Bad Astronomy » Religion

A case study of the tactics of climate change denial, in which I am the target

Phil Plait — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:00:35 +0000

Over the years I have pointed out the fallacious arguments of climate change deniers when they attack legitimate climatologists like James Hansen and Michael Mann. This is, of course, like kicking at a bee hive, and whenever I do the comments section of my posts fill with lots of angry buzzing.

But now, for what I think is the first time, I find myself the target of an attack. And I have to admit, I welcome it: it’s a textbook case of denialist sleight of hand, of distraction, distortion, error, and misdirection.

Stick around for all of this. It’ll be… interesting.

Our story so far

OK, first, here’s the scoop: a few days ago, I wrote a blog post taking apart two intellectually bankrupt climate change denial articles, one in the Wall Street Journal, and the other in the UK’s Daily Mail. Both were claiming that global warming appears to have stopped in the past few years, a claim which is trivially easy to show wrong. In fact, I linked to two articles doing just that: one at Skeptical Science, and another I myself wrote. Finding actual scientists destroying that claim is not hard at all; those ...

Christopher Hitchens, 1949 – 2011

Phil Plait — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:21:24 +0000

Christopher Hitchens has died.

You’ve probably heard; the web is lighting up with obituaries and stories about him. I didn’t know him personally — having only met him on two occasions, both times at skeptic conferences — and I didn’t come into his writings until relatively recently, so nothing I can say here would add substantively to what already exists. Instead, many people have written eloquent thoughts upon his death, so you should read those:

At Noisy Astronomer, Nicole Gugliucci recounts watching Hitchens in a debate with a theist, a situation that occurred often.

Steve Novella of course sums things up with his usual insight and sharp aim.

Kevin Murphy simply put up an interesting video of Hitchens acerbically and artfully dissecting, and then rewriting, the Ten Commandments.

And, as usual, it’s impossible to beat the amazing ability of The Onion to distill away impurities and make me smile ruefully with one simple headline.

… though of course, Zach Weiner manages to do so pretty well in both a web comic as well as a short tribute and imploration for us to do more.

Holiday fundraisers

Phil Plait — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:00:45 +0000

Winter is always a big season for charities. Christmastime is traditionally a time to give, but that means competition among charities increases, and it’s hard to separate out which ones you want to give to. And some "traditional" charities seem like they do good work, but have some pretty intolerant and bigoted beliefs they keep relatively quiet. So deciding to whom to give can be difficult.

So if you have a few bucks, here are a handful of charities I like.

Recipe4Hope is campaign to raise money for the Autism Science Foundation. I am very wary of groups claiming to research autism, since so many of them are fronts for anti-vaccination promoters. ASF, though, understands that vaccines do not cause autism, and is looking into actual scientific research. Here’s their video for this year:

100% of the donations will fund ASF’s pre- and post-doctoral autism research fellowships, helping young scientists start their career researching autism. They have a donation page set up, and the campaign runs through the end of 2011.

The James Randi Educational Foundation has an annual Season of Reason campaign which raises funds to keep JREF operating. Donate $100 (or ...

In the Constitution We Trust

Phil Plait — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 23:42:55 +0000

[UPDATE (20:00 Eastern time): Sigh. The bill passed.]

[UPDATE 2 (23:00 Eastern time): I have been told that this bill, even when passed, does not have the force of law. It's what's called a House Concurrent Resolution, and basically is used to express a sentiment of the legislature. I might then argue it's not unconstitutional, but then why did several House members say it would be (see the link provided in the post below)? Making law really is like making sausages. Anyway, even if the argument about it being unconstitutional is not a good one, this bill was still a colossal waste of time, and meaningless. There is simply no good, real reason to have done this, and the fact that so many thought it was a good expenditure of time, and that so many signed it, makes me sad.]

I found out about this too late to do much about it, but just in case you hadn’t heard, The US House of Representatives is voting tonight on a bill to make reaffirm "In God We Trust" the official motto of the US.

This is pretty shocking. ...

You could use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true

Phil Plait — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:00:49 +0000

Here at BA Central, I have my hands full trying to battle the Forces of Darkness: those who would spin, fold, and mutilate reality for their own gain. They may be motivated by greed, or power, or ignorance, or ideology, but the thing they all have in common is, they’re wrong. They come in many flavors: homeopaths, psychics, creationists, antivaxxers… and yes, sadly, far too many politicians.

And I can rail against them time and again, my arsenal filled with the facts from an entire Universe at my disposal, yet make hardly a dent in their armor.

Sometimes, though, a small dose of satire penetrates right through that shielding and pierces the very heart of antiscience. Thank you, The Daily Show, for fighting this good fight:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c Weathering Fights – Science: What’s It Up To? www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

Related posts:

- You can’t explain Bill O’Reilly
-

You’ve come a long way

Phil Plait — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 17:07:20 +0000

This week, women in Saudi Arabia were given the right to vote and to run for municipal office.

First off, this is fantastic news. Saudi Arabia is one of the more repressive countries for women, so to see them taking this major step is, well, wonderful! King Abdullah has been making small steps towards reform for years. While I want to see women have full rights everywhere on Earth, I understand the political need to take it slowly in Saudi Arabia. It’s a very conservative religious country, and the backlash if things move too quickly could be extraordinary.

There’s much left to do, of course. Women still have a long way to go there; they are not allowed to drive or to leave the country unaccompanied, for example. But this is the right way to move. I just hope that vector stays pointed true.

I also want to relate my own thinking when I first read this news. My initial thought was snark; Welcome to the 20th century was literally the first thing I thought. My second thought was what I wrote above about this being fantastic news.

My third thought was the most interesting to me. It was ...

Erasing false balance: the right is more antiscience than the left

Phil Plait — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 18:31:12 +0000

[Note: I'm anticipating some, um, interesting comments to this post. So, before you leave one, please read this post on my political thinking, and this one on political posts in general.]

I write quite a bit about how rabidly antiscience the political right in the US has become. From the attacks on science by the Bush Administration (and Newt Gingrich before that) to the political litmus test of needing to denounce evolution and global warming if you’re a candidate, the Republican party has planted its flag firmly in the ground of nonsense. At the bottom of this article is a section called Related Posts that has links to just a handful of the copious examples of this outrageous behavior.

They have also become masters at spinning this, going on the attack against science they don’t like and using the media to sow doubt. One of the most aggravating of these tactics is the one of false equivalency. For example, in a post I might lambaste yet another Republican candidate saying creationism should be taught in schools, and someone in the comments will say, "Well, people on the left are antiscience as well!"

This is a common claim, but at ...

Republican candidates, global warming, evolution, and reality

Phil Plait — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 18:27:23 +0000

So, last night was another debate among the Republican candidates for President. While Ron Paul appears to have done quite well, at least according to an MSNBC poll, it was Rick Perry who is grabbing headlines.

Of course, that’s because what he said was outrageously awful. About climate science, he said, "…just because you have a group of scientists that have stood up and said here is the fact, Galileo got outvoted for a spell." That analogy is so ridiculous it’s hard to know where to start; but a good place might be to simply say that Galileo had the advantage of being right. Just because a tiny fraction of people claim global warming isn’t real, or that humans aren’t responsible, doesn’t make them correct. Especially when going up against the overwhelming evidence compiled by a consensus of 97% of scientists who study climate as their career.

Also, the religiously conservative Perry should be a bit more circumspect on his analogies. It wasn’t scientists who were fighting Galileo, it was religious conservatives.

Bismillah, no!

Jon Huntsman, as expected, stood up for science, as Sheril Kirshenbaum points out on her new Culture of Science blog. And while I ...

Did Rick Perry just admit to violating the US Constitution?

Phil Plait — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 20:58:42 +0000

To say I am not a fan of Rick Perry, Republican Presidential candidate, is to seriously underestimate my antipathy toward him. He is anti-science in almost every sense of the word, and his stance on nearly every issue on which I’ve heard him speak is the exact opposite of where I stand.

But then something like this comes along, and shows just how far outside of reality he is. In this video, a little boy asks him how old the Earth is, and Perry then gives an astonishing answer:

After equivocating about the age of the Earth, Perry — a man who, if elected President, will swear to uphold the U. S. Constitution — says, "In Texas we teach both creationism and evolution in our public schools."

This is a jaw-dropping assertion. I find it difficult to interpret this as other than him saying he supports blatantly violating the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by teaching religion in public schools. Gawker does take a different tack saying, " Texas does not, in fact, teach creationism, or anything like it." But even if that’s true, it means Perry is — ...

Update: Reality wins for sure in Texas!

Phil Plait — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 16:30:35 +0000

Last month, I wrote about the Texas State Board of Education debating the adoption of textbook supplements, some of which had creationist material. As I wrote then, those materials, after much argument, were rejected. Yay!

However, the story wasn’t quite done. One of the pro-science supplements was still being held up by a creationist on the Texas BoE, who obviously didn’t care for the way evolution was being portrayed… that is, accurately.

The good news is that as of last week, that final supplement has been approved! The creationist’s complaints about the supplement have been determined to have been "sufficiently addressed" by the publisher. In fact, the supplement now supports evolution even more strongly. I took a look at the complaints made and the publisher’s response (PDF): it’s actually a thing of beauty. Where the complaints were minor wording issues, the changes were made. When the creationists made more substantive complaints, talking about the fossil record or genetic differences between humans and chimps, the publisher either did not make changes to weaken the science, or did change the wording to make an even stronger case for evolution!

Fantastic! And this is an important distinction: ...

Presleidolia

Phil Plait — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 13:04:17 +0000

Hey, I haven’t posted a fun pareidolia (patterns that look like faces or figures) news article in a while, and this is a good one: a man in Finland found this interesting image on his wall:

[Here's the Google translation into English.]

Of course, the article claims it looks like the Virgin Mary.

Now look: I know that the standard depiction of Mary is usually with her head bent, covered in a cowl, with a robe of some sort. That kind of figure lends itself to pareidolia — it’s an easy shape to make, from oil stains to

A win for reality in Texas!

Phil Plait — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 17:48:21 +0000

Some great news out of the Lone Star State: the Texas State Board of Education unanimously rejected creationist supplements to textbooks, instead voting to endorse science-based ones.

Yay!

These supplements are for students to use in classrooms in addition to their textbooks. A passel of creationist ones had been submitted for approval by the BoE back in April by a creationist special interest group, as well as materials based on science submitted by mainstream publishers. Last week, the BoE voted on which to use, and science won.

The links above go to the National Center for Science Education. They are a group that fought valiantly for the science-based materials, which is clearly why they won the day; they greatly outnumbered witnesses for creationism. Clearly, showing up is half the battle. At least. My congratulations to everyone at the NCSE for this victory.

Josh Rosenau, who writes the Thoughts from Kansas blog and was one of the people at the Texas hearings, has written about this debate in detail (including earlier posts here, and here) if you’re looking for more info from an insider’s viewpoint.

So, because of this, I am happy to create ...

Dear Playboy: Deepak Chopra is wrong

Phil Plait — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 18:15:19 +0000

Last month, Playboy magazine ran an interview with Deepak Chopra, well-known among skeptics as a man whose grasp of science is only enough to use sciencey-sounding words to bolster whatever bizarre claim he’s making this week.

I received an email from an editor of Playboy asking me if I’d like to write an OpEd about the interview to be printed in that issue. Given the long reach of the magazine (it sells more than 2 million copies per month) I agreed and quickly penned a response. The interview and my editorial, along with one by Michael Shermer, ran in that June 2011 issue [NOTE: Playboy had the interview online but now it's gone; I found transcripts but I'm not sure they're legal. If someone knows where the original link is, please let me know!]. Here is what they printed from me:

This captures the gist of what I was saying, but due to space limitations was not my entire rebuttal to Chopra’s word salad in the interview (or should that be Mad Lib?). I think it could be read as if I’m insulting people who aren’t scientists, but that’s not what ...

More good and bad news about measles and vaccinations

Phil Plait — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 18:30:13 +0000

Reporting on the latest news about vaccinations is frustrating. For every step forward we take a step back.

1) First, the good: vaccination rate for measles in the UK has risen to its highest level in 13 years according to the UK Health Protection Agency. The rate — 90% among two-year-olds — is pretty good. I’ll note that this is for the first of two vaccinations needed; for the second dose the uptake is lower, 85%.

One bit of bad news about this is the reason behind the rate increase is thought to be due to a series of measles outbreaks in Europe. It’s an irony of life that vaccines are a victim of their own success: inoculations have been so successful in eliminating some diseases that people take for granted the diseases are gone. But they’re not gone, they’re waiting. When vaccination rates drop low enough, we see more measles. And pertussis. And the flu, and polio.

And when this happens, people get sick, and some die. A teenager in the UK recently died of measles. He had a compromised immune system, which means he relied on us, the rest of the population, to keep up herd ...

New York makes gay marriage legal. Excelsior!

Phil Plait — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 12:18:06 +0000

As you no doubt heard over the weekend, New York is set to be the sixth state to legalize gay marriage: the state Senate passed a bill, and the Governor has said he’ll sign it.

My sincere and very happy congratulations to all my gay readers! I think this is terrific news, especially since NY is such a big state, the largest to make gay marriage legal. I also want to specifically point out this bill would not have passed without four Republicans signing it into law as well. I especially wish to thank Republican Senator Roy McDonald, who gave this heartfelt speech:

You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn’t black and white, good and bad, and you try to do the right thing. You might not like that. You might be very cynical about that. Well, [bleep] it, I don’t care what you think. I’m trying to do the right thing. I’m tired of Republican-Democrat politics. They can take the job and shove it. I come from a blue-collar background. I’m trying to do the right thing, and that’s where I’m ...

NBC airs Pledge of Allegiance without “under God”

Phil Plait — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 17:07:40 +0000

A minor firestorm has been lit by the NBC TV network: for their coverage of the the U.S. Open golf competition over the weekend, NBC aired a little patriotic intro of kids reciting the "Pledge of Allegiance" to the American flag intercut with shots of soldiers raising the flag. No big deal for a sports show, except for one small thing: they edited out the kids saying the words "under God" in the Pledge:

Hmmmm. I have several comments.

1) I don’t think this was intentional on the part of NBC. Obviously, they meant to edit the Pledge, but I don’t think they took out the words "under God" as some sort of anti-American God-hating plot to secularize the country and turn us into slavish devil-worshippers. Not that this would stop some folks from believing just that.

That seems far-fetched to start with, but mind you they also edited out the word "indivisible". If they had some sort of anti-religious agenda, why take that out? Just taking out "under God" would be a much stronger statement.

2) The original pledge didn’t have the words "under God" in it. They were added in 1954 as ...

Michele Bachmann needs to check her ID

Phil Plait — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 13:00:54 +0000

On Friday, Michele Bachmann (R-MN) — incredibly, a Presidential front-runner for the Republicans — said this:

I support intelligent design [...] What I support is putting all science on the table and then letting students decide. I don’t think it’s a good idea for government to come down on one side of scientific issue or another, when there is reasonable doubt on both sides.*

Terrific. But then, in a sense, I agree. That is, when Intelligent Design proponents actually have any science, they should speak up. And if there were any reasonable doubt that would be fine too. But they don’t, and there isn’t.

And ID isn’t science, it’s religion. It was even ruled to be religion by a judge — a conservative Republican judge — so teaching it would be in violation of the Constitution that Representative Bachmann is sworn to uphold.

Just sayin’.

*Incidentally, this quote from her is in response to a question asking her to name Nobel Laureates who support Intelligent Design; she previously made the claim that many do. Note that in her answer quoted above she totally dodges the actual ...

Oregon set to remove faith healing defense for parents

Phil Plait — Thu, 26 May 2011 16:30:54 +0000

[Note: I expect to hear some disagreement over my statements in this post. If you are going to comment, PLEASE read the whole post first, and then read my post "When belief kills" before leaving your comment. That should minimize misunderstanding about where I stand on this. Thank you.]

In February, I wrote that in Oregon a bill was being proposed to the state legislature that would remove the defense of religious belief in the case of homicide. Specifically, if the bill passes, parents who use faith healing instead of real medicine for their children can face murder or manslaughter charges if the child dies due to lack of medical care.

In March, the Oregon State House unanimously approved the bill. On Monday, the Senate approved it 25 – 5. It will now go back to the House for any changes to reconcile the versions. After that, it will be sent to the governor where he will sign it, and it will become state law.

This law would apply to anyone who does not seek medical care for their child, but the situation has become urgent of late because a fringe group called Followers of Christ ...

Unraptured, Part II: The Rationalizationing

Phil Plait — Tue, 24 May 2011 13:00:25 +0000

So last week, I said:

I have no doubt whatsoever that when the Rapture fails to materialize, the group surrounding Camping will find some way to rationalize it. Perhaps they’ll claim the date was off. Perhaps they’ll claim it was a test of their faith (a common excuse, actually). Maybe, if they’re lucky, some will leave the movement. But no matter what, excuses will be made.

Well, I don’t want to brag, but: I called it.

Here’s what Camping had to say after it was clear his prophecy was dead wrong:

Saturday was "an invisible judgment day" in which a spiritual judgment took place, he said. But the timing and the structure is the same as it has always been, he said.

"We’ve always said May 21 was the day, but we didn’t understand altogether the spiritual meaning," he said. "May 21 is the day that Christ came and put the world under judgment."

So he claimed his date was off and it was, in effect, a test of faith. If I were so inclined, I’d give myself a twofer on this one. [UPDATE: I didn't mean to say here that Camping changed the date ...

Unraptured

Phil Plait — Fri, 20 May 2011 13:04:26 +0000

I’ve been getting some email and other notes asking about the claims that on Saturday May 21 the Rapture will occur.

Well, what can I say? Harold Camping, the guy making these claims is, to be charitable, a kook. He claimed the Rapture would be in 1994, for one thing, then changed his mind. His claims are based on numerology. Other evangelicals are coming out against him. And so on and so forth.

We’ve seen such claims come and we’ve seen them go. The problem is, they never really leave, do they? A new one always comes along soon enough to take the place of the last one. And so many others are simply recycled (Velikovsky begat Sitchin begat Planet X, which has been subsumed by the Mayan 2012 folks).

Moreover, the most fervent believers in such doomsday prophecies, after the time comes and goes with nothing happening, usually wind up believing in it even more strongly. I saw it happen myself in 2003 when Planet X failed to show up and wipe us all out as predicted. A lot of ...

Update: Tennessee postpones education-wrecking bill

Phil Plait — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 13:00:55 +0000

Some (kinda) good news: a bill designed to promote the teaching of creationism in Tennessee public schools has been put on hold until at least next year.

Earlier in April, the Tennessee House passed this bill, which basically says teachers can help students find weaknesses in scientific theories — and while that sounds legit on its surface, it’s actually very thinly veiled creationist rhetoric for attacking evolution (read the link above for more on this).

To be made into state law, the Tennessee Senate would have to pass the bill as well, but they decided to put it on hold. The thing is, it was tabled basically due to scheduling and not because the bill is antiscience, antireality, and potentially unconstitutional. I imagine when the Senate reconvenes at the next session it’ll pop right back up, as these creationist whack-a-mole bills do. After all, this is the same legislature that grossly mischaracterized a quote by Einstein to support creationism.

So science education in the Volunteer State is safe… for now. Therefore:

Some good news, some bad news, and some background

Phil Plait — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 18:30:10 +0000

With the seeming onslaught of attacks on reality coming from all over the country, I hate to add to the bad news… but I will because the bad news shows just how silly antiscience legislators can be, and there’s also some good news to go along with it. So that’s nice. And I’ll end with an article that shows us why those of us in the reality-based community have such a hard time pushing back against nonsense.

The Good:

A couple of years ago Louisiana passed a law designed to destroy good science, allowing teachers to use creationist materials in the classroom, despite this being a clear violation of the US Constitution. So why is this good news? Because a bill has been filed to repeal that awful law. Even cooler, this bill came about because of efforts by a high school student in Baton Rouge named Zack Kopplin, who has been working with the Louisiana Coalition for Science.

In high school I was busy goofing off with my friends. Zack Kopplin is busy taking on the entire Louisiana State legislature.

Good on him! And while it’s still in the early stages of this fight, it shows that grassroots efforts ...

Antiscience bill passes Tennessee House vote

Phil Plait — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 13:00:08 +0000

A bill clearly intended to promote and protect antiscience passed in the Tennessee State House yesterday, by a vote of 70 – 23.

Let that sink in. 70 to 23.

The bill is another in a long series of creationist (and broadened into other antiscience topics) wedge bills designed to weaken the teaching of real science in public schools. The summary makes that clear:

This bill prohibits the state board of education and any public elementary or secondary school governing authority, director of schools, school system administrator, or principal or administrator from prohibiting any teacher in a public school system of this state from helping students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught, such as evolution and global warming.

On the surface this sounds like legit science; after all, science thrives on understanding the weaknesses in ideas so they can be improved. But if you read that last part, conservative antiscience rears its head: the two specific cases mentioned are evolution and global warming.

That doesn’t sound like real science is the motivation behind this bill — and

Interview with Suicide Girls

Phil Plait — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 21:30:59 +0000

An interview I did with Keith Daniels of the counter-culture site Suicide Girls is now up on the SG website.

I’ll be clear: that page should be OK, but the site itself may be somewhat more than NSFW, in much the same way that standing a meter away from a supernova is somewhat more than Not Safe For Staying a Solid.

I’ve been a fan of SG for a while — it gives a strong, nerdy voice to decidedly non-mainstream thinking in a wide variety of topics, and the interview is like that. We covered a lot of ground: Hubble, NASA, skepticism, politics, life on other planets, the media, and of course Not Being a Dick (while still maintaining a motivating level of anger and passion).

Clearly, after ten years or more of doing interviews, I still haven’t learned how to make a succinct, pithy point. And while I do suffer a bit from verbal diarrhea, I’ll note that some topics deserve more subtlety and longer discussion. Sound bites tend to gloss over vital details, and not everything can be adequately covered by a bumper sticker.

To give you ...

Two difficult court cases protect the public’s health

Phil Plait — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 18:57:31 +0000

Two interesting court cases relevant to medical reality came up recently.

1) Yahoo news is reporting that a judge has thrown out a case where lawyers wanted to use religious and alt-med exemptions as an excuse to not get health care. People were claiming that they had faith that God would heal them in times of sickness, and that forcing them to get health care was an attack on that belief. There are a lot of things wrong with this — for example, they weren’t being forced to actually get health care, just insurance — and to be frank, this sort of thinking constitutes a major health risk to the population. It also smells very much like a fishing expedition on the part of people against universal health care, using religion as a "get out of critical responses free" card.

I’ve said this before: as an American I am not thrilled with the government telling me what I have to do or not do, but there are times when the greater good must be considered… and considered very carefully. Slippery slopes are treacherous. To some people "the greater good" is a phrase used to justify way too much, ...