Blogs / Bad Astronomy

The Skeptic Society’s online magazine eSkeptic has a great article about the governor of Georgia praying for rain a couple of years ago during a particularly nasty drought in 2007. I wrote about this back when it happened (here and here and here, in that order), and I’ve talked about how intercessory prayer doesn’t work, but this new article by Gary Whittenberger is a thorough and well-done piece, and it’s a very interesting read. Discuss.

[Update: I'll add a link to this without comment. Thanks to Derek for pointing it out. Sigh.]

Recently, a young-Earth creationist named Nathaniel Jeanson gave an invited talk in Boston, and besides the usual crowd of believers, a group of skeptics attended as well. Rebecca Watson penned a wonderful description of the event (and on Skepchick as well), complete with audience — and speaker — reactions.

I don’t generally go to talks by creationists, as it would be a rare event indeed for them to say something original, or accurate. But Rebecca noted this:

Because his work at Harvard focused on biology, that was the bulk of his talk, but before reaching that discipline he first dismissed both astronomical and geological evidence for evolution and a multi-billion-year-old universe. Of the former, he declared that when we observe galaxies around ours, they are spread out equally to the “north, south, east and west” of Earth, and therefore we are literally at the center of the Universe (and therefore blessed by God?). This is silly. Mountains of research suggest that the Earth occupies a wholly unremarkable corner of a Universe that is vaster and more ancient than Jeanson’s comparatively puny philosophy can imagine.

I listened to a recording of the talk for this part, and Rebecca reports his argument faithfully. His argument is totally wrong. I know, shocker. His basic assumption is that the Universe has a physical edge, which is incorrect. There is a visible limit for the Universe, a farthest distance we can see. That distance is about 13 billion light years. We can’t see any farther away because there hasn’t been time since the birth of the Universe for a photon to get any farther. You can consider objects that have moved more than 13 billion light years away from us, but we simply cannot see them due to the expansion of the Universe.

You might therefore naively make a map showing all the objects in the Universe, and lo, we are at the center. But that would be true for any and every single point in the Universe. If you are on Alpha Centauri, or in the Andromeda Galaxy, or sitting near a young quasar 10 billion light years away, you would look out and still see yourself apparently centered in the Universe. The whole point here is that there is no special location in the Universe, no preferred point.

So, BZZZZZT. He’s wrong.

But, we knew that.

Of course, Jeanson ignores another rather obvious and difficult problem: if the Universe is 6000 years old, how do we see galaxies billions of light years away? Creationists have to bob and weave a lot to answer that one. Perhaps the light was created already on its way, or the Universe was created appearing old already. But that would be awfully tricky of a creator, trying to fool us by providing millions of individual bits of evidence of an old Universe but then saying it’s young.

I thought deception was someone else’s purview in the Bible.

Anyway, its stuff like this that’ll probably keep me away from live lectures by creationists in the future. Trying to wrap my head around creationist astronomy is like trying to ride a unicycle around a Moebius strip: it’s off-balance, physically impossible, full of one-sided arguments, and in the end you don’t go anywhere.

We’ve had some wins and losses in the past year for skepticism. Some of these — on both sides — have been pretty big. Two of our big losses, for example, were Simon Singh’s denial of his appeal to overturn an absurd UK libel ruling, and the firing of Chris Comer who did the horrifying act of trying to alert people about a science talk in Texas.

It turns out, the news may yet turn around for our two allies.

1) Simon has announced he will go for an oral reconsideration of his denial of appeal. Initially, he submitted a written application for the court to reconsider its findings about his libel case (where the British Chiropractic Association is suing him over his use of the word "bogus" in reference to the quackeriffic aspects of chiropractic), and that was turned down. An oral appeal is allowed, and that will happen on October 14. That’s right after TAM London, and I just bet Simon will have something to say at that meeting. Well, what he’s legally allowed to say, at least.

2) Chris Comer’s case is a bit older, so to refresh your memory: in November 2007 she worked (note the tense) for the Texas Education Agency (TEA). She received an email announcing a talk by the wonderful Barbara Forrest, the topic of which was the Dover creationism trial and other encroachments of religion on science. Comer, noting that a lot of the people she knows would be interested in such a talk, forwarded the email to her colleagues.

The TEA then fired her, saying Comer abused her position at TEA to promote an anti-religious stance. It was a ridiculous accusation and clearly a political move, but they tried to cover their butts by saying they have to remain neutral on matters of religion versus science. Note that this is the Texas Education Agency. They have to remain neutral on the truth? What the what?

Ms. Comer filed suit against the TEA saying this neutrality policy is actually a violation of the First Amendment, but a judge ruled against her.

Note: remind me to never, ever break a law in Texas.

Anyway, the cool news is that Ms. Comer is appealing the decision. Yay!

You can watch a short video about all this courtesy of the National Center for Science Education’s YouTube channel:

I’m very glad to see both these skeptics are not going down without a fight. The forces of evil lurk around every corner, and we must continue to rail and rally against them.

Finding young Earth creationist lunacy is like walking into an elephant paddock at a zoo and hoping to find poop. All too easy.

I say this because in England, thinking the Loch Ness monster disproves evolution can help get you a job! A group there called The National Recognition Information Centre (NARIC) provides information on vocational and academic skills — they’re something like an accreditation group. They reviewed the curriculum involved in getting an International Certificate of Christian Education (ICCE): a certificate granted after passing a creationist course that’s taught in about 50 private Christian schools in the UK. And what did the NARIC find? That this certificate is just fine and dandy, and equivalent to international A levels (a scholastic certificate that shows competency in a particular course).

Here’s a sample from a textbook (printed — gasp — here in the US) that is used in this course. Remember, this is part of a course being used by teenagers in the UK:

Have you heard of the ‘Loch Ness Monster’ in Scotland? ‘Nessie,’ for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur.

Could a fish have developed into a dinosaur? As astonishing as it may seem, many evolutionists theorize that fish evolved into amphibians and amphibians into reptiles. This gradual change from fish to reptiles has no scientific basis. No transitional fossils have been or ever will be discovered because God created each type of fish, amphibian, and reptile as separate, unique animals. Any similarities that exist among them are due to the fact that one Master Craftsmen fashioned them all.

Riiiiight. Nessie disproves evolution. Turns out there’s a whole field of science in there I missed. Faeries disprove the ability of birds to fly! Godzilla clearly shows the surface area/volume law of biology is a crock! Spiderman flies in the face of humans breeding with arachnids!

And, of course, the irony is that creationism itself shows us that despite our highly-evolved brains, humans still cling to easily-disproven nonsense if it’s taught early enough and with fervor.

I sometimes feel that I have to apologize on behalf of America to the rest of the planet. What must they think of someone like Anna Falling, who is running for Mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma on the platform that there’s not enough religion in government?

“Some may ask why this issue during a Mayoral campaign? And I say why not?” said candidate Anna Falling.

Pssst! Someone tell her the answer to "Why not?" is: "The Constitution".

I think that if you run for any publicly elected office, the only prereq is that you have to read the Constitution and answer a quiz with ten True or False questions on it. Sample questions:

1) Is it OK for the government to endorse only Christianity?

2) Would it be legal to, say, put up a stone monument to The Ten Commandments as the only religious icon in a courthouse?

3) Where exactly in the Constitution does it say this country was founded on Christian principles?

etc.

I love this part of her website on, "Why Anna?":

By now you have likely seen that I have stepped out to run to become Tulsa’s next Mayor. We believe that we are the candidate to beat for campaign experience and issue strength.

Psssst (again): referring to yourself in the royal first person plural may not instill confidence in the voters. Unless you’re running for 19th century Queen of England. Then you’ve got a shot.

Tip o’ the crown to Mandy Qualls for alerting me to this.

Well, the jokes here write themselves: a woman named Magdelena — srsly — says Jesus has appeared on her toilet lid.

I think it looks more like Charles Manson, but there you go. Feel free to make your own guesses and scatalogical jokes in the comments… and this may be hopeless, but try to be at least marginally adult about it, OK? It’s been a long day and I’m pooped.

Tip o’ the sanitary ring — for your protection! — to Rev. Big Dumb Chimp.

So Texas Governor Rick Perry withdrew his nomination of decided not to nominate the far-right ultra-religious Planter’s sampler Cynthia Dunbar for head of the state Board of Education, but, as predicted, he has instead nominated another creationist: Gail Lowe.

She is yet another in a long series of ill-qualified religious ideologues on the Texas BoE: she wants to insert "strengths and weaknesses" into the curriculum (the weaknesses to which they refer don’t really exist; they really mean false creationist attacks on evolution), she wants to make classes more political, she wants to remove other solid scientific reasoning from science classes.

I find it interesting indeed that you find none of this when you go to her website. Instead you find vague claims about her stances which give almost no real information. Of course, her record is pretty clear.

So the head of the BoE is once again someone with antiscience beliefs. I wonder if they’ll appoint Jenny McCarthy as head of their Department of Health?

And so, as usual…