There’s an article in the latest issue of Skeptic Magazine called “A Climate of Belief” by Patrick Frank. It says that the case for Global Warming being caused by CO2 is severely hurt by the fact that computer models of the climate are uncertain. At first, I thought it had raised a fairly good objection, at least good enough that I, mostly clueless about climate science, would have no idea how to refute it. But it turns out that the article fails at basic statistics.

The main argument of the article goes like this:

Computer models of climate show error bars in their results, but these error bars only show one kind of error: the variation between multiple runs of the simulation. What the error bars don’t show is the “physical uncertainty”, the measure of difference between the predicted and actual.

How do we estimate the physical uncertainty? We use the climate model to “retrodict” past climate, and then compare to the actual climate we had during that time. Frank shows that such retrodictions only calculated the total cloud cover with 10% accuracy. Of course, to show this, he uses retrodictions of the 1979-1988 period, and compares them to observations of 1983-1990. I have to wonder if it’s good practice to compare different decades.

He goes on to say that 10% cloud cover has a huge impact on global temperature. How big? 1.1°C a year. That means that after a hundred years, the uncertainty is 110°C! See the graph below of the uncertainty as it increases with time.

This graph is what really set my skeptical bells ringing. Yes it’s true that if the uncertainty is very large, we can draw no conclusions. But how can the error be so large? Intuitively, it does not make sense. If all your results are accurate within, say, 10°C, but the error bars are 100°C, that either means you’ve overestimated your error, or you got really, really lucky. Even global warming deniers will grant that the models are accurate within 10°C. Are they feeling lucky?

So where does his estimate of uncertainty go wrong? Frank’s problem is pure statistical innumeracy. Unfortunately, statistics is not common knowledge, so this sort of innumeracy can go right over some people’s heads. Allow me to explain.

Problem 1: Uncertainties do not add! If you have 1.1°C uncertainty in the first year, and 1.1°C uncertainty in the next year, what is the cumulative uncertainty? You might guess 2.2°C, but this assumes that both uncertainties are always in the same direction. Half of the time, they will be in opposite directions and partly cancel each other out. The result when you work out the math is a total uncertainty of 1.56°C after two years. Sure, it’s possible that it will be off by 2.2°C, but error bars are only supposed to cover the most likely data. The uncertainty does not increase in a straight line. It should be proportional to the square-root of time. That is, it will increase more slowly after a little while. I was extremely shocked at such an egregious error. Has Frank never taken a statistics class?

Problem 2: Uncertainties are reduced in a stable system. The environment is a mostly stable system. That is, it doesn’t swing wildly in temperature every century. If the temperature is a little higher than average one year, something will push it towards normal temperature. For instance, higher temperature might increase cloud cover, which reflects more of the sun’s light away from Earth. Therefore, a temperature uncertainty this year may not survive to the next year. When I said the uncertainty is proportional to the square-root of time, I assumed that the system has no stabilizing mechanisms. In fact, the uncertainty will increase much more slowly than that.

Problem 3: What’s the difference between Frank’s uncertainty and the already reported error bars? Frank asserts that they are different, but I’m not so sure. Frank bases his uncertainty estimate on the predictions of cloud cover. But is this uncertainty different from the uncertainty between different runs of the simulation? I imagine each time the simulation is run, it gives a slightly different prediction of cloud cover in the same way that it gives a slightly different prediction of temperature. So not only is Frank calculating the uncertainty incorrectly, it may have already been accounted for.

Frank seems incredulous that we can estimate the temperature decades from now when we can’t even estimate next year’s temperature accurately. But actually, this makes sense. We can’t predict the whether next week, but we can predict overall trends between seasons. Large, overall trends are easier to predict than year-to-year fluctuations!

I only spot the statistical errors, because that’s the part I know. Given the kinds of errors I see, I wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of it were also riddled with flaws.

But these instances do not constitute the only time the military junta has screwed over its own people. Of all the megalomaniacs, it is perhaps only General Ne Win and his successors who relied heavily on astrology and other superstition to chart out national policy…

A relatively harmless example of this is the practice of yadaya – a practice loosely resembling voodoo where a person essentially dresses up and impersonates an enemy to “steal” his or her powers. Thus on numerous occasions Burma’s generals have been known to dress up in drag as pro-democracy advocate and elected leader of the country Aung San Suu Kyi.

However, this story takes an ugly turn as, when told by his astrologer and numerologist that his lucky number was 9 and that he would live to be 90 if he “surrounded himself” with such auspicious digits, General Ne Win appeared before his country in 1987 and informed them that most of their money was now worthless. New money would be issued… not on the metric scale but rather in 45 and 90 kyat bills – since (for example) 45 is a product of and its digits add up to 9.

Yes, it’s a real 90 kyat bill. General Win was really that fucked up in real life.

The result to the country was catastrophic. While 5 and 10 kyats remained legal tender, the now-invalid 50 and 100 kyats that were the mainstay of most of the middle class’s savings in the nation resulted in a collapse in purchasing power and Burma being named least developed nation in 1987. Perhaps the saddest part of the story is that Ne Win’s astrologer was right – the good general lived to be 91 years of age. Maybe this article should be titled “Brutal Narcissistic Military Dictator Proves that Astrology Works!”

1:00:52 – Hitler’s views on superior races mirrors Darwin’s own theories, and a necessary pre-requisite to Nazism was Darwinism. At the time, many eugenicists used Darwin’s theory to justify the slaughter of Jews, Slavs, and infirms en masse.

The Anti-Defamation League respectfully disagrees -

“The film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed misappropriates the Holocaust and its imagery as a part of its political effort to discredit the scientific community which rejects so-called intelligent design theory. Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler’s genocidal madness. Using the Holocaust in order to tarnish those who promote the theory of evolution is outrageous and trivializes the complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry.”

It’s sad that Stein resorts to Godwin’s Law to bring his points across. Persons of all walks of life supported the Nazi Regime because, like the fascist regime in Italy, it promised to get the economy back on track and the trains running on time. Genocide is not linked with atheism – in fact, the Bible details and supports the genocide of the Caananites in Deuteronomy of the Old Testament, and the arrogance and superiority complexes of many Christians played a major role in the near-genocide of the Native Americans. There have been so many genocides that have taken place since even before Darwin came up with his theory, and many of those have been committed by people claiming to be Christians as well as persons of other religions.

1:13:21 – Stein quotes from Darwin’s book The Descent of Man, and seems to make the claim that Darwin was for weeding out those “undesirables” in society just like Hitler and the Nazis after him.

James Watson is a racist, but one cannot discount his research on the double helix because he was, just as one cannot discount Martin Luther’s claims that the Catholic Church of the time needed to be reformed because he was an anti-Semite. That’s not to say that Darwin was even a eugenicist; Stein conveniently omits the next passage in the book (this taken from Expelled Exposed) -

“The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature.”

1:25:27 – Richard Dawkins doesn’t know how the first self-replicating molecule (life) came to be. How could the exemplar of Darwinism not know? Surely Intelligent Design has won…

He’s evil and communist. How could Stein’s righteousness not prevail?

While there is no hard evidence, see Tom Cech’s Experiments under Part II of my refutation. While definitely more experiments need to be conducted, especially in finding an evolutionary basis for an RNA-based polymerase, but there is already far stronger evidence for abiogenesis than Intelligent Design.

1:25:55 – Dawkins claims that an advanced civilization evolved through Darwinism and then could have “seeded” this planet with life. Dawkins is only against God as an intelligent designer.

It’s an entirely plausible explanation that requires no supernatural forces that we can’t prove exist or don’t exist. In any case, this was not the crux of Dawkin’s argument and more of an aside; the film again disingenuously exploits this quote to try to push through the supposed ignorance of the evolutionists.

1:28:33 – In a speech, Stein says that “America is all about freedom”, and that the freedom to impose intelligent design as a legitimate theory in the scientific community is an essential right of the people!

We’re not out to squelch your personal views; you could be a Young Earth Creationist and I wouldn’t particularly care. But to say that ID is legitimate science when it doesn’t even follow the scientific method and instead basically says “I give up, God did it” is something that the film overlooks.

1:28:53 – Stein basically mirrors his own staged speech with Reagan’s memorable speech at the Berlin Wall.

I’m not particularly a fan of Reagan, but that speech did take political courage and was definitely one of his better moments. But to mirror where Ben Stein basically paid pro-ID people to give a seemingly spontaneous standing ovation after the speech is ridiculous.

If you don’t believe me, see for yourself (it’s a vidcap, so quality is terrible) -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4TQlljLfhM

31:22 – A cell could not have been the result of Darwinian evolution because it is a machine of at least 250 perfectly ordered proteins, each of which has to work to maintain a lifeform. Therefore there must be an intelligent design to make something this ordered and precise.

That’s assuming that proteins have all-or-nothing function, which is COMPLETELY false. There are countless mutants of even just one protein and different mutants of different proteins have different catalytic efficiencies. Most mutations don’t even have an effect on fitness, and are silent due to the degeneracy of the genetic code (multiple codons encode for the same protein). And different cellular structures can be analogous but not homologous, meaning that they have different evolutionary bases but the same function, just as with the flagella of the archaea, bacteria, and eukaryotes – demonstrating that there are multiple pathways to adaptations that essentially do the same thing.

Furthermore, the longer back a protein’s lineage is, the more conserved (unlikely to change over time) it is since said protein has undergone selective pressure and any new non-silent mutations would be even more likely to be catastrophic to function. This can lead to some very inefficient proteins, such as Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase (Rubisco), which has enzymatic activity of only 4 molecules per second (most enzymes have activities of hundreds or thousands per second) but is critical for the carbon fixation cycle. If everything were so intricate and intelligently designed, Rubisco would be far more efficient and not have to consist of 40% of total proteins in the cell NOR would it be sensitive to something as simple as oxygen.

Rubisco. If it were intelligently designed, God must really have been on something.

Life can loosely be defined as a structure that is capable of metabolism, can self-replicate, and can regulate its own environment. There is strong circumstantial evidence that all three can occur individually even through very simple, immediate phenomenon; lipids, which were created by the Miller-Urey Experiment, can spontaneously form into micelles given a certain concentration of lipids (the Critical Micelle Concentation). These micelles are enclosed structures capable of forming a basis of a micro environment.

Abiogenesis Goes Far Beyond “Lightning Striking a Mud Puddle” – Thomas Cech’s Experiments

Nobel Laureate Thomas Cech showed through a fragment assay where he stripped away various portions of the bacterial ribosome that if 95% of all proteins were stripped away, the ribosome would still be capable of peptidyl transferase activity. He also found that the protein did not exist around the active sites of the ribosome. Through this and various other experiments, Cech demonstrated that RNA functions as both an encoder and a catalyst (a catalyzing RNA is referred to as a ribozyme).

Cech further demonstrated that such an RNA molecule can be relatively simple and can form through a variety of pathways. Cech sequenced random RNA sequences and found that out of a total of 10^85 possible molecules with just 172 bases, around one per 10^15 molecules was capable of some peptidyl transferase activity. Thus there are 10^70 different molecules with different bases capable of PT activity – and just for those molecules with 172 bases! Thus, one does not need a intricately and intelligently designed ribozyme to perform seemingly advanced metabolic activities – random polymerization and then selective pressure for those molecules best able to self-replicate will suffice.

39:31 – Ben fawns over Capital Hill town idiot Congressman Mark Souder (R-IN), who has proposed a bill preserving “academic freedom” at the Smithsonian in response to Sternberg’s “persecution”. This is just one of many examples of “The Academy”, a shadowy organization dedicated to eliminating God from the science lab.

Congressman Souder’s admits that he is from a district where the Democrats need to be conservatives to survive and the Republicans are even more far to the right. Belief in the literal truth of the Bible hardly makes him some sort of nonpartisan arbiter in the Evolution-ID debate. Oh, and parroting the Expelled movie ON his house website doesn’t really help.

41:29 – The National Center for Science Education is at the forefront of keeping Darwinism in power. They are one of many watchdog organizations, along with that demonic ACLU, which is in cahoots with The Academy.

And there are numerous watchdog organizations that do exactly the opposite. To imply some sort of liberal conspiracy theory is one of the many disingenuous claims this movie makes.

James Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family and more guilty of spamming peoples’ e-mails than half of Nigeria

43:35 – Darwinism turns goodly, God-fearing Christians into Atheists! Just look at Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers! Beware!

(See 57:22 for more)

Although the percentage of Americans who believe evolution stand at an appallingly low 40% (only several percentage points above hardcore creationism), almost 80% of Americans consider themselves Christians… meaning that even if we assume that everyone in the remaining 20% believed in evolution, 50% of evolutionists would have to be Christians. I’m sure that they are Christians In Name Only, because they probably belong to some liberal church that supports gay marriage or is maybe just a front group for *gulp* humanism.

44:18 – Ben uses the example of the Abrams Report on MSNBC (now Verdict w/ Dan Abrams), who absolutely dismantled a lawyer from the Thomas More Law Foundation representing the defendants of the Dover School District Trial to show that the media is firmly in the hands of Big Science.

Kudos to Dan Abrams; he called out the IDers for what they really are – closest creationists. And while Abrams, Keith Olbermann, and maybe even Chris Matthews on MSNBC lean to the left, there have always been more conservative pundits on cable TV. Right-wingers Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck all gave the Expelled movie itself glowing reviews. I also have yet to see an unabashedly far-left organization that masquerades itself as “News”, just as FOX News does for the right.

45:41- Pamela Winnick “refused to take sides” in an article on the evolution-ID debate. But the Darwinists still persecuted her because she refused to show enough deference to evolution.

This is actually one area where Ben Stein gets it partially right. Winnick’s original article does try to set a neutral tone between the evolution-ID debate… although it does make the false assumption that ID is a serious theory that needs to be debated. But Stein gives no examples of how she was “persecuted”. And now Pamela Winnick cannot be considered a non-partisan journalist – her new book “Science’s War Against Religion“.

46:36 – Darwinism has infiltrated the courts in a last-ditch attempt to stop Intelligent Design. Representing the vanguard of the effort is the ACLU.

A court is a forum where all the evidence for or against Intelligent Design and/or the Theory of Evolution can be debated, discussed, and refuted. Oh wait, I forgot you don’t have any evidence – maybe that’s why you’re so afraid of the judicial system.

49:44 - Darwinists have given up on defending their own theory, and have simply resorted to attacking their opponent (religion and intelligent design) like a dirty politician.

On the contrary, this film and the IDers do the very same thing you’re decrying, and I have the liveblog to prove it.

53:12 – There have been plenty of religious people who are also scientists like Isaac Newton and Galileo. Darwinists don’t have a monopoly on good science.

No one said they did except the film, which is just used to build up a persecution complex. Francis Collins is a relatively conservative evangelical Christian and a very accomplished scientist who worked on the Human Genome Project – but the difference between him and the ID people is that the ID people use religion to manipulate science despite the overwhelming evidence.

57:22 – PZ Myers was not only converted to atheism through Darwinism, but now also actively seeks to marginalize religion, bring it down, and make it irrelevant in the public sphere.

Just one in a long line of fear-baiting arguments that this film makes. There are plenty of religious people who believe in the Theory of Evolution; even the Catholic Church and the very conservative Pope Benedict XVI’s doctrine (while not altogether rational) claim the theory as valid and leave it up to the (real) scientists.

Furthermore, Stein is insinuating that atheists are out to overthrow Christianity or something, which is completely false. This is to suggest that atheists are one monolithic force that is “out to get religion”, whereas in reality atheists are just as diverse in world view as the various Christian, Jewish, Muslim or other religious denominations. There are atheists like myself who are more or less content with keeping the separation between Church and State, and more radical atheists who seek actively to challenge the views of religious people just as Christian evangelicals do the same to nonbelievers.

The EVIL ATHEIST CONSPIRACY is coming! Watch out, or you may become one of “Them”.

There is also no conflict between religion and the Theory of Evolution as long as one sees The Bible and other holy books as a damned (pardon my language) allegory rather than word-for-word truths – as many moderate and liberal Christians have… not to mention that France during the Enlightenment experienced an upsurge of atheism up to a point in time where even the famous Cathedral of Notre Dame ceased to be a religious institution for a time – all of this before Darwin was aboard the HMS Beagle.

Finally, the context of the question posed to PZ Myers is also severely lacking – if you were to ask an evangelical Christian what would be their ideal world, it would almost certainly be a monotonous one where there might not be homosexuality and every single individual were an evangelical Christian who adhered to the same brand of Christianity and was “saved”. It was obvious that PZ Myers would say that he preferred a world where scientific research would marginalize in all aspects of life.

If you ever needed another case of an exemplar of the religious right engaging in depraved behavior that s/he has spent his/her life decrying and passing legislation against*, then look no further than GOP Congressman Vito Fossella of New York.

According to Ontheissues.org, Fossella is a “hard-core conservative” who voted for mandatory school prayer in public school, is a hard-liner on reproductive rights, and has the following ratings from the following advocacy groups:

Americans United For Separation of Church and State – 0%

Human Rights Campaign (Pro-LGBT) – 0%

NARAL Pro-Choice America – 0%

National Right to Life Committee (”Pro-Life”) – 82%

Christian Coalition (Pro-Theocracy) – 81%

But aside from Rush’s drug use or Larry Craig’s Minneapolis lavatory trysts, this story probably takes the cake. According to the New York Times, Fossella got drunk as hell at a local watering hole and got pulled over with a blood alcohol level of 0.17%, three times the legal limit.

Mr. Fossella was asked to recite the alphabet between the letters D and T. “The subject immediately started and said ‘A, B,’ ” the officer wrote in his report. After the officer explained the test again, Mr. Fossella started: “D, E, F, H, G, H, I, J, L,” and then was able to finish.

As a result, the Congressman may have to spend a mandatory 5 days in jail. But suspicions arose of an extramarital affair when Fossella, possibly still drunk, called a woman by the name of Laura Fay rather than his wife to pick him up from the police station while claiming that he was going to go see his 3-year old daughter. One thing led to another, and Fossella eventually admitted not only to the rumored extramarital affair, but that also said 3-year old daughter was a love child between himself and Laury Fay.

According to the same NY Post article, Fossella’s wife no longer sees him as a muscular, gun-toting bull-riding conservative family values man-hunk but rather a bespectacled latte-sipping NPR-loving liberal swinger who drives a Prius, and rumors are that she plans to leave him.

*If you’re wondering why I omitted Mark Foley, it’s because he was actually quite socially moderate even for the GOP – he was endorsed by the Log Cabin Republicans and even voted against defining marriage as between a man and a woman; clearly his case is another matter.

00:42 – Ben Stein brings up the example of Dr. Richard Sternberg, who didn’t “tow the party line” and agreed to publish an article by IDer Stephen Meyer. Sternberg was subsequently forced to resign.

04:05 – Stein challenges Michael Shermer, using the moniker of “academic freedom” to contest that Stephen Meyer and Sternberg should have been allowed to publish their article without incident, and says that IDer are being persecuted.

05:11 – Dr. Caroline Crocker got fired from George Mason University for simply mentioning – not promoting – intelligent design. She is now blacklisted and is a persecuted individual.

06:35 – Neurosurgeon Michael Egbert asserts that doctors do not need to study evolution, and the Darwinists went on the attack, pressing him to retire or resign.

07:20 – Professor Marsh of Baylor University was forced by academia to shut down his research and return grant money for links to the intelligent design movement.

08:53 – Guillermo Gonzalez of Iowa State University was denied tenure because he claimed in his book the Privileged Planet that the universe had an intelligent designer. All this despite his “stellar research record” – no pun intended.

10:56 – GODWIN’S LAW #1 Far more to come!

15:02 – Discovery Institute President Bruce Chapman claims that the notion of ID masquerading as religion is a “red herring” and that the Discovery Institute relies on scientific evidence and has persons of all religions, “including agnostics”. Intelligent Design is simply the study of patterns in nature that are best explained by an intelligent creator

20:17 – As Newtonian Physics has been supplanted as well, Darwinism is an obsolete 19th century theory that is falling apart in the face of new evidence.

21:50 – Dr. Stephen Meyer states that it’s his job as a scientist to stop “one hand from clapping” and challenge the conventional theory of Darwinism. He claims that for every shred of evidence supporting Darwinism, there is a counterargument that supports ID.

22:54 – Jonathan Wells claims that Darwinists are distorting the evidence and are “harming science”.

25:15 – Mathematician David Berlinski claims that evolution is so vague about so many things that it cannot fit mathematical models like other theories and points to the vague definition of “species” as one of Darwinism’s fallacies.

27:04 – Darwin was arrogant in titling his book “The Origin of Species” rather than “The Origin of Man”, and presumed to know more than he could prove.

28:13 – Ben Stein incredulously points to a “Darwinist” documentary film that states that “perhaps the chemicals in the early Earth’s atmosphere were jump started by lightning”

28:45 – The Miller-Urey experiment, where a chemical composition believed to mimic that of the early Earth’s atmosphere and catalyzed with lightning, failed to produce life.

29:35 – Ben Stein mocks Michael Bruce’s hypothesis that “life was jumpstarted on the backs of crystals”, stating that he would not bet Ben Stein’s Money on it (haha).

31:22 – A cell could not have been the result of Darwinian evolution because it is a machine of at least 250 perfectly ordered proteins, each of which has to work to maintain a lifeform. Therefore there must be an intelligent design to make something this ordered and precise.

35:16 – 3D CGI animation of cell metabolism ripped off from Harvard (which is now suing) and “enhanced” with whoosing noises to maintain the attention of Ben’s hickish audience.

39:02 – Communism!

39:31 – Ben fawns over Capital Hill town idiot Congressman Mark Souder (R-IN), who has proposed a bill preserving “academic freedom” at the Smithsonian in response to Sternberg’s “persecution”. This is just one of many examples of “The Academy”, a shadowy organization dedicated to eliminating God from the science lab.

41:29 – The National Center for Science Education is at the forefront of keeping Darwinism in power. They are one of many watchdog organizations, along with that demonic ACLU, which is in cahoots with The Academy.

43:35 – Darwinism turns goodly, God-fearing Christians into Atheists! Just look at Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers! Beware!

44:18 – Ben uses the example of the Abrams Report on MSNBC (now Verdict w/ Dan Abrams), who absolutely dismantled a lawyer from the Thomas More Law Foundation representing the defendants of the Dover School District Trial to show that the media is firmly in the hands of Big Science.

45:41- Pamela Winnick “refused to take sides” in an article on the evolution-ID debate. But the Darwinists still persecuted her because she refused to show enough deference to evolution.

46:36 – Darwinism has infiltrated the courts in a last-ditch attempt to stop Intelligent Design. Representing the vanguard of the effort is the ACLU.

49:44 - Darwinists have given up on defending their own theory, and have simply resorted to attacking their opponent (religion and intelligent design) like a dirty politician.

53:12 – There have been plenty of religious people who are also scientists like Isaac Newton and Galileo. Darwinists don’t have a monopoly on good science.

57:22 – PZ Myers was not only converted to atheism through Darwinism, but now also actively seeks to marginalize religion, bring it down, and make it irrelevant in the public sphere.

1:00:52 – Hitler’s views on superior races mirrors Darwin’s own theories, and a necessary pre-requisite to Nazism was Darwinism. At the time, many eugenicists used Darwin’s theory to justify the slaughter of Jews, Slavs, and infirms en masse.

1:04:03 – Ben Stein visits a German concentration camp and learns from the museum curator that the mass murderers used Darwin to justify their actions.

1:06:28 - Ben meets with Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler, who further emphasizes the link of eugenicists to both the Nazi Regime and Charles Darwin. Oh yeah, and Margaret Sanger and the abortionists (ie Planned Parenthood) are actually closet eugenicists and were in on the action as well through forced sterilization.

1:11:32 – Some professor (name is not spoken) claims that Darwinism dehumanizes people and allows abortions and euthanasia to happen.

1:13:21 – Stein quotes from Darwin’s book The Descent of Man, and seems to make the claim that Darwin was for weeding out those “undesirables” in society just like Hitler and the Nazis after him.

1:15:57 - Intelligent Design is not a science issue; It’s a freedom of speech issue and it’s disturbing that America are persecuting these people when it’s supposed to be the freest country in the world. The Founding Fathers would be rolling in their graves.

1:22:41 – Ben Stein confronts Richard Dawkins over whether there’s a 99% chance or a 49% chance that God doesn’t exist.

1:25:27 – Richard Dawkins doesn’t know how the first self-replicating molecule (life) came to be. How could the exemplar of Darwinism not know? Surely Intelligent Design has won…

1:25:55 – Dawkins claims that an advanced civilization evolved through Darwinism and then could have “seeded” this planet with life. Dawkins is only against God as an intelligent designer.

1:28:33 – In a speech, Stein says that “America is all about freedom”, and that the freedom to impose intelligent design as a legitimate theory in the scientific community is an essential right of the people!

1:28:53 – Stein basically mirrors his own staged speech with Reagan’s memorable speech at the Berlin Wall.

1:30:38 – The audience of handpicked, paid volunteers spontaneously gives a standing ovation. Cause despite having all the charisma of Lt. Reginald Barclay from Star Trek:TNG, his speech was so awe-inspiring.

1:30:58 - Join me in the fight against big science!

1:31:15 – Fin.

——-

All in all, the directing quality (never mind the content) was on par with Uwe Boll and perhaps even worse than this; Stein resorted to using staid black and white movie clips to try to illustrate his point, but it just came off as propagandistic and disingenuous. In any case, going back to my previous post, here’s how the drinking teams scored:

1ST PLACE: Team Academic Freedom – 00:00 to 15:02, 39:31 to 57:22, 1:15:57 to 1:22:41, 1:28:33 to 1:31:15 = 35:35 total

2ND PLACE: Team Lightning-Hitting-A-Pond – 15:02 to 39:02, 1:22:41 to 1:28:33 = 28:52 total

3RD PLACE: Team Liberal/Communist Conspiracy – 41:29 to 1:00:52, 1:06:28 to 1:13:21 = 26:26 total

4TH PLACE: Team Hitler – 1:00:52 to 1:15:57 = 15:05 total

Yeah, I was disappointed that Team Hitler lost too.

Retarded Fiction #2) Evolution by means of natural selection is not only implausible, but has never actually been proven.

Really, Stein?

Both of these delicious-looking specimens were originally bred from ferocious wolves.

The next time you see any domesticated animal, fruit, or vegetable, remind yourself that practically everything you see in the produce aisle came about through minute genetic changes sustained over thousands of years.

Here are just a few of the tremendous phenotypic changes that can result from a few thousand years of human-guided artificial selection.

Despite their remarkable dissimilarity to each other, broccoli, kohlrabi, black mustard, brussel sprouts, and swedish turnips were all bred from the same wild ancestral species, Brassica Oleracea– each over the course of mere thousands of years .

Human beings have similarly produced all sorts of genetic monstrosities through artificial selection– cows with udders bulging with gallons of surplus milk, dogs that can fit inside designer purses, ponies that a child can easily mount and ride, bananas with easily transplantable parts, seedless watermelons, 300-kg pumpkins, purple carrots, Frankenfood corn, and much, much more.

Similarly, the environment can act as an unconscious selector, simply because it changes constantly over geological time. Due to the Earth’s precession and variations in the Sun’s radiation output, among other factors, the Earth’s climate is constantly changing– sometimes according to regular cycles, such as the Milankovich cycle , but more often due to irregular climatic cycles, each of which drive constant adaptation on the part of Earth’s organisms.

We know from geological evidence and astronomical evidence that the Earth is much, much older than 6,000 years, which is the figure most commonly cited by Young-Earth Creationists . Due to the gradual motion of tectonic plates over the Asthenosphere, the Earth’s continents have broken apart, collided with each other, and rearranged themselves in countless different ways. Hot spots above the mantle are raising new islands from the seafloor as we speak, creating a plethora of new ecological niches for preexisting organisms from other parts of the world to fulfill.

Hawai’ian island forming off a benthic sea floor.

The Earth’s biosphere is not a constant mechanism that was specially created six thousand years ago by a bearded man in the sky. Just like a farmer breeding healthier strains of wheat or corn, the environment is constantly selecting for certain variables among all of Earth’s organisms, thereby creating an undeniable impetus for evolutionary change. The diagram I posted above demonstrates how easily organisms can gradually alter their appearance and biochemical structure due to the differential survival of their offspring. You don’t need to understand anything about genetics to grasp this basic principle. (And not surprisingly, neither did Charles Darwin.)

STOP, STOP! But wait, what you’re describing is microevolution , not macroevolution . Godless atheists and Evolutionists have proven microevolution , true, but they have never proven macroevolution ! Praise Jesus Chraaaahst Almighty! There truly is an intelligent designer!

You precious little retard. You just wait and watch what I’m about to do to your pathetic arguments, you fucking miserable piece of dessicated Theistard offal, you.

Creationists love to create a false dichotomy between “micro evolution” (small changes sustained over short periods of time) and “macro evolution” (large changes sustained over long periods of time), as if one somehow precludes the existence of the other. This is practically the same as agreeing that yes, 1+1 does = 2, but 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+… etc. will never = 1,000,000.

Speciation events (which typically confirm the viability of so-called “Macroevolution”) have been observed through laboratory experiments performed on microorganisms, plants, fruit flies of the genus Drosophila , and other organisms with relatively short lifespans. Here is just one example:

Rabe and Haufler (1992) found a naturally occurring diploid sporophyte of maidenhair fern which produced unreduced (2N) spores. These spores resulted from a failure of the paired chromosomes to dissociate during the first division of meiosis. The spores germinated normally and grew into diploid gametophytes. These did not appear to produce antheridia. Nonetheless, a subsequent generation of tetraploid sporophytes was produced. When grown in the lab, the tetraploid sporophytes appear to be less vigorous than the normal diploid sporophytes. The 4N individuals were found near Baldwin City, Kansas.

Here is another, this time referring to an experiment performed on Drosophila fruit flies:

Dobzhansky and Pavlovsky (1971) reported a speciation event that occurred in a laboratory culture of Drosophila paulistorum sometime between 1958 and 1963. The culture was descended from a single inseminated female that was captured in the Llanos of Colombia. In 1958 this strain produced fertile hybrids when crossed with conspecifics of different strains from Orinocan. From 1963 onward crosses with Orinocan strains produced only sterile males. Initially no assortative mating or behavioral isolation was seen between the Llanos strain and the Orinocan strains. Later on Dobzhansky produced assortative mating (Dobzhansky 1972).

Talkorigins.org has some more articles demonstrating proof for “Macroevolution”, which include (but are not limited to) transitional forms between animal species, fossil records, molecular evidence, and laboratory experiments.

Yeah, okay, so a fruit fly turned into another fruit fly and a fern turned into another fern. This is still Microevolution, okay!

Mutations are mostly lethal. Artificial selection can’t increase the amount of genetic material in the cell! What about the different chromosome numbers between all of God’s species? This surely didn’t come about through Satanic “evolution”. Praise the Lawd, Glory Hallelujah!

You tongue-speaking imbecile, polyploidy occurs all the time in plant species. If you had spent your high school years actually reading your biology textbook instead of glossing over dumbed-down Creationist literature, you might have gleaned this simple fact by now. Visit Talkorigins.org, and you’ll soon find that there are quite a few peer-reviewed scientific papers confirming its occurrence in lab experiments. Polyploidy also occurs (to a lesser extent) in animals, and it certainly can result an increase in the ability of an organism to survive and reproduce.

Dr. P.Z. Myers (author of the blog Pharyngula ) recently published an excellent post on how chromosome numbers in organisms change over evolutionary time, complete with diagrams simple enough for even the most reason-deprived Theistard in the reddest red state to comprehend.

The Earth is NOT six thousand years old. No matter how slow evolutionary processes may seem on a human timescale, they will inevitably result in remarkable phenotypic changes over the course of millions of years.

Here are some interesting videos posted by a Neuroscience PhD on youtube, debunking some of the most common Creationist misconceptions about evolution:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnu-O5x_pRU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDFJviGQth4&feature=related

But my grandpaw did NOT come from a mud puddle!

Now, does the evolutionary theory have anything to say about the origin of life on Earth? Of course it doesn’t, but that’s not what Ben Stein claims throughout his crockumentary, and the awful stench of it all is already starting to disable my olfactory nerves.

(to be continued… Stay tuned for an addendum to Part II of my multi-part series debunking Expelled : No Intelligence Allowed : “My grandpaw did NOT come from a mud puddle!”)

This was the rhetorical question I posited when a fellow skeptic asked me what I considered to be my least favorite part of Ben Stein’s new crockumentary, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”.

[edit: See if you can find a picture of the Virgin Mary in one of these piles of animal feces! ]

Indeed, the whole film reeks unabashedly of animal excrement. I can scarcely point out which portions ruined my appetite the most, no more than I can segregate the most delectable portions of an acrid mound of donkey manure from the rest of their steaming, malodorous pile.

Just like a pungent heap of animal droppings*, the film fails to demonstrate any redeeming value whatsoever. The camera work looks as if it were conducted by high school students with SONY camcorders. The interviews are awkward, painful to watch, and cringe-worthy from beginning to end. Ben Stein even conducts himself like a simpering ape throughout his entire magnum opus– only a simpering ape could probably demonstrate twice the dignity and three times the charisma Stein musters throughout his film.

As if the film’s shoddy production values weren’t abhorrent enough, Stein manages to unload an even more insidious package of fermenting animal excrement over the brains of his benighted target audience.The scientific “content” of this film is truly despicable, and it would certainly have served as its death-knell were it not for the remarkable scientific ignorance of the American populace.

Stein argues that “Big Science ©,” a faceless bureaucracy that monitors the distribution of scientific funds around the globe, is embroiled in a gigantic conspiracy to marginalize Creationism Intelligent Design and to banish it permanently from public school curricula around the United States.

Throughout Expelled , Stein reiterates the following assertions (and by reiterate , I mean that he pounds them into your fucking skull with all the force of a sledgehammer, and thereby Expells all the neurons out of your brain):

Retarded Fiction #1) “True Scientists” (i.e. Bible-thumping Christards) are being harassed by “Big Science” for advocating the infallible science of Intelligent Design.

Retarded Fiction #2) Evolution by means of natural selection is not only implausible, but has never actually been proven.

Retarded Fiction #3) Darwin’s scientific theories directly led to the creation of Nazism, Communism, Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and all other social institutions that frighten American hillbillies.

Retarded Fiction #4) The complexity of life not only implies the handiwork of a super-intelligent designer, but also proves his existence.

Retarded Fiction #5) Intelligent Design has absolutely nothing to do with religion! We swear to God! This is because its true scientific assertions are actually, umm… um…. ….

Sonny the chimp says: “I can’t believe I share a common ancestor with this moronic piece of shit!”

Let us tackle these insidiously stupid claims one by one:

Fact #1) The vast majority of “persecution” stories highlighted throughout the film are either grossly exaggerated, or are complete fabrications.

Let’s examine the case of Dr. Richard Sternberg, a scientist who Ben Stein claims to have been “persecuted” for publishing a paper by cdesign proponentsist Stephen C. Meyer in a peer-reviewed science journal.

“I was viewed as an intellectual terrorist for giving Intelligent Design even a modicum of credibility.”

-Dr. Richard von Sternberg

Stein goes on to assert that Sternberg “lost his office”, was “investigated by the police”, and even became the target of “physically, emotionally upset, and anti-Republican” individuals.

The truth of the matter is that Sternberg never lost his job for promoting Intelligent Design. In fact, his employment records show that he resigned from his editorial position six months before he published Meyer’s article, and was never even denied access to his workplace after igniting the controversy mentioned above.

Scientists have had their reputations ruined for committing blunders far more trivial than simply publishing a paper advocating ID. As this science blogger astutely points out, Sternberg was not demoted to the status of a pariah for publishing a non-peer reviewed paper. In fact, Sternberg even had several conservative politicians rooting for his cause, including congressman Mark Souder , whom Stein fawns over several times throughout the film.

Several of Sternberg’s peers even resigned in disgust after noticing his despicable lack of editorial oversight. Even if Intelligent Design were respected by the mainstream scientific community, Sternberg would have still been scrutinized by his peers for failing to follow the rudimentary scientific procedures outlined in the peer-review process .

In conclusion, the loss of Sternberg’s scientific reputation is certainly not the lions-and-catacombs Christian martyrdom scenario depicted in the film. Sternberg earned whatever criticism came his way, and he was treated like a prince compared to thousands of other incompetent scientists before him. As the NCSE points out, biology teachers who teach evolution properly are treated with far greater revulsion and antipathy by Christian zealots. Compare their plight to the piddling criticisms Sternberg received from his peers following his ID fiasco. Dr. Sternberg’s story should illicit hardly any sympathy from my honest, well-educated readers, and neither should the persecution tales of countless cdesign proponentsists before him.

Expelled Exposed debunks most of the other “persecution stories” mentioned throughout the film. It is certainly worth a quick read, especially for those individuals who can mentally revisit the scenes in Expelled without involuntarily emptying the contents of their stomachs.

(to be continued… Stay tuned as the author debunks retarded fictions #2-5.)

*And by the way Stein, I take back my earlier comment. Even animal excrement is good for fertilizing fields, a process that agricultural science has vastly improved over the past two hundred years, much to humanity’s great advantage. Your documentary just smells like shit.

Despite not being Korean myself or having any family members in the quixotic Communist regime, I have expressed an interest in what many consider to be the last Stalinist regime in the world – North Korea. Kim Jong Il, as many of you know, is the absolute dictator of the nation and inherited the dynasty from his late father, Kim Il Sung.

So what does this have to do with religion? Well, as with most figureheads of conventional religions, the Kims have enjoyed a cult of personality during their reign essentially elevating both leaders to the status of God-Kings. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all of this is that – despite being impoverished and starving – the North Koreans look upon the two leaders as God-Kings who can do no wrong. Yes, Lil’ Kim has his own creation myth:

But harmless myth is one thing. Importing luxury Mercedes Benz automobiles and hundreds of thousands of dollars of Hennessey a year while your people starve is another. As with many countries run by egotistical dictators, such measures were not taken in the interests of the nation, but rather to preserve the image of Dear Leader as a dear leader. In this last respect, North Korea tries (but fails) to hide from the rest of the world the consequences of living under a delusional God-King -
(WARNING: At least ten times as sad as the Joy Luck Club, and 100% real to boot)

Here is a list of Senate Committees that have something to do with research or science-related policymaking in this country and anyone on such a committee who has any grounding in science at all. I’m grasping at straws with some of these people, but here goes -

• Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation: One engineer (John Sununu, R-NH), One veterinarian (John Ensign, R-NV)
• Committee on Environment and Public Works: One batshit crazy global warming denier (Jim Inhofe, R-OK)
• Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions: One doctor (Tom Coburn, R-OK), one veterinarian (Wayne Allard, R-CO)
• Committee on Energy and Natural Resources: One teacher (Daniel Akaka, D-HI)
• Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry: One organic farmer (Jon Tester, D-MT)

I’m not implying that this nation should be some sort of technocracy of scientists; such a system can easily fall out of touch with the average citizen and is the stuff of dystopian science fiction movies. I also realize that going into law and business are more or less natural routes into a political career and that it is pretty much inevitable that a large portion of not an outright majority of our lawmakers will have gone down this path.

However, ask yourself this – On a committee where the latest in scientific research and related policymaking is discussed on a daily basis, how confident do you feel that the right decisions will be made if the vast majority of the committee members probably could not even interpret a PubMed article on their own?

It would be reassuring if at least a few politicians on such a committee were able to interpret and disseminate scientific information provided to them like they are easily be able to do with issues of constitutionality, foreign policy, and general domestic policy. But in a nation where the current administration supports intelligent design, set us back six years on stem cell research to pander to the religious right, and still shows lingering doubts about the validity of anthropogenic global warming… maybe that’s too much to ask.