Richard Dawkins on atheism

I am godless. And I think Richard Dawkins' discussion of atheism and evolution is really quite first rate...eventhough I couldn't disagree with him more over the particulars of evolution. We both agree it happened. And we both believe there's no god.

Read the whole story here (they try to trick you into getting a paid subscription so be patient and wait for the right links to materialize)

A sample:

"There are many religious points of view where the conservation of the world is just as important as it is to scientists. But there are certain religious points of view where it is not. In those apocalyptic religions, people actually believe that because they read some dopey prophesy in the book of Revelation, the world is going to come to an end some time soon. People who believe that say, "We don't need to bother about conserving forests or anything else because the end of the world is coming anyway." A few decades ago one would simply have laughed at that. Today you can't laugh. These people are in power."

my new indianabeer.com article

see it here.

it's all about this guy:

more on bocks

Since this is the season of the bock I thought some more bock stuff was in order. And luckily, Sarah Smith sent me this cool link with a ton of old bock labels from when this country, at least the German-dominated regions, was dominated by medium sized regional lager breweries.

Check out Strohs's old bock label...I wish they still made a Bock.

and more happier things...like the SlyFox simulated goat race!

One of my favorite breweries, SlyFox in SE PA, has a bock fest every year about this time where they hold a goat race. They also are serving 5 bocks this year, holy crap, but the goat race is fun too.

Now you can have your own simulated goat race online. And boy is it fun.

Check it out here. And have your speakers on to get the full effect.

Hopefully Upland's Maifest will be fun this saturday as well. But I seriously doubt that they'll have an eisbock (let alone 2!) or a doppelbock. It will probably just be their average Maibock. Maybe it will be better this year? I hope.

now for some happier things...like slapgut

Ahhh when my life seemed better. Sitting around a mountain lake (wolf lake?), drinking beers with best friends after a very tough backpacking trip in the smokies. These pictures make me happy.

And they make me laugh.



Here is a shot looking more or less westward into Tennessee from the crest of the Smokies.



Here's a shot of the plucky one himself standing proud atop a beautiful Appalachian waterfall.

Last bit on Dembski I promise

Looks like there had been lots of people taking issue with Dembski's latest post...and they had their comments deleted too.

see here and here.

Next up...fun slapgut pictures.

going out with a bang

Well, I can't take the ID folks anymore. For several reasons. But one is that I need to be more positive and less worked up about this shit. So I'm not going to post about it anymore. I promise. But I feel I should go out with a bang.

Billy 'god (or aliens) did it' Dembski has been really quite dishonest today. And it is really easy to nail him on it. So I did in a comment to his blog. Of course he will undoubtedly erase it (he did) like he did my previous ones, but I have reproduced it below.

It is in reply to this post.

Here's what I wrote:

Now I can’t see anything in your list of reasons why you erase people’s comments for erasing this one.

Clearly you did NOT read the piece about quote-mining that you linked to above, or else you would have seen what I have copied from it here. It clearly states that Ward’s ‘evidence suggesting Divine Creation’ was simply rhetorical and part of a historical review of the field and that he goes on to cite evidence that is clearly consistent with evolution.

Hopefully some people will read this before you get a chance to erase it.

What you have done here is truly dishonest.

Dembski “…must be accountable for a least the rest of the section from which he quoted. Following a historical review, Ward resumes,

‘Until almost 1950 the absence of metazoan fossils older than Cambrian age continued to puzzle evolutionists and earth historians alike. Other than the remains of single-celled creatures and the matlike stromatolites, it did indeed look as if larger creatures had arisen with a swiftness that made a mockery of Darwin’s theory of evolution. This notion was finally put to rest, however, by the discovery of the Ediacarian and Vendian fossil faunas of the latest Precambrian age. (Pp 35)’” *6 pages after the quote Dembski gives above*

“In other words, we learn that science has known for well over 50 years that the supposed “sudden” appearance of Cambrian fossils was invalid, and Dembski has quoted this 12 year-old book in a basically dishonest manner.”

housecoat?

So what do you think a housecoat is? Is it the same thing as a bathrobe? A robe? Kimono?

Please, weigh in with your comments.

And don't look it up. Just tell me how you have used the word housecoat.

thank you

Michael Pell ladies and gentlemen

'It better taste like peaches and grip like a fist.'

You figure it out.

DAMN YOU DEMBSKI!!

Billy 'god did it' Dembski took a comment of mine off of his blog this morning. I think this is funny. Why didn't he answer it that stupid fuck? Or at least leave it there? I realize it's his blog, but it seems slightly disingenuous to manipulate it like that. It gives the impression that HE IS RIGHT! But he does have some explanation for removing comments:

"(1) Thou shalt not be boring, and the person you least want to bore is me. In particular, I’ve been at this game for about fifteen years now, so I’ve seen most of the objections. Don’t repeat what I likely have already seen (for an overview of the sorts of objections I’ve seen and handled, consult my book The Design Revolution)."

OK. If that's how you're going to be about it, I need to go read your no doubt stupid book and get back to you.

I plan to even though it will be an incredible waste of time I am sure.

Anyway, I posedt a comment about the evo-devo bit I wrote about yesterday. I pretty much just wrote that while ID folks are out to show how there is conflict within evolutionary biology, no serious evolutionary biologist gets to working in a lab or in the field or whatever and says, holy shit, I think I'm going to invoke a conscious designer to explain this complex trait.

I don't think so.

Rather, people like Arthur Wallace say: we can't explain these traits, namely the origin of the different animal body plans, simply by invoking mutations with small phenotypic effects and selection (as if anybody ever claimed this). Then folks like Wallace invoke these sorts of things to explain it:

"He places particular emphasis on gene duplication, changes in spatio-temporal gene-expression patterns, internal selection, coevolution of interacting genes, and coadaptation."

This is from the book's description. No 'conscious designer' here.

Of course this may be missing the point of Nelson and Dembski. I think their point may be something like: see how these things can't be explained by evolutionary theory? Well we can explain them! God or aliens or the world spirit did it! Well, unfortunately that doesn't amount to much of an explanation. Also, if it did, very few, IF ANY, practicing evolutionary biologists think that we need to go outside of a naturalistic framework because IN PRINCIPLE, and eventually in practice, these sorts of things will probably be explained.

But two issues: is anything in science ever actually explained FOR GOOD? And secondly, there seems to be something to be said for keeping one's metaphysics (or even mechanical explanations assuming ID folks want to say that aliens did it and they have a whole different naturalistic story for how they got here) SIMPLE. Assuming explanation is possible at all, it certainly seems possible in PRINCIPLE that we can explain all biological phenomena in terms of natural mechanisms.

Well...clearly I need to work this out a bit more.

odd bedfellows...ID and evo-devo

As I wrote here, ID proponents, aka stupid creationists, continue to cite people who work in evo-devo to show how much trouble evolutionary biology is really in. Paul 'god (or aliens?) did it' Nelson writes a bit about it over at http://www.idthefuture.com. He cites Arthur Wallace, a prominent evo-devo proponent who wrote:

“How can a theory of evolution that purports to explain how creatures with trillions of cells arose from unicellular beginnings lost in the mists of pre-Cambrian time be taken seriously if all it tells us is that differential rates of destruction can alter the genetic composition of populations? How are the new variants that natural selection spreads through populations created in the first place? Although the phrase ‘creation science’ carries disreputable connotations because of its frequent use by some religious fundamentalists, we truly need some ‘creation science’ (in the other sense of that phrase) as a major component of evolutionary theory.”

Then Nelson writes that by reading Wallace's new book:

"...you'll learn a lot of biology, and a lot about what evolutionary theory needs -- and has yet -- to explain."

Ok. Yes. Clearly there are a lot of things that modern evolutionary theory has not, in practice, explained. From this one can not infer the following:

(1) Evolutionary biology cannot IN PRINCIPLE explain these things and (2) we must resort to a designer to explain them

Of course one of the biggest developments in biology (no pun intended) in the last couple of decades is in evo-devo, as it has come to be called. The push to include developmental considerations into evolutionary theory. Now I don't know much about evo-devo, but I know that no serious evo-devo proponent thinks that we can infer design from complex traits.

They certainly don't feel the need to invoke a designer.

They value the naturalism of science and have good reason to believe that IN PRINCIPLE we can explain all biological phenomena (except maybe the origin of life??) without recourse to a conscious designer.

I myself think that the origin of life itself can as well be explained without recourse to a conscious designer. The origin of the universe (if there was one)? I don't know enough physics to say. But I imagine it's a lot sketchier than even the origin of life. There are actually some pretty well worked out models of the origin of life that do not involve conscious designers.

tibetan restaurants and other goings on

First off, Pink Floyd fucking rules. I'm listening to Wish You Were Here right now and you can't really beat that intro and the first words. This guy Tim Nebosny from Huntingdon PA had some terrific insight into those first few words. First he pointed out how full of character they are. They are rich no doubt. Then he notes how you tell Roger Waters must have just finished smoking a cigarette. Good stuff.

Anyway, so Serena and I went to the Snow Lion last night. We were pre-empting her birthday this Monday. Anyway, the Snow Lion is one of only a handful of Tibetan restaurants in the country. When it was founded in 1987 it was only one of two. Well this is interesting. I mean, Bloomington has a rich Tibetan cultural tradition what with the Dalai Lama's bother or nephew or whatever living here. But why aren't there more Tibetan restaurants?

Well, I think it's because real Tibetan food kind of sucks. This is from the menu at Snow Lion:



They pretty much admit as much. I think that's funny. I mean, there were a bunch of Indian curries and Cajun dishes. Weird.

I actually heard a story one time about traditional Tibetan cuisine from a famous climber who had been to Tibet and Nepal several times climbing the big mountains there. Anyway, one of his most memorable experiences was being invited to a sherpa's hut for a traditional dinner. He was very honored. However he said it was not the most enjoyable experience. The hut was poorly ventilated and the cooking/heating fire was just an open fire in the middle of the floor. And they burn exclusively yak dung. Or whatever kind of dung they have there. Anyway, he said it was pungent. And it burnt his eyes really bad. And the embers and ashes were getting into everything. Everything was cooked in a big pot over the fire and all the shit-ash was getting into it. He said the food was not very good and kind of tasted like burnt shit. So this is one reason why there are no traditional Tibetan restaurants I guess. Instead you end up with these weird non-descript fusion recipes. Eh...whatever. Serena's curried beef noodle cabbage concoction was decent.

And now for the other goings on...Jen and Brian and I are going to Encore. Fuck it. I'm going to get some cafeteria style dinner and some Arrogant Bastardi. It will be good.