Archives 2006

God and Free Will

This may be an old argument, but I just ran across it on a random podcast:

One argument for the lack of clear evidence of God is that it would undermine free will: anyone who knew for a fact that God exists would be overcome with goodness or something, and in the presence of such a cosmic carrot, would effectively lose the ability to sin.

To this the counterargument is, what about Satan? Satan supposedly had direct proof of God, talked to him, met him at the workplace, and so forth. But he still rebelled.

One might retort that Satan was angelic, not human. But then either Satan had more free will than humans do (in which case one must wonder why God didn’t build humans the same way), or Satan had less free will, in which case the whole thing was a setup.

Discuss in the comments. Next week, we’ll address an equally weighty question: whether the Millennium Falcon can beat the Enterprise in a fight.

Terrorist Shoes

Would someone please explain to me why the TSA requires passengers to
take off their shoes at the airport? Seriously.

I understand that it’s a reaction to
the shoe bomber,
but what I’m asking is what security benefit this procedure provides.

Presumably what they’re looking for when they x-ray your shoes is something that

  1. Shows up in x-rays.
  2. Doesn’t show up in a metal detector.
  3. Is small and flat enough to fit inside a shoe.
  4. Can’t be shoved into one’s sock or duct-taped to one’s shin.

I submit that the last two items are mutually-exclusive, and that
therefore, the practice of requiring airline passengers to take their
shoes off is just security theater: something that makes it
look as though the government is doing something about
terrorism, without actually doing anything.

I don’t mind a certain amount of security theater: a lot of security
measures, like wiretapping and closed-circuit surveillance, are
invisible, and it’s good to put on a show to make up for that. But the
shoe thing is both annoying and pointless.

Dembski In Bed With Ann Coulter

Bill Dembski brags
about having been “in constant correspondence” with Ann Coulter, helping her with her latest stack of soiled paper, Godless: the Church of Liberalism. He even quotes a bit of what it’s all about:

Though liberalism rejects the idea of God and reviles people of faith, it bears all the attributes of a religion itself. In Godless: The Church of Liberalism, Ann Coulter throws open the doors of the Church of Liberalism, showing us:

  • Its sacraments (abortion)
  • Its holy writ (Roe v. Wade)
  • Its martyrs (from Soviet spy Alger Hiss to cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal)
  • Its clergy (public school teachers)
  • Its churches (government schools, where prayer is prohibited but condoms are free)
  • Its doctrine of infallibility (as manifest in the “absolute moral authority” of such spokesmen as Cindy Sheehan and Max Cleland)
  • And its cosmology (in which mankind is an inconsequential accident)

Then, of course, there’s the liberal creation myth: Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

The only comment I’ll offer on this bucket of turkey offal is that if public school teachers are clergy, they should get stickers to that effect, so that they can get better parking spaces and whatnot.

Dembski quotes all of this with approbation, and never hints that he cares about Coulter’s subpontibian nature, even after “constant correspondence”. One must therefore conclude that he agrees with her.

If Dembski were actively trying to discredit Intelligent Design and bury its corpse at a crossroads with a stake through its heart, he could scarcely do better with a fusion-powered grave-digging backhoe and a dozen Buffy Summers clones.

It’s All So Clear to Me Now

Bill Maher explains Intelligent Design.

No wonder IDiots think atheism is a religion: they think ignorance is a form of knowledge.

Focus on the Family Lies to Children

Focus on the Family,
James Dobson’s right-wing nutsoid organization, obviously isn’t above
lying to kids:

Q. Hi, Average Boy!

I need some advice on evolution. Everyone is talking about it, and I just don’t understand why people think we came from monkey people. I hope you can answer my wonders.

Bye,
Parker D.

A. Hey, Parker.

Great question! I’ve actually had people tell me that it looks like I may have come from a monkey family. However, if evolution did work, wouldn’t my ears be smaller by now?

Animals do adapt to their surroundings. For instance, my cat has developed a nervous twitch that lets him know when Billy walks in the room. That’s a survival adaptation. But the main evolution chart that most scientists go by was actually made up. The guy who presented all the facts threw in an extra step — that hasn’t even been discovered — to link men to apes.

Not to mention, if monkeys evolved into men then why do we still have monkeys? Wouldn’t they be men, too? That’s a good question to ask your friends the next time you are talking about evolution. Now if you will excuse me, I want to finish my banana.

Your friend and mine,
Average Boy

Elsewhere on the same site,
there’s a retelling of
Big Daddy
for children:

“Uh, Mr. Jemison,” he stammered, “You mentioned the Earth is billions of years old and began with a big bang. How can scientists know this as fact when they weren’t there?”
…

Cole looked down. “Sir, evolution and the big bang are theories based upon the idea there is no God, so doesn’t that make them a type of religion? I can’t agree that these theories are facts when the Bible has never been proven wrong.”

If it isn’t obvious why this is a load of dingo’s bollocks, ask in the comments.

Dembski Proposes Research Program, Cordova Misapplies It

I’ve been saying for a while (and I’m not alone) that if the ID folks want to be taken seriously by the scientific community, they need to do some actual, you know, research. So I was taken aback when William Dembski actually
suggested a line of research Read More

Both Maryland Antievolution Bills Dead

So
reports
the NCSE.

QOTD

There is this unmatched fanaticism that thinks they’re doing God’s will. You cannot negotiate with it. You cannot talk to it. You cannot make a deal with it. You’ve got to ultimately stand up to it, confront it, and defeat it if you want to live free.
— Sean Hannity, This Divided State

If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was talking about radical Muslims.

ID at Cornell

Allen MacNeill, at
Cornell,
will be teaching a course this summer entitled
Evolution and Design: Is There Purpose in Nature?.

Telic Thoughts has picked up on it, and MacNeill has chimed in in the comments. Go read them.

Judging by the course description and reading list (which includes books by Behe and Dembski), and MacNeill’s comments, it appears that this may be the fair “teach both sides” course that creationists have been demanding for some time. I also suspect that the outcome may not be one that they like, but I guess we’ll see.

Brian Flemming’s War on Easter

Brian Flemming, the author of the documentary
The God Who Wasn’t There,
has a new thing going: a
War on Easter.

I bet Bill O’Reilly and John Gibson are already wetting their pants in delight.

The
press release
explains the MO: undercover operatives (no doubt endowed with super-secret atheist Ninja powers of concealment; either that, or they have a suit and can blend into a crowd) will hide DVDs of The God Who Wasn’t There in churches, where they’re likely to be found by congregants and Easter egg hunters.

A bit like Chick tracts with much better production values. There’s also an
FAQ.