As you know, your Curmudgeon has been struggling with the new editor here at WordPress, and we’ve also been struggling to restore the old classic editor. Nothing works. Oh, we can write — as we’re doing now, but we can’t do links, and we can’t correctly format excerpts from other blogs and articles.
So where does that leave us? Well, we can’t keep blogging as we used to. That’s not much of a catastrophe. We’ve mentioned before that creationism isn’t what it used to be. In recent years, there haven’t been many creationist laws introduced into state legislatures — and those that do get introduced never become law. Also there hasn’t been any litigation about creationism. Since Kitzmiller (no link, but you can find it at Wikipedia), lawyers haven’t been interested in the subject. Also, we don’t encounter many creationists running for public office with creationism as part of their campaign.
So we don’t have hard-core creationist news like we did in the early days of this blog. We still have creationist organizations, and we probably always will, but other than appealing to (and soliciting funds from) hard-core droolers, outfits like the Discoveroids and Hambo’s tourist attractions don’t mean too much.
It won’t be a catastrophe if this humble blog goes out of business. We’ll miss it, because it’s been a load of fun, and some of our commenters have been with us from the beginning. But we don’t have to shut down completely. We can still post occasional essays — as we’re doing now — which don’t require any special formatting. Maybe we’ll do some of that. But the principal function of this blog — ridiculing creationist websites and activities — can’t be done without links and formatting.
Anyway, that’s the situation. This blog, as we’ve known it, won’t be around any more. We’ll miss it, and we’ll miss you. But we may have things to say from time to time, and If we do, we’ll say it here, at the same website. Until then, your Curmudgeon is signing off.
Copyright © 2024. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
Alas.
I am not so sanguine about the future of creationism. Can one be confident that politics in the USA – and the Supreme Court – will not give new life to creationism?
TomS
My friends and I will miss you very much!! We love your
style and witty comments . Please consider another subject
to write about so we can still follow you!
Gail (AS)
Don’t go !
Such a shame. It will be a loss for those of us who crave sanity in a craven world.
Dear SC:
Hang in there, if you can bear WordPress,. It will be hard to miss your words of wisdom, and those of commenters like Dave Luckett and docbill1351, which have made every post a joy.
Derek Freyberg
“Say it ain’t so Joe!”
I feel your pain but I don’t understand your pain. I went through several iterations of the Blogspot editor but I could always figure out how to get stuff done.
What’s the problem with Word Press? Lots of computer, engineering, kibitzing experience here. We are family, we could help.
ARRRGGHHHH!
Keep taking good care of those pups curmy . Thank you for providing this forum over the years. Thank you for the wit and
informative satire. Thank you.
How will anyone find out if Stevie boy “code coder computer code encoding codie-code-code” Meyer is a vampire or not.
Sigh. The new year of 2024 is full of surprises. I’ve been hanging around here for a long time, learn from people way smarter than me, and happy to chime in on occasion to bring my own spin. ❤️Sensuous Curmudgeon ❤️ 😠Wordpress 😠
It’s been a hell of ride. Thank you. You’re one of one.
I sent a comment, imploring SC to consider keeping the comment section open, citing rather than linking the occasional item of interest, but possibly widening the scope of the blog.
Do not the “pastors” of megachurches flit about the continent in private jets? Is it a fact that calling for genocide on the campuses of the most prestigious Universities in the US is not necessarily an offense against their codes of conduct? In my own country, to my grief and horror, I heard a mob chanting for that genocide, and my blood ran cold. There are few events indeed that could make me ashamed to be an Australian, but that was one.
We are a corresponding society, and those societies were the harbingers and actuators of the Enlightenment. It seems our role will be a little different: lining the ramparts against the new barbarians. Well, then, so be it. But give us a rampart to line, SC, a hill which, if we must die on it, will stand our memorial for when a better generation rises.
My first comment has apparently disappeared into the void. Perhaps this one will fare better.
SC, I’m gonna miss the blog. It’s been fun and enlightening.
Will you keep on using the same handle when you turn out essays? I’ll keep my eye out.
Retired Prof
This is extremely upsetting news!
Please keep going. It almost feels like a win for creationism. We can live without links and fancy formatting, but we cannot live without your uncanny ability to uncover these crazy stories, plus your witty comments. And there is our whole family of commenters! We’ve all learned so much.
The formatting doesn’t bother me at all either. I live for the days when people forget to close their tags anyway. Everyone need a little formatting excitement one in a while.
So I went around looking at all the well-formatted blogs. Way overrated.
Indeed, creationism isn’t fun anymore. On the contrary, it is ensconced in the House Speakership, and directly linked to the biggest internal threat that the US has seen since 1861.
We need you. You function as an information transfer node, with some readers considerably more important and better connected than me. So you have a much larger impact than you realise; I remember that you were surprised when I told you that you had been cited in Red Dynamite, a major academic study of the nature of US creationism. And from a purely selfish point of view, I value this site as a place where I can think aloud to a sympathetic but critical audience, rehearsing my arguments.
You can use the Bold, Italic, and Link directly from the options in the pulldown menu. The only real hassle that I can see is with colour the, so on my own website I asked the AI assistant. whose response was
To change the text color in your content, you can use the following CSS code:
Your text here
Replace “blue” with the color of your choice, such as “red”, “green”, or any other valid color name or hexadecimal value.
Now all you need to do is to learn how to use CSS code. Good luck!
I will miss you and your pithy comments. I always looked forward to seeing your blog in my inbox. Good luck to you and your future endeavors.
DougK
I completely understand. I started here in the David Coppedge days (remember him? The JPL-Cassini network guy that liked to proselytize creationism at work) I stayed for the Hambo news and the laughs at creationist expense.
Seems most creationism in politics is just showboating to keep the small part of their Republican base happy–just an effort to show your fealty to the cause no results expected.
So yes we have a Creation museum and Ark encounter and a speaker of the House who is a true believer, but so long as it doesn’t end up in most schools one could argue rationality is holding its own.
Troy, see this. And why is every pulpit in the UDs not denouncing this blasphemy? https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/god-gave-us-trump-says-lie-filled?publication_id=95153&post_id=140421303&isFreemail=true&r=7aj6s
In case anyone doesn’t get the Paul Harvey reference in the article, back in the day there was a radio show guy called Paul Harvey who would scam his listeners by pretending like his commercials were news stories, and his “real” news stories were about as fake-arsed as his commercials.
Paul Harvey …
I will miss this blog, it has given me years of enjoyment.
I will miss this blog, it has both entertained and educated me since 2003.
Is there any information about how many people read this blog?
TomS
“Is there any information about how many people read this blog?
TomS”
ANS: All of us.
SC Please please please reconsider. We care nothing for the clumsy editing tools.
You’re saying WordPress is making it so blogs can’t include links ?!?
Anyways, I agree creationism is currently in recession compared to numerous other crazy pseudoscience issues…but, it always comes back once peoples’ immunity is down. Keep the blog up and post when you like! And thanks for all the fish!
“I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat. I do not want to send them away hungry, or they may collapse on the way. So here, have this big ol’ floppy fish instead of the pizza I could have ‘poofed’ out of thin air.”
Personalized individual pizzas I might add. I can hear the disciples now: “But LORD, how are you going to personalize the pizzas of so many people?” Not the brightest disciples ever.
Blessed are the cheesemakers …
I’m no expert, but I notice that @Paul Braterman was able to post a comment with a link.
@SC
Perhaps you can do this as a workaround, to post the main text, and then add a response with the needed links? Does that make sense?
Isn’t there anyone reading this who has knowledge about WordPress?
I think that this blog has, and will continue to give a service to “conserve the Enlightenment”.
TomS
I have tried composing in MS Word, and then cut-and-paste into my own blog. Links, either spelled-out or inserted using the MS word Link choice, Italic, bold, and strikethrough simply transpose correctly. Underlining is lost, as is colour. underlining is on the WordPress pulldown menu, but I haven’t managed to work out how to get colour.
Important to the Curmudgeon: click on the text of a paragraph in WordPress, and will come a block with a paragraph sign at the end. Click on the ¶, and you will see a pair of quotation marks, click on that, and the entire block of text will be indented block quote just the way he wants it.
So at this stage the only thing that is not utterly trivial is colour. If I can find the answer to that I’ll come back to you, but try WordPress’ own Help. You may have to try to get an answer from the wretched AI that they’ve inflicted on us, before you can get through to a human being
Not end, beginning, for ¶
To Paul Braterman: I tried your blockquote technique. It didn’t work for me. Thanks anyway.
Primates Progress..I will be checking for comments section
over there. “Gigantopithecus blacki “
I am trying this as a test to see if I can post a link to Wikipedia. I’m not using any editor, just typing it in:
http://www.wikipedia.org
TomS
My mistake, I’m trying again
wikipedia.org
TomS
It doesn’t work. Sorry for the interruption.
TomS
Here is some pretty good drone footage of the ark (or industrial park) encounter (depending on which side you look at) with a pretty good view of the drowning pond out in front of the facade of the ark building industrial complex.
You may be missing out some vital step. here is what I do
Go to WordPress, start ânew postâ, and you get this:
Move cursor over “Type / to choose a block” and type in the stuff to be quoted Then move the cursor over what you just typed and you get a box with your editing tools. On the left hand side of this is the ¶ Click on the ¶ and you get a menu of options Click on the big quotation marks (two down) and that’s it.
Most annoyingly, nothing seems to have happened on your editing page, but if you save and view, you can see how it worked out.
Let me know if this works.
Paul S. Braterman, Professor Emeritus, University of North Texas Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Chemistry, University of Glasgow 14 Willoughby Place, Callander FK17 8DH, Scotland, UK https://paulbraterman.wordpress.com/ ORCID 0000-0002-3500-9385
@richard
The question is: Why does this thing remind anyone of a ship?
TomS
@TomS
I’m not sure what one would call half of a vessel, but of course that wouldn’t apply in this case anyway since this one doesn’t even qualify as a flotation device.
Imagine if Wile E. Coyote received a package with the label “ACME Lead Balloon Flotation Device”. Ken Ham is the roadrunner and the ark visitors are the unsuspecting coyotes, even though it’s right on the label.
Paul Braterman: I’ve been trying, but I can’t get the blockquote thing to work. Maybe it’s my fault, but it shouldn’t be so complicated.
It works, but you can’t see that it’s worked unless you first save the latest draft, and then inspect it, in that order. Ridiculous, I agree, but I really hope that you can get past these absurdities
Thanks, but I’m not going to jump through all those hoops. This used to be fun. Now it’s ridiculous.
I’m not surprised. However, I would strongly urge you to keep the site in existence, because of the wealth of information available
I’ll keep it alive. From time to time, it’s inevitable that I’ll be motivated to write something. And I won’t have to do a lot of complicated formatting.
My liege.
By your leave, Most Sensuous of the Curmudgeons, I will essay this topic, to start with a typical anti-evolutionary argument based on Intelligent Design. Call me Simplior, who wrote this:
One can see the images of four American presidents on Mount Rushmore. It is improbable that those images could be explained by random chance. We are justified in drawing the conclusion that they were the product of Intelligent Design, and that means that there was an Intelligent Designer.
And so we are justified to arguing about the much more complicated structures of living things, that it is vastly more improbable that living things are to be explained by random chance, but are the product of Intelligent Design by an Intelligent Designer.
TomS
Let me know gently, if I am overstepping the bounds of this Free Fire Zone.
That argument is fallacious, as I’m sure you are well aware, TomS.
Only one possible outcome could have met the sculptor’s design – the realistic likenesses of the four Presidents he chose to depict. No others were tried and rejected. It would have required a truly monumental (that’s a little joke there, son. Try to keep up) coincidence that it just happened one day by chance, all at once.
When it comes to living things, however, every combination that is physically possible of all available atoms, could have been tried in an endlessly patient process, with compounds of ever greater and greater complexity succeeding one another in all the possible environments of the whole planet, for a couple of billion years, until one such compound gained the property of self-replication from available reactants and ambient energy. After that, natural selection takes us the rest of the way. But any blind, natural drunkard’s-walk path that resulted in a compound that could self-replicate would have been sufficient.
That is, Mount Rushmore must be explained in terms of a single process. Life requires millions. But in both cases, the means were separately available.
@Dave Luckett
Thank you.
I have several different paths to take from that starting point.
1) Use AI to construct an ID argument. This would be my way of avoiding a straw man,.
2) Show how this argument does not present a positive argument for ID. Indeed, does not even describe an ID process.
2a) Show how evolutionary biology does describe a process, descent with modification, and presents a prima facie case for that, and, moreover.
2b) how evolutionary biology can explain features of the world of life, while ID, even if it were true, cannot explain much of anything
3) Show how the ID argument does not distinguish between individuals vs. populations (instants vs. lifetimes).
TomS
And continued:
4) Investigate how much an “Argument From Dysfunction” (against Intelligent Design or against the supernatural/inscrutable/omnipotent/omniscient/benevolent/etc.) suffers from similar problems.
TomS
In other news, we have NCSE reporting on a new covert creationist bill in New Hampshire. It appears to utilize a novel description, for legislation, of the theory of evolution, or any other scientific, social, cultural or economic theory the proposers don’t like: “unproved”. It prohibits “educators and school administrators from pushing or asserting, advocating for, or otherwise compelling belief in, any particular theory or ideology.”
Obviously, this is idiotic and ridiculous. Any “theory or idiology”? Then equal rights under the law cannot be asserted; the ideology that government is by the people, for the people, of the people cannot be taught or advocated for. The basis of the US Constitution cannot be inculcated.
Alicia Lekas and Oliver Ford, who sponsor this bill, both sit on the New Hampshire house’s Education Committee, a fact which disquiets me.
@Dave Luckett
It is common for US schools to require often the reciting of The Pledge of Allegiance.
TomS
Quite so, TomS, and I know that since 1954 the words “under God” have been part of that pledge. I can’t for the life of me understand why that does not violate the prohibition in the First Amendment against the establishment of a religion, but apparently it doesn’t.
But the words that follow are certainly in the nature of ideology. The idea that the nation is “indivisible” is, as has often been pointed out, a contradiction of the statement of the Declaration of Independence that a people may “dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another”; and the concept of “liberty and justice for all” is an ideal that still has difficulties in actual application even in the most advanced western democracies. These are statements of ideology, not necessarily political practice.
But the New Hampshire bill would, from its wording, prohibit the teaching or advocacy of any ideology. I can only surmise that its sponsors think that such a prohibition would receive much the same treatment as the words “under God” in the Pledge: it’s not a breach of the law if there is a strong, if not universal, consensus for allowing it. Perhaps de minibus non curat lex may apply.
I’d still be interested to see how a competent court would treat the question. However, if this bill does not get up – which it certainly should NOT – I will be deprived of that spectacle, an outcome I anticipate with equanimity.
I would say they have gone “scorched-earth” except of course they are lying, so not really. More like scorching everyone else’s earth, which of course is just regular ol’ carpet bombing the wall and seeing what sticks.
“All of human civilization has been a long story of us fixing everything nature broke.” –Richard Carrier, king of the atheists
God created nature, therefore Man fixes things God broke, which places Man above God. But, Man is not above God, therefore atheism is wrong. If atheism is wrong then something exists which is not an infinite regress. This everyone understands to be God.
Source for previous quote since that’s the only place it exists. (The quote from Richard Carrier, king of the atheists.)
@richard is able to give a link in that reply.
Is it not possible for @SC to work around the difficulty by giving any desired links in a reply to an orginating post?
Not ideal, but not, if I may be forgiven to be so bold, overly burdensome?
TomS
I just checked. I think the way you insert a link on WordPress now is the same as it’s always been. Highlight the text that you want to carry the link, ckick on the link icon, which looks a bit like this ( – ) , in the editing box, and copy the link URL into the dropdown window.
@richard
There have been enough examples of humans breaking stuff which nature had working. Climate change is a major case. And then there is a mixed record wrt disease – there are diseases which are the result of human action – from misuse of antibiotics, manufacture of carcinogens, bad diet, neglect of populations, etc.
Does the record of human behavior supply an ideal, better than nature?
TomS
How about, blog the title of the post, and then finish the post in the comments section, crossing fingers that the comment doesn’t go down the wordpress comment void.
@ TomS: I think it interesting that Creationists always use something like Mt Rushmore, as an example of making the Design Inference, instead of, say, a canvas by Jackson Pollock. Setting aside considerations of relative artistic merit, Mt Rushmore and Pollock’s Number 1A, 1948 are intentional artifacts created by intelligent designers—but with a difference that renders the latter less suitable to Creationist sophistry. And Dave Luckett has perfectly revealed why when he writes:
IOW: Once again, the Creationists are presenting a teleological fallacy, insisting that the world we inhabit is the only world that could have ever existed, and it does so because this is how it was intended—by some agent of Oogity-Boogity—to exist.
Pollock’s paintings are not random, he selected the size of the canvas, the range of paints to use, and the fashion in which he chose to apply them, but the precise result is not fixed, though it falls within a broad range of parameters. Nor could an individual Pollock canvas be precisely reproduced by the same methods Pollock used to produce the original. The actual result is dependent on factors outside the artist’s direct control—that is, it cannot be strictly determined by the intelligent agent’s intent. Which was part of Pollock’s point—but that’s another discussion!
In any event, starting from the Creationists’ teleological fallacy is to start with the wrong—and in fact, meaningless—question, viz., what must the initial conditions of the beginning of life have been in order for our precise world—and no other—to exist? And among the immediate difficulties with attempts to answer the question framed that way is to explain away all the countless events—from asteroids wiping out dinosaurs to human wars that murdered millions—that have irrevocably shaped our world and its futures entirely free from any intention or agency of an ‘intelligent designer’
@Megalonyx
Thank you.
I have discovered a creationist essay on the Mount Rushmore analogy. It first appeared in “Creation” magazine, volume 18 issue 2 March 1996 and it was reprinted in Creation Ministries International’s creation.com for July 13, 2016
“Mount Rushmore … evidence of design”.
htpps:/creation.com/rount-rushmore-evidence-of-design
Here is a bit from that:
“No one doubts the memorial is the work of an intelligent designer, yet much greater design and laws in the universe are overlooked, or disregarded, by people who believe that evolution produced everything in existence, with no intelligence or design behind it.”
TomS
Excuse my typo, the link works, but the description should read as
“mount-rushmore …” not “rount …”.
One comment is that to say that the sculptures on Mt, R are intelligently designed does not explain anything of interest. Why are they there, rather than somewhere else?
And, given the interest of creationism, which says that every living thing is also designed, how do the sculptures differ from the flora and fauna on Mt.R.? To say “they are designed” doesn’t tell us the obvious – they didn’t just grow there.
TomS
I thought Scooby-Doo got into the comments somehow.
Megalonyx states the point I was struggling to make. Pollock is a difficulty for me, because it is quite impossible to know what he actually intended, or if he intended anything at all, and yet he is said to have created something meaningful. Can the same transaction be claimed for God?
Pollock has one overwhelming advantage: his audience. On the meaningless, formless inadvertence of his gloops and splatters, they impose meaning. That meaning exists only in their own minds. No matter; they see it, and praise Pollock for it. God has the same advantage. A creationist sees meaning in the Universe, and praises God for it.
I think they’re both full of, er, praise.
@Davw Luckett
But the works of Pollock are designed. That there is a component of randomness does not destroy the fact of design. One could be cynical, and say that they were designed to make Pollock’s reputation, or to make money.
What I am saying is that there is very little that being designed explains.
Utopia, the state described in the book of that name by Thomas More, is intelligently designed. But that is not enough to make it exist.
A Pyramid Scheme is intelligently designed, but that does not explain its working, or its failure to work.
The World Wide Web – is that intelligently designed or not? What does the answer to that question explain?
TomS
Imagine if Scooby Doo solved religion mysteries instead circumnavigating religion in favor of other con game mysteries. Imagine how fast they would have been cancelled. Shrewd business decision by Scooby’s manger.
@richard
Imagine there were a story where the hero solves the mystery by showing that there was design.
And then think of the case where the hero’s solution depends on it bring “yet more than” any known X (where X is, for example. design).
TomS
Oh, I agree that Pollock’s works can be described as “designed”, in a sense. He had conscious control over the materials, and even over the motions of his hands as he spilled the paint. I would also agree that the fact of design explains little about the result, in Pollock’s case. For all their learned confabulation, no critic can explain what the works of Jackson Pollock mean or are meant to convey, beyond a studied contempt for meaning itself. And, if the truth be told, most likely for anyone who attempts it.
And you are of course quite correct to point out that design can be of physically impossible things, or things that never existed, or cannot work. My first mass-market publication, a short story called “The Patternmaker”, was about the implications of realising an impossible design. The point is, the world itself then becomes only an illusion.
But is it true that “there is very little that being designed explains”? The imposing sculptures on Mt Rushmore, the beauty of the Michelangelo Pieta, the lethality of an AR-15, the speed of a Bugatti Veyron, the power of a AGT 1500 engine – all these and much more are explained by their being designed. The error lies in assuming that the awesomeness of a whale, the beauty of a hummingbird, the lethality of a taipan, the speed of a cheetah, or the power of a grizzly, are also designed. Design might indeed explain why some things exist; it does not follow that it explains why all things exist.
#Dave Luckett
If tourists visiting Mount Rushmore were to ask a local about the sculptures of the four presidents, would they be satisfied with being told that those sculptures were designed? And if they asked about the local flora and fauna, only to be told that those, too, were designed?
Imagine a teacher asking the class why is Michelangelo”s Pieta beautiful. Would any teacher accept the answer “It is designed”?
(Just as unresponsive is “Michelangelo was a genius”. And how about “Why does Mary look so young, even younger than her son? Because of design.”?)
I don’t know much about cars, and you tell me that the Bugatti Veyron is fast, and that the explanation for that speed is that it is designed. I don’t get any satisfaction from that explanation.
TomS
It might not be satisfying, TomS, but where does it say that an explanation must satisfy whoever receives it? Even a complete explanation might be, and often is, unsatisfactory.
The Pieta was conceived and created by a great artist, possibly the greatest, of the Renaissance. There is no other explanation for it other than he designed it as it is. Why does the Madonna look so young? Because Michelangelo designed it that way. That is the only explanation, and it will have to do, for there is no other.
Why did he design it that way? That’s a different question. Because he wanted to advance a meaning: The Madonna is forever young, forever flawless. Perhaps.
The Bugatti was designed to be what it is. Is that a sufficient explanation. I say, yes, it is. Does that design have meaning? Sure it does. It means, among other things, that there is a market for a road car that costs at least 1.8 million dollars, and can do 400 km per hour. That might not be a very creditable meaning, but that’s one of the things it means.
Pollock’s paintings were also designed – to some extent. Do they have meaning? To some, they do. Not me, of course, but I’m a reactionary philistine with a grudge against glib conmen who take advantage of the credulity of pseuds, even while I am little in sympathy with the latter.
This connection between design and meaning is not necessarily even there, let alone intentional. The world is full of things that were designed, but turned out to have meanings that their designers never dreamed of. The internet, for example. Or no meaning at all. Pollock’s paintings to me, for example.
While there remains a great deal to be said about how and by what means and for what purpose a design was made and executed, “It was designed” is a sufficient explanation for its existence; but only for those things that are known to be designed. It does not explain things that are not known to be designed. Life is not known to be designed. It is idle to assert that it can be explained by design, therefore.
Next door to Jackson Pollock’s atelier was the studio of a very different artist, one Packson Jollock. Jollock was a gifted art forger, able to recreate flawless copies of other artists’ masterpieces that regularly fooled even the greatest experts—but that is all that Jollock ever painted, he never attempted a composition of his own design. Moreover, he did not produce these flawless copies in order to sell them; instead, as he was also an expert thief, he routinely and secretly broke into museums and galleries to steal famous paintings, replacing them with the forgeries he then placed in the original frames, all without ever being detected in so doing.
And he was also an extremely fastidious man: the floor of his studio was covered by a large piece of white canvas which, over the years of his lucrative career in art forgery and thievery, acquired a thick patina of drips, dribbles, and splashes of many different paints.
By chance, on the very day in 1956 when Pollock died in an automobile crash, Jollock was killed by a freak tornado that ripped through both his own and Pollock’s adjoining studio, utterly scrambling the contents thereof. But in the resulting junkyard there was not, of course, a miraculously-assembled Boeing 747, but instead a gallimaufry of original Pollock canvases, Jollock forgeries of Great Masters’ works, genuine Great Masters’ works that Jollock had purloined, and Jollock’s randomly-splattered drop-cloth.
So who you gonna call to sort out the wheat from the chaff? A Creationist, who can apply Dembski’s ‘Explanatory Filter’? Would such a one, using such tools, distinguish the works by their varying degrees of ‘Specified Complexity’ or be able to infer ‘Design’ in such a way to distinguish Jollock’s forgeries from original works, or Jollock’s drop-cloth from an original Pollock?
The utterly sandy foundation for the Creationists’ Teleological Fallacy is the bit of bait-and-switch they pull with their vaunted Design Inference: that is, when we encounter Paley’s abandoned watch in a field or the Presidential visages on Mt Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota, we are able to correctly identify that they are the products of ‘Design.’ But actually, all that we are really able to detect is that they are the products of Artificial Manufacture, which we can also discern, with similar confidence, in a bird’s nest or a beaver’s dam. And it is without any reference to the identity or the intention of the manufacturer nor the degree of complexity of the artifact that we can so conclude: the identification rests on our confidence that no known natural process can produce such a result, whereas the activity of some agents can. The degree of complexity of the artifact or any purpose for it we might infer for it are matters irrelevant to our determination that it is manufactured.
The bait-and-switch part is in how Creationists misuse that evidence of Manufacture. It is true that from a manufactured artifact we can indeed usually determine something about the identity of the manufacturer, more tenuously something about the process of manufacture, and more tenuously still an intent by the manufacturer. But Creationists are either entirely mute about any process of manufacture (or else invoke magical oogity-boogity as the means of manufacture), and in fact reverse the whole logic, viz., from their ungrounded axiom that the cosmos could only ever be what it is, their claim is that every integrated component thereof must demonstrate intent on the part of a manufacturer, otherwise the cosmos would be different, and therefore everything in nature is a manufactured artifact.
Which is absurd: as we already stated, we identify Paley’s watch and Mt Rushmore as manufactured artifacts precisely because they do not arise from natural processes!
MLK Day 2024
“Science investigates; religion interprets.
Science gives man knowledge, which is power: religion gives man wisdom, which is control.
Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values.
The two are not rivals.”
Martin Luther King
“The reusage of highly similar and complex parts in widely different organisms in non-treelike patterns is best explained by the action of an intelligent agent.”
How more obvious can it be that Intelligent Design is the “clown parade” equivalent of a creationist parade of clowns?
@ richard: 🙂
The occurance of highly similar and complex thunderstorms in widely different times and places is best explained by the actions of Zeus, the Hurler of the Thunderbolt!
@Dave Luckett
Is there anything which cannot be explained as designed?
Any thing, or its contrary.
How does that relate to the Argument Against Design From Dysfunction?
A pyramid scheme is designed. Is its function explained by design? How about its failure?
Isaiah 40:22 speaks about the circle of the earth. Is that text (indeed any text of the Bible – or any text of any work) explained by the Bible being intelligently designed? If so, what does that tell us about the shape of the earth – flat as a pancake or round as a ball (or what lesson we are to take from any text).
TomS
@Megalonyx
What are the odds that every tree will have roots you can’t explain that.
TomS:
I wrote a carefully considered response to your questions, and it was swallowed by WordPress. If I post anything substantial I must remember to back it up before I hit the go button. Forgive me, but I haven’t the heart to write it all again.
Sex: A Spicy Problem for Evolutionary Theory
A recent entry in ID the Future,
episode 1850 with Andrew McDonald guest Jonathan McClatchie
idthefuture.com/1850
“Sexual reproduction ought to be a recipe for evolutionary disaster. It’s a seeming waste of resources producing little or no short-term advantages. It demands an entirely different form of cell division and requires highly designed interconnected components to succeed. And yet, sex reigns supreme in the biological world.”
TomS
I didn’t listen to the “episode”. I’m not interested in spending anymore time hearing how somebody can’t think of how sex can be the result of natural processes and thus must be the result of something-or-other-unspecified-with-the–tag-ID. Irreducible complexity and all that.
I’m no scientist, but I’ve wondered whether anyone has considered the possibility that something like multiple mating types, as in fungi, were the beginning of sex, with the result being the two sexes?
TomS
“You can’t explain that.” — Bill O’Reilly, 500,000 youtube subscribers and growing
I have met Jonathan McLatchie. He seems to me completely sincere, does work at thinking things through rather than spouting the most plausible garbage, and has risked alienating his own audience by the forcefulness with which he defends the scientific reasons for believing that the earth is old. Unfortunately, he also believes that the gospel must be true, because of Isaiah 53, and that somehow this is an overriding argument for separate creation
Thank you so much for your dedication and persistance in stomping on creationists year after year.
In West Virginia, the state Senate Education Committee approved a bill authorizing the teaching of intelligent design in schools. See an article in the Charleston MetroNews of January 16, 2024
TomS
I found several news stories about the ID bill in West Virginia, but no mention of it in the web pages of the National Center for Science Education.
TomS
Dear Curmudgeon,
I regret, like everyone else here, that we may not get new updates from you.I have found your mixture of knowledge, wit, satire , idealism and academic rigor very interesting for years. However, your legacy posts and the comments of your readers are priceless and document a truly valiant effort to share knowledge about science and to expose the anti science antics of the creationist community. I very much like MLKs comment on the difference between science and religion. “Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control.”
Simple, elegant, non judgmental. While our creationist objects of study seem and often are, unsavory ignoramuses, in my view, they are simply the leading edge of the bottom feeding portion of religious people. The most vocal part. And sadly, representative of a significant portion of America’s population.
If they really want Intelligent Design in schools then they should do it like normal people do. March around in circles all day tooting their horns, and then when the walls of science fall go in and genocide everything that breathes.
There seem to be no interest in carrying on any conversation.
Alas
TomS
About the West Virginia bill – it seems to have been changed from referencing “intelligent design” as a theory of how the universe and/or humanity came to exist to say, instead, “scientific theories”.
Whatever that bill then is supposed to do.
I got this information from the blog “thefriendlyatheist” (and I have no idea about how reliable is this information – I don’t have any familiarity with the blog – any help is appreciated) for Jan. 18, 2024 “WV Republicans refile bill to get “Intelligent Design” in classrooms… with a twist”.
https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/wv-republicans-refile-bill-to-get
TomS
@TomS, I think Friendly Atheist is reliable, at least it comes to reporting facts, though of course he has his own clearly stated agenda. In this case, I think the relative section is now fairly harmless. As I recall, similar permission-giving bills exist in some states, and since there are just that, permission-giving rather than mandating, they would be difficult to challenge. Moreover, if a teacher were to use the relevant paragraph to promote intelligent design, the appropriate legal response would be to challenge the assumption that intelligent design is not a scientific theory, rather than tp question the constitutionality of the bill. I have friends much better informed about these matters than I am, some of whom hung out here, and I will ask them
@Paul Braterman
Thank you.
I have no reason to doubt the blog, but I’ve learned to be careful.
BTW, I occurred to be that the term “humanity” is ambiguous, so that “how … humanity came to be” could refer to the origin of the species Homo sapiens (or the genus Homo , or “baramin” of Hominidae), or raise the question of abortion (are ova and sperms included in humanity?).
TomS
@TomS, in context I think it must mean the origin of the species (or genus, it hardly matters which). The origin of a fetus is not in doubt; what is in dispute is when it becomes a person, but that’s a different conversation
And I notice that there is discussion taking place on The Panda.s Thumb.
There is a difference from what I have said; where the Thumb reports about the origin of life, rather than what I have seen, of humanity. Several posters point out that evolution – at least in its present form – does not have an explanation of the origins of life. At least in some meanings of “humanity”, i.e. a taxon, evolution has much to offer about the origins. “Humanity” in the sense of an individual, or an abstract ethical or moral or cultural behavior or attitude, is often controversial. (Not that creationists pay attention to the ambiguities in their language.)
Also, the Thumb seems to be behind the news, if I am correct, reporting the early language about intelligent design rather than scientific.
TomS
Correction
This seems to be the relevant language in the West Virginia pending bill:
(c) No public school board, school superintendent, or school principal shall prohibit a
7 public school classroom teacher from discussing or answering questions from students about
8 scientific theories of how the universe and/or life came to exist.
TomS
Well, that wording does not appear to be creationist, nor to privilege any religious position, TomS. It possibly could be used as a lever by which a creationist teacher could claim that they cannot be prevented from inserting their views into their classes, but I think that the First Amendment rights of their students would put paid to that, pretty quickly, in the light of Kitzmiller.
And, let’s face it, we’ve always known that a small minority of teachers are religious fanatics who aren’t going to let a little thing like the Constitution come between themselves and their students’ salvation. That’s always on, and where it occurs, has to be tackled at the school level, or district at most. It’s possible, I suppose, that some State representative has hatched a new and cunning plan for abolishing the Enlightenment, but on the face of it, it only prevents teachers being forbidden to teach the known facts about life, the Universe and everything.
On the earlier questions TomS asked about design. I’ll try again, only this time I’ll back up before attempting to post.
“Is there anything which cannot be explained as designed?
Any thing, or its contrary.”
Yes, there is. In fact, most things cannot be explained by design. Design can be used as an explanation only for things we know to have been designed, or can reasonably infer to have had a human origin flowing from need and intellectual concept. A Neolithic arrowhead was designed. Stonehenge was designed. The sculptures on Mt Rushmore were designed.
Are beaver dams or weaver bird nests or orb spider webs designed? Edge case. I would say, no. Those structures evolved, not out of intellectual concept, but out of a continuous process of interaction with an environment. From this I derive the requirement that design must be a conscious process with a conscious motive.
“How does that relate to the Argument Against Design From Dysfunction?”
Design must by my definition have a conscious purpose, but that does not imply that it succeeds in that purpose. There are, there have been, many designs that do not serve a purpose, or are not fit for purpose, or necessarily involve costs that subvert their stated purpose. The argument against design from dysfunction assumes that if something is designed, it is successful in achieving the designed purpose, and all aspects of it contribute to that. That is an unsafe assumption.
But what if the designer be omniscient? How can anything designed by such an agency be faulty, or fail? Different question. In that case, but only then, the argument against design from dysfunction has merit. Even then, it might be objected that an omniscient designer is not necessarily benevolent, nor even careful. Thus, while that argument is not necessarily effective against the concept of a designer of the Universe, or of life, it is effective against the Abrahamic concept of a loving and benevolent God.
Thus, dysfunction is not an argument against design, but it is an argument against an omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent Designer. But the first argument against such a Designer is that it is presumptuous to claim that anything is the product of design where design itself, as a conscious process, cannot be reasonably inferred.
“A pyramid scheme is designed. Is its function explained by design? How about its failure?”
In accordance with the above, a pyramid scheme is explained by design, and its function is also explained by design. It’s just that its function is not to promote the general welfare, but only the profit of its projectors. Its failure – which is inevitable – is thus only a failure of design if the projectors don’t profit.
Another example of the same is the boondoggle. Again, it is designed, but its function is to ensure the profits and business activities of its projectors, not to produce a functional system.
“Isaiah 40:22 speaks about the circle of the earth. Is that text (indeed any text of the Bible – or any text of any work) explained by the Bible being intelligently designed?”
Yes.
“If so, what does that tell us about the shape of the earth – flat as a pancake or round as a ball (or what lesson we are to take from any text).”
About the shape of the Earth, it tells us nothing whatsoever. What it does tell us is that human beings are, and probably always were, capable of using figurative language to express concepts for which they had no definitive or conclusive evidence. For the writer of Isaiah 40:22, the world was a regular shape, a circle, a disk, because it was created by an orderly God who worked according to assimilable patterns. That was an assumption, but it was the assumption underpinning everything that writer ever thought, or heard of, or was taught. For some, that is still the case.
The lesson we should take from that or any text is that it must be criticised in the light of adequate physical evidence, and where such evidence cannot be proffered, the text’s assumptions and conclusions must be – not absolutely rejected – but set aside.
But where evidence to the contrary is proffered, THEN the text must be rejected. Translation of the concepts and language of a completely different culture is difficult, but it appears that Isaiah 40:22, taken literally, describes the Earth as a disk, not a sphere. That is wrong. Its literal reading must therefore be rejected.
@TomS, the relevant language was completely changed, presumably by the education committee, between the first and second Senate meetings. I’ve described this over at Panda’s Thumb
This is what I said there:
This bill underwent dramatic changes, presumably in committee, between its first and second Senate readings. The original version read
” Teachers in public schools, including public charter schools, that include any one or more of grades kindergarten through 12, may teach intelligent design as a theory of how the universe and/or humanity came to exist.”
And just in case that wasn’t sufficiently clear, there was an annotation “NOTE: The purpose of this bill is to allow teachers in public schools, including public charter schools, that include any one or more of grades Kindergarten through 12 to teach intelligent design as a theory of how the universe and/or humanity came to exist.”
This has now turned into ” No public school board, school superintendent, or school principal shall prohibit a public school classroom teacher from discussing or answering questions from students about scientific theories of how the universe and/or life came to exist.”
The revised version doesn’t actually say anything. It has dropped the reference to intelligent design, and does not specify any particular theories, while “teach” has been replaced by “discussing or answering questions from students”. Interestingly, “the universe and/or humanity”, which is clearly an oblique reference evolution, has been replaced by “the universe and/or life”. I find it difficult to imagine circumstances under which an administrative superior would prohibit a teacher from discussing or answering questions about any scientific theory. What is going on?
My suggestion: I do not know if the sponsors of the original version really thought that the bill had any chance of passage, or if they were merely indulging in street theatre. But it seems clear that their colleagues, aware that the original version was indefensible, but for whatever reasons wanting to avoid outright rejection, simply amended the bill to the point that it became meaningless.
Three days ago:
“So if you saw if you saw an outboard motor in the cell as I’ve written about of course the bacterial flugum tell me again why you would withhold a judgment of design in that case.”
Behe has got to be the densest person on the planet, or playing con game.
A few typos in there. Sorry, Mikey boy.
@Paul Braterman
In the original versions it’s implicit that they think ID is a scientific theory. So in their heads they think nothing has changed.
The shorter Behe: total lack of self-awareness.
My favorite was his statement following his disastrous, case-killing testimony at Kitzmiller, “I think that went quite well!”
If he’s going to run a con game then at least hire Paul Newman and Robert Redford and play ragtime songs.
@Paul Braterman
I’m sure you’ve probably seen it, but thought I’d post a link anyway.
The Lincoln project, I believe, is a Republican group dedicated to stopping Trump. I think this piece is also referring to the piece glorifying Trump as made by God, reproduced here: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/god-gave-us-trump-says-lie-filled
@Dave Luckett
“Yes, there is. In fact, most things cannot be explained by design. Design can be used as an explanation only for things we know to have been designed, or can reasonably infer to have had a human origin flowing from need and intellectual concept.”
I am curious about your concept of design. Would you agree that necessity is the mother of invention? Is a design manifested by use of means? What do you think of this opinion from George Berkeley’s “Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous”?
“We indeed, who are beings of finite powers, are forced to make use of instruments. And the use of an instrument sheweth the agent to be limited by rules of another’s prescription, and that he cannot obtain his end but in such a way, and by such conditions. Whence it seems a clear consequence, that the supreme unlimited agent useth no tool or instrument at all. The will of an Omnipotent Spirit is no sooner exerted than executed, without the application of means; which, if they are employed by inferior agents, it is not upon account of any real efficacy that is in them, or necessary aptitude to produce any effect, but merely in compliance with the laws of nature, or those conditions prescribed to them by the First Cause, who is Himself above all limitation or prescription whatsoever.”
TomS
Necessity is never the mother of invention in biological systems. For if something were necessary, but it had not yet arisen, you’d be dead. The on the contrary, interventionism as a necessity, in the sense that once something arises, it becomes built into more complex systems that can’t work without it. I’m not sure that helps any
@Paul Braterman
But plenty of stuff in the world of life is not necessary. Does that mean that that stuff was not invented? Unless there is a necessity which we don’t know about.
TomS
TomS:
If necessity were the mother of invention, then life was not invented. Invention is a bit like the Norse god Heimdall: it has many mothers. Necessity is one, but convenience is another, as are veniality, avarice and laziness. But also altruism, occasionally. Alfred Nobel thought he had invented something that would make war impossible, for example.
Design is characterised by use of means, certainly. Good design might be described as economical use of appropriate means to gain a specific, closely defined goal.
Berkeley is making much of a fairly basic axiom of Abrahamic theology: God creates without need of instruments…
Oh, wait. Whatever happened to the idea that we humans are instruments in God’s hands? Why would he need us as “servants who will become sons” as C S Lewis describes it? (Sorry for the sexist language. On that subject, Lewis was a bit of a dick.)
So God doesn’t need instruments, but for some purposes He uses them anyway. Does that imply that He needs them for those purposes? Does Berkeley consider that point?
I wouldn’t have thought so. Berkeley simply describes God as “omnipotent”, from which everything else flows. God can design and create without instrument, with no means other than His will, because He can do anything, simply by definition.
Yes, but that ducks the question of what God actually did. How can the creation of the Universe be described as “design”, anyway, when it plainly consists not of making the best use of the means and materials available, but begins by making out of nothing the rules by which those means operate and materials come to exist? That isn’t design, as I understand the word.
For if design is characterised by use of means, then God did not design the Universe, and the whole basis of “intelligent design” falls through the floor.
But we already knew that.
Did God first need a fish before he could multiply the fishes? Water before he could make the wine? Maybe he was sloshed from the wine before the fish because who the hell would feed everyone with fish.
@Dave Luckett
Thank you.
We seem to agree, basically.
As regards to Berkeley, I do not remind you, but Berkeley was famous for his attack on Newton’s infinitesimal calculus for its supposed support for atheism. (The justification of calculus didn’t appear until the 19th century.)
TomS
Why doesn’t Michael Behe have his name legally changed to “buy my book” because that’s all he ever says. “Hi, I’m Buy My Book Behe.” Cut right to the chase.
The Trump “and God made Trump ad is a copy of Beloved Leader DuhSantis’s ad “God Made a Fighter” Just as sickening.
Chris Hopper
@Formerly Holding The Line In Florida
They’ve realized that people have reached the low dumbness level that they will find these types of things awesome and not stupid. I was hoping they wouldn’t notice that we are the dumbest species of all time, but they have noticed it.
Latest news is that DeSantis is quitting.
DeSantis several months ago:
“First of all, I mean, I think a lot of this stuff when he hits me with it with juvenile insults, I think that helps me,” DeSantis told reporters. “I don’t think voters like that. I think they look at it and they realize, like, you know what, that’s not effective. And so I don’t think it’s effective.”
Never overestimate the dumbest species Ron.
Imagine if the smartest species (cats) ran against the dumbest species (humans). The cats would lose because of not being dumb enough.
See this article in Wiktionary.org
nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people
TomS
I’m really enjoying all your comments. One of these days I’ll have to post something new — regardless of formatting, to keep the entertainment flowing.
@The Curmudgeon
Thank you.
TomS
Reviewing some points that I’d missed:
Richard: “The reusage of highly similar and complex parts in widely different organisms in non-treelike patterns is best explained by the action of an intelligent agent.” Bizarre, since the most obvious and striking evidence for evolution and common descent is the overwhelmingly treelike pattern observed.
TomS, I think there’s a large literature on the evolution of sex. The generally accepted explanation is that it allows mixing of the descendants of various mutations, thus allowing disfavoured variants to be bred out without losing an entirely lineage.
Richard: to be fair to Bill O’Reilly, I think his point was, not that we can’t explain the tides in particular (of course we can), but that we can’t explain the regularity of the natural laws that they illustrate. Does he have a point? I think he may
@Paul Braterman
I’m not so bold as to think that I can make a contribution to science.
My point is to point out a failure of the “irreducible complexity” argument. They are so bold, but they ignore an obvious pathway: two sexes can result as a simplification from many sexes. The analogy which has been often pointed out, of an arch, which is “irreducibly complex”, but can result by a natural process of erosion. A person, such as I, with no learning in biology, can see such an obvious point. They should be embarrassed.
TomS
@TomS, you are too kind to them. We have, as you say, the natural example of an arch. One model much used to illustrate the point regarding biology is a river crossed with steppingstones. Say the system involves a plank from the first the last stone. This is clearly advantageous, but not necessary. Over time, the middle stone gets washed out, analogous in biology to a gene degrading in the absence of purifying selection, and the plank has now become part of an irreducibly complex system.
We also have specifics (to take Behe’s own chosen examples, the blood clotting system and the bacterial flagellum) where there is a clear record of the “irreducibly complex” objects having been cobbled together from independently evolved components.
I had an amiable but unproductive exchange with Behe. His point was that until all the pieces were in place, you didn’t have a flagellum, and therefore in his sense the flagellum was irreducibly complex. It did not seem even worth pointing out that this would only be a convincing argument is the flagellum had been essential at the time of its first appearance, which of course it was not.
@Paul Braterman
I think Bill’s point goes one step further than that. People can’t explain everything (okay good point)–but furthermore–therefore Jesus created everything and then jumped out of the sky into Mary’s womb. (God of the gaps, but HIS God.)
Here is Bill’s reply to the tides go in thing. Basically we can’t explain things, everyone is a desperate pinhead, it takes more faith to be an atheist, yada.
@richard
There are many guesses that might explain.
One proposed, from long ago, is that it’s just a matter of chance.
And, of course, people complain that that would be an event of one in a vast number of possibilities.
And that ignores that the number of possibilities, given a omnipotent agency is even vaster, if not infinite, making one chance even less probable, even if not actually zero. (Just super-natural. Super-natural means that more stuff is possible than just the natural.)
And it doesn’t take a brilliant thinker to think of other possibilities.
TomS
@Richard, I was much too kind to Bill. He is using scattershot argument based on ignorance and the complexity of reality, with a strong streak of pretend anti-elitism, to insult those who disagree with him.
I’m not sure who posted this excerpt, but since it’s had less than a thousand views in six years I don’t think that matters very much. Intellectually, Bill O’Reilly is self-destructing, but he either doesn’t know, or doesn’t care, or probably both
@richard
Why isn’t there a moon for Mars? There are two moons for Mars. Why were we short changed? Is there anything in theism which tells us why that’s so?
Why isn’t there life anyplace else? God made a universe, billions of light-years across, and it existed for billions of years before there was any sign of life. It isn’t as if God couldn’t make life anywhere at anytime. How do you know that there isn’t life on the Sun, or in “empty” space, or in the center core of the Earth? No one has bothered to look for it there.
TomS
Very simply, utilizing the argument from ignorance, we can determine that if we don’t know if there is life on the sun, then there is life on the sun if we want there to be life on the sun. Easy!
SC, Thought this might get your juices flowing. WIthout you to research this and blog about it, we are all left in more darkness. AIG received a grant for their school from this foundation.
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2022/08/dark-money-group-pushing-woke-heat-maps-targeting-schools-has-ties-to-christian-education-foundation/
The extreme left’s “long march through the institutions” and its success is now a fact of history. Of course the far right deplores it, mainly because they didn’t think of it first, but the far right are not the only ones. They think they can bring more moderate conservatives into their camp by detailing some of the worst effects of “woke” ideology – and in all fairness, they’re not difficult to find.
So it’s not surprising that right wing lobby groups and “think tanks” would practice their own form of sectional politics, and try to recruit outside their core constituency. What is a little surprising to me is that they’d so misdirect their resources as to give funds meant for that purpose to AiG. That’s not just preaching to the choir, it’s giving them money for being in church.
A completely new subject.
It is of interest to me because of the suggestion that “darwinism” bears any blame for those social-political movements of the early 20th century, so-called “social darwism” and worse. I’m not going to go over once again defending the science of evolution from the changes.
But rather, there is the issue of Robert Koch (1848-1910), German scientist, Nobel laureate in medicine or physiology (1906), founder of the institute of medicine which now bears his name.
I do not have enough knowledge of German, nor access to a university library to follow serious research, but ISTM that he bears responsibility for the misuse of science against populations.
But i realize that bringing up this point might be used by anti-science people, like anti-vaxers and such. I must emphasize that the misuse of science does not mean that the science itself is questionable.
Briefly, there has been popular movement against people of other cultures or nationalities that they are carriers of disease, and must be isolated – or worse. I don’t know how much the theory of infectious diseases – to which Koch was a major contributor – as it was taught, for example in American medical schools to this xenophobia. It was – and, in some circles, even today – popular, with some times awful consequences. Some times, some groups were called diseases.
Koch himself seems to be a bad enough guy. And the Robert Koch Institute a couple of decades after his death was complicit in some of the crimes of Germany.
Can anyone clarify, verify or falsify any of this?
TomS
@TomS, there is nothing of what you say in the Wikipedia article on him. Xenophobes certainly use the argument that the outgroup carry diseases, but I don’t think this argument depends on anything more than the well-known fact that some diseases are contagious. Koch is not mentioned in Adam Rutherford’s book on eugenics. So if you want to say that Koch was in any sense “a bad enough guy,” I think you need to give us more evidence
I was wondering, from some articles referenced in RationalWiki on “Hitler and evolution”
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Hitler_and_evolution#Comparison_with_minuse_of_the_germ_theory_of_disease>https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Hitler_and_evolution#Comparison_with_minuse_of_the_germ_theory_of_disease
and that Hitler had praise for Koch.
As I said, I have no access to a research library, other than what one can get online. Are these articles reliable?
TomS
@TomS; careful reading required. Reference 2 actually expands to “I feel like the Robert Koch of politics. He found the bacillus of tuberculosis and through that showed medical scholarship new ways. I discovered the Jews as the bacillus and ferment of all social decomposition.’ Hitler, Table Talk, night of 10 July 1941″, showing that Hitler regarded Jews as an infection, but telling us nothing to suggest that Koch had encouraged this analogy. Later on, we have reference 12, ” [https://www.voelkerrechtsblog.org/robert-koch-research-and-experiment-in-the-colonial-space-or/ Robert Koch, research and experiment in the colonial space Or: Subjugating the non-European under the old international law] byThamil Ananthavinayagan 10 June, 2020. Vokerrechtsblog: International Law & International Legal Thought”. This reads as if it is part of the project of decolonising the curriculum. Some of the work done to this end is good, and some is very bad. Not being an expert, I’ll have to leave it there. I know that some people who have read this blog (I don’t know if they’re still here) are very interested in the question of appropriate and inappropriate moral judgements on historical racism
“God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.”
What’s wrong with just healing people. Without having to be in Paul’s vicinity. Or in the vicinity of certain fashion accessories.
I bet his shadow never healed anyone. What an amateur.
The point of prayer is its effect on the person making the prayer, not the effect of the recipient of the prayer. Similarly with pilgrimages, fasts, icons and relics.
TomS
@TomS, this I can understand and respect. Then how is petitionary prayer possible?
If everything is invisible, then how do they even know who they are talking to? It’s already tough enough for monotheists (those who have precisely three gods). Think of all the trouble polytheists (those with more than three gods) must go thorough sorting it all out.
@Paul Braterman
Yes, a prayer asking for something can be problematic. There are people who avoid such prayer. But some say that a prayer of petition is a form of recognition that everything depends on God. And Christians have the Lord’s Prayer which includes “give us … our daily bread”.
Many distinguish a prayer for forgiveness from a petition for something.
TomS
TomS: Petitionary prayer was specifically allowed by Jesus: John 16:23. But his prayer in the Garden the night he was betrayed must be considered, also: Matthew 26:42 (eg) says that He prayed that “this cup might pass” from him, but stipulated “Thy will be done”. The same words appear in the Lord’s Prayer before the petition for daily bread.
The principle seems to me to be that a Christian may pray for material necessities, or indeed for anything that is not sinful in itself, but must accept with willing obedience and submission that the answer may be “No”.
It’s probably only my cynicism, but I can’t avoid the reflection that this neatly covers all the possible outcomes, and therefore any result, be it fulfillment, non-fulfillment, or complete and total disaster attending either a grant or a refusal, can be held to be consistent with the faith.
@Richard, considering the recurring types of deity across cultures, Christianity has a pantheon of four members: Father/god of wrath, Son/god of redemption, Spirit/ephemeral god, and Satan/trickster god. Christians don’t worship the trickster, but in some sects, believers devote as much attention to blaming his malevolence for the ills of the world as they give thanks for the benevolence of the other three.
Retired Prof
@TomS, @DaveLuckett, I am amazed how little Christians are aware of the fact that the Lord’s prayer is a compilation of key phrases from the early morning prayers still said by orthodox Jews, and in the process of being compiled and selected around that time, as Pharisee concerns shifted away from the Temple in Jerusalem and towards communal (synagogue) and private prayer. This to me strongly suggests that we are not looking at a one-paragraph prayer, but had the lifting of the headings of three or perhaps more key paragraphs.
Do Christians ever discuss such matters in those terms? (I am not a never have been a Christian, and so I do not know how Christians discuss such matters among themselves)
If I’m right, Dave is over-interpreting a compressed text
Paul Braterman, you are correct, of course, to say that most Christians have no idea how much of Jesus’s teachings, his very word choices, come directly from Jewish practice and belief. I actually knew of how much the Lord’s Prayer comes from that source, but that knowledge was purely accidental.
I believe you know that my father was a Presbyterian minister. He played chess on different occasions with both the local Catholic priest and with Rabbi Coleman, who was somewhat more than merely the local rabbi. This I regard as something of a feat of ecumenism, for the middle ’60s of the last century.
With Father Lynch he would drink a single glass of whisk(e)y, Scotch or Irish by turns. The Rabbi would take a glass or maybe even two of Kosher wine. (He had his own brand new glass, never used for any other purpose.) They would discuss mostly secular politics, but my father also sponsored the rabbi into the local ministers’ fraternal, not, I gather, without some controversy. The rabbi gave him a beautiful Seder plate that came to me as an heirloom. It now has pride of place on the table in my entryway. It will go to my son, who knows the story, and will treat it with respect.
I forget how the subject came up, but it was the rabbi who spoke of this very subject, the words of the Lord’s Prayer crossing over from orthodox practice. My fourteen-year-old self was already fairly aware of Christian – or rather, Protestant – conventions, including the idea (that I now know to be false), that Jesus of Nazareth was completely novel and a radical departure from all that had gone before. To hear that the Lord’s Prayer was not so original as all that quite jolted me. Perhaps my attitude to the tradition in which I had been brought up became less trusting from that point on, but I can’t say for sure. It might have happened anyway; probably would have.
Anyway, I am aware that most Christians might indeed “over-interpret a compressed text”, but it was most Christians I was speaking of. Me, I’m pretty sure that there is no particular point in intercessory prayer at all. In my experience, nobody is listening.
@Retired Prof
Orthodox, Catholic and some others recognize patrons. They are not called “gods”, but the distinction is sometimes a fine line. One might say that prayers are not directed to a saint, but that distinction is mostly ignored.
TomS