Pharyngula

Posted by: DiscomBob | November 24, 2009 11:49 PM

Indeed.

Posted by: Torrie | November 25, 2009 12:01 AM

It's Atheist Derangement Syndrome at it's finest!

Yeah, I keep getting close-minded by Christians. Hard to make a point when the other side is projecting.

My favorite religious people are the ones who say, I'm going to tell you a different way of looking at things, most Christians get it wrong.... lol!

and the ones who say evolution AND creationism is right, we had both. lol!

Posted by: Dahan | November 25, 2009 12:07 AM

I made the mistake of engaging a creotard to day, online. In the end, after hearing about missing human to ape links, the 2nd law of thermodynamics and the rest of the usual stupid, I was called elitist, arrogant, and conceited because I wouldn't allow that his baseless claims were as valid as my scientifically backed ones were.

Nothing new to any of us, I know. But tell me, why do I allow myself to be sucked into debating those who love their ignorance more than reality?

Posted by: Lion IRC | November 25, 2009 12:19 AM

Hi FeministXblogspam.com,

I find the racism irrational and unbiblical.

In order to view humans clearly you need to look at us from an objective point of view - eg. God.
Otherwise we might sit here slagging each other all day with no arbitrary yard stick.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/11/deep_rift_in_chicago.php#comment-2052216

You’ll get lots of support from the male atheists here and on Mr Dawkins forum as well – they are so brave they don’t even ask permission to open the door for a lady.
http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5913&start=200#p2469584

Lion (IRC)

Posted by: MrFire | November 25, 2009 12:20 AM

But tell me, why do I allow myself to be sucked into debating those who love their ignorance more than reality?

The SIWOTI is strong in you.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | November 25, 2009 12:24 AM

Lion

Was there lead in the paint in your house as a child?

Posted by: Gruesome Rob | November 25, 2009 12:45 AM

In order to view humans clearly you need to look at us from an objective point of view - eg. God.

First you have to provide evidence for God.

Posted by: badrescher | November 25, 2009 1:09 AM

Only god is objective...

That is almost funnier than the comic!

"the racism" is in your head, not the comic.

Posted by: Kagato | November 25, 2009 1:26 AM

In order to view humans clearly you need to look at us from an objective point of view - eg. God.
Otherwise we might sit here slagging each other all day with no arbitrary yard stick.

No, you'd much prefer people slag each other using YOUR arbitrary yard stick.

Posted by: Ellie | November 25, 2009 1:30 AM

Any chance we can revisit the conciousness debate here now we've ejected DM?

Only, I wrote to Dr Steven Laureys (the brain scanning guy) and he answered me pretty quickly. He said:

"hi i don't get into the fascilitated communication issue here - shared your doubts - (in his case the communication works and was tested by me in controlled blinded way) i here rather focus on his diagnosis of vegetative state for many years while in fact he showed clinical signs of consciousness and had a normal brain PET scan
hope this helps cheers"

It is good that he tested it, but given the high level of proof against FC I would suggest this is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. "I tested them and found it to be real" isn't enough for this enquiring mind.

Posted by: D | November 25, 2009 1:46 AM

Great stuff! Reminds me of Caveman Science Fiction.

Posted by: mythusmage | November 25, 2009 2:00 AM

Gruesome, #14

It's even worse. Considering how much trouble we have understanding each other, let alone non-human creatures, how can we expect to understand the mind of God? The best we can do is to see things as we think God would see them, but in the end we are limited in our perceptions and understanding and can only ever see things from our point of view.

Be humility the key to Heaven, so many more of us need to learn to say, "I don't know."

Posted by: Rorschach | November 25, 2009 2:13 AM

The best we can do is to see things as we think God would see them, but in the end we are limited in our perceptions and understanding and can only ever see things from our point of view.

Alan, take your meds man.

Posted by: Flea | November 25, 2009 3:56 AM

Shhhhhh Joel (#27)! One troll per thread is enough.

Posted by: Knockgoats | November 25, 2009 4:52 AM

Ellie@20,

I agree: without detailed (and preferably peer-reviewed, published and independently checked) accounts of how Laureys tested the "communication", I remain sceptical. There's a million ways for a fraud to cheat a scientist - ask James Randi!

Posted by: puseaus | November 25, 2009 6:10 AM

How to celebrate God in Nepal. Text in Norwegian, but lots of pictures:

http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/utenriks/1.6881597

Posted by: The Tim Channel | November 25, 2009 6:50 AM

Lou Dobbs Unavoidable Nightmare Scenario

Dateline 2026, Politics Class, Middleton High School

Teacher: "Who can tell me the last time a Republican was elected for office in the United States? Juan, Maria, Julio? Don't be shy now. Ok Ruiz, I see you waving your hand! Tanisha, Mercedes and Latoya settle down and quit pulling on Damien's dreadlocks!"

Ruiz: "In 2010. The party officially dissolved after the overwhelming Democratic victories in 2012, which was highlighted by the re-election of President Obama. Every congressional and senate seat up for consideration in that election cycle went to the Democratic candidate. My mom first showed me pictures of some of those extinct Republicans when I was about five or six years old, because I'd outgrown having nightmares by then. They were some of the scariest looking thugs I've seen since Grand Theft Auto - Ghosts of Detroit came out in 2022, the year after Puerto Rico and Cuba were granted statehood."

Enjoy.

Posted by: Fred The Hun | November 25, 2009 7:17 AM

puseaus,

You missed the point by a light year or so.
Perhaps this will help: The USA and the majority of the people living in it have become a joke!

http://www.nolanchart.com/article7066.html

Disclaimer: I'm by no means a libertarian nor a fan of Ron Paul, if anything I'm more of a non ideological anarchist. Though the link has a lot of truth in it about general American lifestyle and the consequences which will not be pretty

The majority of the American people are living in a fantasy world that is going to come crashing down around them in the near future. They are almost all still convinced that they are better, smarter, stronger etc..

Best of luck to those who have taken the time to build ties within their communities and learned some real skills.

Cheers!

Posted by: Bruce Gorton | November 25, 2009 8:35 AM

Lion IRC

Before saying the Bible is not racist, try reading it.

Posted by: Michelle R | November 25, 2009 8:58 AM

...And here I thought that most of the old testament is just killing other nations because they aren't of the same title.

Posted by: Larry | November 25, 2009 10:05 AM

Keef may be partly wrong; knuckle walking developed in the chimp line independent of the Homo line. Homo's never knuckle walked. This should change some current thinking.

Posted by: dNorrisM | November 25, 2009 10:21 AM

Testing...

Thanks for the tip, Kagato- I tried that unsuccessfully a while back.

Hey #34
"Dobbs loves Latinos ;-)

Posted by: Cuttlefish, OM | November 25, 2009 10:35 AM

In order to view humans clearly you need to look at us from an objective point of view - eg. God.

I’ve got absolute truths by the dozens
They depend on the god that you cite
And, my brothers and sisters and cousins,
I have to decide which is right.

Each claims their morality’s better
They’re divinely inspired, you see;
So I’d follow their laws to the letter,
Except that they all disagree.

Whenever I look to the bible
To see how a person behaves
I can trust that the info’s reliable,
Like how I should punish my slaves.

I don’t wish to be petty or selfish
I just want to know I am right
Is it worse to be gay, or eat shellfish?
Both are wrong, in Leviticus’ sight.

Is it sinful to kill and eat cattle?
Well, the Hindus, of course, would agree
But then, kosher’s a whole different battle,
Although bacon tastes yummy to me!

I’ve got absolute truths if you want ‘em
Each according to different gods
Some keep them, and others will flaunt ‘em
But you’re breaking some rules, say the odds.

When religions make war over quarrels,
And they claim that their god is the source
Can a person have humanist morals?
Of Course!

http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2009/11/no-god-no-problem.html

Posted by: kevin gallagher | November 25, 2009 12:12 PM

@CUTTLEFISH

As usual mah man your lyrical madness makes me feel better after the idiocy of yesterdays attendees. Keep up the good work! >.

Posted by: PaulC | November 25, 2009 12:45 PM

The first time I ever read about apes throwing feces, I am sure it was in the context of being debunked. This was probably over twenty years ago. I had never heard of it before then, and I never heard about it again for a long time. But over the last few years (since the move Madagascar maybe, but I think earlier) it has become a very popular allusion.

So now I'm really confused. I did a little bit of searching on the web and almost nobody asks if it is actually true, though they ask why. Is it common behavior in a zoo? Has anyone personally seen it happen? Has it ever been observed in the wild. This, at least, was the claim I was sure had been debunked.

Posted by: uncle frogy | November 25, 2009 1:18 PM

>>Be humility the key to Heaven,
so many more of us need to learn to say,
"I don't know.">>

that is the only thing you said that
is true too bad most religious arguments I have ever heard all start from a position that they know the truth and if pressed will only say it is is revealed or it is a mystery and they believe.

all I can add is so you say

Posted by: Ron Sullivan | November 25, 2009 2:00 PM

One of the many useful things I've learned over the years is what a zoo-resident chimpanzee does to signal, "I am about to throw feces at you." He (in this case) stands up tall, raises his arms over his head, and makes short rocking jumps, side-to-side, from one foot to the other.

Saw this some years back in the San Francisco Zoo, when they had the chimps living on a sort of island with a moat. An anthro student, our housemate, had given us this clue so when we saw the Big Chief Chimp do his little dance, we withdrew from the crowd—I think we even warned, "Uh-oh, he's about to throw shit!"—to a slope not far away. I don't think anyone took the warning; certainly most of the crowd stayed in range.

Now this old boy had a system and a grudge. He picked up a good wad of feces and wetted it thoroughly in a puddle of water before wadding it into an approximate ball and hurling it over the moat into the crowd. I don't recall his pitching style, but he had a good arm.

Here's the anthro lesson: That crowd of humans, 50 or more, dodged back squealing from the dripping splattering wad of shit. And then they all closed in again. Mr. Chimp went through the motions again, and a third and fourth time, and every time the crowd dodged back screaming and then closed up ranks again, back to the front of the island. Same people, too.

All we could figure was that the H. saps felt that the chance to see their neighbors splattered with apeshit was more important than avoiding the shit themselves.

This also explained the Dr. Laura show, among other human phenomena.

Posted by: PaulC | November 25, 2009 2:12 PM

I might have misunderstood what I read the first time around. It was something like, so and so claimed to observe chimps in the wild defecating directly into their hands and throwing it at the researchers, but there is no corroborating evidence and the account is believed inaccurate. I have no idea where I read this, but it stuck into my mind for years before "poo-flinging apes" went memetic.

This is different from a crowded zoo enclosure where a pile of feces is the most obvious weapon to some stressed out chimps. But it may not be a defining characteristic any more than carving fake guns out of soap is a defining characteristic of human beings. Then again, it might be for all I know. I was just wondering.

Posted by: Tulse | November 25, 2009 2:55 PM

the bible does support the ideal of racial superiority

It's pretty much what is meant by "Chosen People".

Posted by: Haley | November 25, 2009 6:50 PM

I love it. A joke about creationists, conservatives, global warming deniers and homophobes wrapped up into one comic.

Posted by: David Estlund | November 25, 2009 7:44 PM

@bevo/devo: hook 'em

Posted by: 1 world currency | November 26, 2009 1:03 AM

Well, I haven't read the new Testament but no, "Chosen People" does not mean racial superiority.

The phrase does not occur in the text. The first Jew was Abraham, not Adam. He became a Jew by choice, not out of fear of eternal damnation. He was to be rewarded if he sacrificed (symbolized by cutting his foreskin) and led a moral life. Race meant nothing. If his sons and followers did not get circumcised, they did not become Jews. Anyone who chose to be a Jew could convert and was granted the exact same rights as any other Jew (still true today).

Read as literature by secular humanists like myself, the OT does not confer Jews with any special rights. In fact, many of the stories were obviously never meant to be taken literally. You don't find even Orthodox Jews objecting to evolution. Abraham is "promised" a small plot of land. By implication, any righteous person is "entitled" to an equitable share of the Earth's resources, not based on race. Of course, "race" is a useless scientific term.

Posted by: JennyAnyDots | November 26, 2009 6:47 AM

PaulC - I'm an archaeologist, not a primateologist, so none of this is anything I've ever studied in detail, but I just re-read Gerald Durrell's book Menagerie Manor a few weeks back. He also notes that apes in captivity start hurling faeces, but he also had 2 orang-utangs which developed the habit of consuming their urine and faeces. His comment on this was that it wouldn't happen naturally in the wild because they'd keep moving through the trees and wouldn't even think about what they'd left behind.

Posted by: tom | November 27, 2009 12:31 PM

All that matters in the climate change debate is the quality of the data and the predictive capacity of the models.

Again science is not about “overwhelming evidence“, it's about predicting measurements.

There's a lot of talk like “if you don't believe in global warming, then you are stupid.“ and “scientists have reached a consensus“.

This kind of talk often comes from people who have neither examined the body of measurements, nor studied the predictive capacity of the models/theories. They may be right but their viewpoint is still a religious/political viewpoint.

Climate science is worth doing simply because human beings have a long history of changing their environment for short term gain and then self destructing. (see Easter island, Greenland etc..) Earth is our last island.

But I really don't like the cartoon above. It is political. If you want to change people's minds, teach them the scientific method, then convince them that the measurements are valid, and that the models are describing and predicting correctly.