…and this is a 
Ken Ham is crowing over fooling a child. A young girl visited a moon rock display from NASA, and bravely went up to the docent and asked the standard question Ham coaches kids to ask — and she's quite proud of herself.
I went to a NASA display of a moon rock and a lady said, "This Moon-rock is 3.75 billion years old!" Guess what I asked for the first time ever?
"Um, may I ask a question?"
And she said, "Of course."
I said, in my most polite voice, "Were you there?"
Love, Emma B
Ken Ham is also quite proud of himself. He's also pleased with the fact that many people will be dismayed at the miseducation he delivers.
Each time I give examples in my blog posts of children who have been influenced by AiG, the atheists go ballistic on their blogs. They hate to read of instances like this. They want to teach these children there is no God and they are just animals in this hopeless and meaningless struggle of this purposeless existence.
I am angry at Ken Ham, but in this case, I mainly feel sad for Emma B, who is being manipulated and harmed by a delusion. So I thought what I would do is write a letter to her — a letter which I wouldn't send, because I'm not going to intrude on a family with the actual science, but because this is what I would say if Emma actually asked me.
Dear Emma;
I read your account of seeing a 3.75 billion year old moon rock, and how you asked the person displaying it "Were you there?", the question that Ken Ham taught you to ask scientists. I'm glad you were asking questions — that's what scientists are supposed to do — but I have to explain to you that that wasn't a very good question, and that Ken Ham is a poor teacher. There are better questions you could have asked.
One serious problem with the "Were you there?" question is that it is not very sincere. You knew the answer already! You knew that woman had not been to the moon, and you definitely knew that she had not been around to see the rock forming 3.75 billion years ago. You knew the only answer she could give was "no," which is not very informative.
Another problem is that if we can only trust what we have seen with our own two eyes in our short lives, then there's very little we can know at all. You probably know that there are penguins in Antarctica, and that the Civil War was fought in the 1860s, and that there are fish swimming deep in the ocean, and you also believe that Jesus was crucified two thousand years ago, but if I asked you "Were you there?" about each of those facts, you'd also have to answer "no" to each one. Does that mean they are all false?
Of course not. You know those things because you have other kinds of evidence. There are photographs and movies of penguins and fish, there are documents from the time of the Civil War, as well as the fact that in many places you can still find old bullets and cannon balls buried in the ground from the time of the war, and you have a book, the Bible, that tells stories about Jesus. You have evidence other than that you personally witnessed something.
This is important because we live in a big ol' beautiful world, far older than your 9 years, and there's so much to learn about it — far more than you'll ever be able to see for yourself. There's a gigantic universe beyond South Carolina, and while you probably won't ever visit a distant star or go inside a cell, there are instruments we can use to see farther and deeper than your eyes can go, and there are books that describe all kinds of wonders. Don't close yourself off to them simply because you weren't there.
I'd like to teach you a different easy question, one that is far, far more useful than Ken Ham's silly "Were you there?" The question you can always ask is, "How do you know that?"
Right away, you should be able to see the difference. You already knew the answer to the "Were you there?" question, but you don't know the answer to the "How do you know that?" question. That means the person answering it will tell you something you don't know, and you will learn something new. And that is the coolest thing ever.
You could have asked the lady at the exhibit, "How do you know that moon rock is 3.75 billion years old?", and she would have explained it to you. Maybe you would disagree with her; maybe you'd think there's a better answer; maybe you'd still want to believe Ken Ham, who is not a scientist; but the important thing is that you'd have learned why she thought the rock was that old, and why scientists have said that it is that old, and how they worked out the age, even if they weren't there. And you'd be a little bit more knowledgeable today.
I'll assume you're actually interested in knowing how they figured out the age of the rock, so I'll try to explain it to you.
The technique scientists use is called radiometric dating. It uses the fact that some radioactive elements slowly fall apart, turning into other elements. For instance, a radioactive isotope of potassium will decay over time into an isotope of another element, argon.
One way to think of it is that it's like an hourglass. You know how they work: you start with all the sand in the top half of the hourglass, and it slowly trickles into the bottom half. If you see an hourglass with all the sand at the top and none at the bottom, you know it was recently flipped over. If you see one with half the sand in the top, and half in the bottom, you know it's about halfway through the time it will run. And if you look at how quickly the sand moves through the neck of the hourglass, you could even figure out how long until it all runs out.
In radiometric dating, the scientists are looking at how far along all the radioactive potassium is in the process of turning into argon. The amount of potassium is like the amount of sand in the top half of the hourglass, while the amount of argon is like the amount in the bottom half. By measuring the relative amounts of the two elements, and by measuring how fast radioactive potassium turns into argon, we can figure out how long it's been since the rock solidified.
It takes a very long time for the decay to occur. It takes 1 and a quarter billion years for half the potassium to turn into argon. When they measured those elements in the moon rocks, they found that the radiometric hourglass had mostly run out, so they knew that it was very, very old.
Scientists double-check everything. They also looked at other elements, like how quickly uranium turns into lead, or rubidium into strontium, and they all agree on the date, even though these are decay processes that run at different rates. All the radiometric hourglasses they've used give the same answer: 3.75 billion years. None of them say 6,000 years.
I think you're off to a great start — being brave enough to ask older people to explain themselves is exactly what you need to do to learn more and more, and open up the whole new exciting world of science for yourself. But that means you have to ask good questions to get good answers so that you will learn more.
Don't use Ken Ham's bad question, and most importantly, don't pay attention to Ken Ham's bad answers. There's a wealth of wonderful truths that reveal so much more about our universe out there, and you do not want to close your eyes to them. Maybe someday you could be a woman who does go to the moon and sees the rocks there, or a geologist who sees how rocks erode and form here on earth, or the biologist who observes life in exotic parts of the world…but you won't achieve any of those things if you limit your mind to the dogma of Answers in Genesis.
Best wishes for future learning,
Comments
Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort
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June 23, 2011 8:22 PM
It's a shame you wouldn't send that letter, it's a really good thing to teach children young how to properly ask questions.
Posted by: PZ Myers
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June 23, 2011 8:24 PM
Well, I don't know her address for one thing -- Ham is right not to publicize it. For another, no, I'm not going to do the equivalent of barging into someone's home to lecture at them.
Posted by: foolish-rain
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June 23, 2011 8:25 PM
Nicely done, Dr. Myers.
But maybe you should just teach her to ask Ken Ham why he wanted to condemn her to a lifetime of minimum-wage jobs due to her ignorance. That would be so cute!
Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives
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June 23, 2011 8:26 PM
All right, now you have to write a children's book about science next after you're done with the current book.
Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort
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June 23, 2011 8:26 PM
Eh. I suppose that's probably a good idea. Though it'll likely never get to her, and she's likely to grow up under the "tutelage" of Ken Ham and his Creationist ilk, a young mind destroyed by the lies of Creationist dogma :(
I hate seeing people turn out like I was.
Posted by: starfia
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June 23, 2011 8:28 PM
One of my favourite Pharyngula posts ever. Do too few people talk to adults this way, too? No one wants to seem condescendingly introductory, but maybe more people than we think came through childhood without ever having this intrinsic attitude affirmed.
Posted by: JoeBuddha
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June 23, 2011 8:30 PM
I'm optimistic. Anyone who is that assertive as a child will be hard to keep ignorant as she grows up. Here's hoping she grows up questioning everything.
Posted by: hopscotchblog
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June 23, 2011 8:31 PM
De-lurking to say that like starfia, this too is one of my favorite posts you've written. It actually choked me up a little bit.
Brilliant.
Posted by: gmontjr
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June 23, 2011 8:31 PM
Delurking to say "Nice Letter"
I liked it a lot.
Posted by: Kurt Denke
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June 23, 2011 8:31 PM
PZ, that is a beautiful letter. I hope that, one way or another, it finds its way to that little girl.
Posted by: hairychris444
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June 23, 2011 8:33 PM
Dear Emma
Genesis 1 & 2 - were you there?
Love,
Sanity
Posted by: Akira MacKenzie
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June 23, 2011 8:34 PM
As much as we like to think so, religion-spawned Ignorance doesn't necessary lead to burger flipping. I bet those Liberty U alumni who worked for Dubbya's legal department aren't exactly suffering.
And don't get me started on how much mega-church pastors and televangelists rake in.
Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula
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June 23, 2011 8:36 PM
What I wonder is why no-one asks this of Ken Ham when he talks about Jesus 'dying' for our 'sins' - then again, intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy are so ingrained in the minds of people like him that they might as well have been commandments.
Posted by: tkreacher
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June 23, 2011 8:36 PM
This is where a creationist might stop reading:
"lol, scientists believe in Superman's home planet but refused to believe in Jesus Christ our LORD and savior. And they hate God. lol".
Deep breath... Ken Ham is a disgusting, festering, steaming, undulating pile of mind-ruing shit and I fucking hate him. I fucking hate him.
Posted by: billygutter01
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June 23, 2011 8:36 PM
If I were a nine year old, and an adult (a professor, no less!) took the time to write me a wonderful letter like that, I like to think it might get me thinking more about science.
But then again, I'm a doe-eyed optimist (between bouts of snark and cynicism).
Posted by: Alverant
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June 23, 2011 8:37 PM
Except she wasn't asking a question. Asking a question means you're willing to listen to the answer. Creationists don't ask questions, they make accusations they think are questions but refuse to hear the answer since it would go against their preconceived notions.
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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June 23, 2011 8:37 PM
Dear Emma,
Could you be an honest juror?
I mean, if "Were you there?" supposedly prevents one from knowing, do you believe that our system of justice is horribly unfair when people "who weren't there" decide cases?
BTW, was God there at the beginning? You sure? Well, were you there?
[That's what you have to ask, because supposedly God was there--trouble is, if they weren't there, how the hell would they know?]
Glen Davidson
Posted by: NitricAcid
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June 23, 2011 8:38 PM
Potassium turns into argon. Radioactive krypton would have to decay through a dozen other isotopes to reach argon.
Posted by: Rorschach
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June 23, 2011 8:39 PM
Great letter, PZ. One hopes that Emma gets to read it.
Worst thing, Ham has made a kid believe that "were you there ?" is a smart question.
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 23, 2011 8:40 PM
Wonderful letter, PZ. Emma may never see it, but here's hoping a lot of other people will and discover the wonder of learning.
Posted by: Epinephrine
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June 23, 2011 8:40 PM
Great letter.
Posted by: NitricAcid
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June 23, 2011 8:42 PM
If you ask Ken Ham "Were you there?" when he talks about Jesus dying for our sins, his reply will be, "No, but God was!" And because Ham constantly hears god babbling in the back of his head, that's just as good.
Posted by: Randomfactor
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June 23, 2011 8:43 PM
Another way to answer her question is "Yes, I was there. Every atom in my body was made in the same stars and the same supernovas that made the atoms in this rock, and in the Mars meteorite which fell on Antartica, and the sandwich you'll have for lunch tomorrow. You, and I, and everything on Earth you've ever seen all made this trip together."
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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June 23, 2011 8:44 PM
Actually, only about 11% turns into argon, the rest into calcium. But only the argon is useful for dating, since it's a noble gas that wouldn't exist primordially in most rocks. Not to disagree with you, rather adding.
Yes, it's not very good to make such an obvious mistake in that letter. A krypton isotope wouldn't be a good parent isotope for dating rocks, mainly because it wouldn't exist (or would only in low and uncertain levels) in rocks in the first place.
Glen Davidson
Posted by: RichVR
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June 23, 2011 8:45 PM
Your letter should replace the puerile Dear Virginia letter that runs every Christmas Eve in national newspapers across the country.
Posted by: rajatjha
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June 23, 2011 8:46 PM
PZ, I am a avid (and silent) reader of your blog, but this post has prompted me to comment.
This is beautiful. It is beautifully written, beautifully thought out. For a long time now, I have been trying to figure out how to awaken in people the love of knowledge. There is a joy in learning uninhibitedly, and many very religious people shut themselves off from this joy. Ken Hamm is going one further, and ruining that capacity for joy in the children he fools.
Thank you for being a bastion of knowledge amidst a sea of anti-intellectualism. You inspire me to continue finding joy in truth.
Posted by: tkreacher
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June 23, 2011 8:47 PM
Oh, and I want to add, now that my rage at Ham has subsided enough: the letter is absolutely superb.
Posted by: Brownian
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June 23, 2011 8:47 PM
I'm unclear: are people like Ken Ham advocating a legal system in which the only evidence considerable is eyewitness testimony?
For instance, considering how he feels about the morality of atheists and evolutionists, does he really want to convince us that a murder committed with no witnesses is unpunishable?
I'm used to the stupider theists telling me to my face that without God I have no reason not to rob and kill them, but now I've got Ham telling me how to get away with it?
Posted by: EvolutionSkeptic
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June 23, 2011 8:48 PM
As someone who recently learned to ask these sorts of questions recently, this letter actually made me tear up a little, Dr. Myers. I wish I could talk to her myself and tell her about my migration of "evolutionskeptic" to a reasonably educated lover of science and the scientific method who may not know everything about evolution but came into the Pharyngula lion's den and asked the questions I needed to ask to LEARN, rather than just wallow in my ignorance.
This was a beautiful letter that I wish she could see and sincerely hope someone somewhere directs her toward. It's something I wish I could have seen at her age. Dr. Myers' caring for her education is touching, as is his hope for her future accomplishment.
I came out on the other side, Emma. If you ever actually read this, post something here, and I'll do whatever I can to help you move in the direction I did. It's wonderful here, I promise. Freeing yourself of those shackles is so freeing. I wish you all the best, even if you never read any of this.
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawkUL-U9MUY8KYyNdOz0mVLJQIOQ81UEVm8
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June 23, 2011 8:48 PM
I've criticized PZ several times in the past few weeks -- but I have to say, sometimes he says things very well, and those things are well worth saying. This is one of those cases. There are some profound principles, and real justice, in these comments.
David
Posted by: Therrin (Ben S)
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June 23, 2011 8:50 PM
Nine might be a bit young for radiometric dating (don't most parents forbid that until high school?), but I like the hourglass analogy as a starting point.
Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe
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June 23, 2011 8:50 PM
I highly doubt that any of them have thought this through that far. However, most theists do seem to put inordinately much weight on eyewitness testimony; and the fundier, the more so.Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies
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June 23, 2011 8:50 PM
I love the positive tone of your letter, PZ.
I really hope she grows out of her need to impress adults (authority figures). Hopefully one day she'll realize how fucking cool it is that she got to see moon rocks.
Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe
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June 23, 2011 8:52 PM
oh hey, it's EvolutionSkeptic! I remember you coming here for the first time, hehe. How's the learning going? :-)
Posted by: waynerobinson4
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June 23, 2011 8:55 PM
I doubt seriously that Emma will learn. She's home schooled.
I looked at the AIG link, at the risk to my sanity. There was a link to Georgia Purdom's report on her visit to the Galapagos Islands, and besides claiming that she and Darwin saw much the same things, but that she drew the right conclusions and he the wrong ones, that all the Darwin finches evolved by natural selection into the different species in hundreds of years or a thousand years and agreeing that the islands have different ages, she took a lot of nice photos.
She's one confused creationist.
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 23, 2011 8:55 PM
EvolutionSkeptic! I remember you. How's it going?
Posted by: Joshua Zelinsky
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June 23, 2011 8:58 PM
Hey! PZ! Quit it! You're supposed to be the rude, intolerant, nasty gnu atheist who says mean things to poor little religious believers. And here you are being nice, and polite, and kind to little kids...
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 23, 2011 8:58 PM
waynerobinson4:
You don't know that. There's every possibility Emma will learn. See Evolution Skeptic's post @29.
Posted by: Cosmic Snark
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June 23, 2011 8:58 PM
Interesting how Ken Ham's blog allows no comments...
Posted by: hairychris444
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June 23, 2011 9:02 PM
@EvolutionSkeptic
Awesome! :-)
Posted by: ConcernedJoe
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June 23, 2011 9:02 PM
Absolutely awesome letter - hats off to you PZ
And what is especially nice about it is that only a blooming idiot or charlatan would challenge it on principle .... ahh I see Ken is stage right.. badda bing.
Posted by: elronxenu
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June 23, 2011 9:07 PM
That is a great letter. Although PZ cannot send it, I predict at some unknown time in the future, PZ will receive an email starting:
"Dear PZ Myers,
I am the Emma referred to in Ken Ham's post, and ..."
Posted by: echidna
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June 23, 2011 9:08 PM
Nine is too young to perform radiometric dating calculations, but it's never to early to expose them to the idea.
I think that one of the big problems we face in education at the moment is that we too often limit the ideas children are exposed to because they are not ready to be tested on it. The result is that too often children are expected to be proficient at things that they were only just exposed to a few weeks before.
Posted by: MrFire
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June 23, 2011 9:09 PM
Good to see you again,
EvolutionSkeptic!:-)
Posted by: Mike Mixer
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June 23, 2011 9:09 PM
Mentioning Jesus and the Bible was very devious. Asking why people know what they know is one thing but throwing in one thing she thinks she knows the answer to is sure to start her questioning herself on everything she thinks she knows. Very devious indeed.
Posted by: Chuck
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June 23, 2011 9:10 PM
Ken Ham should read that letter in fear, because this is why we're going to win this battle and war. "How do you know?" always trumps "Were you there?"
We have mechanisms and explanatory power and unlocked mysterious of the universe and the best Ken Ham has to offer these kids is, "Were you there?"
Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula
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June 23, 2011 9:12 PM
Cosmic Snark wrote:
What's the use of going to all the effort of lying to people if your critics are just going to come along and point out - in excruciating detail, armed with that annoying thing called 'evidence' - what a liar you are and undermine the effect your lies have?
Posted by: Orangegonian
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June 23, 2011 9:12 PM
My wife is pregnant with our first child and I think I'll print this post out and save it to use as a teaching moment. Thanks PZ!!!
Kevin
Portland, OR
Posted by: No One
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June 23, 2011 9:13 PM
*singing*
Blackbird signing in the dead of night...
More candles everyone!
Posted by: StarScream
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June 23, 2011 9:14 PM
Prediction: Ham's post tomorrow will 1) vaguely mention this post as from a "well-known atheist professor and anti-creationist", 2) will not link to it, 3) dismiss it using the motive fallacy by quoting Romans 1:18, and 4) mention some inane thing about atheists can't make ethical judgments.
Posted by: Cyprien Confessor
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June 23, 2011 9:14 PM
Oh no! I can imagine the quote mining already @2!
"Professor PZ Myers says 'Ham is right' in a blog post about the age of the moon..."
Seriously, though, I've been lurking for a long time and like others had to jump in to applaud this letter. Thanks, PZ.
Cyprien
Posted by: Cuttlefish, OM, CR
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June 23, 2011 9:15 PM
So... It's clear that Ken Ham reads Pharyngula--at least occasionally. Odds are very much against him dipping into the comments, but just in case:
Do you have the honesty to share PZ's post with Emma? Or will you choose to intentionally bear false witness?
.
.
.
It occurs to me that I know the answer to this, every bit as much as Emma knew the answer to her question.
Posted by: MrFire
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June 23, 2011 9:16 PM
Are you concern trolling? It's a little hard to tell.
Posted by: koyote_ken
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June 23, 2011 9:17 PM
Great letter, PZ, just excellent. But did anyone look (without puking) on that link to see what that poor girls mother wrote? It proves the point of complete and utter closed minds:
As the woman tried to explain it, the mother just turned stone headed and all she heard was "yada, yada, blah, blah.." Talk about preconceived reality. It completely answers the point about having the answer before asking the question. That little girl is beyond sad.......Her "Homes Schooled" t-shirt is all the evidence one needs to see. Pathetic.Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 23, 2011 9:19 PM
Mike Mixer:
There's nothing devious about it at all.
Posted by: echidna
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June 23, 2011 9:19 PM
Jadehawk (and others):
Evolutionskeptic returned to Pharyngula with this post:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/06/graphic_stories_explaining_evo.php#comment-4203444
From the post:
Posted by: alexander.johannesen
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June 23, 2011 9:19 PM
Yes, good stuff. I use this *exact* explanation for radiometric on everyone who cares to listen, including my kids, and bang on about epistemology ("How do you know what you know?" and "How do you know that it is true?") all the time. Of late I've fought online on epistemology with Christians, and they simply do not understand it. It's astounding that people who claim to pursue truth never pursue the truth of their belief.
Posted by: Brother Ogvorbis, Emperor of Steam and Fire, Penseur Extrémistes
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June 23, 2011 9:19 PM
Unless the person in question has a patriarchal or authoritarian world view. To an authoritarian, an eyewitness, even an eyewitness recorded in a bowdlerized, mistranslated, miscopied, selectively edited, and borrowing on earlier mythos, is a more effective source, a more believable line of evidence, than any thoughts, any line of reasoning, within his or her own head. The authoritarian writings will always trump personal thought.
Little Emma has already internalized the idea that she cannot think, that all answers must be handed down from an authoritarian source. And that includes the trick questions used to play infantile games of gotcha.
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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June 23, 2011 9:20 PM
In addition, Emma, in any fair judicial proceeding we could and would check any testimony--like the Bible--against the material record. That is to say, we can check to see if Yahweh of the Bible was there (or alternatively, if he was telling the truth) at the beginning by checking to see if his account agrees with the "clocks" that we have.
Since the clocks say that "Yahweh's testimony" is wrong, we know that either he wasn't there or he was lying. The witness is therefore impeached.
If you don't allow for this sort of cross-checking of "witnesses," you have no excuse to deny the creation claims of, say, Hindus. If you simply check Hindu claims against your own religious writings, you're simply circular in reasoning, and thus have no ability to judge in these matters at all.
Just like the IDiots, who judge complexity having the evidence of evolutionary processing throughout to be "design," and thus their claims are completely without evidentiary value.
Glen Davidson
Posted by: Brownian
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June 23, 2011 9:22 PM
Nothing devious about it. It's blatantly obvious (especially to a child; adults are better at self-deception) that "Were you there?" applies just as well to the resurrection of Jesus as anything else. It would have been weird to not mention the connection.
Posted by: Chuck
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June 23, 2011 9:25 PM
Emma proceeded to answer that she thought the moon rock was probably around 6,000 years old
To which the presenter should have asked, "Were you there?"
Posted by: Sven DiMilo
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June 23, 2011 9:25 PM
QFmfT
Posted by: tfkreference
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June 23, 2011 9:26 PM
This is why I read Pharyngula--and watch the videos with the Muslims and come to PZ's talks. Posts like this show that it's possible to focus dickishness on those who deserve it (e. g., Ken Ham) and still approach the innocently benighted with care. Drawing the line between the two is the hard part, and as this post shows, PZ knows where that line is.
Posted by: Loreo
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June 23, 2011 9:28 PM
For a long time, even after my escape from the RCC, I worried about having my own kids because I didn't understand how one could raise moral children without the framework of religion.
I'm constantly amazed that I ever felt that way, but that's the poison of religion for you.
It's letters like this which make me confident that I can raise up a properly skeptical brood who can make me proud.
Posted by: raven
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June 23, 2011 9:30 PM
Were you there when god cursed Cain to wander the earth?
Did anyone ever actually see the 10th Israeli Dinosaur Cavalry in action?
Were you there when god killed off the entire human race except for 8 people?
How about when jesus was crucified?
Or when he came back from the dead?
That were you there question cuts both ways.
Posted by: truthspeaker
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June 23, 2011 9:30 PM
No kidding. That was the best explanation of radiometric dating I've ever read.
Posted by: Dave Hooke
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June 23, 2011 9:33 PM
Lovely letter.
I usually laugh at creationists. This episode reminds me that it's actually sad.
Posted by: Kevin
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June 23, 2011 9:34 PM
Well, I think that "were you there" is a great question for evaluating the verity of the bible stories.
Jesus was resurrected from the dead. Were you there?
No, but the bible says so. But were the writers of the stories there? (Hint, the answer is 'no'. For example, none of the entire book of Luke is attributed to an eyewitness. Luke 1:1 says he's an historian, not a witness.)
But they were inspired by god. But were you there? Do you know anyone who was there? Is there any record of anyone witnessing the writing of the books?
But my preacher says ... Was your preacher there?
No ...
So, you can declare what you believe, but can't provide one shred of evidence that supports that belief.
But the bible ... Were you there?
Posted by: ardip
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June 23, 2011 9:35 PM
That was awesome Dr Myers. One of your best posts ever.
Posted by: Josh, "Raquel Dommage," Porte-parole Gay Official
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June 23, 2011 9:35 PM
I haven't read anyone else's comments yet so apologies if this is duplicative.
This is what makes public intellectuals like you a treasure. There are many very smart, very clever people doing research. There are many very talented writers. There are some(they are fewer) experts who understand how to make their subject intuitively comprehensible to the ignorant and the very young. It's exceedingly rare to find them in one person, and you have all those qualities, PZ.
This is what Richard Dawkins' writing did for me, years before The God Delusion, and years before I thought of myself as an outspoken atheist. Though I thought mistakenly that I knew what evolution was, I didn't - until I read Richard's The Blind Watchmaker. It clicked in my head in the most, well, glorious way - it was the kind of feeling you get when you crest the highest point of a roller coaster before it drops. I felt the same way when I finally "got" general and special relativity (sadly, I have to keep "getting" them over and over and over. It doesn't stick.).
That opened the floodgate of my reading about science. I'd been a language/humanities-only student in high school and college, and so much the worse for my parochial choice of subject matter.
Thank you. Please keep doing what you're doing.
Posted by: thefloatinglantern
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June 23, 2011 9:36 PM
Fantastic letter.
~Tim Martin
Posted by: Brownian
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June 23, 2011 9:38 PM
There's an instructor at the University of Alberta who explains the exponential decrease in the amount of the parent radionuclide via an analogy with Canadian Tire money.
Posted by: Dillinger
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June 23, 2011 9:39 PM
Fucking A, just when I forget that PZ is brilliant aside from his evil atheist tendencies he goes and does something simply beautiful like this.
Good show, Sir..
Good show.
Posted by: raven
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June 23, 2011 9:40 PM
Xpost from TET. Ham might enjoy lying to kids but the statistics say creationism is going the way of the Flat Earth and Geocentrism. It's slow but the turtle did win the race.
Ding Dong, the evil witch is still dying!!!
Or at least they think they are. A recent poll of fundie leaders, at a meeting in SA, found that 82% of the US leadership thought their influence was waning.
Well fundies aren't known for their thinking abilities so it isn't a great data point. But definitely better news than if they were wildly optimistic.
Posted by: teawithbertrand
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June 23, 2011 9:41 PM
I like how Ham closes this little article:
"Praise the Lord, Emma has such a strong foundation in God’s Word and won’t fall for the atheist lies in their attempts to shake their fist at their creator God."
Why would I "shake my fist" at God when I don't think he even exists? Ham knows less about atheism than he does about science. Biggest. Ignorant. Fool. Ever.
Posted by: zoologica
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June 23, 2011 9:41 PM
Nice. I read Emma's question and started thinking about how I'd clearly describe radiometric dating to a nine year old and wasn't sure how I'd proceed. I thought the hourglass analogy was great and I think you explained it quite well at a level a nine year old could understand.
Posted by: Polly D.
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June 23, 2011 9:46 PM
You know, P.Z., as one of those nonconfrontationalist athiests, I disagree with you most of the time.
But, daaaamn, isn't that just a fantastic description of potassium-argon dating. High five, well done!
Can we just mass-mail these to all people who have no concept of how old the world is?
Posted by: JamesM
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June 23, 2011 9:47 PM
The line in Emma’s letter to Ken Ham that bothers me the most is...
“I said, in my most polite voice, “Were you there?”
To even ask the question “Were you there?” in this context is intrinsically impolite, no matter what voice she used to ask it, and it was clearly intended to be impolite. It is not a genuine question (as PZ points out) because the person asking the question knows the answer. Rather, it is a rhetorical question, meant as an attempt to ridicule and undermine the authority of the educator. The point of asking this sort of question is to affect classroom/audience dynamics by making a joke mocking the teacher/instructor/museum guide being soooooo old and try to get other students to laugh at the teacher. The point of asking the question is to encourage others not to take the teacher seriously.
There is nothing polite intended about the question. Ken Ham is just encouraging kids to be Class-Clowns-For-Jesus.
Posted by: raven
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June 23, 2011 9:47 PM
You don't understand wackos like Ken Ham.
Ken Ham hates Thor, Zeus, Brahma, Buddha, the Easter Bunny, Tinkerbell, and lepruchuans. He never writes, never calls, and doesn't even leave a saucer of milk out for the brownies.
Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem
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June 23, 2011 9:49 PM
This is now up on the wiki.
If anyone would like to tweak the details, like the krypton/potassium/calcium/argon stuff, that would be awesome.
Interwiki links to wikipedia are done like this:
[[wikipedia:radiometric dating|radiometric dating]]
Posted by: Silič O'Nopolitanopoulos, Färschdbischuf Beesknees aus Ulm und Klein Elguth, Elector Pharynguline.
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June 23, 2011 9:53 PM
How terribly accommodationist of you.M**neyfied will be soooo upset with you.
--o--
Your next book should be aimed at kids. Do it together with Cuttlefish.
Posted by: AlanMac
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June 23, 2011 9:55 PM
Dear Emma:
Yes, we have all been "there" . And you can go "there" too. You can look at the evidence that is presented, take what ever measurements you need to prove that the evidence is real and properly presented and then use your imagination and by conjecture you go "there".
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/f9LRTJNqyuirK9NU8MpnjZn4a3d3WZ.Os3c1ke0OkYek3w--#5e803
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June 23, 2011 9:56 PM
Fabulous letter!
Now, please stop linking to that putz's blog. I can't keep myself from clicking and all it does is upset me..
Posted by: Tigger_the_Wing
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June 23, 2011 10:00 PM
PZ, you've done it again. Another astoundingly brilliant post.
I wish I'd had your Letter to Emma when I was raising my kids; as it is, I would like your permission to forward it to my grandchildren.
Posted by: Liberal
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June 23, 2011 10:01 PM
"Your next book should be aimed at kids. Do it together with Cuttlefish."
I'd buy that. They'd love it!
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmVT1LBhwmO9ej9LNg7a5e9d-AVJ8ezfmE
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June 23, 2011 10:06 PM
(stuff supposedly happened in the bible)
Were you there?
Posted by: safetycap
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June 23, 2011 10:06 PM
Super letter; one minor correction:
Fixed it for you.
Questions and answers cannot be "bad," because they are not capable of morality. They can, however, be poorly worded/constructed/thought-out/etc.
—And now you know. :)
Posted by: ibyea
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June 23, 2011 10:08 PM
@PZ
How come you are not writing some sort of Discovery channel biology documentary??? This letter is freaking good!
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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June 23, 2011 10:11 PM
Because they would gut his style and content in favour of explosions and fast editing.
Posted by: Melvin Dios
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June 23, 2011 10:17 PM
Questions and answers cannot be "poor," because they are not capable of wealth accrual. They can, however, be badly worded/constructed/thought-out/punctuated/etc.
Bad pedant is poorly pedantic.
—And now you know. :)
Posted by: david.imsety
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June 23, 2011 10:17 PM
That was really nice post, thanks for writing it.
@safetycap I'm sympathetic to the view that correct language is language the way people use it (descriptive rather than prescriptive), but even without subscribing to that position, it should be noted that the more common a word is, the harder it is to fit it into one simple definition (in general). Words like "less", "well" or in this case "bad" can be used in many ways. According to the first two dictionaries I checked, the first definition of "bad" is "failing to reach an acceptable standard : poor" (Webster). They are synonyms.
Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes
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June 23, 2011 10:17 PM
I guess it's going to get out that you are nice to kids, PZ. Even smart-assy kids. Everyone knows that atheists are mean to kids, and that you are the meanest atheist of all. So, wtf?
Do you remember when Fonzie started wearing a brown bomber jacket with a scarf? That was pretty much the end of Happy Days. Now you are going to have to go out, find some nice kid and just kick it.
(JK...it was a lovely letter.)
Posted by: davidhortonsblog.com
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June 23, 2011 10:17 PM
Must add my congratulations to those of the others PZ, well done indeed.
You have fleshed out and made beautifully explicit the obvious short response to the short "question" - how do you know about anything that occurred before you were born?
The note from Koyote Ken is disturbing "Then the rep replied, “Oh, yeah I believe in the Bible too.” Really? A guide on a scientific exhibition felt obliged to include this in the response?
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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June 23, 2011 10:17 PM
Nice letter PZ. Gets to the right points.
**************
DBM, we don't give a fuck what a godbotting loser like you thinks on any topic. So fuck off like a decent person with honor and integrity would do...
Posted by: benjamin.tillman
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June 23, 2011 10:21 PM
Classy. I hope the letter finds its way to her.
Posted by: Cuttlefish, OM, CR
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June 23, 2011 10:23 PM
#86--
http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2011/02/were-you-there-ken-ham-song.html
Be sure to read the verses my commenters added as well!
Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula
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June 23, 2011 10:23 PM
You know you're a true loon when your ideas are considered so moronic by Queenslanders that you have to move to the US to be taken seriously; sadly, my state of birth (and former home) tends to be pretty open to providing an audience for the worst kind of idiots.
Posted by: SisyphusRocks
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June 23, 2011 10:25 PM
Awww, PZ, you big teddy bear. You are going to lose your reputation if you keep on like this. This is a beautiful letter and I am adding it to my collection for use when my own kids are old enough.
Posted by: You_Monster
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June 23, 2011 10:30 PM
Looks like I'm going to have to eat two babies tonight...
We can't let people start to think that vocal and confrontational atheists are capable of feeling empathy.
Posted by: Owlmirror
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June 23, 2011 10:34 PM
I kinda hope that the docent stops by and reads the letter. It might provide a bit of a pick-up, after coping with far too many smarmy YEC children and their snotty YEC parents.
I've had an idea that's been percolating in my head for situations like this: Carry around a picture of an old person. When kids pull the "Were you there?" question, instead of answering yes or no, show the picture of the old person, and ask if the picture is of an old person or a young one.
If the kids are willing to play along, and aren't just going to mess around, they'll answer with "old".
"OK, how do you know that this is an old person?"
Again, if the kid isn't going to mess around, they might either answer with something like "I've seen old people before" or "She/He has white hair (and/or wrinkled skin, and/or other characteristics of age)".
The point is to emphasize that just as she knows what old people look like, and knows what the characters of age are, scientists can also figure out how other things besides people change over time. We don't have just one hourglass; we have many many different hourglasses, and many different types of hourglasses. The details of how the hourglasses work are a bit complicated, but scientists have figured out the details -- and can teach them to anyone at all who is willing and able to learn.
I just hope that something like that would avoid the "yada yada" effect from the snotty YEC parents.
Posted by: EvolutionSkeptic
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June 23, 2011 10:37 PM
Wow ... thanks to those of you who remembered me. I never realized I actually made enough of an impression to be remembered. I'm sincerely honored. This community was a tremendous help to me, and I never actually expected you guys to actually remember me. That's awesome.
I seriously teared up toward the end of this letter. It brought a lot of memories of my own education flooding back to me. I know Dr. Myers doesn't like to hear this, but he really can be a kind guy from time to time (sorry, Dr. ... I know you want to be known for being dangerous. Your secret is safe with me) ;).
Posted by: Philosoraptor
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June 23, 2011 10:39 PM
Between the AiG picture with little Emma in her "homeschooled" shirt touching the moonrock, the brainwashing, and PZ's extremely touching letter (I wish someone had talked to me like that when I was 9!), I'm a bit overwhelmed...
I'm going to modify some Shakespeare,
"There is more to this universe, Emma, than what is taught in Ham's ideology..."
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/lwuYDng4p5p2kmGZnxylPtpI_ECp2xYe#41583
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June 23, 2011 10:39 PM
I question whether the little girl's letter was genuine. Knowing what a lying piece of donkey shit that ol' Hambo is, he might have scribbled it himself.
But, in any event, your letter was beautiful. I wish I'd had a teacher like you.
Posted by: kadet.biegler
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June 23, 2011 10:47 PM
Thank you for publishing this superb letter. I enjoyed the clear logic and elegance of it immensely. But then I made the mistake of clicking on the link you posted. Seeing the picture of this little girl was heartbreaking. A great harm is being done to her - as we speak - and if the kind and wise words of people like you don't reach her soon enough, it may be irreparable.
Posted by: rotorhead87
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June 23, 2011 10:49 PM
This is one of the best things I have read in a very long time. This is right up there with the post about the woman taking her kid to the zoo as my favorite post on the blog. Absolutely wonderful.
Also, 9 most definitely isn't too young to educate kids about science, even something as advanced as radiometric dating. My daughter is only 5, and I constantly expose her to science and learning, even if it is something she probably doesn't understand. I have shown her many things as advanced as this, and some of them she even understands and remembers. Kids can really amaze you with what they can learn.
Posted by: lhikanliveson
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June 23, 2011 10:53 PM
You should absolutely send the letter. Screw her parents, there's educating to be done, and your approach in that letter was probably the warmest and friendliest way to do it.
Posted by: Josh, "Raquel Dommage," Porte-parole Gay Official
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June 23, 2011 10:55 PM
EvolutionSkeptic:
Actually, I suspect he rather does like to hear that. It's in the nature of a teacher who genuinely cares about teaching. Contrary to the stereoptype that we all live to DESTROY HEARTS AND MINDS most of us get a - yes - warm and good feeling inside when we can have an actual exchange with people like you. Most of us desperately want to change minds - not because we want to rack up notches on our belt, but because we care about other people opening their minds and learning. Many of us were where you were, too. We're not alien:)
Posted by: Balstrome
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June 23, 2011 10:56 PM
I hope you do not mind, but I created a fake facebook id and pasted your letter to Emma on Ken Ham's page about Emma and the moon rock.
List was at 04:55 South African time. I do not know how long it will last there, but hopefully some will read it and learn from it.
Posted by: chigau (◦_◦)
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June 23, 2011 10:58 PM
#96 Cuttlefish, OM, CR
Beautiful!
This could go on forever!
Posted by: Xios the Fifth
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June 23, 2011 11:01 PM
Thanks, PZ. Thanks for making me optimistic after reading Ken Ham's post.
Posted by: Utakata
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June 23, 2011 11:06 PM
I think this letter should be up there with Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot for inspiration and science based wondering. I hope many young and inquiring minds get to read it, even if it never reaches its intended target.
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawlr3fDs9SKkl4raiVIj78emqiZVKi-JHsM
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June 23, 2011 11:07 PM
The American education system is pathetic, in most of Europe and Australia this girl would likely be openly ridiculed for being so stupid the first time she uttered such a stupid idiotic remark.
In the USA it seems it's taboo to point out some lazy fat student is in fact a lazy fat moron who needs extra help.
Posted by: Randomfactor
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June 23, 2011 11:08 PM
3) dismiss it using the motive fallacy by quoting Romans 1:18
Romans 1:33 trumps that.
What?
What do you MEAN someone edited that out of your Bible? It's in the original...what are they trying to hide from you? Why are they lying to you?
Posted by: Shplane, some shit in french
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June 23, 2011 11:09 PM
Probably the best letter I've ever read.
Admittedly, I don't read many letters.
Posted by: Frankosaurus, Cupcake of Death
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June 23, 2011 11:15 PM
Better Letter, fewer assumptions about her beliefs:
Dear Emma,
It is good you are a seeker of truth. I was just like you at your age, questioning what people told me. As you continue to learn, and if you have questions about science, and wish to put them to a scientist, I welcome your emails any time. Stay in school, eat your greens, don't do drugs, and drink your milk.
Your pal,
PZ
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 23, 2011 11:15 PM
Googlemess:
Who pissed in your mouth, Cupcake? There's nothing at all to indicate that 9 year old Emma is lazy, fat or a moron.
She's a 9 year old girl who has been taught a specific view, and that happens all over the world, Cupcake, even in your little utopia.
A child should have the world of learning opened up to them, not be met with scorn and ridicule. Save that for people like Ken Ham.
Posted by: Balstrome
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June 23, 2011 11:22 PM
I am bored, so I also messaged all those who commented in Ken Ham's facebook page about Emma, and send them a copy of PZ's letter to Emma.
Did about 18 or so cretins.
Posted by: Arkham
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June 23, 2011 11:22 PM
You really should considering that letters are more of a gateway to the mind of an individual stating their opinions to close associates as opposed to what they would say if they knew they had an audience. Lettersofnote.com is a good place to start. You may be surprised.
Posted by: Josh, "Raquel Dommage," Porte-parole Gay Official
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June 23, 2011 11:23 PM
Shut the fuck up, Fuckosaurus.
Posted by: Balstrome
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June 23, 2011 11:26 PM
#111 We should take this letter and paste it wherever we see education being reduced. Hit all the social media networks.
Posted by: Tigger_the_Wing
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June 23, 2011 11:27 PM
rotorhead87, I'm with you. People used to criticise me all the time for giving my kids factual answers to their questions. They would tell me that the kids were too young to understand the answers. My thoughts were that if I always tell them the truth they'll grow up believing me in important ways (they'll trust me not to lie) and that when they are old enough to understand they won't first have to forget a load of rubbish. Everything I told them earlier will make sense.
Now, when my older three were little I was still a devout Catholic. I decided that the best way to raise all my children was not to indoctrinate them, but to be a good example. Just as I did their questions about the world, I would answer their questions about my faith honestly then, when they grew up and wanted to know more about my faith I would tell them, they would immediately understand the Truth and would instantly become good Catholics. They never asked questions I could answer.
They are all atheists. As am I, although they beat me to it.
Posted by: Joe Bloe
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June 23, 2011 11:28 PM
Great letter. I've downloaded it for future reference.
My guess is that Emma will continue into adulthood with all her delusions intact - and she will bring up her children the same way. The big story in Emma's life (today and for ever) will be about the day she took on NASA and won!
Posted by: alexander.johannesen
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June 23, 2011 11:28 PM
@randomfactor "Romans 1:33 trumps that."
Wanna expound on that? I can't find any information on this at all.
Posted by: Arkham
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June 23, 2011 11:29 PM
Who the fuck are you talking to?Posted by: PZ Myers
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June 23, 2011 11:31 PM
Frankosaurus: also on my short list. Which is getting to be a long list.
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawkUL-U9MUY8KYyNdOz0mVLJQIOQ81UEVm8
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June 23, 2011 11:31 PM
#112: Civilized people don't "openly ridicule" a nine year old for asking a question that her parents put her up to.
The cliche about the American education system being comparatively terrible when it comes to science education, also appears to be untrue. At least, adult Americans who undergo that education tend to do better on one simple science test than anyone but Swedes:
http://christthetao.blogspot.com/2011/03/why-are-americans-so-scientifically.html
David
Posted by: Frankosaurus, Cupcake of Death
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June 23, 2011 11:32 PM
You'll have to forgive Josh. He gets testy sometimes. We are in agreement with most things of worth, however.
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 23, 2011 11:33 PM
Arkham:
If you must fucking know, you twit, it's addressed to Frankosaurus @115, a long term troll and assclown.
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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June 23, 2011 11:35 PM
Arkham,
Frankosaurus has had a few choice nyms.
___
Tigger_the_Wing,
My rule is: Answer truthfully and only answer the question asked. Kids are curious, they will ask until they are satisfied with your level of response.
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 23, 2011 11:35 PM
PZ:
Pardon me for indulging for a moment, but I wish he'd take a long walk off your short list.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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June 23, 2011 11:37 PM
Not that I've noticed liar and bullshitter. Still no evidence for your imaginary deity, or your babble being inerrant, which is required for your theology to be anything other than bullshit. Which means your defend bullshit.Posted by: Irontree
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June 23, 2011 11:39 PM
Dear PZ,
I rarely comment, but I needed to this time. Your letter to Emma is extremely well written; polite, informative, and to the point without being rude. I have been accused of "bias" by my students for dismissing the "Were you there?" question. I have been asked that question for 18 years in almost all my classes. It has gotten really frustrating. If you don't mind, I plan on reading the majority of your letter to my 8th grade students next fall.
Thank you for an excellent response to an overused question. Danr
Posted by: Arkham
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June 23, 2011 11:39 PM
Sure, because nobody ever changes their mind, right? Were you ever programmed to think that way? If not, fuck off. I daresay that you are correct in that most people do not overcome early childhood memetic programming. Is that reason enough to belittle someone that is so young they spout what is fed to them? How does that superiority swollen clit/boner feel now?Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 23, 2011 11:40 PM
Fuckosaurus:
You'll have to forgive Josh. He gets testy sometimes. We are in agreement with most things of worth, however.
The fuck you are, you liar. Josh can't stand you any more than the rest of us.
Posted by: Frankosaurus, Cupcake of Death
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June 23, 2011 11:43 PM
No, I actually think it's best to just let the kid explore things: don't implore her to change, only be available. Her biggest hurdle is probably that she distrusts scientists. Anything a scientist says is just going to be baloney then. But if you emphasize common ground, emphasize the positive, and don't lecture her to death, then you've done your bit.
Don't get me wrong, it's a good letter. Maybe it's just a style thing.
Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem
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June 23, 2011 11:43 PM
I doubt that.
Posted by: Josh, "Raquel Dommage," Porte-parole Gay Official
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June 23, 2011 11:44 PM
No, we're not. I loathe you. I think you're scum, intellectually and morally.
Arkham, note this.
Posted by: Arkham
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June 23, 2011 11:45 PM
Of course I'm a twit because I don't obsessively follow every post and comment made here. If that is your definition of a twit I gladly agree. Perhaps if I took some shitty photos you would like me? (As if your approval means more than fuck-all.)
Posted by: Balstrome
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June 23, 2011 11:46 PM
Well being an asshat myself, I think that if the Ken Ham's of the world send children in to do battle with me, I will treat them like any other soldier of unreason. No prisoners. Why should I allow a child to use their youth as shield while they attack me and mine. You want to play in the big world, fine lets do it, or send in your Uncle Ken.
Posted by: Josh, "Raquel Dommage," Porte-parole Gay Official
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June 23, 2011 11:48 PM
Arkham:
I'm not calling you anything, as I don't remember engaging you before (though I may have). I'm just pointing out that I'm talking to Fuckosaurus (Frankosaurus), and that I think he's more vile than the glue holding pages of used-bookstore porn mags together.
Posted by: chigau (◦_◦)
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June 23, 2011 11:50 PM
Arkham
Perhaps you will be happier wherever you go.
Not here.
Posted by: alexander.johannesen
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June 23, 2011 11:51 PM
@Josh, what's wrong with the glue? Unless you mean "glue", in case, eeeeeewwwww!
Posted by: Frankosaurus, Cupcake of Death
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June 23, 2011 11:51 PM
Josh, I agree with your description of me, and duly note it to be a thing of worth.
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 23, 2011 11:52 PM
Arkham:
You're a twit because you say stupid things*. There's no need for obsession, anyone who reads here, with comprehension, becomes aware of the players. It's easy, really. All it takes is reading.
As for your dislike of my photography, I don't care and more to the point, it isn't relevant. I'm not going to run off crying or anything, so you won't get any satisfaction on that score.
*Like this, in yours @133: "How does that superiority swollen clit/boner feel now?" Completely unnecessary, and shows your continued reluctance to lose gender based comments.
Posted by: Arkham
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June 23, 2011 11:52 PM
That's because you don't know me. All you have is a false idea of who I am based on moronic screeching from the gallery. Trust this, I hold you as lowly as you do me due to the same bullshit you want to call out. I'm a humanist (evil, I know) as opposed to holding your rights above every others' interest. I heartily accept your hatred. You are so small-minded that, of course, your cause is more important because it is yours. I say equality. You say say I COME FIRST! I'm cool with that, but I think you are childish for saying so.
Posted by: Josh, "Raquel Dommage," Porte-parole Gay Official
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June 23, 2011 11:53 PM
Then why don't you take your sacred paste and go stick someone else's electronic pages together? Surely there must be some site dedicated to suboptimally intelligent theists you can go toss off some pixels on?
Posted by: Kseniya
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June 23, 2011 11:58 PM
I want to stand up and be counted on this. Nice one, PZ. Really well done.
The whole scene is at once infuriating and sad, and represents a disturbing trend. It's just another brick in the wall, y'know?
Once again, I am reminded of Asimov's piece about American anti-intellectualism. Sigh.
As for The Question cutting both ways - does it ever! Virtually all claims by all supernaturalistic religions would crumble under that sort of "scrutiny".
EvolutionSkeptic: Good for you, and thanks for the progress report. :-)
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 23, 2011 11:59 PM
Arkham:
I know you well enough, from what you have written here. I was not the only one to tell you, repeatedly, in that thread that you were wrong.
What we have to go by here is what we write. I tried with you, for quite a long time. I was patient, I explained, over and over, and yet, you continued on with lame reasoning and trite excuses. You're doing it again.
All I said was that it takes reading. I'll assume you're capable of that. If you read, even for a few months, you'll get to know everyone and what goes on. I said that to you before.
I realize you'd rather insult my work, and if that's all you're capable of, have at it. Oh, by the way, it's pretty arrogant to assume you're hated, by anyone. You hardly inspire that level of passion.
Posted by: Josh, "Raquel Dommage," Porte-parole Gay Official
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June 23, 2011 11:59 PM
I'm gonna weigh in on the side of Arkham here (red alert! red alert!). While his/her:
. . might be provocative, it can't be accused of being sexist. It's not even a little bit biased in one way or another. It's an insult to both clits and glanses alike:)
No, I don't wanna referee the fight, but no one can claim Arkham is being a sexist ass, so please don't go there. Let the best and cleverest insults win.
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 24, 2011 12:02 AM
Josh, I didn't say it was sexist. I said it showed Arkham's reluctance to let go of gender-based comments.
Posted by: Josh, "Raquel Dommage," Porte-parole Gay Official
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June 24, 2011 12:03 AM
Of course, if there are other disputes in other threads that I'm not aware of, I can only say I'm sorry - I don't know or remember about them and don't want to say anything about shit I'm ignorant about.
Posted by: Qwerty
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June 24, 2011 12:03 AM
Perhaps docents should read this letter and when queried with "were you there?" they could answer that perhaps "how do you know? might be a better question as I think we both know the answer to 'were you there?'"
Of course, Ken Ham is teaching what creationists and bible thumpers do best which is to ask a question to which they already know your answer.
(Or think they do.)
Posted by: Frankosaurus, Cupcake of Death
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June 24, 2011 12:05 AM
@146 See Josh, you are proof of my point.
I sensibly demur at accepting the letter as is, and raise tidy points as to why. Nothing wrong with that, but since you do have decided not to trust me, you won't give it no respect, and no regard neitha. (Just like she may just roll up PZ's letter and spew "Pfff, stupid Minnesotan!").
Offer availability, offer friendship, that's the way to go. These, I would note, were not offered in the letter. But these are my offer to you Josh. Are you big enough to accept?
Posted by: Josh, "Raquel Dommage," Porte-parole Gay Official
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June 24, 2011 12:05 AM
A good and true point. But I have a rather hard time letting go of them myself, so long as they're equally snarky:)
Posted by: Arkham
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June 24, 2011 12:06 AM
I don't want you to "run off crying." I find you to be weak in argument but loud in statement. You have never said a single thing relevant to what I was saying. You are singularly unimpressive. You ignore what is said and pretend that a statement is a platform for you to shout your position. Your position being that you are more important than everybody else. You make me sick. Why not work together? Even if we disagree we can still work towards a common goal. Our disagreements are truly minor if you think about it. I'm sure you will say that you are doing exactly that and anybody who says you're being selfish is a fool. Right? Grow the fuck up.Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem
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June 24, 2011 12:06 AM
Arkham is maligning humanists by association. I advocate humanism on my good days, and it doesn't have to mean something so naive. It just means measuring moral values by humane outcomes.
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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June 24, 2011 12:06 AM
Emma is not in any sort of position to learn from PZ's letter. She's too young, and almost certainly too deeply entrenched in a subculture in which religious judgments are made. This is a letter for others, perhaps including Emma in a few years.
It will neither do to pretend that she's doomed to a life of authoritarian stupidity due to past, and even future, indoctrination, nor to suppose that she's able to profit from a thoughtful letter contrary to her entire existence. The best that can be done is to at least get her to realize that there are counter-arguments (which she will probably think now are morally tainted, but she still might wonder), and hope that in the future she might look into it.
Right now she's being praised by authorities who she has every reason (from her obviously limited knowledge) to believe are telling her what is sound and correct. Right now it probably would be best to point out to her that there might indeed be something wrong with the prohibitions against learning another position that she almost certainly has to obey. That is something that always seemed odd when I was a creationist--surely truth can stand investigation?
There's no reason to trouble the child at this time, I would say, aside from, say, what PZ wrote here. She needs to get along in her world right now. Pique her curiosity, if possible (I mean like here, in the unlikely event that she might come here), and get her to wonder why so little curiosity exists in her social world.
But this is not the time for her to decide that nearly all of the adults in her life are lying to her (at least not telling her the truth). She's stuck with that curse upon her head for the next several years, at least.
Glen Davidson
Posted by: Josh, "Raquel Dommage," Porte-parole Gay Official
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June 24, 2011 12:09 AM
I'll consider friendship with anyone who's intellectually honest, free of bigotry (especially religiously inspired bigotry), and who is willing to talk to other people like a grown-up, rather than as a four-year-old trying to score points.
When you meet this description, please apply to Box #2265. I like long walks on the beach, golden retrievers, and romance novels.
Posted by: Hurin, Nattering Nabob of Negativism.
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June 24, 2011 12:10 AM
Raven @65
Yeah, it really really does.
If "were you there?" is a legitimate question, then the world is only as old as you are.
I honestly hope AIG keeps using it if they are going to misinform children. Its the easiest handle I can think of for undermining their credibility.
Posted by: PZ Myers
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June 24, 2011 12:10 AM
Arkham and Frankosaurus: Take a break. Go somewhere else. You're at risk of being slapped down hard by the one guy here who has the power to shut you down completely.
Don't reply, don't argue with me. Just obey.
Posted by: AKron
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June 24, 2011 12:12 AM
Add me to your long list of awesome admirers.
Even DMB the liar liked it.
And evolutionskeptic
And caused lurkers to de-lurk (stay de-lurked!)
Not sure why people are giving Frankentard mention though.
Oops. I just did too.
Posted by: Rey Fox, Bird Caller Guy
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June 24, 2011 12:13 AM
Oh Jesus dildo-fucking unicycle-riding Christ, did you learn NOTHING from that thread? No, don't ask me for the Cliff's Notes, I finished trying to pound through your thick skull long ago.
Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem
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June 24, 2011 12:14 AM
Francosaurus, this decision did not occur arbitrarily.
You, as an individual, have been judged by your speech.
That's all anyone can do. There's no reason for you to complain about it.
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 24, 2011 12:14 AM
Qwerty:
I loved Randomfactor's response @23. It was a beautiful way to address the question with something other than "no". It's also the type of answer that would spark curiosity and bring about learning. Well, if I had heard something like that when I was 9 (and in catholic school), my eyes would have gone wide and I would have been fascinated by the idea of being star stuff.
Posted by: Frankosaurus, Cupcake of Death
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June 24, 2011 12:15 AM
You get what you give Josh. I would note I have never sworn at you. Lets say I make a fresh start with you. You can't make fun of me, and I can't make fun of you, until one of us says something completely outlandish, and we treat each other's opinions with the utmost respect and generosity until that point. Challenge accepted?
By the way, funny enough our interests are very similar. Only I like golden beaches, long novels, and walking on retrievers.
Posted by: Arkham
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June 24, 2011 12:16 AM
Oh bullshit. If people can't change their minds Glen, then what is the point?
Yeah, the posters here tend to be right, but lack the self awareness to know when they are flapping like autistic children. Red, blue, blue, blue, NO TOUCH! It's fucking stupid.
Posted by: Josh, "Raquel Dommage," Porte-parole Gay Official
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June 24, 2011 12:16 AM
Ooooh, PZ got all Daddy. Hehe.
Posted by: Randomfactor
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June 24, 2011 12:16 AM
Wanna expound on that? I can't find any information on this at all.
The 33rd verse essentially says "you're no better than they are, so mind or own knitting." It was so subversive they put it as the first chapter of Romans 2--but it begins with "Therefore..."
Posted by: PZ Myers
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June 24, 2011 12:17 AM
Last warning. Next time I see either Arkham or Frankosaurus in this thread, they will find themselves in the dungeon.
Posted by: Jack Krebs
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June 24, 2011 12:19 AM
Very nice post. As a teacher, I like both the tone and the content. Maybe somehow Emma will see it posted here.
Posted by: azumahazuki
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June 24, 2011 12:19 AM
Ugh, just reading this story set my teeth on edge...it put me into full-on mama-bear mode (NOT mama grizzly Palin, you fucking hack). Okay, maybe the mental image of me in this state is a bit more like an extremely pissed-off, spiky Espeon pokemon with long, bladed limbs, but you get the point: people who would damage a child mentally or physically make me absolutely livid with rage.
The saddest part is that it's a lot easier to tell a large, simple lie than a small but complicated truth. This particular religion specializes in, and capitalizes on, that one fact. As I know from experience, childrens' minds are a lot more open to authoritative, simple-sounding statements than ones that need to be explained.
What can we do?
Posted by: Josh, "Raquel Dommage," Porte-parole Gay Official
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June 24, 2011 12:20 AM
Is that licensed, or may I feel free to produce it in plastic for distribution to toy stores?
Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem
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June 24, 2011 12:25 AM
So there's a visual aid of the uranium series now, but I'm afraid it's not age-appropriate, but how can you really make nuclear decay age-appropriate?
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 24, 2011 12:26 AM
azumakazuki:
Keep talking. Be activists.
Who knows, maybe Emma will come upon this open letter in 5, 10, 20 years. In the meantime, maybe many other kids (and adults) will read this letter and get to thinking about things.
Evolution Skeptic, who wrote in this thread, initially came here as someone who didn't believe in evolution. Change can be affected, we can teach, we can show people the value of thinking critically and learning.
It might feel pointless at times, but it really isn't.
Posted by: Rey Fox, Bird Caller Guy
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June 24, 2011 12:29 AM
Have at it, Josh.
Posted by: AKron
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June 24, 2011 12:30 AM
What I wrote "awesome admirers" sounds crappy #161. I'm not sure what I was saying.
Take #2:
Please add me to your long list of awed admirers.
awed - "A mixed emotion of reverence, respect, dread, and wonder inspired by authority, genius, great beauty, sublimity, or might"
Ya, that's better except the dread part.
But your admirers are awesome, too. That's why I've read through each and every 172 comments.
And now I'm going to bed.
Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM
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June 24, 2011 12:31 AM
Thus roareth the Fuckosaurus:
You are the one who declared that LGBT people should just shut up about being second class citizens, that they should seek psychiatric help instead of working to take their rights.
I would rather be swore at then have some assclam tell be that I should be denied rights.
Fucking die already you fucking waste of meat.
And fucking respond to my taunts, you dinkleberry. I want to see the banhammer come down on your shit filled head.
Posted by: PZ Myers
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June 24, 2011 12:33 AM
No, stop taunting them, too.
Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM
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June 24, 2011 12:39 AM
Sorry, I really hate that person. He has given me plenty of reasons to do so.
Posted by: Frankosaurus, Cupcake of Death
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June 24, 2011 12:39 AM
All I need is a really good line to go out on, something people will remember forever. First, my list of thanks.
I'd like to thank Nerd of Redhead. We have not always agreed, but he certainly had a great way of mocking others.
I'd like to thank strange gods, mainly because his name reminds me of a title of one of T.S. Eliot's books, which I've wondered if he was referencing.
I thank John Morales for keeping things real. I thank Walton for being one of the more interesting political and legal observers on here. I would also thank Rev Chimp, Josh, and Sally Strange because from them I have learned and grown so much.
Finally, I thank PZ, whose humour and intellect often attracted me back again and again, and I only wish I was more a biologist to engage more heavily on the sciency bits. I respect his views, am thoroughly impressed sometimes with his trenchant thoughts, but do think he could use more breadth de temps en temps.
Thus, thanks given, I offer these parting words:
M_ N_ M _ I_ B i _ _ N_ _ .
Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM
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June 24, 2011 12:41 AM
Buh-bye, fuckface. You will not be missed.
Posted by: chigau (◦_◦)
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June 24, 2011 12:45 AM
Frankosaurus
As provided by you?gad
that was pathetic
Posted by: michael.e.coon
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June 24, 2011 12:46 AM
PZ
just....perfect.. I've been lurking for years delurked to say.....beautiful. I could not hope to say that as well as you did. I do hope, however, for Emmma's sake, that she sneaks off to the library (or wherever she can read unfettered interweb stuff) and she reads this. Your letter has a very good chance of provoking a mind and that is fine, fine thing.
Posted by: bgsmith42
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June 24, 2011 12:48 AM
Totally awesome. If I believed in any such woo, I might think you were channeling Carl Sagan, PZ. I'm going to share this with my 9 year old daughter. She loves science, knows the correct age of the Earth, and has a basic understanding of evolution and geologic time, but I still think it would be a good preemptive strike against any sort of anti-science hogwash any of our more religious relatives might try to infect her with.
Posted by: billydeanhubbard
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June 24, 2011 12:59 AM
Dear Ken,
How do you know who your parents are? Were you there when you were conceived?
Thanks,
Billy
Posted by: Patricia, OM
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June 24, 2011 1:00 AM
Very nice PZ.
If you do write a children's book I'll buy one for each of my three little great nieces. Well done.
Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble OM4Jesus
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June 24, 2011 1:00 AM
Dear Brother Frankosaurus,
You neglected to thank our brother in Christ, Floyd Rubber for sitting on your face during your daily devotions.
Floyd is very upset. He says he's going to pierce your scabby little meatstick, and hang you by your erectile tissue from the nearest church spire.
Yours in sacred body modification.
Smoggy
Posted by: Arkham
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June 24, 2011 1:08 AM
Yes, please ban me over the idea of equality. I apologize for the fact that I don't hold one group in higher esteem than another. Have the African-Americans reached equality? Have women? No? Then why am I a pariah for saying that all should be equal? Is it because I don't have a plan to achieve said goal? Neither do you. Neither do your commentators.
I guess I deserve to be banned due to the fact that I think all should be equal. Fuck you very much, but I am not going to play favorites as it suits me to maintain popularity. If popular opinion is what you crave; fuck you. If the commentators here are so narrow minded that all they see is what they want, fuck them. They (and you) are being sexist, racist, whatever to suit your needs at the moment.
If only I could be as "open-minded" as you. See ya.
Posted by: badandfierce
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June 24, 2011 1:09 AM
Nine is old enough to google yourself. Who knows? I think I was nine the time I got in an argument with a teacher following a book report on a biography of Darwin. That was a fun day! So there's a good chance of Emma finding this. Hi, Emma! Good brain you've got there. I'm sure you'll learn to use it.
Anyway, I'll be reading this to my baby sister when I see her in a few weeks. It's an excellent piece of writing.
Posted by: nic nicholson
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June 24, 2011 1:09 AM
You've outdone yourself PZ, that was fantastic.
This story illustrates something I believe to be true, and I believe each of us should emphasize in any discussion with a believer:
RELIGION IS NOTHING BUT HEARSAY
Faith is nothing but belief in hearsay
Sorry for shouting.
I propose that from now on, instead of referring to them as Christians, as they prefer to be called, we refer to them as Believers of Hearsay. BoH!
Let's call it as we see it.
-Nic Nicholson
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 24, 2011 1:15 AM
badandfierce:
That's assuming Emma has unfettered access to a computer, or any access at all. Many fundamentalist people who homeschool make sure such a thing isn't accessible at all.
The internet is a wonderful tool, but you can't use something you don't have.
Posted by: Patricia, OM
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June 24, 2011 1:15 AM
Dear Brother Smoggy,
Matthew 15:8There is no sin in Brother Floyd's judgement, for verily, did not his lord and saviour say:
Yours in the wish that the rod and staff may comfort us all,
The Very Ignorant Slut,
Madame Patricia
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/AiIGingd28IaRwNXvgk3tt1dQxClDIpChEU-#42fcf
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June 24, 2011 1:16 AM
Oh PZ! What a wonderful post. Shared it on FB, not that I have a bazillion and one friends, but nonetheless it needs to be out there.
I am also going to share it with my 10 and 11 year old children as an outstanding example of science communication.
Thank you so much!!!
(I am sending your care package of tea to the University this weekend! Complete with an unsinkable rubber duckie tea strainer!)
Annie From Canberra
Posted by: junkbotix
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June 24, 2011 1:18 AM
PZ, that was an awesome and very edifying letter; I wish that Emma B could see it, but I understand and agree with your decision not to send it, even if you knew the address. You have a true gift of words, and your description of radiometric dating is one that should be in science textbooks worldwide; very succinct. Here's to hoping that other children, as well as adults, read this letter, and learn something from it. I know I have. Thank you.
Posted by: chigau (◦_◦)
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June 24, 2011 1:19 AM
I think the quality of parting statements from he banned is improving.
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 24, 2011 1:20 AM
Annie from Canberra:
Oh, way to make a tea addict jealous!
/derail
Posted by: Mandrellian
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June 24, 2011 1:20 AM
The most interesting part about this is that Ken Ham, AiG and all their little wizards haven't advanced very far beyond a 9-year old's understanding of science - or a 9-year old's idea of a decent fucking argument!
The other interesting thing is that we are dealing with allegedly educated and morally superior grownups who think it's the height of subversive irreverence to goad young children into asking loaded, accusatory non-questions, making those children think they're smarter and better informed than people who've dedicated everything to understanding the world as it is, not how they wish it to be.
If that isn't child abuse then Kenny boy's beard isn't the creepiest fucking thing ever to crawl out of Queensland. Emma may be in for a very rude shock if she keeps on asking questions; who knows - "God did it" might one day be completely insufficient for her inquiring mind and anything can happen when someone discovers they've been lied to their whole life.
And I can only imagine Ken's indginant response were a 9 year-old science buff to walk up to him and spout a similar arrogant sneer at the behest of an adult who ought to know better than to involve children in things they don't understand. He'd no doubt cry "indoctrination!" and other curses, not noticing the massive fucking beam sticking out of his undesigned eyeball.
TL;DR: Ken's use of children as his footsoldiers reveals him to be lower than a snake's arse in a ditch.
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 24, 2011 1:25 AM
chigau, see here. Arkham's still all upsetty about that, and seems to be incapable of sticking to any other topic or losing the gender based comments.
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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June 24, 2011 1:26 AM
'How do you know?' is such a simple, yet powerful, question. It takes away so many loaded assumptions that hinder most discussions, yet gets at the heart of trying to understand. By contrast, 'were you there? commits the truth of the matter to eyewitness accounnts as is a) they were the only valid approach, and b) that it's a valid approach in this circumstance.
My general rule is if anyone has to resort to such games of rhetoric, then their position is not worth holding. But if they could do that, it wouldn't be called faith - it would just be reality. How do I know they're talking nonsense? They have to result to dishonest indoctrination in order to defend their position in the face of critical inquiry. That's how I know!
Posted by: Rey Fox, Bird Caller Guy
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June 24, 2011 1:26 AM
Bye bye, Arkie. As I said before, there are plenty of places on the internet where you and other privileged white guys can circle jerk over how "colorblind" you are without actually doing anything, so you can find a home there.
Posted by: Patricia, OM
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June 24, 2011 1:26 AM
Oh sweet baby jezus...what would Floyd Rubber do...?
Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM
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June 24, 2011 1:28 AM
You can find videos on YouTube where Ken Ham leads an auditorium of full of children through a chant of "Were you there?".
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 24, 2011 1:29 AM
Rey:
I wish. PZ hasn't tossed the twit in the dungeon, and I have no doubt it will be back.
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 24, 2011 1:32 AM
Janine:
Really? Oh, the terrible things that are done to children. There's no level of scorn that wouldn't be applicable to Ham and his ilk. Poor children.
Posted by: Patricia, OM
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June 24, 2011 1:33 AM
Oh, Raven @65 - You owe me a gin & lime cooler for the one you caused me to spew all over my bib with your comment re: 10th Israeli Dinosaur Cavalry .
Posted by: Cath the Canberra Cook
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June 24, 2011 1:34 AM
Excellent letter, PZ, up there with Dawkins letter to his ten-year-old daughter.
Hi Annie!!! Are you in the Pharyngula FB group? It's about time we had another Canberra Pharyngula meet.
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/AiIGingd28IaRwNXvgk3tt1dQxClDIpChEU-#42fcf
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June 24, 2011 1:36 AM
Dear Caine,
I saw it in our local tea shop and couldn't stop laughing at it. Especially when the sales assistant said it was "kind of like an unsinkable rubber duck" and all I could think of was Steve Novella and Orac's use of that term. She probably thought I was mental, but who cares! All I knew was that it would go splendidly with the loose leaf tea selection!
http://www.shopwiki.com.au/_T~Duck-~-Floating-Tea-Infuser?o=375811632&s=315074
I think that link works...
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 24, 2011 1:41 AM
Annie from Canberra, oh, thank you so much for that link! I love it, I must have it. I already have my little devil duckie, but this will seriously add happiness to my daily tea. Thank you!
/derail
Posted by: chigau (◦_◦)
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June 24, 2011 1:43 AM
Caine #198
In my #195 forgot the snark icon
(whatever that is).
and a letter t.
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/AiIGingd28IaRwNXvgk3tt1dQxClDIpChEU-#42fcf
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June 24, 2011 1:44 AM
Dear Cath
No, I'm not, but I'll find it tonight (I'm at work and my late luch has just about ended) . A Canberra meet up would be great!
I have just shown some colleagues (all science communicators) this post, they all agree it is MOST excellent! Yay PZ!!
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 24, 2011 1:46 AM
chigau, no problem. I blame it on brain cells (mine) deprived of sleep lately. ;)
Posted by: Patricia, OM
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June 24, 2011 1:46 AM
My alcohol preserved brain processed that statement in that form, and I actually agreed. We seem to be having a shortage of trolls. How will we be keep our coats and fangs sniney with no troll meat?
Posted by: Philip Legge
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June 24, 2011 1:49 AM
Logging in to add another comment saying much the same thing as a whole lot of others up-thread, which is: what a brilliant letter, PZ, you judged it superbly. What a shame it’s very unlikely to be read by its intended recipient.
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 24, 2011 1:55 AM
Patricia:
I know, I know. The problem with Arkham is, any time I post, xe just has to go all personal, yakking about my photography, which has no relevance in any front page thread, and is still holding a massive grudge from a previous thread, rendering it incapable of sticking on topic.
Anyway, it's not like we're actually lacking in trolls lately, they've been popping out of the woodwork all over the place. There were several in this thread which I completely forgot about until now, and Googlemess David is still stinking up one thread after another, along with Brother Bill.
Chewtoys aside, PZ did tell both Fuckosaurus and Arkham that continued posting would get them dungeoned, and what did they do? Post. Off with their heads!
Posted by: Patricia, OM
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June 24, 2011 2:00 AM
Me too, ME TOO!
Posted by: autismandoughtisms
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June 24, 2011 2:01 AM
Excellent letter. Not only would it have taught that young girl a lot if she gets the chance to read it, it also taught this older lady certain details I didn't previously know. So thank you.
I've had a quick look at the other comments, and noticed someone suggested you'd be good at putting together a children's book along these lines (and for other subjects I'd say too). I'd buy such books for my two children too if they ever came to be; what a great idea.
Posted by: Patricia, OM
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June 24, 2011 2:26 AM
I must say I am sorely disappointed in Brother Smoggy for not attending to his holy correspondence.
Deut. 23:13I hereby suspend Brother Smoggy's paddle and cancel his spanking couch privileges until the 2nd cumming.
Posted by: raven
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June 24, 2011 2:28 AM
Think you and the others are on to something here.
I still have my science books from childhood. Couldn't bear to throw them out even though I now have a few degrees. They aren't even that out of date.
Between PZ and Cuttlefish and some good artists, there is a demand there for bioscience childrens books and with that amount of talent they could own it.
I'm not sure if there is such a thing as atheist anti(contra)-religious programming children's books. But there should be. I can see where in families where religion is hanging on, they would make Xmas...interesting.
Posted by: Daniel B. Walter
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June 24, 2011 2:29 AM
The context in which this beautiful letter was written (as well as the fact that the poor girl might never read it) makes me quite sad. Probably one of the best written explanations of radiometric dating for kids.
Posted by: bookworm
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June 24, 2011 2:29 AM
Hi, another de-lurker here. Australian (deeply embarrassed by Ken Ham), an ex conservative Baptist minister (who would like to contact all those I ever preached to and offer sincere apologies for screwing with their heads and emotions), PhD in Biblical Studies (it advanced the world about an eight of an inch but my mum was impressed). PZ's letter caused my de-lurk: thank you, and my 4 year old daughter will I hope also have cause to thank you. Given my background and having been immersed in the fundamentalist system(s), you amazing lot here have helped dissolve the crap - when you've been in it for a long time, de-conversion is not a swift process!
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 24, 2011 2:35 AM
bookworm:
No, it isn't a swift process and many of us here know that all too well. It's great to hear from you, and don't be shy, chime in more. We have a casual, continuing open thread, join in anytime.
Posted by: Patricia, OM
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June 24, 2011 2:39 AM
bookworm @220 - I am intrigued, what is the course for a PhD in Biblical Studies?
I don't ask this in a smart ass way or to subject you to snark, I just wonder if my many years, and awards for biblical study would qualify me (or others here)for that degree?
Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM
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June 24, 2011 2:45 AM
It may not be a quick process but, bookworm, you are yet an other person that proves that it can happen. All of us need to know of people like you. The secular humanists so that we know that we are actually helping real people. And the fundamentalists so that they know that one can leave it behind and five a fulfilled life.
Thank you for your story. Hopefully, some of those you ministered to followed your example.
Posted by: Patricia, OM
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June 24, 2011 2:54 AM
No it isn't. It is slow and painful as hell. As a former generational fundamentalist snake kissin' christian, I can say I know the agony of uncertainty and shunning you are going to experiance. But the clear truth is so sweet smelling - take a deep breath, and welcome!
Posted by: Mr.Kosta
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June 24, 2011 3:28 AM
This post deserves a standing ovation, PZ. Kids should not have their learning process disabled because of some megalomaniac moron spewing shit and lies.
Posted by: bookworm
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June 24, 2011 3:37 AM
Thanks everyone. #222 The PhD was basically a classical Hebrew study, at a secular uni where there was little tolerance for faith based reasoning. Those four years were the reason I ended up an atheist; ironically, my Christian friends are of the notion that my education was a bad thing because it was the obvious precurser to my so-called back-sliding. That there might just be something to it, if it led to me switching camps, is a foreign notion ... Now, I just need to get rid of the accretions of layered guilt (started off Catholic, moved to Evangelical, so the conflation left something of a miasmic goo. I'm comforted that there's quite a few of you who have or are clawing their way out of the noxious mess).
Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble OM4Jesus
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June 24, 2011 3:40 AM
I am sorry Sister Patricia @ 217, your punishments no longer have any effect upon me.
As you know, I live in Christchurch, Noo Zillund, from whence I run my powdered ram semen empire.
For the last nine months God hath punished us daily with earthquake upon earthquake. When you've been receiving a divine spanking for the length of time it took Christ to gestate in the Blessed Virgin's unviolated womb (including six earthquakes over 6.0), all earthly chastisement seemeth like gentle charity.
My God is a brutal, fucking bastard and he shitteth liquefaction upon the just and unjust.
Glory be to his motherfucking name.
Yours in perpetual quaking,
Smoggy
AMEN
Posted by: Tigger_the_Wing
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June 24, 2011 4:02 AM
Smoggy, the news here in Canberra is that your government is buying up properties and moving people out of the area. What kind of impact do you think that is going to have on well-established communities? I knew people back in the UK whose homes had been destroyed for a reservoir; instead of being moved to the adjacent village where they had most of their friends and family, they were moved several miles away. It was heartbreaking how lost and lonely the elderly in particular were (there was no public transport between their new homes and the village).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
May I add my voice to the calls for a Cuttlefish/PZ collaboration for the production of science books for children? I found that a lot of the ones available when my kids were young seriously underestimated their ability to understand stuff.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Re. the Canberra meet; I've missed the lot of you (especially Cath the Canberra Cook) that I met when PZ was here. I'd love to have a chance to meet up again.
Posted by: opposablethumbstoo
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June 24, 2011 4:17 AM
Ah, PZ, how could you!? How could you not have written a children's science book just a few years ago, so I could have got it for my spawn when they were just starting science at school?
Wonderful letter in so many ways - moving; crystal clear explanation and analogy; total absence of condescension and the true - true - courtesy of your consideration and caring for another's wellbeing (emotional as well as intellectual). (sod mealy-mouthed "politeness" when all it is is a smoke-screen for arrogant insult)
I second, third, fourth and nth all those who wish you would write a children's book; you clearly have the rare ability to address even the most inexperienced without losing any factual rigour on the way.
Posted by: davem
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June 24, 2011 4:19 AM
Nice letter.
Thirded.Oen question I do want answered, and I've never had a decent answer that satisfied me. Why is the 'hourglass' reset when the rock forms? If the elements of a rock were all formed in a star(and they were, right?), then why isn't the radiometric age that of the star in which the elements were formed, rather than the rock?
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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June 24, 2011 4:25 AM
A Canberra meetup would be good. Haven't done one in about 6 months, and even then it was just me and Peter McKeller talking shit at the Wig & Pen. Good times.Posted by: Nick Gisburne
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June 24, 2011 4:37 AM
Question: Were you there?
Answer: No, but the rock was, and that's how we know.
With that response the child is prompted to ask further questions, particularly the 'how do you know?' one.
Loved this letter. If there was ever something which simply has to go into a book (whether about science or atheism), this is it.
Posted by: serendipitydawg
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June 24, 2011 5:14 AM
Melvin Dios #90
Even worse pedant uses all meanings.
"poor
adj. poor·er, poor·est
1. Having little or no wealth and few or no possessions.
2. Lacking in a specified resource or quality: an area poor in timber and coal; a diet poor in calcium.
3. Not adequate in quality; inferior: a poor performance.
4.
a. Lacking in value; insufficient: poor wages.
b. Lacking in quantity: poor attendance.
5. Lacking fertility: poor soil.
6. Undernourished; lean.
7. Humble: a poor spirit.
8. Eliciting or deserving pity; pitiable: couldn't rescue the poor fellow.
n. (used with a pl. verb)
People with little or no wealth and possessions considered as a group: The urban poor are in need of homes."
/non-poorly pedant
Get well soon!
Posted by: christophe-thill.myopenid.com
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June 24, 2011 5:22 AM
Juste one thing to say :
Yay PZ!
Hurrah for education!
Longlive teachers and professors!
(OK, that's 3 things)
Posted by: Segmentum
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June 24, 2011 5:28 AM
What a beautifully constructed letter, if only Emma would ever read it.
Can she be reached via the internet?
Posted by: LRJ
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June 24, 2011 5:50 AM
/delurk.
Excellent!
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/THlkM.UR3pUu9fSTJFomnHcoEagJwQ--#3f25f
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June 24, 2011 5:51 AM
Although I lurk continuously, as a diffident SAfrican social scientist with absolutely no grounding in the natural sciences, I always hesitate to comment.
But for this letter, I had to de-lurk.Of course, I knew that evidence is the basis of scientific thought, instead of authority, but showing that dichotomy this clearly in a way that kids and non-scientists can easily grasp is brilliant. "How do you know that?" is THE question. Eureka!I even understood how radio-carbon dating works. Thank you for this, PZ, and I agree with the other commentators that kids should be exposed to your clear thinking and explaining.
Suezboo.
Posted by: GravityIsJustATheory
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June 24, 2011 6:42 AM
Posted by: echidna | June 23, 2011 9:08 PM
I don't know when I was first exposed to the idea of radiometric dating, but I do know I was younger than 8 when my father explained to me:
a) evolution
b) why the sky is blue and the sun is yellow
c) mantle convection and continental drift (with the aid of a pan of porridge).
Posted by: э̀иэЯ
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June 24, 2011 6:46 AM
Remarkable, PZ, you appear to write your e in two strokes, as in this typeface. As a young boy I used to do the same (to avoid cluttering up its 'eye'), until I got consistently low grades from my Greek teacher, because he couldn't read my handwriting.
Posted by: Stephen Wells
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June 24, 2011 7:07 AM
@230: the key here is that crystallisation is chemically selective. A classic example of this the freezing of ink; the solid ice formed when ink freezes is much less dark than the liquid it formed from, because during the crystallisation of the ice, the dye molecules tend to be left out of the crystal structure. For minerals, the date we're interested in is when the sample solidified from a melt.
In the potassium-argon case, there is no way during the formation of a typical mineral crystal that you'd ever find an argon atom in the structure. The chemistry is wrong. So if you find argon atoms trapped in the structure, they must be there because originally a potassium atom was there and subsequently, being a radioactive isotope of potassium, decayed. That leaves an argon atom where potassium once was.
By mass spectrometry measurements on the current structure, you can obtain the current amounts of stable potassium, radioactive potassium, and argon. The amount of radioactive potassium and argon together tells you the original amount of radioactive potassium in the sample when it was formed, and the ratio of argon to radioactive potassium tells you how many half-lives ago the sample was formed.
Which is how we know the solar system is about 4.5 billion years old- we can date meteorites*.
*Attempts to market "geophysicists date radioactively" T-shirts have always failed for some inexplicable reason.
Posted by: Sid Leminov
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June 24, 2011 7:12 AM
ffs, serendipitydawg.
Posted by: MacTurk
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June 24, 2011 7:24 AM
The asshole has no shame. Ken Ham has no shame; he peddles lies and he delights in seeing how his lies propagate.
I feel so sad and angry, first at Mr Ham, and second, Emma's mother, who is SOOOO proud that the indoctrination has worked. She goes into greaster detail at the link.
Quote "Actually, Emma, age 9, asked a bit more, but I just copied what she typed for you. She was VERY excited to share it with you, since she’s been blessed to hear your teachings through your kids DVDs and Kids Answers".
The women delights in how receptive her child is to propaganda!
This is a form of child abuse.
Posted by: ConcernedJoe
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June 24, 2011 7:26 AM
#240 thanks for well put answer to #230
I was going to take a SWAG at it but you saved me from embarrassingly stumbling around the answer.
That is the beauty blogs like PZ's, Ed's and the like - usually you can really learn things from people who really know real things and not just made up things.
Posted by: harkonnenjr
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June 24, 2011 7:27 AM
Wow, sir. I wish all the kids in the world could read this.
Posted by: Cyberguy
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June 24, 2011 7:29 AM
I have turned "Dear Emma" response into a freely downloadable pamphlet, with PZ's permission.
See http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~edmin/Pamphlets/Pamphlet%2006%20-%20Dear%20Emma.pdf
Other pamphlets and resources are on my site, and a couple are based on other PZ posts - http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~edmin/Pamphlets
As I note on my site, these pamphlets are not intended to be handed out on street corners, but are an information resource meant to support a face-to-face conversation.
Posted by: scott.anthony.robson
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June 24, 2011 7:53 AM
I know I'm at the end of a long list of comments and almost no one will read this, but I wanted to say I think this is the best post I have ever read from PZ.
Wonderfully worded, if unsent, letter.
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawkLnPjYJtVy9Xa8LqSYbTxptK6nya6ySdo
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June 24, 2011 7:53 AM
Has anyone taken the time to turn this question around on Mr Ham?
I imagine it would go something like this:
"God created the universe 6000 years ago"
well, were you there when God created the universe?
"No but God inspired the Bible, which is the inerrant and literal word of God"
So you were there when he inspired people to write the word of God, and when they decided what written works would go into the Bible you follow today?
"Well no, but God told me so"
...
And who knows what silly places he would end up at after this.
Posted by: humanapexx
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June 24, 2011 7:56 AM
I can understand using language like that when talking to a child, but I would still prefer to say "Ken Ham is a retarded asshole".
Answers in Stupidity
Posted by: Riptide
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June 24, 2011 7:59 AM
I do have a question about radiometric dating, though. Were you th--err, sorry, wrong one.
The method seems to make the assumption that argon *only* forms from decaying potassium, but is it possible that there was a 'base level' of argon (and other material which is now the product of decay) in the original materials from which the rocks initially formed? Supernovae are monstrously big explosions, after all...especially for the first stars (which likely caused the 'supermassive' black holes at the centre of almost every known galaxy). Or, even if this caveat were true, does the redundancy of checking the other elements' rates of decay compensate for that possibility?
Don't get me wrong; I think the Earth is very old (perhaps even older than is commonly accepted, as it's plausible that the oldest rocks we can find only date from around the impact which formed the Moon, a cataclysm which could have wiped out evidence which might have come before--but I'm not certain of that). It just seems that the assumption I pointed out above might not be justified.
Posted by: John Morales
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June 24, 2011 7:59 AM
Now and then, one of PZ's posts is a keeper.
I fancy this is one such.
Posted by: John Morales
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June 24, 2011 8:03 AM
Riptide, this reference has seen much exposure here, and it addresses the issue.
Radiometric Dating - A Christian Perspective
Posted by: Tigger_the_Wing
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June 24, 2011 8:07 AM
Thank you, thank you, thank you Cyberguy!
Just what I needed! I shall email the link to people who will appreciate it.
And to those who still think that the Letter to Emma is aimed at an older child: two of my grandsons are nine, and they and their friends are perfectly able to understand that level of science.
One of the more insidious lies of the religious is the withholding of information with the excuse "You wouldn't be able to understand."
We grow up being told we are too stupid to understand the answers to our questions, therefore we should just learn the dogma by rote, obey the rules and leave the difficult stuff to our superiors.
In susceptible people like me, the effects can be lifelong. I still find it just about impossible to question anyone in authority.
PZ shows far more respect for Emma than either Ken Ham or her mother.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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June 24, 2011 8:14 AM
The heat required to melt rock drives out all gasses prior to crystallization of the rock. Which makes it a good method to date volcanic eruptions, where the rock melted during the eruption, outgassed any argon present and reset the clock when it solidified.Posted by: Gordon
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June 24, 2011 8:14 AM
Remember kids, when Ken Ham tells you that Genesis is literal truth ask him "Were you there?"
Posted by: Thunderbird 5
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June 24, 2011 8:15 AM
So that pathetic pile of toss Ken Ham is still trying to become a living Chick Tract. I recall there's one about some godly student triumphing against the evil atheist (and increasingly intellectually-bowed) teacher. Meanwhile he makes himself a pile of cash peddling cod-logic and bullshit for fuck-witted parents to foist upon their kids.
The letter is beautiful. Gave even this cynical old bag some goosebumps, it did. So how about an audio version? Get Werner Herzog to do it and I'd be made up for life.
Here's a sample of his style: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvWh6PMi9Ek
Posted by: Cath the Canberra Cook
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June 24, 2011 8:16 AM
Riptide, argon is a noble gas, so basically it doesn't turn up in the middle of rocks unless it's generated there. There's actually a fair amount of argon in the atmosphere.
Posted by: Cyberguy
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June 24, 2011 8:17 AM
@Tigger_the_Wing - No worries, happy to have been of assistance. Take a look at my other pamphlets in case they are useful.
Richard Buckminster Fuller used to say that all children are born geniuses. They just slowly get de-geniused as they grow up!
Very true. Children can understand remarkably complex subjects if they are explained clearly enough.
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawlYcDKGY3lewPxp7Y6NTsJQdP8NWv6Kofw
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June 24, 2011 8:23 AM
I'm assuming the reference to Jesus and the bible was meant to plant the seed of skepticism, yet it looks more like PZ Myers is admitting the bible is evidence of the existence of Jesus, the crucifixion and anything else the bible asserts. That's what this little girl will understand, and that's is the way this letter will be quote-mined in the future ("even PZ Myers admits that what the bible says about Jesus is true!!")
Posted by: StevoR
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June 24, 2011 8:23 AM
I'm going to give you my highest praise possible for that PZ.
That was Sagan-Esque / Asimovian.
Well written & 100% spot on. :-)
Posted by: Thunderbird 5
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June 24, 2011 8:26 AM
Re. #255. Here's the man himself, not a parody
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3xFZ0A15Bg
Posted by: Smith Powell
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June 24, 2011 8:27 AM
One of your best posts. I am going to share it with my grandchildren. Thank you so much.
Posted by: StevoR
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June 24, 2011 8:30 AM
BTW. Have you had / will you have this published somewhere other than this blog - a major popular science magazine or, better yet, a national newspaper with a *really* big circulation? Because I think it deserves to be read by as many people as possible.
Your best post yet in my view.
Posted by: Hirnlego
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June 24, 2011 8:47 AM
My response would have been: "Well, I wasn't there were you were born either, but here you are."
Posted by: PenguinFactory
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June 24, 2011 8:53 AM
I believe this post is what's scientifically known as an "epic win".
Posted by: saerrock
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June 24, 2011 9:00 AM
Sir,
I see why now you have become a teacher. Congratulations, hopefully a young mind rescued from dogma, superstition & corruption.
Posted by: Tualha
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June 24, 2011 9:23 AM
I can think of only one way that poor little Emma would ever hear of this page. Maybe some scientifically-inclined hacker will break into Ken Ham's blog server and make that page redirect here. Of course, that would be wrong.
Posted by: SantaCruzOM - this OM does not signify a Molly :-(
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June 24, 2011 9:26 AM
Thanks, PZ. That was a wonderful letter. While I doubt that this little girl will (be allowed to) deviate from her indoctrination, there's always a chance. I do hope that she'll one day find her way to enlightenment. The world is more glorious when viewed in the light.
I plan to read your letter to my two children tonight. They are 9 and 11. My son has shown a strong interest in science already - scoring the highest in his class on his standardized science test this year - yeah, I hate standardized tests, too. I think this will help him to better understand how we arrive at certain complex answers. My daughter is more of an artist, but I think this will open a door for her as well. Thank you.
Posted by: myeckwaters
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June 24, 2011 9:29 AM
GravityIsJustATheory #238:
FINALLY a good use for porridge!
Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes
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June 24, 2011 9:30 AM
Echoing StevoR: When does that book come out, PZ?
Posted by: go4tli
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June 24, 2011 9:37 AM
I actually started to turn away from creationism in a serious way as a result of Moon rock ages. I could accept, with my limited understanding, that perhaps something as catastrophic as a global flood(*) would change things on Earth to a degree that would be difficult to duplicate in a lab. Maybe something happened that made rocks look older than they really are, all over the planet, and simply made geologists wrong when they failed to take it into account.
But then I learned about the Genesis Rock. And there was no flood on the Moon, as far as I knew. What are the odds that something catastrophic happened on the Moon that gave "false" old ages, too?
Just how do those scientists know their ages are correct, anyway?
... And I was off and running, starting to figure out the nature of the evidence we have that speaks to the matter. Turns out the evidence is staggering. As is the evidence for evolution. And for all kinds of other amazing and wonderful things I simply didn't allow myself to look at for the longest time.
I feel bad for Emma, because I was once in her shoes, a smug nine-year-old who thought he knew why the experts were wrong. But the damage from this kind of brainwashing can be undone, and based on my experience, PZ is trying to undo it in exactly the right way.
So start looking at the evidence. I know how much it hurts, Emma, but your story proves that you're a brave person, brave enough to make it to the other side. It's bigger and deeper and more wonderful over here than you can possibly imagine on that side. I only wish I could be there to help you, to comfort you, and to encourage you.
(*) Yeah -- see, when you're hip-deep in this stuff, something like a global flood is a starting assumption. Goofy, I know, but there's really no end to the goofiness in there.
Posted by: TV200
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June 24, 2011 9:47 AM
If I may be as so bold.
This post,or some variation of it, might make an excellent introduction/foreword to PZ's forthcoming book.
Posted by: Gus Snarp
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June 24, 2011 9:51 AM
Gosh, PZ. You're such a Teddy Squid. That letter was brilliant. I can't imagine a better response. All I could come up with is, "Kid, no one likes a smart ass." But changing the question to "How do you know?" in the way you did lets the kid figure out for themselves that they were being a smart ass. So well written. Actually, I think the docents at the Smithsonian should have a copy of this, and memorize it for next time.
Posted by: Gus Snarp
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June 24, 2011 9:58 AM
And in addition to teaching this girl to ask the wrong kind of question, Ken Ham has taught her that being fundamentally rude is OK as long as you do it in your most polite voice. Ugh. Does the link say how old this poor, deluded child is? I refuse to give AIG any hits to find out.
Imagine if no one from Pharyngula ever followed a link to AIG or Conservawhatever? Their hit counts would drop to three a month.
Posted by: Gus Snarp
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June 24, 2011 10:11 AM
Oh, right there in PZ's letter it says "9 years". I might have noticed that.
Posted by: mygoldilocks
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June 24, 2011 10:15 AM
One of my favorite posts! I shared it with everybody I know
Posted by: Joffan
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June 24, 2011 10:16 AM
Well, I'll take one bright spot. At least Emma was taken to a science exhibit and was interested in the displays.
I imagined a possible continuation to the conversation that might be interpreted by Emma B's mother as "yada, yada"...
... "Were you there?"
The NASA guide smiled kindly and said to Emma, "Of course not. But perhaps you want to know how we worked out the age of the rock?"
Emma said "I can't believe it's so old!"
The guide replied, "Well, the rock itself tells us, if we understand how to look. Some of the crystals change in ways we can read to see how long ago it became solid."
Emma: "But how do you know the answer is right?"
The guide: "The changes are driven by forces that we have tested in lots of different ways, and now we understand them really well. It's the same kind of investigation, really, that helped us go into space."
"Wow."
Posted by: b_chan
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June 24, 2011 10:17 AM
I created an account just so I could comment and say how beautiful I thought the letter was. It reminds me of the "Yes Virginia there is a Santa Claus" letter except that it is about science and reality and being open to learn new things and new experiences. Yes, Emma, science is real and we can really know things without being there.
I am saving this letter for myself, printing it out, storing it in my folder of special articles.
In the mind of Ken Ham and his ilk, "the Bible tells me so" is "proof" all by itself. So, just because they weren't there at creation or at the crucifixion of Jesus doesn't mean they can't "know" it happened. They "know" it because God tells them so in the Bible, end of discussion.
A real question begins a conversation, "were you there" isn't about starting conversation, it's about ending it - especially in the mind of little kids.
Posted by: Martin
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June 24, 2011 10:22 AM
Wow. I know you're an educator by inclination and by profession, but I had no idea you could write stuff targeted to young kids. Please, please write a book for youngsters one of these days.
Posted by: viridian1
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June 24, 2011 10:31 AM
PZ that was a terrific response. I hope this letter actually reaches this little girl and anyone else who's been brainwashed by that insincere fool
Posted by: dotteson1
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June 24, 2011 11:08 AM
Very nice letter and explanation, PZ. I'm hopeful that it will be widely circulated so that even if this little girl doesn't see it, others will.
Something that would be almost as good, but far less likely, is that Ken Ham would have the gumption to post a link to your comment on his web site. Unfortunately, that act would serve to encourage open-minded inquiry, so I don't expect you'll see a lot of hits from that source.
Posted by: andrewjanuary
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June 24, 2011 11:21 AM
Not read all of the comments, so apologies if someone's already said this.
A lot of people here seem to be misunderstanding the point of the "Where you there?" argument. It's not a serious philosophy on which they propose the world be based, it's an attempt at undermining a supposed hypocrisy within the scientific viewpoint. Comments about what a stupid perspective to build a world view from are missing the point.
The argument goes "Science supposes to be based off empirical evidence yadda yadda, but if you weren't there then surely it's all still faith, you still only believe it to be true. Therefore you are hypocritical for putting faith in science at the same time as saying people are foolish for putting faith in religion."
The "were you there" question is designed to highlight this supposed contradiction, to demonstrate you're still using faith and belief yourself.
Of course, there are many flaws in this line of reasoning :)
Posted by: Zinc Avenger
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June 24, 2011 11:29 AM
Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective?
I'll file that right next to Baking: A Lepidopterist Perspective.
Posted by: Tamson
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June 24, 2011 11:30 AM
(Long time lurker, first time poster) Ah, PZ, you are such a kindly gentleman! I am printing out this letter for my nephews who sadly are saddled with a fundagelical mother.
Emma's question brought out an immediate "get offa my lawn" reaction. Smug, disrespectful children usually get a verbal smack-down in our family - probably a good thing I'm not a docent.
"Where you there?"
"Do you believe Jesus died for our sins and after three days rose from the dead?"
"Yes."
"Were *you* there? Now stop being rude and asking questions that you were put up to."
Grumble, grumble...kids these days...grumble. grumble.
Posted by: David Marjanović
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June 24, 2011 11:32 AM
Seconded :-)
I'm just not sure about the word "dogma" in the last sentence. That's not a word I'd use when talking to a 9-year-old. If she'd ask her parents what it means, they'd probably use "true" in their explanation, and she'd understand you as saying "reject the truth and start lying"... :-S
Several of them have come to Pharyngula over the years to claim that we must accept all four gospels as (contradictory) truth, because if eyewitness evidence is unreliable, why is it accorded the highest weight in courts (alternatively American courts)? They seriously believe it is. It's not.
"Homes Schooled"?
Seriously?
Homes have been schooled?
University?
Over here, radiometric dating is used as an example, as one of several, of exponential in- or (in this case) decrease – in highschool math books.
And not just "rock sample contains x amount of isotope 1 and y of isotope 2, isotope 1 has half-life z, how old is the sample", but also "you're watching a sample of isotope 1, after time t x % have decayed, what is the half-life".
Uh...
I must say, I'm dumbfounded. Your "argument" is precisely why PZ wrote "bad" and not "evil".
Comment 90 says the rest of what I wanted to say.
:-D :-D :-D
Stolen.
...Why did you include "fat" in there?
This is the terrible part.
Over here, people get that education before they become adults. It's part of most or all highschool curricula. In the US, only people who manage to go to college get it – and only those are represented by the test you cite.
Dude, the verses and the chapters are a medieval invention. They are not there in any ancient manuscripts; those are all continuous walls of text – even spaces between the words were invented only in the 6th century or so.
Of the uranium-238 series. Uranium-235, for instance, decays another way.
But 238U is the most common uranium isotope, and it's the one used to date such old things because of its half-life of about 4.5 billion years.
+ 1
:-) :-) :-)
Rocks don't form directly from supernovae, precisely because supernovae are much too hot for that.
The oldest rocks on Earth, no, the oldest remaining zircon grains are only 4.4 Ga old. The moon is 4.51 Ga old (or anyway was last time I read up on this). The figure of 4.56 Ga for the age of the Earth is actually the age of the oldest known meteorites.
Seconded and thirded.
Posted by: greeata
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June 24, 2011 11:33 AM
I live in Kentucky - In fact, I live just a couple of hours south down I75 from Florence. It's appalling to me that Kentucky can be so far behind in everything . . . but, as Mark Twain once said - "I want to be in Kentucky when the world ends, it's always 20 years behind everything."
I grew up listening to Ken Ham radio broadcasts - my parents were devout Baptists - luckily, it didn't warp my mind too much and I grew up to be a free thinker that questions all evidence presented....hopefully little Emma will be just as lucky...
Posted by: Muzakbox
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June 24, 2011 11:37 AM
You made me all weepy at my desk this morning. Thank you for the letter. I'm going to share it with some children I know. Not because they are religious but because I think it might help them think about how they ask questions.
Posted by: Sastra OM/COR
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June 24, 2011 11:42 AM
andrewjanuary #281 wrote:
But the argument you describe -- that faith is faith is faith -- is also being proposed as a serious philosophy on which to base an understanding of the world. Ham's advocating an epistemic view which tries to eliminate the concept of degrees of certainty or, as Isaac Asimov would say, "the relativity of wrong."
It's a familiar tactic from the I-Know-You-Are-But-What-Am-I Department of Apologetic: if all beliefs are equally unjustified leaps of faith into the night, then believing Jesus rose from the dead is no more ridiculous than believing China exists or your car is in the garage or other people have minds. We don't draw reasonable conclusions based on evidence: we choose our beliefs based on where we want to place our trust. It's pretty much all guesswork.
Big problem, of course. For one thing, taking this bit of sophistry seriously leads to what's been called Crank Magnetism -- the tendency for people who believe in one piece of bullshit to also believe in other, unrelated pieces of bullshit. That's likely to happen because their entire way of evaluating evidence is screwed up.
Ham's not just messing with children's scientific knowledge. He's putting them in prime position for conspiracy thinking and deciding truth by following your heart.
Posted by: bora.gurel
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June 24, 2011 11:43 AM
Very nice letter, Dr. Myers. I hope she gets to read it. It would have been nice to post it as a comment at Ken Ham's blog, but, surprise surprise, comments are not allowed there. :)
On a personal note, this story made me rage like a madman the first time I read it. The little girl, with the "100% Homeschooled" t-shirt posing next to a moon rock, positively beaming with triumph, of having made her parents happy. What will she think of this when she grows up enough to think for herself? Will she grow up enough to think for herself?
As a new father of a beautiful girl, it pains me beyond description to see children misled this way. I would classify this as child abuse.
Posted by: victoria love
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June 24, 2011 11:56 AM
PZ, why aren't you the president? If Obama addressed the nation in the manner you did Emma we wouldn't be in quite the mess we are right now. Ken Ham is the Republican party and Corporate Media rolled up in all their glory.
Sadly, most of our citizens are a lot like Emma, trained seals who are sorely in need of factual information. But we insult them at our own peril. And quite honestly, Matt Taibbi is exactly right when he says in his article about Michele Bachmann,
"there are a great many people in America just like Bachmann, people who believe that God tells them what condiments to put on their hamburgers, who can't tell the difference between Soviet Communism and a Stafford loan, but can certainly tell the difference between being mocked and being taken seriously. When you laugh at Michele Bachmann for going on MSNBC and blurting out that the moon is made of red communist cheese, these people don't learn that she is wrong. What they learn is that you're a dick, that they hate you more than ever, and that they're even more determined now to support anyone who promises not to laugh at their own visions and fantasies."
I wish you or someone with your gifts would take the bully pulpit and teach Americans the right questions to ask.
Posted by: Sastra OM/COR
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June 24, 2011 12:05 PM
A beautiful letter. Is it too late to include it in the book?
When I read how the little girl asked the NASA employee if "she was there" when the 3.75 billion year old rock was formed, I momentarily imagined what would happen if the docent had pretended to be hurt, offended or insulted at being told she looked that old. I enjoyed picturing an embarrassed fundy mother anxiously apologizing and personally vowing to never let Ham's tactic backfire like that ever again!
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/juUhBZgRtY.amT52vBf60tQMMPV8AUYGkWdS_Hz6vMqAf3Zj#35dc0
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June 24, 2011 12:20 PM
Cath the Canberra Cook said,
That and the wonderful letter and a couple of the other comments have almost cleared up my confusion about how the date of the rock is reset to the date it solidified.When the old seafloor sinks into a subduction zone, for instance, it drags along mud and shells and everything else. This mixture sinks until it's under extreme pressure and heat. If it then melts and rises, it may reach the surface or solidify while it's still deep underground. Isn't some argon among the other impurities trapped therein? Or, when the samples are selected for testing, are they only taken from homogeneous crystalline regions, excluding any crevices, voids or chunks of contaminants? Did I just answer my own question? Or, can't individual argon atoms be trapped in the fluid rock as it crystallizes? It can't always outgas if it has nowhere to go.
Posted by: Sastra OM/COR
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June 24, 2011 12:23 PM
victoria love #289 wrote:
Um ... small problem here. If you think the quote has it 'exactly right,' that would seem to indicate that PZ Myers would NOT be your ideal candidate for the job. I don't think he would treat Bachmann with the same gentle consideration he treats a 9 year old girl, nor would he advocate it. He's more of the point-and-laugh school of honesty that's apparently being disparaged by Taibbi.
Not all people who are embarrassed become more determined to keep their viewpoint the same. Some of them may begin to pick up on the possibility that maybe their deeply-held belief is wrong. If it's not treated as sacred by others -- if it can be mocked -- then it deserves a deeper look.
Not sure if you knew that and were making a point, or if you're new.
Posted by: shonny
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June 24, 2011 12:26 PM
Is the decline in knowledge in the US due to having intellectual black holes like Dim Ham around?
Just being in the vicinity of the sleaze-ball bombards you with stoopid to a nauseating extent, so fortunately there's one helluva lot of water between him and here.
Posted by: CJO
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June 24, 2011 12:26 PM
Dude, the verses and the chapters are a medieval invention. They are not there in any ancient manuscripts; those are all continuous walls of text – even spaces between the words were invented only in the 6th century or so.
Well, yes, if you mean the familiar chapter and verse divisions. Those are medieval, though not 'finalized' until the KJV, the scheme of which is the one still used. But the 4th century Codex Vaticanus, the second oldest near-complete NT manuscript, divides the gospels into numbered sections, believed by scholars to mark liturgical use, and the epistles are divided into "chapters" (not the current divisions, the sections are much longer), but continuously, as if all the epistles (not just the Paulines and pseudo-Paulines) were one long book.
Posted by: Yard Gnome
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June 24, 2011 12:30 PM
I'm a little late in this thread, and I haven't anything particularly useful to add to it, but I wanted to, as many others already have, thank you for posting it. I work in adult education in East Asia and encounter a frightening number of apparently well-educated adults ignorant of the value of good questions. I sometimes put myself at risk of derailing entire lessons just to push the issue.
The world is full of Emmas, despite the possibility that this particular one is a fabrication of Ham's. PZ has in his letter done quite a service, and I hope it can be used to reach a wide audience that may not be limited to children.
Posted by: Rasmus
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June 24, 2011 12:34 PM
That's a good letter.
I think I remember that the teacher I had when I was in the 10-12 age range handed out decay curves and had us do "carbon dating" graphically with ruler and pencil.
That's perhaps not the most pedagogical way to introduce the subject, but I sort of got it and I don't think I was the only kid in class to get it.
The shape of the decay curve can be explained in words. "At first there's lots of stuff that can decay, so then lots of stuff decays. Then there's a bit less stuff that can decay..."
Posted by: indre.m
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June 24, 2011 12:47 PM
That letter is amazing. I wish all teachers were like you.
Posted by: Prospect151
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June 24, 2011 12:50 PM
Excellent Post. My commendations on your letter, PZ
Posted by: PeteJohn
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June 24, 2011 1:03 PM
Yes, yes, 1000x yes. PZ is inviting her to use her mind and and expand her knowledge. Ham and the mom are commanding her to turn off her mind and turn to one lousy book for all her answers.
Wonderful, wonderful letter PZ. I wish there was a way little Emma B. could see it, because I highly doubt Ham and mommy are serious readers of Pharyngula.
Posted by: Dave, the Kwisatz Haderach
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June 24, 2011 1:04 PM
Beautiful letter PZ, I hope she reads it someday.
And to all those posting things like...
"The little girl, with the "100% Homeschooled" t-shirt posing next to a moon rock, positively beaming with triumph, of having made her parents happy. Will she grow up enough to think for herself?"
...as an ex-Emma (private Christian YEC edjumacation and all the religious trimmings), I can say with certainty that there is hope for her. An inquisitive mind is more than a match for religious dogma.
Keep up the good work, PZ. Keep helping people see the light of reason.
Posted by: davem
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June 24, 2011 1:10 PM
@240 Steve Wells : Thanks for the clear explanation.
Posted by: Michael Dowd
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June 24, 2011 1:40 PM
Great post, PZ.
I've cross-posted it (with an intro) on my Evolutionary Christianity blog site, here:
PZ Myers: "How Do You Know That?"
Keep up the great writing.
~ Michael
Posted by: natural cynic
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June 24, 2011 2:02 PM
Emma, does your mommy let you watch CSI? What they do is called forensics. Scientists who study the age of rocks do the same thing.
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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June 24, 2011 2:10 PM
Yes, but argon won't be among these. Argon will stay in the atmosphere, or it will be degassed from the older rocks as they are heated.
Yes, but not from the atmosphere. Argon from potassium-40 decay underground can be a problem for certain rocks forming under pressure.
How could all of these be excluded?
Look, it's actually understood that rocks forming under the ocean at higher pressure can give incorrect potassium-argon dates due to reduced outgassing of the radiogenic argon present (from underground decay).
Not all rocks give good potassium-argon dates. Terrestrial lavas erupted at the surface often do give good dates, the bigger problem there being that some rocks leak radiogenic argon.
Of course not.
Still, in uranium dating one can generally expect that lead is not included in the zircons that frequently are dated. Zircon simply doesn't incorporate lead into it (unless at extremely low levels), so it wasn't there originally. Some minerals within rock probably also exclude argon, while others would incorporate some of the argon if it cannot outgas.
Radiometric dating is highly studied and compared with other sorts of radiometric dating, in order to find out which sorts of rocks give good dates. You have received very simple answers here, as might be expected (this is still quite simple), while the literature on which rocks give reliable potassium-argon dates is considerable and complex.
Your questions are good, but they have been addressed in various places. The problems are well understood, and only rocks yielding reliable potassium-argon dates are subjected to that form of dating.
Glen Davidson
Posted by: Richard S. Russell
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June 24, 2011 2:10 PM
I haven't read ALL of the previous comments, so please forgive me if someone has already raised this question, but do we have any evidence whatsoever that this "Emma B." is an actual child and not merely a pious fable that Ken Ham conjured up out of whole cloth?
About here is where I throw in my standard observation about such a possibility: "True believers have engaged in child rape, torture, mayhem, murder, and genocide, all for the greater glory of the Biblical God. What on Earth makes you think their consciences would bother them so much that they'd draw the line at mere lying, cheating, stealing, plagiarism, and forgery?"
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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June 24, 2011 2:21 PM
Well, usually. Of course sometimes potassium-argon dating is used, yet, if the results seem questionable, other scientists question them based on the uncertainties of argon incorporation and retention in rocks.
A truly unusual discovery in the life sciences or geology would generally be subjected to several different methods of radiometric dating, if at all possible. In many cases it is indeed possible.
For the past hundred million years and even beyond at a lower confidence level, astronomical dating can also be used in a number of cases.
Glen Davidson
Posted by: sandiseattle
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June 24, 2011 2:22 PM
Gonna make it quick today, on a buddies computer:
JM, thanks for the link re: radiocarbon dating, so reading the whole thing later.
&
What was Arkham all uppity about re: Caine's photography? Seen some of it, where's the bad? (not that I'm saying every pic Caine does is the bomb, I'm sure she'd admit to snapping off a stinker or two now and then. but seriously I've not caught up what did Arkham dislike.?)
Posted by: Rasmus
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June 24, 2011 2:22 PM
Richard: Yes. It's obvious if you read Ken Ham's blog. (Do keep your intellectual headache pills handy if you should venture there.)
Posted by: azumahazuki
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June 24, 2011 2:49 PM
@bookworm
This is a bit late, but I personally and very very glad to have you with us. People who can actually read the old texts in the original are extremely valuable in the fight against bullshit.
Posted by: Owlmirror
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June 24, 2011 2:58 PM
No. It's actually worthwhile. It's by a geologist who happens to be a Christian. It explains radiometric dating from the evidence, addresses common YEC canards, describes additional non-radiometric dating systems, and lists references and other resources.
It also has a few sentences of religious apologia, which might be annoying to atheists, but are presumably meant to be reassuring to Christians. While atheists disagree with those, I think that we can agree that conveying scientific understanding is worthwhile, regardless of the additional dogma that the author might be carrying around in a compartmentalized mind.
Posted by: robteix
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June 24, 2011 3:25 PM
Dr. Myers, beautiful letter. Just beautiful. Congratulations.
Posted by: Rich FineMan
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June 24, 2011 3:25 PM
Dear Emma,
You're ugly.
Posted by: NitricAcid
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June 24, 2011 3:29 PM
Dear Rich #312
Emma will probably grow up to be a beautiful young woman.
You will probably remain a prick forever.
Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM
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June 24, 2011 3:31 PM
Just going by the four word post by Rich FineMan, I will guess that the moniker is ironic.
Posted by: spam.away.666
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June 24, 2011 3:33 PM
That's not even funny on a shock level.
Are you too afraid to say this in real life so that people can see what an ass you are and avoid you? Or is that not even a priority for you any more?
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/juUhBZgRtY.amT52vBf60tQMMPV8AUYGkWdS_Hz6vMqAf3Zj#35dc0
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June 24, 2011 3:50 PM
Thanks, Glen.
The answer, it seems, is that although there may be impurities (whether concentrated or diffuse), the problem does not really exist if the samples tested are carefully chosen to avoid the problematic ones.
Posted by: Pulkit
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June 24, 2011 4:00 PM
By Ken Ham's logic, Emma wasn't there when he was born. So that means he was never born, which makes him non-existent. Emma's mother should keep her child away from imaginary beings that seem to be utterly stupid.
Posted by: Paul A.
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June 24, 2011 4:03 PM
Wow, I actually now understand radiometric dating. I guess I need to read more science written for a nine year old.
Posted by: David Marjanović
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June 24, 2011 4:07 PM
One reason is that he never runs for president...
:-D
Taibbi can consider this stolen.
About 50 threads won at once.
Ideally, and increasingly, yes. ("Single-crystal ages" as opposed to "whole-rock ages"; the latter have gone out of fashion now that more sensitive instruments yadda yadda are available.)
...Wait. Are you saying the divisions of the KJV spread to the Protestant and (later) Catholic Bibles in all other languages? Luther made his German translation some 60 years before the KJV... ~:-|
(Analogous to: "Oy! Hovind! You can't carbon-date this! There's no BEEP carbon in it!")
Do you mean cyclostratigraphy (light and dark bands in water-laid sediments that you basically just need to count because they're caused by Milanković cycles)? That can narrow ages down to 10,000 years. It's amazing.
Posted by: hairychris444
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June 24, 2011 4:30 PM
@Richard S. Russell #305
Well, even if it is a *ahem* pious *ahem* fraud PZ's response is well worth the price of admission alone.
Posted by: Poolio
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June 24, 2011 5:02 PM
PZ, that was absolutely outstanding. With your usual brash ways, I had no idea you had it in you to write something so beautiful and touching. Makes me feel for this poor girl Emma even more, how these kids don't know any better and are being preyed upon by monsters.
Posted by: Sastra OM/COR
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June 24, 2011 5:05 PM
Richard S. Russell #305 wrote:
No, we've no conclusive evidence that it's not a pious fable. Could be.
But here's where I'll throw in my standard observation about such a possibility: if it is less trouble to find a particular situation than to fake the evidence for it, then it's reasonable to consider the situation true. Follow the path of least resistance.
If, after all the years of indoctrinating families and their kids, not a single mother had ever mentioned to Ham that their kid had followed his advice, I'd find that pretty hard to believe.
I use this rule of thumb for reality tv and talk shows, too. Would they really have to find and pay an actor to "pretend?" Assume cheap and lazy: it's more likely.
Posted by: Dude... Real Men Watch Ponies!
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June 24, 2011 5:10 PM
@victoria
#319
... why do you wish to condemn PZ to a living hell?
Posted by: It's Fuckin' Meatloaf (But you can call me Meat)
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June 24, 2011 5:33 PM
Delurking to say well put, PZ.
We can't let Ham get away with such intellectual dishonesty, especially where impressionable children are concerned.
And then the trolls start...
Arkham spouted:
I thought that you wanted everyone to be equal and be friends. You insult me personally when you say that. I am autistic, and you don't even know me. You have never even met me here or anywhere else.
You dont't win friends with salad^Winsults
I would be much less calm, were there not the 3 post rule here.
Posted by: Buxley
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June 24, 2011 6:12 PM
Wow. Very nicely written letter to Emma B., Dr. Myers. It's a pity she probably will never see it, but one never knows.
Let's hope that the Emma Bs of the world, and all of us for that matter, get better at asking questions and actually listening to answers instead of just assuming we know all the answers already.
-Buxley
Posted by: Tigger_the_Wing
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June 24, 2011 6:20 PM
It's Fuckin' Meatloaf (But you can call me Meat), I skipped right past Arkham's posts so I didn't see that particular outrage.
Yes, I'm autistic too (and so are most of my friends and family) and that was extremely insulting.
Thanks PZ for the banhammer! ^_^
Posted by: CJO
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June 24, 2011 6:23 PM
...Wait. Are you saying the divisions of the KJV spread to the Protestant and (later) Catholic Bibles in all other languages? Luther made his German translation some 60 years before the KJV... ~:-|
Hm. I'm not sure, now that I think about it. I am regrettably anglo-centric about such matters. KJV took the divisions primarily from Tyndale though the translators altered some of them. Tyndale probably got his from Luther's. So the KJV's chapter and verses are basically a modified version of Luther, not the other way around; as you point out that would be impossible chronologically. But I don't know if there was ever a back-adjustment to German translations based on the KJV. On one hand, why would there be? On the other, the chapter and verse divisions don't vary among modern vernacular translations, do they?
Posted by: davej
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June 24, 2011 7:28 PM
I went to church and a lady said Santa Claus died for us. And I said, in my most polite voice, "Were you there?"
Love, Virginia (No Virginia, there is no Santa Claus)
Posted by: Therrin (Ben S)
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June 24, 2011 8:12 PM
On science for the young, I've been fond of this person's artwork for a long time. Highlights are the counting cards (zero, one, two, three, pi, four, five, ..) and the scientific method poster. Maybe a little adult-oriented, but still fun.
Posted by: matthone11
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June 24, 2011 10:09 PM
One way to shut the idiots up, when they ask 'Were you there?' just say, 'Yes'.
Of course, with children like Emma the best thing to do is try to educate them, but zealots like Ken Ham are beyond hope and the best thing to do is to laugh at them.
Posted by: sphex
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June 24, 2011 10:37 PM
Nothing original to add, but DAY-um that was a fine post. If not Emma, SOMEone who is learning to think will see it.
As an aside: I had been trusting radiometric dating "on faith" until I read the OP and the comments here! This is why I love Pharyngula: I always learn so much.
Posted by: Louella
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June 25, 2011 5:49 AM
Masterful.
Posted by: teawithwatson
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June 25, 2011 6:10 AM
This is a really brilliant and inspiring letter. What's best is that it's written with such care and kindness, I think you should send this to Emma because it could help her an awful lot. It's not fair letting a child grow up being thought for by other, close minded people.
Posted by: Gordon
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June 25, 2011 7:10 AM
How little you know about religion! It wasn't Santa who died for us, it was the Easter Bunny.
Posted by: Bewdy Rooster
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June 25, 2011 8:43 AM
I'm a science teacher. II read this out - with a few interruptions explaining PZ, Ken Ham, youngearthers, and so on - just to inspire my kiddos to think and ask the great question "how do we know?" (Often a bit challenging and difficult for science teachers, but always a great question nonetheless)
The youngsters liked the story and the thinking behind it. I felt glad that I could tell this story without fear of recrimination or being "reported".
Thanks PZ!
Posted by: kiki
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June 25, 2011 9:50 AM
"Homes Schooled"?
Seriously?
Homes have been schooled?
No, it just means she was schooled by some gangsta-ass playaz, homes.
OK, now I want a T-shirt with a picture of Snoop Dogg and the legend "100% HOMEY SCHOOLED". But then, I'm kind of a dick sometimes.
Posted by: billy.einkamerer
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June 25, 2011 10:06 AM
Even though I myself am a young earth creationist, I enjoyed this post. I think your question "how do you know that?" is a much better question, and it's fair to evaluate the method and learn from it.
I reckon that truth truly remains true universally, and because of that, anything should be subject to scrutiny, investigation, evaluation and explanation, no matter what the starting position is, or the final conclusion.
To dismiss something outright because it's Ken Ham, or PZ Myers for that matter, without looking into it, seems to be what happens most often; instead of assessing and tackling the argument itself, as you have done here.
Amicably yours, from the other side, where the grass is greener cos it was created ;)
Billy
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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June 25, 2011 10:17 AM
Billy, where is your conclusive phsyical and scientific evidence for a young Earth? Cite the peer reviewed scientific literature. Here's a hint, if any site like AIG uses the babble as a source, it isn't scientific. It is religious propergander.
Posted by: David Marjanović
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June 25, 2011 10:25 AM
So far, I have simply assumed they don't.
Do you know any of the instances where Tyndale and the KJV differ? I can look them up in the three (!) German ones that we have at home.
In that case, I feel forced to say, chances are very high that you won't stay a YEC for long. :-|
The alternative is that you'll end up like Kurt Wise, who believes reality is a lie and God the Liar of Liars.
You'll see.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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June 25, 2011 10:31 AM
billy.einkamerer #337
We don't dismiss Ham because he's Ham, we dismiss him because he's (a) wrong and (b) a liar. On the one hand we have literally tons of evidence for a 4.5 billion year old Earth and for evolution. On the other hand we have Ham waving a Bible and lying about what it says.
Warily yours, where the grass and everything else living has evolved. :-\
Posted by: billy.einkamerer
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June 25, 2011 10:51 AM
@Nerd of Redhead,
My point of mentioning my current view was to highlight two things, my perspective - so that readers know where I'm coming from, and secondly, to set the contrast so that my compliment of the article would be understood.
I don't have conclusive proof for either standpoint, and while I love science I'm not a scientist by qualification or by profession.
To expect me to justify my views would require a lengthy exchange which might upset or bore most here. :)
You mention a good point about peer reviewed stuff, and that's something that I think needs looking into. Thanks.
@David Marjanović,
A fair point, however, I believe all sides have unanswered questions, which makes discussion interesting, the science necessary, and the journey exciting; as long as it stays discussion and doesn't downgrade into mud-slinging…
@'Tis Himself, Designated Economist,
I can understand that you say he's wrong and you're right (we all think this after all ;) but why do you say he is a liar? I assume you mean regarding the bible?
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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June 25, 2011 10:58 AM
Billy,
Lengthy exchanges are the staple of any comment thread that has passed the 100 mark. Don't fret about being discounted, some people will reply in kind and you will be exposed to a whole lot more information than is present in the topic post.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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June 25, 2011 11:00 AM
No, you would learn a lesson in real science from a number of us. All you have is the presupposition that your imaginary deity exists, and the presupposition your babble is inerrant. All presupposition arguments are false. The null hypothesis for any rational argument is non-existence of your deity, and your babble being a book of mythology/fiction. Then hard and conclusive physical evidence is required to change both starting points to your presupposed conclusions.Oh, and that is why most of the gnu atheists are atheists. There is no solid and conclusive physical evidence to back your presuppositions.
Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM
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June 25, 2011 11:14 AM
I dismiss Ken Ham for the same reason that I dismiss you, because you advocate for an idea that has no relationship to reality. That alone is reason enough. The reason why Ham is scorned is because he is dishonest about the facts, he discourages curiosity and, when he can control the environment, controls what people can communicate about.
But how would you know any of this, you were not there.
Posted by: Owlmirror
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June 25, 2011 11:18 AM
Actually, we're pretty sure that he is a liar about science.
I, at least, suspect that he has seen sufficient rebuttals to his false statements about science that regardless of whether the original false statements were deliberate or simply mistakes, him ignoring those rebuttals cannot be anything other than deliberate dishonesty.
Although ... I'm pretty sure he is lying about the bible as well. I know that he's got things in his Creation "Museum" -- like dinosaurs in the ark, dying out shortly after the "flud" -- that aren't in the bible.
Posted by: billy.einkamerer
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June 25, 2011 11:54 AM
@Dhorvath
Sure, thanks. You see, my reasons for my views include experiences which cannot be scientifically backed up or explained. You see, I believe in the truth of the bible, and I have sufficient proof to be convinced of it's truth. And while I love science, admittedly, it takes second place for me. When I read the bible, millions of years is not what I get from it. So, to be honest, I have chosen the side of creationism, and young earth at that. When I look at evolutionary science, and origins science, casually of course, I still see many questions where supposed water-tight cases are proposed. You must understand, this is my own investigation, and it's flooded with a mix of bias and reason, faith and logic.
@Nerd of Redhead, OM
Wow, I'm slow - I only got your "babble as a source" joke now. You almost caught me searching google for the babble institute of science. haha
If all presupposition arguments are false, doesn't that make yours false too by presupposing mine is false?
Also, why is the null hypothesis for any rational argument the non-existence of God?
If your presupposition is naturalistic, then surely the very source of your argument is nothing more than random chemical reactions in your mind as a result of millions of years of various chemical reactions? in which case, truth itself dissolves, and reason and logic too?
What do you base any argument on, in the naturalistic atheistic framework of thinking? And how do you define truth and reality, and why do you define it thus?
Wow, did we just step out of science class into philosophy?
@The Janine Is A Lonely Hunter
Thanks for your comment. Could you explain how I do that? Why do you say that it is no relation to reality, and what do you mean when you say reality? I just want to be on the same page. :)
@Owlmirror
I hear you, but not being deeply involved with Mr Ham, could you cite some examples of false statements that he sticks to?
I don't mean stuff that's up in the air, but more like "earth is flat" kinda stuff, if that is what you mean, and I think it is what you mean..
Wow - this is turning into a real powwow.. Thanks for all the feedback!
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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June 25, 2011 12:09 PM
Billy
Talking to people is why I come places like this.
I don't doubt that you have experiences which speak to you, but to say they cannot be scientifically explained seems a stretch. Do you mean you can provide no evidence for them? Proof is a specific word, something can't be proof for you and not proof for me. You have evidence which you interpret as being favourable for the bible, but to say you have proof indicates that you could convince me with it. Why? I have read the bible too, and it certainly does not reflect the evidence that we find in the real world with respect to history. Why? The bible is not internally consistent, how do you decide which parts are literal truth and which parts are allegory? Could you give some examples of questions you have? We all suffer from bias and faith, science is a tool that helps us filter that out so we can focus on reason, logic, and evidence.
Posted by: KG
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June 25, 2011 12:10 PM
Of course there are unanswered questions in geology and evolutionary biology, but none of them cast any doubt whatsoever either on the great age of the earth - approximately 4.65 billion years, or on the evolution of all organisms from a common ancestor, primarily by natural selection. There is no genuine scientific debate on these questions, any more than there is on the (roughly) spherical shape of the earth. The pseudo-scientists of the self-styled "Institute for Creation Research" and "Discovery Institute" do not, in fact, do real scientific research: they focus on distorting what real scientists say by quote-mining, misrepresentation of arguments between evolutionary biologists as casting doubt on the fact of evolution, and other forms of misrepresentation.
For exactly the same reason that the null hypothesis for any rational argument is the non-existence of leprechauns. But there are plenty of Christians who accept the overwhelming evidence for an ancient earth and evolution, so this may be a diversion from the issue.
No, they don't. First, the chemical reactions in your brain are not random, but again, that's a side issue. Think about an electronic calculator or computer. Now we know that all that goes on inside them is just electrical impulses going from place to place - but they can still be programmed to give correct answers to mathematical or logical questions. (For that matter, they can also be programmed to give wrong answers.) You need to think in terms of different levels of description of a complex system like a computer or a human brain: it can simultaneously be true that "it's all just chemical reactions" (or electrical impulses), and that the system can perform logical operations and arrive at true answers.
Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM
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June 25, 2011 12:24 PM
You answered this question before you even asked it.
You are making the claim that there is a truth, a fact, but you either cannot or will not back it up. You will not allow others to judge what you claim. As far as I am concerned, that is a denial of reality.
If you will not let you ideas be judged nor tested, you have no right to demand respect for your view. Nor cam you really talk about what you believe, it is too nebulous to be reality.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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June 25, 2011 12:26 PM
Science is a methodology that gets around presuppositon arguments by requiring evidence for claims. Essentially, your claims are false until you can show them otherwise. And there are a million or so scientific papers, all positive evidence, that back evolution. You don't have any scientific evidence for your claims. That is what makes your presuppositions false, and the null hypotheses non-existence of your imaginary deity, and babble being a book of fiction/mythology.Simple. If the existence of your imaginary deity is the null hypothesis, trying to refute the existence of the deity becomes "proving a negative". By making non-existence the null hypothesis, it changes the direction of proof so that so you, who makes the claim, must perforce supply the evidence in order to support your claim of existence. There is also the thing where until you prove your diety exists, you can't prove your babble is the word of said deity.You did, with mental wanking meaning nothing. Philosophy has the problem that without a grounding in reality, it is nothing but mental masturbation. Science is grounded in reality, which is why it is progressing human knowledge, and philosophy isn't. By the way, if you claim there is a stupornatural, it is up to you the claimant, to demonstrate that with solid physical evidence, as the null hyposthesis is non-existence, same with existence of your deity, and your inerrant babble, and for the same reasons. Otherwise, by parsimony, removing the stupornatural gives the same results without the extra bullshit.This won't be a philosophical argument, but rather a scientific argument. You see, science is only refuted and replaced by more science. Ergo, you want to replace evolution with creationism, you must use the methodology of science to do so. You can't refute science with religion, philosophy, or theology.
Posted by: Owlmirror
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June 25, 2011 12:27 PM
Hm.
If someone claimed to have "sufficient proof" in the truth of a book that you were sure was fiction, would you find the claim convincing?
We've had YECs here ragging on the Book of Mormon, for example, pointing out where it disagrees with current science on archaeology and such. When it's point out that the exact same problems exist with the bible, to far greater degree... the problems are simply ignored.
The difference is that you are presupposing something about the real world which is contradicted by the evidence of the real world.
Nerd is not presupposing that your presupposition is false, but is rather concluding that it is false, based on that contradiction.
The same reason you would automatically assume the null hypothesis for all Gods that you don't believe in -- Zeus, Shiva, Odin, Osiris, and so on.
There's no evidence that they exist. There's no evidence that your God exists either.
Nonsense. The "chemical reactions" are not random, but follow chemical laws. And they are the result of millions of years of evolution, which we would expect to result in at the very least sufficient correctness to be able to survive.
Look up evolutionary epistemology.
Sound logic and empirical evidence. Rational skeptical empirical analysis. A general application of the scientific method.
Truth is that which follows from valid logical operations and logical axioms, and from empirical reality.
A minimal set of minimal axioms, operations, and algorithms is necessary for any epistemology.
You mean like this? Or maybe this?
I have no idea what you mean by that.
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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June 25, 2011 12:28 PM
Billy,
We all use presuppositions. Mine is that I can trust empirical measurements. When something is measured today as having a different weight from yesterday I accept it as having changed, something left what is being weighed. Likewise, if the spectrum absorbed or emitted by one substance matches that absorbedor emitted by another I am confident they share a property. I could give many more examples, but I hope that is sufficient for you to see my point: the world offers us information and that information is useful in exploring the world.
Science is in the business of taking that information and describing how that information fits together, it has no agenda, no answers that it must reach, no other purpose save inspection and description. When we do really well with science the descriptions that we have also allow us to make predictions. If those predictions turn out false, we know the description is inadequate. If those predictions match what we find the description has utility and will continue to be used until such time as it is falsified. We call such a description a theory.
Posted by: billy.einkamerer
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June 25, 2011 12:47 PM
@Dhorvath
Experiencing supernatural things I believe falls outside of what science is equipped to answer. I know, convenient, but still appropriate.
Regarding proof, I 100% agree, it's a strong word and I chose it on purpose. I use the term proof because it convinced me. Would you agree than we all have differing levels of required proof to be convinced of something? For example, two people can witness a miracle, and one will believe because it was proof enough, the other not.
When you say it doesn't reflect history, can you explain what type of history you mean? There are whole science fields dedicated to the history of the bible, biblical archaeology, anthropology, etc.
I do find the bible internally consistent. It does have some mystery, but that doesn't undermine it's consistency. I only enter the problem of having to choose which parts to believe if I have an evolutionary presupposition, which I don't. So, in my mind, Adam and Eve were literal people. It clears up a lot of the inconsistencies. This is one of the reasons that I have given it priority in assessing the evidence, is because in everything it deals with, from history and places, to the condition of the human heart, to the reality of the purpose and value of life, it speaks volumes and I've found it trustworthy.
I guess three of my questions would be:
- in the big bang, how did something come from nothing. and I know that it wasn't nothing, it was a singularity I think it's called, infinitely small, but even that, how did it come from nothing?
- the question of irreducible complexity, such as the human eye or microscopic one celled creatures.
- the question of genetic information, where did this information come from, and how did it increase over time?
Thanks for your honesty and respect, I do appreciate it; you make talking about this enjoyable.
@KG
Let's be honest, the character of propents of both sides of the argument have at times been shaky. I don't seek to justify any shakiness whatsoever; but I don't think you can dismiss a whole side of the argument by some shaky examples. If I had to do that, I would present Piltdown man as a fraud, Nebraska man as a pigs tooth, and chuck out the whole argument for evolution and call it pseudo-science. I don't think that's fair on all the honest and clever people involved.
Regarding the null hypothesis, many of the fathers of science would disagree, namely Pascal, Newton and the little guy on the Boston Celtics logo!! ;)
And the computer idea, fair enough, but can you use an example of a machine that wasn't made by man, but fell together and contained programmed information regarding it's internal logic ;)
My worldview doesn't adhere to an unplanned, undesigned, uncreated mash of chemicals "learning" to "use" "logic" to "determine" "truth" due to billions of years of chance, yours does. I agree that the brain isn't random. but if chance is the father of everything, and time is it's mother; what truly is left as the foundation of determining truth?
Sorry if this comes across at snappy - it's not meant to!
Thanks all! I'm not going to reply any more this evening, got plenty to get on with - thanks for the thought provoking posts!
Cheers vir eers!
Billy
Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM
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June 25, 2011 12:51 PM
My fucking brain just broke.
Posted by: billy.einkamerer
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June 25, 2011 12:57 PM
@Dhorvath
ok, last post - really! :P
I 100% agree with everything you've stated there. Which is why I like science.
Which is also why I liked Dr Myers article enough to post my appreciation of it, knowing there might be some people who would take pot-shots at me for doing so.
Once again, thank you!
Billy
Posted by: Brother Ogvorbis, Apropos of Nada
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June 25, 2011 12:58 PM
Billy:
Internal consistency? What, according to the gospels, is Jesus' family tree? What, according to the gospels, are Jesus' last words on the cross?
Archaeology? There is not a shred, not one iota, of evidence even suggesting that the Israelites were held in Egypt.
Oh. Sorry. Those are some of the mysteries, right?
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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June 25, 2011 12:58 PM
Nope, it's not appropriate. If something doesn't impinge on the real world, how can you tell it exists? Ergo, non-existence is the conclusion. If the stupornatural does impinge on the real world, traces of that interaction should be there for science to study. Your assertion is refuted. Welcome to real science.Having read the babble twice cover to cover, you are wrong cricket. It bites its own words regularly. Which is why one of the leading causes of atheism is actually reading the babble.Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM
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June 25, 2011 12:59 PM
You have no idea what you are talking about. You are spilling out words when you have no meaning for them.
It is not just chance, there are rules to how these chemicals operate. And what happens is determinded by the situlation they are in. It is not random.
But you do not care enough to even try to understand. Instead, you attempt a cheerful whine that pleads for your special knowledge. It is piss poor.
Come on Billy, there is nothing about electricity and computers in the bible. Why are you online?
Posted by: billy.einkamerer
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June 25, 2011 1:01 PM
@The Janine Is A Lonely Hunter, OM
hahaha
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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June 25, 2011 1:07 PM
Oh, and Billy, word salads don't really phase us. We usually laugh at mish-mashes like Janine did. We are serious about you using the results of science and technology to communicate to us, and yet ignoring that science when it makes your religion look silly. Science can't refute your religion, but it can show it is not reality based.
Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM
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June 25, 2011 1:08 PM
The very definition of piss poor.
Posted by: billy.einkamerer
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June 25, 2011 1:13 PM
@The Janine Is A Lonely Hunter, OM
I was laughing at your exploding brain comment..
ok, they're not random, I agree with that, my understanding of the naturalist worldview was that it was chance over time. you refer to these rules, so what are they? how did they come about? which came first, the matter or the laws? do you agree, a law is just a human description of this rule that we get by observing nature?
My simplification of this was to add some humour. If we get all sticky this fails to be fun anymore. Though, I see you have a very low view of my comments, and that's unfortunate.
over and out (really this time, really)
Posted by: raven
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June 25, 2011 1:23 PM
You haven't read it then.
Virtually all biblical scholars who aren't blinded by toxic faith find it to be an incoherent mish mash from start to finish. A very incomplete list would include Spong, Ehrman, Sanders, Wright, Mack, Price, Avalos, Crossans, Pagels, and lots more.
Anyone who actually reads it and is honest and not brain damaged will come to the same conclusion. It starts on page 1 with two different contradictory creation accounts that are completely false anyway and ends with John's Revelation about the future, none of which ever came true.
Posted by: Brother Ogvorbis, Apropos of Nada
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June 25, 2011 1:23 PM
Will he stick the second flounce? I'll tune in later.
Billy:
What, according to the gospels, is Jesus' family tree? What, according to the gospels, are Jesus' last words on the cross?
Posted by: KG
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June 25, 2011 1:30 PM
billy.einkamerer,
There are, in the last century, absolutely no non-shaky examples from the YEC side. None. Not a single one. The scientific arguments about the basic fact of an earth far older than YECism claims were over by the 1830s: all geologists, practically all of whom were Christians who did not believe in evolution, had accepted by then that there was no possibility the earth was only a few thousand years old. Scientific arguments about the reality of evolution - although not its mechanisms - were effectively over by 1900.
It is also telling that your only examples are a fraud from a century ago that was exposed by evolutionary scientists, and an honest error from nearly as long ago. This tells me that you are simply regurgitating what you have been told.
I'm not clear what you're saying here. But in any case, it is not an answer to my point, which I will make more explicit: in regard to an assertion that some particular type of entity exists, the burden is always on the one claiming that it does to provide grounds for thinking so. Otherwise, you have no reason to dismiss (as I'm sure you do), all the gods youdon't believe in, as well as leprechauns, werewolves, vampires, banshees, hobgoblins...
OK, so you accept that something which is purely material can indeed make use of logic and arrive at true conclusions. That's progress. Now, evolutionary theory does not say that the human brain "fell together". It says it is the outcome of a long process of random mutation and natural selection, which is not random. Do you accept that those organisms able to gain more accurate information about their surroundings (and whether they contain food, or predators, or potential partners in reproduction for example) are more likely to survive and reproduce than those that cannot? That is the basis on which evolutionary theory can account for the evolution of brains able to support logical reasoning and a search for truth.
As I've explained, natural selection is not chance. And I'm not going to accept this "worldview" dodge: what it means, in effect is "I'm not going to pay any attention to any evidence or argument." You use computers and the internet - I know you do, because your words have appeared on this thread. The science behind computers and the internet uses the same procedures of gathering evidence and testing hypotheses as do geology and evolutionary biology: if you reject those, it is inconsistent and hypocritical to accept that behind computers - but then, how do you account for how they work?
Chance is not the father of anything, nor is time anything's mother; this is either an ignorant or a dishonest description of the scientific view of evolution. Truth is determined (where this is possible) by gathering evidence that is available to all (neither your private experiences nor mine count, because no-one else can check them), logical reasoning, and testing hypotheses. You have not provided any argument to the contrary here whatsoever.
Posted by: Owlmirror
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June 25, 2011 1:36 PM
ural things I believe falls outside of what science is equipped to answer. I know, convenient, but still appropriate.
How do you know that you actually experienced something supernatural?
How would you define supernatural?
Richard Carrier has a long essay on trying to nail down the supernatural, here:
http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2007/01/defining-supernatural.html
He gives an abstract of his thesis as:
Would you agree with this?
I'm not sure that's the right word, though. "Proof" is used in different ways in different contexts. Mathematicians and logicians have a much more rigorous standard of what "proof" means than the average person, or even the law.
Scientists prefer to avoid the term, perhaps because of the awareness of the rigor demanded by mathematics and logic.
Or rather, two people can witness an event, and one will believe that it was a miracle, and the other will not. Calling it a miracle assumes your conclusion.
Archeology and anthropology largely falsify what the bible claims. The historical sciences of geology and cosmology falsify what the bible claims.
So the contradiction between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 is just a "mystery" to you, not an inconsistency?
You can get away with a lot if you just call all contradictions and inconsistencies "mysteries".
What are you referring to here? Inconsistencies within the bible, or inconsistencies between the bible and reality?
How was a purported God supposed to come from nothing? Religious apologists claim that this alleged invisible person with magical superpowers gets some kind of exemption from the question of where it came from, and just magically exists eternally.
Cosmology does not say that there was necessarily nothing at all before the Big Bang. There are different scenarios posited where something fundamental, like the laws of physics, and time, simply exist, and can give rise to universes that look like ours.
Sigh. The best explanation of irreducible complexity is evolution by natural selection from simpler organisms.
Duplication of genes, variation of duplicated genes, and to a certain extent, early horizontal gene transfer, early in the history of life.
==========================
You don't understand how science works. Science itself throws out the "shaky examples" when it finds them. Religion refuses to throw out shaky examples, ever.
Pascal and Newton may have been religious, and they may have been scientists, but they failed to apply rationality or science to their religious beliefs. And religious scientists today do the same thing. Psychologists would call this mental compartmentalization.
It's not just "chance". It's chance and selection. Organisms which have no connection to reality at all cannot survive or reproduce.
The death of that which is false.
Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM
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June 25, 2011 1:36 PM
You gave me no reason to take your comments seriously. Even you admit that you know nothing of of biochemistry. Yet you criticize it on the basis of a secret knowledge that you cannot share.
So sorry that I am unable to share in the humor based on deliberate ignorance. It is unfortunate only for you. But you deserve that reception you received.
Posted by: Iain Walker
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June 25, 2011 1:43 PM
billy.einkamerer (#346):
That's kind of ambiguous. When you say "cannot be scientifically backed up", do you mean that it cannot be verified scientifically that you have had the experience, or that your interpretation of the experience cannot be scientifically verified? If the former, then there are empirical standards for verifying whether or not people have experiences of the same type, and how reliable people (including you) are when it comes to recalling and reporting them. That you had an experience of a certain kind can hence be treated an an empirical, evidence-based proposition. If the latter, then if your interpretation of the experience cannot be scientifically verified (or more generally, if independent supporting reasons for your interpretation cannot be given), isn't that grounds for doubting that your interpretation is correct?
And when you say "cannot be scientifically explained", do you mean cannot be explained in practice at the present time (given our current theories and technology) or cannot be explained in principle? If the former, then bear in mind that the scientific study of religious experience is still in its infancy (relatively speaking), but that a lot of informative work has already been done, and your experiences may be less inexplicable than you think. If the latter, it seems to me rather arrogant to assume that science will never be able to provide an explanation. Historically, people who predict that "Science will never explain this!" usually turn out to be wrong.
And on either interpretation, the question arises: How do you know that your experiences cannot be scientifically verified or explained?
I suspect that your standard of sufficiency of proof for the accuracy of the bible is going to be a lot lower than your standard for the accuracy of evolutionary theory. And indeed, I suspect that your standard for the bible is going to be a lot lower than the standard you would normally apply to any other collection of ancient texts.
Parsimony. Generally, it's good epistemic practice not to assume any more than you need to. This doesn't just apply to gods, it applies to anything. And bear in mind that the god hypothesis is a complex, wide-ranging cosmological hypothesis with huge implications. That's not the kind of thing you assume lightly, in any branch of investigation. You need good positive reasons for accepting it.
Chemical reactions aren't random, and your argument is a non sequitur. The causal underpinnings of my belief that P (i.e., the particular processes that give rise to me being in the state of believing that P) have got nothing to do with the truth of P. You seem to be making a category error here, muddling up individual beliefs (which are states or properties of an agent) with their semantic content (which are propositions).
Broadly speaking, reason and experience, applied as consistently and as rigorously as possible, and with a lot of self-checking.
Posted by: Owlmirror
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June 25, 2011 1:45 PM
Crap, blockquote fail via copy-and-paste fail in the beginning of #366.
That should have read:
How do you know that you actually experienced something supernatural?
How would you define supernatural?
Posted by: raven
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June 25, 2011 1:47 PM
yours does: No it doesn't. Stop making strawpeople and then murdering them. Ours, the scientific one, doesn't either depend only on chance. Evolution is a highly nonrandom process capable of creating everything in the biosphere.
If your worldview was the only one we had, we would still be in the stone age.
Goddidit explains nothing. It also stops any inquiry into how the universe actually works, a process called "science" that has been the most successful human invention ever.
BTW, we are not the products of chance. That is an incredibly ignorant statement by someone way too undereducated. Evolution is highly nonrandom, the result of chance plus selection, a powerful engine of nonsupernatural creation.
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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June 25, 2011 1:50 PM
billy.einkamerer,
This is somewhere that I think you may be mistaken about what I mean. I have no trouble believing that you have had experiences which you have interpreted as supernatural. However, your personal experience, just like mine and virtually every other person who has ever lived, is subject to so much internal noise via bias, misperception, prejudice, and plain lack of comprehension that it is pretty much guaranteed that what you recall is not what actually happened.
We are not accurate recording devices, we remember a fraction of any given event and then fill the rest in later on when we try to recall what happened to us and around us. This is part of the strength that science offers, it assumes that people are unreliable at experiencing and at recalling experiences of the world. From that assumption it finds ways to minimize the imposition of our internal dialogue on the facts we generate about the world.
No, I would not agree. If it's proof, it's proof for all and brooks no belief. There are very few things that meet that standard. Everything else is evidence and interpretation. In your example two people witness something and one interprets their experience as having seen a miracle while the other does not. Neither of them can prove anything about what they witnessed based on their individual experience. Remember that idea I presuppose? That there is information in the world and we can use it to learn about the world? That the way we describe that information provides opportunities to predict what other information may be available? The bible makes claims about the real world, it claims there was a worldwide flood, it claims that two million people wandered around Sinai for forty years, it claims the world is less than ten thousand years old, it claims that the dead rose and the sun stopped in the sky and give a narrow constraint on when that happened. These things do not match up with archeology, historical studies, geology, or any other examination of evidence regarding the places and times described in the bible. What order were plants, animals, and humans created in? Were man and woman created at the same time? How many animals did Noah take on the ark? Who went to Jesus' tomb and discovered it empty? Should I go on? Have you read with a critical eye, or merely for personal comfort? There are many things that I read which I find inspirational, but none of them gets a free pass on being wholly correct. Did something come from nothing? That is not what is described by any big bang theory which I am aware of. Matter came from energy, energy came from gravity, gravity could well have predated that era. Gravity is a fair bit simpler than a deity. I don't follow how these are irreducible. There are a huge variety of light sensitive receptors on plants and animals throughout the world we know. Some are very simple, some are very complex, and most fall between the two extremes. When you say that something is irreducible you imply that it must have existed exactly the way it is or been helped in getting there. The help is all around us, simple eyes vary within a given function, sometimes that variation makes for an eye that is more complex and sometimes that is useful and so passes on with greater success than the less useful eye from which it grew. I want to be very clear here about what you mean by information. When you talk about information I am assuming that you mean the recorded function in a gene, what it helps to produce if you will. This view of information is misleading. A gene is a record, not a plan. What it records is something that happened in the past, often very long ago. That something is a chemical reaction, perhaps influenced by strong radiation, certainly influenced by heat and chemicals in the vicinity of that reaction. Most of the information that could have been recorded by that gene was not, instead it is lost to us. It has since become dead heat radiated into the environment never to be used again. Genetics doesn't create information, it records it, and what it records is a snapshot of a few chemical reactions that have taken place over the history of our glorious chemical soup of a planet.Posted by: KG
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June 25, 2011 1:56 PM
Your understanding of the naturalist worldview is wrong, as I've noted. As for what the rules (or better, regularities - I'd agree that the "rules" or "laws" scientists formulate are attempts to capture observed regularities) are and where they come from, those are indeed deep questions. As to what the regularities are - that's what the whole of science is about, so (a) there's no answer to the question shorter than a library of scientific books and journals and (b) the answers in those books and journals are still provisional, and known to be incomplete. As for where these regularities come from, most of them are consequences of other, more basic regularities! For the most basic - the regularities of fundamental physics - the answer is simple: no-one (yet) knows. That is not evidence that God made them, and if you use "God" as an explanation for the existence of natural regularities, what is your explanation for the existence of God? If you say that the existence of God does not need an explanation, what does the existence of natural regularities?
But you're shifting the goalposts here, as YECers routinely do when they are losing the argument. As I've already pointed out, there are many Christians who accept the overwhelming evidence for an ancient earth, evolution, and the Big Bang. It's becoming clear that you are not arguing in good faith: you refuse to put forward any grounds for your own beliefs (you won't actually tell us how you know, despite your first comment), and you shift the goalposts whenever one of your claims is countered. You appear to be reading from a YEC script, rather than attempting to engage in a rational exchange.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
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June 25, 2011 2:14 PM
Funniest thing I've read all week.
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/DSpkYfQCgvlEn9vndoY5AgY79KOsws46.A--#07c17
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June 25, 2011 2:23 PM
I think that the letter you wrote was amazing. 9 year olds shouldn't think they have won a moral victory against adults. Better to teach them to respect others, whatever their beliefs.
My only problem is with some of the insults being thrown at this ham guy. We may not agree with him and his methods, but we should be mature and open minded enough to let him believe what he wants.
I don't believe that god exists, but I don't judge or ridicule those that do. I will not attempt to change their views and i hope that they will not attempt to change mine. True believers in God would not try to change my mind, or tell me that I will burn in Hell if I don't believe.
Anyone that takes pride in manipulating a child like that is clearly worshipping at the altar of himself, and likes the power he thinks it gives him. In my book only 2 kinds of people manipulate children to their way of thinking. One of them is a religious zealot, we all know the other.
I think it's time we all grew up and stopped arguing about wether or not a guy died on a cross 2,000 years ago. We have enough to deal with, and a little unity on this planet would ba a good start.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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June 25, 2011 2:28 PM
We don't give a hoot what Hamikins believes in per se. But he also tries selling his beliefs as fact to schools, churches, and the public. That is why we make fun of him. If he would shut the fuck up, we could ignore him.Your concern is noted, and then filed in the appropriate circular receptacle.
Posted by: Amphiox, OM
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June 25, 2011 2:29 PM
Why don't you go do some research on the history of the manipulative, immoral liar that is Ken Hamm, and then come back here and say this with a straight face?
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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June 25, 2011 2:29 PM
Yahoomess,
It's Hams methods that we object to, not his beliefs. He preys on ignorance and actively works to isolate people from learning. That's what makes him objectionable, the cancerous spreading, not what he believes.
Posted by: Brother Ogvorbis, Apropos of Nada
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June 25, 2011 2:30 PM
Can I, pretty please with sugar on top, move to your world? Please? 'Cause I am sick nigh onto death of godbots trying to witness me -- in person, by mail, by email, via billboard and bumper sticker, and by way of politicking.
Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM
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June 25, 2011 2:32 PM
My only problem is with some of the insults being thrown at this ham guy. We may not agree with him and his methods, but we should be mature and open minded enough to let him believe what he wants.
If only it were that simple.
Ken Ham is not just one person who has idiosyncratic beliefs. He actively works for tax moneys in order to teach children his lies and distortions. He teaches children how to drown out education. He works at making sure that people have the same level of self imposed ignorance that he has.
He deserves all of the scorn and insults thrown his way.
And you have shown that you do not understand the issues at all.
Tone troll.
Posted by: KG
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June 25, 2011 2:44 PM
googlemess@374
Why not, if they really have?
Does it not occur to you that he gets insulted because he's a liar and exploiter of the ignorant, and especially of children? Or that no-one here is advocating forbidding anyone from believing anything?
Posted by: Iain Walker
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June 25, 2011 2:49 PM
billy.einkamerer (#353):
Well, I'd agree that some people are more gullible than others. Subjective standards of proof may vary, but this doesn't mean that rigorous public standards cannot be formulated and applied by a community of investigators, especially public standards designed to minimise subjective bias and error (e.g., the scientific method). Indeed, because applying a standard of proof is a form of rule-following, and because rule-following is necessarily a public practice, I'd argue that for anything to qualify as a standard of proof it must be public and inter-subjective, capable of being checked by others. A purely private standard of proof, one that in principle only you could apply, would be no standard at all.
So you don't get to hide behind subjectivity. Your personal level of proof has to be capable of public analysis and criticism if it is to be taken seriously.
And arguments can in principle be given as to why one or other of them is mistaken (too gullible or too skeptical), or as to why one or other or both is being inconsistent (applying lower or higher standards of proof to the event in question than they would normally apply).
Which generally find the bible wanting in the historical accuracy department.
Not sure which internal inconsistences you're referring to, but if your assumption is that Adam and Eve were the only humans around at the time, and that all living humans are descended from them, then you have a whopping great inconsistency with reality. Biologists can tell whether a species has undergone a genetic bottleneck, and roughly when it occurred. If humans were descended from a single pair around 6,000-10,000 years ago, then this would be apparent in the human genome - human genetic variation would be very much reduced compared to what it actually is.
The idea that the Big Bang originated in a cosmological singularity is, as I understand it, a bit old hat these days. But setting that aside, why do you assume that there was ever "nothing"? Why should "nothing" be the default assumption, rather than "something"? If there is no need for anything to come from "nothing", then your question is moot.
Also, this question has nothing to do with evolution.
Neither the human eye nor unicellular organisms are irreducibly complex. And irreducibly complex systems were predicted as an expected consequence of evolution by mutation and selection by the German geneticist H.R. Muller back in 1918. Irreducible complexity is pretty much what you would expect if a system was fine-tuned over millions of years by a process that adds, duplicates, modifies and subtracts parts and repeatedly filters out the combinations that don't work at every stage.
Mutation, including insertion mutations and duplications, and selection. Plus, as Owlmirror points out, horizontal gene transfer.
But perhaps you'd like to explain what you think the term "information" means here, and how you think it is measured. Because in my experience, most creationists just bandy the term about without having the first idea what they are talking about.
Argument from authority. Since we can give reasons for arguing that they were mistaken on this count, why should we be impressed? It's the the quality of their reasoning that matters, not their historical prestige.
Posted by: serendipitydawg
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June 25, 2011 2:53 PM
Sid Leminov @241,
I'm sorry Sid, if someone claiming pedantry says
it brings out the worst in me because, without evident irony, it looks stupid.
I shall do my best not to ruffle your feathers in future.
/irony
Posted by: raven
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June 25, 2011 2:56 PM
We don't give a rat's ass what Ken Ham believes. Free country and besides, the world is full of kooks and crackpots.
We do care a lot when they try to force their dysfunctional beliefs on the rest of us.
If it was up to Ken Ham, science would be dead and the USA would be a xian fundie dictatorship on its way back to the Dark Ages. And that is just the start. One of the creationist leaders, Tom Willis, seriously advocated herding biologists into slave labor camps and working them to death. We don't much like that idea either.
Posted by: Phalacrocorax, not a particularly smart avian
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June 25, 2011 3:12 PM
Yahoomess (#374) wrote:
Too bad you missed the point of the letter. Especially the part he says: "I think you're off to a great start — being brave enough to ask older people to explain themselves is exactly what you need to do to learn more and more".
Ken Ham is not a hermit in a cave. He is the president of an organization that promotes misconceptions about science. Take a look at his museum. I'm not even sure if he's honest about what he believes.
Unless they think that's what God wants them to do...
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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June 25, 2011 3:55 PM
You obviously have never run into the goddists who I have to deal with. There was one who used to send me Come to Jesus™ emails until I threatened to complain to the company about her misuse of company facilities. I've had several people tell me about Pascal's Wager as if it was something I'd never encountered before. I'm sure many others here can tell you similar stories.
Posted by: Marla Shane
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June 25, 2011 5:41 PM
I read this to my nine year old daughter, Sagan. She listened intently at the beginning, but then started fidgeting toward the part where you're telling Emma to ask the right questions.
But when you assumed that the girl would want to know the answer to the "right" quesiton - how do we know the rock is 3.75 billion years old, my daughter exclaimed "Oh cool!" and I had her full attention again.
She absolutely ate it up. She asked me afterwards if she "would learn this stuff in chemistry or astronomy class?" That's another good question I can't answer!
Thanks P.Z. At least there's one nine year old girl who appreciates your letter (and a mommy).
Posted by: serendipitydawg
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June 25, 2011 5:59 PM
"Each time I give examples in my blog posts of children who have been
influencedindoctrinated by AiG, the atheistsgo ballisticexpress reasonable outrage on their blogs. They hate to read of instances like this. They want to teach these children there is no God and they are just animals in this hopeless and meaningless struggle of this purposeless existence.Praise the Lord, Emma has such a strong foundation in God’s Word and won’t fall for the atheist lies in their attempts to shake their fist at their Creator God."
I clicked the link! I couldn't help it....
Posted by: serendipitydawg
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June 25, 2011 6:01 PM
Premature submission, but you get the point.
That's man's site is creepy, nothing will make me go back.
Posted by: hackenslash
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June 25, 2011 7:15 PM
Only one critique (not a criticism):
This could be worded better for a child. Were I to write this, I would couch it in terms understandable to a 9 year-old.
I do understand that this was not intended for a 9 year-old to read, but for an audience of discerning critical thinkers. It would have more power, in my opinion, even to those of a more critical bent, were it delivered in a manner more palatable to one with a narrower vocabulary.
There is utility in what you have written here, and it constitutes a lesson for us all, but I wonder if it might not have greater impact if written for a 9- or 7- or 5-year-old.
My apologies for being a niggler. This is one of your better posts, but it's the little things that set us apart.
My thanks.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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June 25, 2011 7:23 PM
OK Billy, lets remind you where you are starting from.
Null hypotheses,
Your imaginary (or any) deity doesn't exist.
Your holy book is mythology/fiction
The burden of proof is upon you to prove all allegations.
Ergo
The burden of proof requires conclusive physical evidence, preferably citations to to peer reviewed scientific literature.
Every allegation you make must be verified by as third party citation, with with peer reviewed scientific literature being given the highest regard.
Sites with presuppositions of the babble being inerrant, without citations to the peer reviewed scientific literature that they are correct, are given no regard.
Any cited web site, if they are found wrong in any allegation, are considered wrong in everything until their veracity can by shown by citations to the peer reviewed scientific literature.
Welcome to evidence based science, where your opinions are worthless...
Now, what solid and conclusive physical evidence, such as an eternally burning bush, can you present for your imaginary deity?
Posted by: calilasseia
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June 25, 2011 7:24 PM
The best way of rebutting this nonsense is simple.
We don't have to be there. All we need is for the physical evidence to be generated by the relevant events, and be persistent.
Speaking of physical evidence ... anyone got any for Cap'n Noah's fantasy floating petting zoo? Or any of the other drivel contained in Ham's favourite piece of bedtime mythology?
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 25, 2011 7:31 PM
hackenslash:
What makes you think a 9 year old wouldn't understand the letter? There's not much worse when you're a child than to deal with adults who find it necessary to speak down to you as if you were an idiot.
I would have understood that letter when I was 9 years old. My reading skills and comprehension were tested when I was 10, I was reading at college level. When I came across something I didn't understand, I got out the dictionary, looked things up and did side reading in order to learn more.
Also, see Marla Shane's post @385. Then read the rest of the comments, many by parents of children around Emma's age. There's no complaint that it's too adult for sprogs.
Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe
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June 25, 2011 7:41 PM
wrong. appeals to authority are idiotic in general, and when they're based on nothing other than ageism they're dangerous to the development of children in addition to being idiotic. deference based on nothing other than age is wrong and a form of mindless authoritarianism.Posted by: David Marjanović
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June 25, 2011 7:52 PM
I haven't caught up, I'll try to do that about 10 hours from now. Just this...
...in spades. It cannot be emphasized often enough.
Posted by: MagistraMarla
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June 25, 2011 7:56 PM
What a wonderful post, PZ!
I'm a non-science person myself, and that was the most understandable description of how scientists "date" objects that I have ever seen.
I plan to send this wonderful "letter" of yours to my grandsons - ages 12 and 6. I'm sure that my daughters will appreciate it as an educational tool.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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June 25, 2011 8:00 PM
Few people, even fewer children, object to being talked up to. It's only the insecure who don't want people overestimating their intelligence. And like Caine, I believe I would have understood PZ's letter when I was nine.
Posted by: Amphiox, OM
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June 25, 2011 8:04 PM
I would hazard to guess that many six year olds would have understood the hourglass analogy.
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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June 25, 2011 8:06 PM
I might have objected to someone talking that long without my getting a word in. I might have had trouble keeping quiet at that age*, but there is nothing in that which I would have found challenging conceptually or linguistically at nine.
*I seem to have kept that problem.
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 25, 2011 8:08 PM
Dhorvath, I wouldn't have had trouble keeping quiet and listening, however, the second the hourglass was mentioned, I would have insisted on getting the egg timer from the kitchen.
Posted by: hackenslash
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June 25, 2011 8:10 PM
Well, there were technical terms in there that were not explained. This would have left many adults nonplussed. Perhaps you haven't had much experience of cretinists; I have. Indeed, my experience of this particular class of fuckwit is extensive. Moreover, my critique of the post was nothing to do with the kind of condescension you seem wont to ascribe to me, but more to do with universality, in terms of being more readily understood by a broader audience of that kind of age, which I assume is the motivation behind PZ's post.
Whoopee for you. I have to say that, as a very advanced reader from a much earlier age than you suggest, I wouldn't have understood that letter when I was 9, and I didn't have the disadvantage of having been home-schooled by fuckwits. You were clearly home-schooled by Einstein. Either that, or your comment is as fabricated as your objection. Perhaps I didn't make myself clear enough for one of your clearly superior intellect.
I had meant to add an apology for not reading the rest of the responses to the OP, but I overlooked it. However, there are pertinent points to be made here. How many of those comments were made by professional educators, like myself, or by children of cretinist parents? How many of them are basing their assessment on how well they might have understood it, with no regard to the difference between themselves and their children? Perhaps they are speaking only from personal experience, and not in more general terms? Is it possible that their posts constitute, dare I say it, personal testimony? Remind me again of the amazing value of eyewitness testimony in rigorous discourse...
Now, did you have anything of substance that you wanted to add, or do you really want to spread the contents of your bowels in public, such easy pickings for anybody with a clue?
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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June 25, 2011 8:15 PM
Caine,
I was unruly, even then. We didn't have an egg timer to collect, but I am sure I had several timing minute glasses from different boardgames. I dont know as I would have thought to go get an example though.
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 25, 2011 8:18 PM
hackenslash:
Okay. That's fine. I wouldn't have had a problem with it. The fact that you wouldn't have understood it does not necessitate the assumption that all 9 years old would be the same. I'm simply noting that automatically dumbing things down for sprogs is unnecessary and insulting.
My, my. You're awfully sore over my pointing out that there's no need to talk down to children.
There's a whole internet out there, Cupcake. Go pronounce your outrage.
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 25, 2011 8:23 PM
Dhorvath:
Oh, I remember having timers on several board games now, I had completely forgotten about those.
I would have wanted a timer as I've always loved demonstrations. I'm a visual critter. :)
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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June 25, 2011 8:34 PM
Goodness, gracious, Caine, I guess that's you told off and right smartly too, I might add. Of course the telling off demands that hackenslash has a clue. This requirement has not been demonstrated.
Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem
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June 25, 2011 8:36 PM
If anybody does think they can improve on the letter, have at it:
http://pharyngula.wikia.com/wiki/How_do_you_know_that%3F
Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem
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June 25, 2011 8:40 PM
I suppose if you change the substance of it, you should delete the [[PZ Myers]] from the end.
But if it can be improved, improve it.
Posted by: hackenslash
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June 25, 2011 8:41 PM
Where did I imply any such assumption? I defy you to point it out.
As for your assertion of having no problem with it, I have doubt that your reading comprehension was what you suggest, not least because it is failing you so dismally now, in the face of unambiguous language.
I teach children whose reading comprehension is better than yours, and I know they would have trouble with some of the technical terms laid out in the OP. Perhaps you are comfortable with being liberal with the truth in your posts. I am more comfortable in admitting my shortcomings, not least when they are past shortcomings, and when they are not actually shortcomings, but a product of underexposure to reading material (by which I mean being too young to have read enough), let alone the sheltered reading material of a cretinist.
Not sure which bit of all this is failing to penetrate your purportedly superior intellect (according to you, that is; certainly not purported by the evidence thus far presented).
Sore? Are you possibly making the mistake of equating screwing your nonsense over with emotional content? You flatter yourself. Your opinion is of zero consequence. I'm not sore at all, but I will kick nonsensical bollocks into touch with no mercy every time. I'm renowned for it.
Now who's being condescending? If I were a lesser person (or if we were elsewhere), I'd think up some inventive epithet. As it is, I'll simply expose your ignorant, fallacious bollocks for what it is.
Again, do you have anything of substance, or is it just misrepresentation of others' positions and citations of personal opinions that you have to offer?
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 25, 2011 8:42 PM
'Tis:
Yes indeedy! Hackenslash even went to the trouble of swallowing a thesaurus to do so. I'm so honored.
Well, it seems hackenslash* is a bit slow in that regard. We can't all be quick on the uptake.
*I wouldn't be at all surprised if hackenslash is Arkham, back to attempt wreaking revenge on my hideous superiority.
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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June 25, 2011 8:47 PM
hackenslash,
Would you care to point out what you think is problematic about the letter. I have read it three times now and I stand behind it being well within the my range at nine.
Posted by: John Morales
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June 25, 2011 8:47 PM
[meta]
hackenslash:
Heh.
(Cargo-cult orotundity is amusing)
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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June 25, 2011 8:50 PM
And tpyos to the rescue. Can't be too serious about my editing.
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 25, 2011 8:50 PM
hackenslash:
Oh, do tell, Cupcake. I'm sure we'll all wait with bated breath of your tough guy on the internet tales of bravery and arse kicking!
As for my opinion (that it's unnecessary to talk down to sprogs) being worthless, of zero consequence, yada, yada, yada, why are you still yapping? You're making yourself out to be a liar here,
Arkhamhackenslash.Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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June 25, 2011 8:56 PM
Slammed and patronized simultaneously. Caine, all you need is to be condescended to and you'll have the trifecta.
And the cupcake comes through.
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 25, 2011 8:58 PM
hackenslash, tough guy of the internet:
Cupcake. How about Douchebisquit? I'll happily go with that one.
What is it, exactly, that you think is fallacious about talking down to children is unnecessary and insulting? I'm obviously not the only one who thinks so, others posted that they would had no problem with the letter at 9 years old, either. Once again, the fact that you would not have understood it does not warrant the assumption that all 9 year old sprogs wouldn't have understood it either.
Now, the amount of bile you're spilling isn't warranted by that simple statement. Unless you're Arkham the twit.
Posted by: hackenslash
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June 25, 2011 8:58 PM
hackenslash requires no thesaurus, having a substantial command of his native language. Indeed, it surprises me that somebody who could have understood the full text of the OP at 9 years of age, especially the material on radiometric dating, replete with technical jargon, thinks that I must have 'swallowed a thesaurus' for the sole purpose of responding to his or her guff. Again, you flatter yourself.
Well, given your failure to comprehend that my original post was a mild critique of style, rather than substance, perhaps the lassitude in uptake is not mine, but your own. Again, I invite you to read for comprehension.
I have no idea who 'Arkham' is, but my own history is a matter of record. Perhaps you would like to discuss this with Calilasseia, who will, no doubt, tell you that I am not this person of whom you speak, and also not as 'slow' as you might suggest. Indeed, PZ himself may remember some of the content I have delivered elsewhere, generally more robust than your scatter-gun testimonies and generalisations.
As for your superiority, let me know when it arrives, and I'll give that as good a kicking as I have your inane waffle.
Posted by: Owlmirror
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June 25, 2011 9:00 PM
How old are these alleged children that you allegedly teach?
I think PZ goes out of his way to try to explain things as simply as possible.
But, here's a chance for you to make the effort to improve it:
Offer it to your class, and get feedback from them on what, if anything, they find hard to understand. Ask them to underline hard words, and confusing paragraphs -- and ask them to explain what they think it means in their own words.
Then e-mail PZ their comments and questions they ask.
How hard would that be?
I think that if they understand the ideas, even if they don't understand some of the words, the letter is a (qualified) success.
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 25, 2011 9:05 PM
'Tis:
I know! What's my prize?
Gad, some people. Hackenslash seems to be a rather confused cupcake, as xe wouldn't have understood the letter when he was 9, but was reading at a very advanced level from a young age! Golly. Perhaps Cupcake didn't do so well on the comprehension part of reading.
Oh, that reminds me. What would you recommend as a good beginning primer on economics? (Keeping in mind that I won't always have you handy to pick your brain and ask questions.)
Posted by: hackenslash
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June 25, 2011 9:07 PM
That's interesting...
Thanks for linking me to that explanation of 'cupcake', Caine. I think you might want to read that yourself, fucko, because I see no example of myself having hit any of the markers there, but you have hit several.
Of course, I am uninitiated, so I may have missed some nuance that you are all familiar with. Educate me.
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 25, 2011 9:09 PM
Owlmirror:
When I was a sproglet, I was allowed to read anything I liked, as long as I had a notebook, pen and dictionary close by. I was taught to write down any unfamiliar words, look them up, then find a way to use them in a conversation within a week.
Posted by: PZ Myers
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June 25, 2011 9:13 PM
I'm not interested in vague criticisms that the language is too hard for a 9 year old -- as I wrote up there, this is what I would say to the kid. If I sail over their head, that's my problem.
I'm also not interested in criticisms of the critics. It's all rather pointless. I said what I said, I would not expect that anyone else would say exactly the same thing. So?
If somebody finds this one falls short, fine, I'm not worried about it: go write a better one. I'm not stopping you. But if you waste all your time irrelevantly fussing over my version, you won't get it done.
Posted by: hackenslash
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June 25, 2011 9:17 PM
I teach ages from 4 to 16.
I do too. Perhaps you also failed to read my first post. It seems that some here are very quick to jump to PZ's defence, when it isn't actually warranted. I did say it was a critique, not a criticism. That seems to have been lost on all you cupcakes (love that; I'm keeping it).
Fuck me, finally a response that is actually worth something. I'm sure PZ would approve!
Better still. I like it a lot.
I already think the letter is a success. Perhaps you missed the bit where I said that this was one of PZ's better posts.
Fuck me, but some people around here really need to learn to fucking read for comprehension.
PZ, you need to work on this; not the letter, but the reading comprehension of your readers.
Posted by: hackenslash
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June 25, 2011 9:21 PM
Good enough for me.
Posted by: Lord Setar
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June 25, 2011 9:21 PM
hackenslash #418:
Why is it considered acceptable to simply reverse the tactic and say "well I know you are, but what am I"? Surely you could not at least explain which markers Caine has hit, if Caine has indeed hit any...
Posted by: calilasseia
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June 25, 2011 9:21 PM
Since this topic has now been derailed into the matter of how best to explain complex concepts to children, is anyone up for the contest of improving upon PZ's original?
Posted by: hackenslash
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June 25, 2011 9:21 PM
Good enough for me.
Posted by: Patricia, OM
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June 25, 2011 9:23 PM
Thank you for your concern.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
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June 25, 2011 9:25 PM
Great advice. I'm sure he'll get right on it.
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 25, 2011 9:25 PM
Lord Setar:
All of them, I'm sure. It's really not important, and I'll accede to PZ's wishes and shut up. Honestly, I didn't think pointing out that it's unnecessary to condescend to sprogs that big of a deal. Apparently, it is a massive deal. Heh.
I'll just wait for 'Tis to hit me with a nice selection of bookses.
Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM
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June 25, 2011 9:29 PM
A literacy test in order to comment on a blog sounds like a great idea.
Posted by: PZ Myers
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June 25, 2011 9:31 PM
Oh, really? How do you propose that I work on readers' reading comprehension? Is this another of those vaguely handwavey suggestions to improve matters that you don't bother to expand upon?
I think the problem here is that you rather pompously set yourself up as better at writing than everyone here, yet have given no bona fides; you have no history here, you're using a pseudonym with no link back to your presumably beautifully written blog, and your criticisms are so non-specific that there is no way to use them to improve the letter...which does make one suspicious of your claim to be a teacher.
You say it is "replete with technical jargon", which is an odd claim -- it's almost entirely jargon-free. There is one exception, that I consciously made: I used the word "isotope", when I'd been considering using a simpler word, like "form". It's an old trick I like to use in discussions, to drop in one technical term that my audience might not be familiar with, but in a context where the meaning ought to be decipherable. The test is to see whether they're paying attention and are alert enough to ask a question.
Do you know the meaning of the word "replete"?
Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe
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June 25, 2011 9:32 PM
i re-read the letter specifically with the thought in mind to see if any of the words would have been too difficult to understand at 9; the names of some of the elements, plus the word "isotope" would probably be the only troublesome ones.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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June 25, 2011 9:32 PM
Fuckenslash, many of us here read well above their alleged reading age. Remember you are dealing with very smart folks who post here regularly. I was reading at high school level in elementary school. So, take some advice. Fuck off loser...
Posted by: Patricia, OM
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June 25, 2011 9:34 PM
Caine - I just finished why we believe in god (s) A Concise Guide To The Science Of Faith by J. Anderson Thompson, Jr., MD. Pretty good in my opinion.
Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe
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June 25, 2011 9:35 PM
ok, now my post is just funny, since it confirms what PZ was going for :-p
and now I'm really going to try to get some work done.
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 25, 2011 9:38 PM
Patricia, that sounds like an interesting read, I've put it on my book list, thank you. I am going to try and grok economics better, so I'm looking to 'Tis to guide me in some reading matter.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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June 25, 2011 9:49 PM
An inane argument from "authority" I presume. *back to waiting for strawberry shortcake (Redhead's making coffee for herself), after planned over shrimp creole*Posted by: coffeycake
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June 25, 2011 9:57 PM
If I were teaching this letter or reading it to a child - say, my niece, who just turned ten - and she had questions about the word "isotope" or any of the other seemingly difficult words in the letter, I'd have smiled and said, "Let's look it up!" and gotten out a dictionary. Then I'd have asked her what she thought the letter meant once we were done reading it. We'd have had a nice conversation about what she got out of it and both of our opinions. Then we probably would have drafted a nice thank-you letter in response, which would have included any questions she may have had that I couldn't answer.
This is not too difficult for a nine-year-old to understand, especially if said nine-year-old has a caring parent or teacher on hand to help. I know I'm late to the party, but as a teacher-in-training, I have to say that many people don't give kids enough credit for what they can and can't understand. Teach them to be self-sufficient by not spoon-feeding them all the answers. Teach them that it's okay not to have all of the answers as long as they're willing to learn - that's what this letter does, and so I think it's successful.
So, for what it's worth, PZ, I liked this post very much. :-)
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 25, 2011 10:01 PM
coffeycake:
Eloquently stated and I agree 100%. You're going to be a good teacher.
Posted by: Owlmirror
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June 25, 2011 10:18 PM
Guilty as charged.
Actually, the change in style between that comment, and the subsequent ones, was sufficiently large that I missed that they were by the same commenter.
As noted, the 'nym is unfamiliar, and that unfamiliarity led to the the lack of recognition in the later comments.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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June 25, 2011 10:32 PM
Over a year ago I recommended a list of basic economics books to Walton. A few months ago I gave a similar list to Mattir. Naturally I can't find either of them.
Recently I came across Partha Dasgupta's Economics: A Very Short Introduction. I was impressed by it. It's not a textbook but rather a discussion of how economics works in different settings. Several of the chapters compare how Becky, who lives in an affluent American suburb, and Desta, the daughter of Ethiopian farmers, live and why they live in those ways. There's some math involved but nothing too strenuous. I recommend Dasgupta's book as a basic economics book for the non-economist.
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 25, 2011 10:37 PM
'Tis, thank you, that sounds exactly like what I need. I respond well to that type of example and teaching. I'm off to locate it and put it on the list for then next book purchase.
Posted by: Forbidden Snowflake
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June 26, 2011 1:42 AM
Hey, Billy:
Look at that! It seems that kind ol' Ken has thoughtfully provided us with a prime example of him lying shortly after you asked your question! Now, isn't that gracious of him?
Posted by: StevoR
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June 26, 2011 3:45 AM
@284.David Marjanović | June 24, 2011 11:32 AM :
Fish homes maybe? ;-)
Posted by: jaybgee
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June 26, 2011 3:50 AM
You know, people say that my hamburger comes from a cow, but were they there?
Posted by: StevoR
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June 26, 2011 3:56 AM
@284.David Marjanović | June 24, 2011 11:32 AM :
I coul be wrong but I'm fairly sure that supernovae cretae uranium and all of the other elements higher than iron.
Not in rock form but as atoms or something that later get accreted into planetesimals, I think?
Stellar nucleosynthesis creates the elements up to iron and then the (?)-process in the supernovae shockwave / explosion creates all the rest methinks. If I'm not mistaken which is always a possibility, natch!
Posted by: laania
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June 26, 2011 4:56 AM
Delurking to say, like so many above, that this is probably my favourite of your posts so far. I read your blog pretty much every day but don't often feel the need to comment. It does make me sad to think that the young girl in question might never read this, or learn about the wonderful things in your letter.
And agree with with Carlie at #4 that you should definitely write a kids book!!
Posted by: PennyUk
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June 26, 2011 5:03 AM
Belief in Creationism is thankfully very rare in the UK. When Darwin published The Origin of Species it caused little controversy within the Church of England. By then it was already accepted that Genesis was allegorical and not taken literally.
The question "were you there" is perplexing. Museums are full of items older than 6,000 years. Weren't the Clovis peoples in the US over 10,000 years ago?
Posted by: David Marjanović
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June 26, 2011 6:54 AM
Dude...
The Bible contradicts itself even on what is necessary and what is sufficient to be saved.
Dare you click here and read?
...what?
You know that place in the Bible where Jesus tells his disciples to go forth and convert all peoples, don't you?
The fewer religious people who kill each other over things such as whether or not a guy died on a cross 2,000 years ago, the better, then. Don't you think?
Exactly. The atoms freeze out of the gas one by one; there's little chance for an argon atom to get trapped during such a process.
Yes.
Posted by: KG
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June 26, 2011 6:57 AM
Not that rare. I saw a poll result recently with 17% rejecting evolution. (And no, before someone claims it, this 17% are not all, or even mostly, Muslims. Muslim population at present is about 3% of the total, so even if they were all creationists, which I know they are not, they would still be a minority among the rejectionists.)
Posted by: Walton, Marquis of Carabas
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June 26, 2011 7:06 AM
This. The idea that kids should "defer" to adults based only on age, and that they should be punished for arguing with adults and questioning those who claim "authority", is toxic authoritarianism. That's the problem I have with formal schooling, in its traditional form.
Posted by: David Marjanović
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June 26, 2011 7:11 AM
Only one of the many teachers I ever had had a serious problem with me correcting them.
:-)
Posted by: MetzO'Magic
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June 26, 2011 10:08 AM
Yeah, there's always that little seed of doubt that was sowed by Soylent Green.
Posted by: Markita Lynda: Healthcare is a damn right
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June 26, 2011 1:58 PM
PZ, I really hope that Emma B. gets word back to you some day with the news that your letter changed her life for the better.
Posted by: gsantostasi
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June 26, 2011 2:23 PM
Dr. Myers,
Very good job. I have one compliment for you: I wish I had a teacher like you when I was a kid. Thank you for your letter. I hope Emma reads it.
Giovanni Santostasi
Posted by: Amphiox, OM
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June 26, 2011 2:28 PM
Well, here's the thing. A supernova is actually a process not an event. There's the core collapse, the rebound that blows up the star's outer layers, followed by the rapid expansion of those expelled layers, the collision of the shockwave with other shells of gas and debris expelled earlier in the star's late evolution, and so on. During this process, atoms heavier than iron are formed by fusion, scattered, and condensed into dust particles. Dust particles are basically very small rocks.
At what point in this process is the exploding star no longer a supernova, but a supernova remnant is a matter of semantics (I'm not even sure if it is precisely defined). At the very least, I think that most people would continue to call it a supernova so long as initial increase in brightness remains observable - and it can take many months for the supernova to fade back to its pre-explosion level of brightness.
So yes, supernovae do form rocks.
Posted by: Giliell, connaiseuse des choses bonnes
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June 26, 2011 4:48 PM
Coming very late to the party:
Yes, please
Posted by: dwight007
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June 26, 2011 6:01 PM
Ham is a classic douchebag...reading the comments of his followers on Facebook is disturbing..who are these people?..seems like they live under rocks like the guy in the geico commercial..also interesting how he deletes any dissenting comments within 5-10 minutes of posting..cheers to those who 'liked" his page in order to comment, i couldnt bring myself to like his page for even 5 minutes, but congrats to those who did..keep up the good work
Posted by: brnofeathers
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June 26, 2011 7:55 PM
PZ, your letter to Emma is a beautiful indicator of your excellence and effectiveness as a science educator. I am a 55-year-old electrical engineer who is currently working on transitioning to teaching math or science to high school students. With your permission, I would be proud to use this letter as part of my curriculum. Thanks.
Posted by: Pacal
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June 26, 2011 10:03 PM
Love the letter!!
Posted by: joshnankivel
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June 26, 2011 10:22 PM
PZ, as a fellow blogger, I absolutely LOVE that your link to Ham's site has the link text "crowing over fooling a child".
It makes me think, what if more rational bloggers optimized their posts to target keyword searches that someone riding the fence on a topic would likely put into Google? Are there important questions that rational bloggers should be ranking highly for, but which religionists have a monopoly on? I may do some research on that topic...
(I just started a blog at http://iamSkeptic.com but I've been blogging for my profession over 5 years)
Posted by: Marcel G
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June 27, 2011 8:58 AM
Incredible letter. Every awesome thing about it (and about you for writing it) was mentioned in the previous posts and there's not much left to add. Let this comment be another testament to its awesomeness.
o/
Posted by: onth3outsidecorner
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June 27, 2011 9:27 AM
Amazing PZ, thank you for writing this. I would like to add a link in a compairison article for my blog with the video posted a while back about some indoctrination of kids shouting back 'where you there?'
I'm going to be honest, it's hard to start out as a blogger when such great stuff is coming out by people like you already! All I want to do is link to my betters, but that's no way to become better!
Thanks again for such a wonderful response to Emma.
Posted by: billy.einkamerer
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June 27, 2011 1:30 PM
Iain Walker, KG, Dhorvath, Owlmirror and the rest;
Thanks for taking the time to address my many questions, and help correct flaws that I currently have in understanding the scientific method. Some of you have pointed out some straw man arguments - seriously, that was not my intention, and I've taken your correction and am addressing how I see those things so that I don't misrepresent them in future.
I was chatting to an atheist/evolutionist friend of mine a few minutes back, and we both agree that creationist scientists will severely help their case and rep by contributing to science at large instead of moaning, misleading and being underhanded. I would hope that there are many out there who are already doing this. :)
I enjoy these kinds of discussion, because I learn a lot, and realize how little in fact I know on the subjects we discussed. I'm sorry if I've offended true scientists here by misrepresenting your field or overly simplifying it.
Thanks again, I've enjoyed this for the most part..
Billy
Posted by: Owlmirror
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June 27, 2011 2:23 PM
@billy.einkamerer @#463:
Thanks for returning and acknowledging -- but it would be nice if you answered some of the questions to you above.
But I can understand if you would prefer to think about them some more.
Posted by: David Marjanović
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June 27, 2011 6:14 PM
Unfortunately, the grand total is zero.
All seconded!
Posted by: mygoldilocks
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June 27, 2011 11:53 PM
I shared it with all my friends and relatives. Everyone of them were touched by this beautiful letter. To my surprise some of them didn't know that it was that old and they started asking questions! and it lead to a long discussion about the age of the earth, the universe and everything.. it was very enlightening..
PZ please write a book for the kids.
Posted by: mygoldilocks
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June 27, 2011 11:56 PM
I shared it with all my friends and relatives. Everyone of them were touched by this beautiful letter. To my surprise some of them didn't know that it was that old and they started asking questions! and it lead to a long discussion about the age of the earth, the universe and everything.. it was very enlightening..
PZ please write a book for the kids.
Posted by: hbriem
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June 30, 2011 2:17 PM
I have read your blog for a long time and you've written many a good one, PZ.
I have to say though, that this one is most unusually excellent!
Posted by: scotslawstudent.com
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July 17, 2011 6:52 PM
First off, that is a wonderful piece of highly accessible popular science writing. It's not easy to write so simply so huge congratulations on doing it.
To foolish-rain: Yeah, it's very nice to think that people who think differently to you are going to crash out and live in dumpsters but, frankly, it doesn't matter what you believe. The various circumstances where it actually matters if you believe in a deity or not can be written on the back of a stamp, and most them happen after you die.
"Were you there?" is a guy who cares a little too much about the issue trying to score points by asking ridiculous questions that he already knows the answer to. It doesn't really matter to him if evolution is real, God is real, the Earth is old, the Earth is flat or anything. He's not flipping burgers and his world looks the same if God's in it or not but he gets to think he's fighting NASA this way.
It's ego but also it's piddlingly insignificant but "were you there?" is not going to affect how kids do in life. On the other hand it might make them a bit boring at parties, to be fair.
Posted by: Chaos Cryptic
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July 17, 2011 7:13 PM
Yeah, not having a grasp on reality and science isn't going to affect kids' future career options at all. *rolleyes*Posted by: thedaver64
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July 21, 2011 12:17 PM
de-lurking to say this is really really good. bravo.
Posted by: scotslawstudent.com
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August 2, 2011 9:39 AM
@Classical Cipher,
Not so much. It's surprisingly easy to get through an entire career in many fields without the age of the Earth ever coming up.