Fighting for your theistic delusion

As atheists we like to point out to theist that their beliefs are completely irrational and are not based on any known facts. In fact as I have noted before theism is all in fact like a big conspiracy theory, yet most theists refuse to acknowledge this. So I though I would try unpack this again in a logical step by step manner.

So here is my correlation between Christianity and Conspiracy Theories.
1) Decide what you believe, don't believe what the facts say.
i.e. 9/11 was an inside job or Jesus was resurrected.
2) Go make illogical links.
i.e. Bin Laden was a CIA agent or The tomb is empty and that was where Jesus was buried.
3) Find evidence that supports your claim, and remember it can be circular and preferably by non-authorities as authorities are always evil.
i.e. Alex Jones wrote it and so it must be true even though it disagrees with 99.9 % of other reports or Its in the Bible and the Bible is real even though archeology does not agree with it.
4) When confronted with facts shout as loud as possible.
i.e. ITS CLEAR YOU ARE WORKING FOR THE ORGANIZATION I THINK IS BAD or YOU JUST HATE GOD BECAUSE YOU WANT TO SIN.

At about 3:45in the 10 minute clip below you will hear exactly what theists sound like to me. Oh and trust me its worth it, as Alex Jones really gets handed logic and rationality and he absolutely loses it. This is a perfect example of the irrational thought held by theists.

I really sometimes want to give up, as this is what the fight is like. Its rational thought fighting irrational stupidity. Lets try make this a positive 2015 and discard irrational thought.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE.

Its okay to be wrong

When I think about what I want to write in this post, it seems that I surely must have  written this post at least a million times either in my mind or in comments and blogs. So, if you feel you have heard this from me before, maybe you have.

In a nutshell, no one likes to be wrong. Be you an atheist, theist, 9/11 truther, etc. However, today his post is dedicated towards fellow atheists. This not wanting to be wrong effect is really strange coming from atheists, as we are meant to be skeptics. Yet atheists are some of the hardest headed people I know. They truly refuse to budge. Before you point out the obvious, I know I am guilty of this too but I do try my best to be skeptical and in fact I have said I was wrong on more than one occasion when shown the facts. I will go on record further to say I also was wrong to ban one religious  commentator on my blog who I thought was a troll. The initial ban of this person was due to their comments  leading to a lot of ridiculous comment fights which seemed pointless and they were. However, it turns out the people I should have banned were the atheists  (the real trolls in this situation) that kept the in fighting going as they really did not have much constructive criticism otherwise. So, I was wrong. See its really not that hard to say.

We as atheists, we are quick to criticize theists for holding ridiculous ideas about Jesus, Muhammad, Allah, pink unicorns, Buddha and the list goes on. Yet, when we feel we are right and social justice is on our side we don't want to change our opinions. Put more simply, if you are a male like me, you don't want to sound like a chauvinist or racist. But, this is not how skepticism works, skepticism follows the facts and if people call you a chauvinist or a racist for following the facts, then they are the idiots and not you. Some obvious examples that have occurred recently which have resulted in people not being able to focus skeptically, are issues such as Michael Brown or the hollaback campaign. Or should I say that people seem to think these issue are simple race and sex issues when this has clearly been shown to be wrong.

Lastly, remember you are not alone, even scientists do not like to be wrong. But that is why the peer review process exists, to make sure that only the correct information gets printed. Follow the facts and be prepared to say, "I was wrong."

An idea for the Pakistani government to embrace

There is no such thing as moderate Islam. As I have pointed out multiple times before on this blog, the idea of moderate Islam is a sick inside joke. With this in mind I thought I would present a novel solution to most of the problems in Pakistan. So if anyone from the Pakistani government is reading this, take this to your president and parliament ASAP.

The solution is simple:

Ban Islam.

Yes, I know you may  not be rocked to the core of your being right now. However, lets be realistic about where all the violence in Pakistan is coming from. Lets be realistic and look at what is the problem that is driving against social reform such as women getting an education. What is the problem in Kashmir? What is the problem along the Afghanistan/Iran borders? With very minimal effort, you will see that one of the major, if not the major problem is that little insignificant belief in Allah and what is written in the Koran as law. Now at first take, it may not seem insignificant as so many people believe this bullshit, but it is insignificant as it is not true.

There is nothing accurate in the Koran. There is nothing scientific in the Koran. For example, there is nothing accurate in believing women are half a man. If you believe this, then you are retarded, or have some serious mental problems. Additionally, there is nothing good in wanting to kill people that want to disagree with you and draw a picture of a person called Muhammad. As you can see from these mild examples, that the belief in Allah is destroying your country and there is a very simplistic answer to this all.

Lastly, yes I know this idea is absurd as the Pakistani Government is run by Muslims. They will never want to get rid of their money and their religion. After all banning Islam would mean they have to give up both supporting extremism and their loyal voting base.

Merry Christmas to all

To all those fine people that read this blog either with rage in their eyes or nods of agreeement, I am hoping more with rage in their eyes, I want to say to you all.

Have a Merry Christmas and a fantastic New Year! If you feel insulated by this well, to you I say bah humbug and Merry Christmas.

Moderate Islam in Australia - all sick irony intended

The recent hostage crisis in Sydney, Australia shows the face of Islam for what it truly is. Its a barbaric religion that allows the so called extremists to get away with their terrorism, while the so called moderates do not bat an eyelid.

 

 (Source)

In fact I have heard from a Muslim that he agrees with what the Taliban does along the Afghanistan and Pakistan border, although he himself is not that type of person. Granted one person does not make an analysis set, but it seems that this type of opinion is not isolated. Let me be clear here, I am not calling for the mass extinction of every Muslim. I am calling for the mass extinction of a religion that teaches an ideology that has left many people dead in the name of Allah and their pedophile prophet Muhammad.

So why are so called moderate Muslims so scared to confront the so called extremists and actually speak up against the atrocities. Its simple, they can't as if they do they are going against their holy Koran and that would mean they are infidels. Just like the stupid Christians cannot accept that two men or women can have a very happy homosexual sex life and relationship. Both of these religions are based on books that were written by people who lived in a day and age when slavery, public executions and other barbaric practices were common place. The question rather should be, should we accept anything better form these fools?

Religion needs to die. If it does not die its going to carry on killing innocent people that have nothing to do with it. If you disagree then you need to wake up.

Lastly, I am so glad that Man Haron Monis is dead. To the tactical unit who got rid of this shit stain from the earth I applaud you. May your grave get pissed on everyday Man Haron Monis. This is what a shit stain looks like.

(Source)

How to be an idiot and a freedom lover at the same time

I am not sure how this happened, probably because I listen to the fantasy mind of Alex Jones for entertainment. But I came across this video on Youtube by a libertarian/anarchist group called  Freedom from Government, and I believe it shows you how to act like an idiot.

These people live on a cloud of illusion. If police did not care about anything what would happen? If you honestly think people can police themselves? Then, I present the following to you: if people could police themselves there would be no theft, there would be no rape, there would be no crime, ever. So does this happen? Easy answer, No! The facts are, that if people could police themselves there would be zero crime and then police would be redundant. However, this is clearly not the case.

All the police were doing in these video clips was asking questions. Wake up you idiots, its just questions and its acceptable. Just as I may ask someone I see walking around in my research building who they are and what are they looking for. By being evasive, you are sowing doubt in the mind of someone that is just doing there job.

Since the dawn of mankind we have slowly been progressing from hunter gather groups, to communal living, to cities, to states etc. The laws these people want, are the laws of the past, they are the laws from the bloodiest times in human civilization. How can anyone in their right mind want to regress instead of advance. There are other primates that still live in communal groups, and I have included a picture below.

(Source)

The best part is that they use the preamble for the United States Declaration of Independence on their Youtube account "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. " Creator? What creator prove the existenceof your creator before you say something idiotic. Just further evidence that these people need to grow up and stop acting like children.

Remember, its very simple. If someone asks you a question, its not that difficult to answer. Imagine going to a job interview and not answering questions. Would you get the job?

xxxx
And now I really need to start writing more about atheism and religion as a pest to society.

Once upon a time their was a riot due to the death of an innocent person....

Once upon a time their was a riot due to the death of an innocent person called Mark Duggan, these riots were called the 2011 England riots and started in London Tottenham where Duggan lived. Duggan got killed by police officers during an operation where they believed he was involved in planning an attack as well as buying illegal weapons.

These riot ended in looting, burning of cars, more deaths etc etc. Look at the video belowfor some of the riot action.

Anyway turns out that Duggan was not as innocent as his family and everyone claimed to be. In fact he had illegally bought a gun, and was been monitored by the police for some time. This is besides been arrested and investigated for murder and attempted murder. Oh and he was also convicted for handling stolen goods and smoking marijuana. So it turns out the sweet innocent boy was not so sweet and innocent, so much so that the police got cleared and the killing was deemed lawful.

When I first heard this news, I was outraged then I heard the evidence and I changed my mind. Same thing with Michael Brown at first I was outraged, but then I heard the evidence.

BTW, here is some evidence about number one star witness who said Michael Brown had his hands up then said in fact thats not true, he also said Brown assaulted or had an altercation with police officer Wilson (see 1:00 in the video below).

And then you get people saying stuff like "The most common misconception I’m hearing is that Mike Brown was significantly larger than Officer Wilson. This is incorrect. On page 198 of the official grand jury transcript, you can see that Officer Wilson testifies he is 6 ft 4 and weighs 210 lbs"
No! Brown was 292 lbs, that is a back street boy larger than Officer Wilson.

How about we listen to the police officer and give him a chance. After all it seems that he was a well trained cop, and is actually upset about what is happening in Ferguson. He thinks the riots are no good for the community.

Lastly, even if everything I have written is wrong. Even if the grand jury and the police are lying. To go running around looting, burning stuff down in good old riot fun is unacceptable for people that are meant to be taking the moral high road. Its disgusting behavior by idiots that can't think. Just go home and let justice serve its course.

Alchol and its role in evolution

Recently, there was a very interesting article published in PNAS entitled "Hominids adapted to metabolize ethanol long before human-directed fermentation". In a nutshell this article details the use and evolution of the ADH4 enzyme in the metabolism of alcohol. Interestingly, this enzyme is also important in the metabolism of Vitamin A. What the authors found was actually very impressive in that they showed this enzyme is present in the other apes as well, however it is not as effective at metabolizing alcohol as it is in humans. Then by going back into the fossil record the showed that this enzyme in humans became more active at metabolizing alcohol about 10 million years ago.

This is fascinating, as it is around that time when our ancestors are to believed to have moved from the trees into the plains. The authors believe that the mutation that occurred to create a more efficient ADH4 enzyme was beneficial to these ancestors as they were able to metabolize the alcohol that would naturally occur in fallen fruit. By being able to do this, our ancestral humans would have not being drunk and as such had an evolutionary advantage.This change in environment lead us eventually to walking upright and becoming who we are today awesome apes that can read, type and understand.

Well unless you are a creationist.Apparently, if you are a creationist this article means that we are evolved to be drunks.

Some times my palm just explodes through the back of my head.

Heavy Metal listening for your everyday Christian

In the past, I have blogged about heavy metal and the so called satanic messages it is meant to be indoctrinating children with. In fact it still amuses me that some people will not listen to certain types of music as these bands are meant to be associated with (add other deity here) and (add other deity here) worship. However, Satan is usually the god associated with heavy metal for some absurd reason. So I thought I would present a list of Heavy Metal/Hard Rock groups or acts that any Christian can freely listen to as these acts are associated with God loving, Jesus praising members or lead members.

In no particular order I give you:
1)Megadeth

 Thats right, Dave Mustaine is a Christian that said he also listens to Alex Jones.

2) Korn

 Both Brian "Head" Welch and Reginald "Fieldy" Arvizu are Christians

3) Alice Cooper

 Vincent Damon Furnier aka Alice, is a Christian.

There you have it, three great bands to enjoy when you need a bit of heavy metal release and don't want to be selling your soul to another god that does no exist.

Yes, this post is for my amusement and to help some Christians out there enjoy god music guilt free.

Michael Shermer rape allegations versus the sceptic

I have never given the rape allegations against Michael Shermer much thought really. The main reason I have never bothered is simple really, the first time I heard about it was from a quote by PZ Meyers @ Freethoughtblogs and some other quotes from the SkepChicks, and to be honest, I don't trust these groups as reliable sources. However, this idea/slander/allegation has been gaining traction in some parts of the atheist/skeptic community with quotes like "regarding Michael Shermer’s rape of a drunk woman and his subsequent protection by many of the most powerful and influential men in the atheist movement". So I thought, hey why don't we do what everybody should do when presented with claims like this, and lets go look at the evidence.

Full disclosure: I do not have access to any police reports etc. So I have to base my views on the publicly available evidence.

First I decided to do what anyone would do, I went to Google and typed in "Michael Shermer rape" and then....... I pressed the news button after all this is usually better than trusting some blog which is after all just an opinion. Yes, this is my opinion!

Needless to say, I found zero news articles (a few opinion pieces) detailing any such events. This was strange, as this is not what one would expect when such serious allegation are being thrown around. Remember that guy called Mike Tyson and his rape conviction, try typing that into Google and you will find tons of references to his conviction. So where is this all coming from? Why are people saying this is true when there is no evidence? Why should I trust one person over another person, are we not told to not believe personal testimony as it is unreliable?

I am sorry, this is not skepticism. Call me a chauvinist if you want, but the facts show that these are baseless accusations and they deserve to be discredited just as any other baseless accusation or belief.

A peer review laugh

As I have been talking about peer review recently and how it works and why it works. I thought I would give the peer review process a bit of a ribbing.

Now, it is true as I have noted that at times incorrect views or incorrect interpretations may be published in peer reviewed journals. In fact some really important papers have been retracted by the authors for making mistakes which reviewers (and they) did not notice until a year or two later. So bearing that in mind, this really made me laugh.

 (Source)

But to bring it back to how science works. This line has now been removed and if you have access you can see that science and peer review and post peer review does work.

This was and is funny, as it shows scientists are human. But more importantly, again it shows that the scientific method works.

Published peer reviewd ID manuscripts?

 So I found a page on one of the countless pesudo-science webpages for creationism on the Internet which claimed that there are multiple peer reviewed scientific articles published which support  intelligent design. I was astonished as I am not aware of any peer reviewed intelligent design manuscripts except in those creationism journals who are owned and run by creationist organizations and have no impact factor and are not scientifically accredited.

This claim was even more astounding as they claim that these articles are published in scientific journals such as "Protein Science, Journal of Molecular Biology, Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling, Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics, Quarterly Review of Biology, Cell Biology International, Rivista di Biologia / Biology Forum, Physics of Life Reviews, Quarterly Review of Biology, Annual Review of Genetics, and many others". Needless to say I decided to investigate a little as I really do not want to trust some pseudo science website, and who knows maybe evolution has been wrong all along.

My mission was to open the articles that the website highlighted as important papers and then press "Ctrl+F" to search for the phrase intelligent design. After all if something is supportive of intelligent design you would at least expect the phrase intelligent design. Here are the results and the number of hits listed in [brackets].

Stephen C. Meyer, “The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories,” Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, Vol. 117(2):213-239 (2004) [1 hit, which lead to a massive controversy and editorial staff getting fired, also this is a literature review and not a scientific research paper.]

Michael J. Behe, “Experimental Evolution, Loss-of-Function Mutations, and ‘The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution,’” The Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 85(4):1-27 (December 2010). [0  hits]

Douglas D. Axe, “Estimating the Prevalence of Protein Sequences Adopting Functional Enzyme Folds,” Journal of Molecular Biology, Vol. 341:1295–1315 (2004). [0 hits]

Michael Behe and David W. Snoke, “Simulating evolution by gene duplication of protein features that require multiple amino acid residues,” Protein Science, Vol. 13 (2004).[0 hits]

William A. Dembski and Robert J. Marks II, “The Search for a Search: Measuring the Information Cost of Higher Level Search,” Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics, Vol. 14 (5):475-486 (2010). [0 hits]

Ann K. Gauger and Douglas D. Axe, “The Evolutionary Accessibility of New Enzyme Functions: A Case Study from the Biotin Pathway,” BIO-Complexity, Vol. 2011(1) (2011).[0 hits]

Ann K. Gauger, Stephanie Ebnet, Pamela F. Fahey, and Ralph Seelke, “Reductive Evolution Can Prevent Populations from Taking Simple Adaptive Paths to High Fitness,” BIO-Complexity, Vol. 2010 (2) (2010). [0 hits]

Vladimir I. shCherbak and Maxim A. Makukov, “The ‘Wow! Signal’ of the terrestrial genetic code,” Icarus, Vol. 224 (1): 228-242 (May, 2013). [0 hits]

Joseph A. Kuhn, “Dissecting Darwinism,” Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, Vol. 25(1): 41-47 (2012). [0 hits]

Winston Ewert, William A. Dembski, and Robert J. Marks II, “Evolutionary Synthesis of Nand Logic: Dissecting a Digital Organism,” Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, pp. 3047-3053 (October, 2009). [0 hits]

Douglas D. Axe, Brendan W. Dixon, Philip Lu, “Stylus: A System for Evolutionary Experimentation Based on a Protein/Proteome Model with Non-Arbitrary Functional Constraints,” PLoS One, Vol. 3(6):e2246 (June 2008). [0 hits]

Kirk K. Durston, David K. Y. Chiu, David L. Abel, Jack T. Trevors, “Measuring the functional sequence complexity of proteins,” Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling, Vol. 4:47 (2007).[0 hits]

Frank J. Tipler, “Intelligent Life in Cosmology,” International Journal of Astrobiology, Vol. 2(2): 141-148 (2003).[0 hits]

Michael J. Denton, Craig J. Marshall, and Michael Legge, “The Protein Folds as Platonic Forms: New Support for the pre-Darwinian Conception of Evolution by Natural Law,” Journal of Theoretical Biology, Vol. 219: 325-342 (2002).[0 hits]


A.C. McIntosh, “Evidence of design in bird feathers and avian respiration,” International Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics, Vol. 4(2):154–169 (2009). [0 hits]

Douglas D. Axe, “Extreme Functional Sensitivity to Conservative Amino Acid Changes on Enzyme Exteriors,” Journal of Molecular Biology, Vol. 301:585-595 (2000). [0 hits]

So there you have it, the most important manuscripts that suport ID have zero reference to ID. The one that did have a reference lead to a change in editorial staff and a peer review scandal. So guess that science does not exist after all.

Thats why we call them ID-iots.

xxxxx
For clarity: I could not search for 3 manuscripts as they were unavailable. Additionally, I also neglected to search a cited book, as just like the review article quoted above it is personal opinion and not scientific research.

Homo floresiensis an insight into evolution versus creationism

I was reading a comment piece a few weeks back about the so called Hobbit human fossil, more commonly known as Homo floresiensis. This fossil is fascinating due to its body structure which is unlike any other Homo species. It is mainly for this reason that when it was originally classified, it was said to be a new human species.

However, like most good science stories it did not end there. Since the initial report and reviewers requests there has been vast speculation as if it really is a new human species or in fact juts a dwarf Homo erectus? Or could it even be a pre-Homo species? Currently, there are further studies under way to determine where this species falls into the evolutionary tree for us Homo sapiens, and it really is that complicated as you can see in the picture below.

(Source)

However, the final conclusion to this comment piece sums up the situation so well. Its here that we can observe a hard-line being drawn  underneath the evolution versus creationism perspective. To understand where this fossil fits in we need more evidence. It does not matter if it is older or newer, we just need to know the truth.

Unfortunately, this is not the way Creationism works, it requires less evidence or ideally no evidence and that is not science.

Religions royal pain in the butt

I mentioned last week that Religion has been giving me some problems recently. Now I am sure at some point I may share some finer details of that event, but it really got me to thinking how much religion and religious people have affected my life due to their stupid beliefs. So here is a list of just some events off the top of my head.

1) Getting a deadline moved earlier (when I was already overloaded with deadlines) as a colleague had to go to mosque during the last week of Ramadan. Funny I don't get the same treatment to well not believe in invisible things...

2) Getting harassed when watching TV or entertaining friends by a "friendly" knock on the door.

3) Getting told that Jesus is the only psychiatrist that can solve my depression problem. Guess they don't know I was a Christian? Oh my bad..... I was not a real Christian.

4) Having to sit through prayers opening meetings.

5) Getting told the reason a friend survived a near fatal accident was God, when the exhausted doctor had just brought us the news.

6) Getting told the reason a friend had a miscarriage was Gods way of making sure only perfect babies are born and its all in his plan.

7) Getting told by a Muslim that the Koran has never been changed and its the true word of god. Of course this is only true for the Sunni, as the Shia don't understand the true word of god?

8) An ex-girlfriend dumping me as she believes we could not have a real relationship as without God threesomes are impossible. Actually I think theists don't like relationships with atheists as it makes them realize you don't need a god to be moral.

9)Getting told that the atheist (insert family relation here) who died will be seen in heaven as really said person was a Christian. In other words, this makes me feel good and I don't like to be reminded that my (insert family relation) is in hell.

10) Seeing people suffer financially, as the right thing to do is tithe the ten percent to the Church. Apparently food is for the weak?

Short list, but really just some of the reasons that religion really gets under my skin.

Needless to say this excludes all the other minor problems that religions create, like murder, rape, incest, pedophilia, war, etc. (sarcasm intended)

Social justice is bullshit

Social justice, what does it mean? This may sound like a stupid question and really it is, but I think its a good place to start when explaining why I think social justice is bullshit. The problem is basically that what is called social justice today is not social justice.

Social Justice is meant to be "a state or doctrine of egalitarianism". Its mean to be fair, its meant to be equal. However I think the people at Urban dictionary say it best when they define social justice as "Promoting tolerance, freedom, and equality for all people regardless of race, sex, orientation, national origin, handicap, etc... except for white, straight, cisgendered males. Fuck those guys, they're over-privileged no matter what."

The problem I think social justice suffers is the same problem that religion suffers. There is a lot of following the mouthpieces and proclaiming them right all the time. However, there is a huge gap in the rational thinking in the warriors that buy into the bullshit they are fed. Now, I am sure if you are all for social justice in its modern incarnation you completely disagree with me. Well let me elaborate with a perfect example. Its an example that had me angry until I saw the facts and didn't buy into the bullshit that is/was getting spoon fed.

There is a petition on change.com at the moment to get a certain Julien Blanc denied entrance to Korea to hold a seminar on how to pick up women etc. Now while I agree the guy is an idiot and he should be held accountable for the stuff he does. Granted he should only be held accountable if the ladies he "sexually abuses" actually call it sexual abuse, that after all is how the justice system is meant to work. It is important always to remember, that there is a difference between my personal opinion and what is getting claimed. There is a difference about how I feel and basically what is blatant lies to evoke a response. So let me explain further with some examples.

Firstly, this petition claims Julien Blanc endorses rape.
"His "lecture" includes not only how to degrade, manipulate women but goes as far as to include tips on how to harass and rape women."
This is a very bold claim, as I have never heard him endorse or teach how to rape. Additionally, if you make such a claim you need to back it by facts. But there are no facts, just bold claims.

Then they show you a clip from "his" youtube channel, which is in fact not his channel.
"Julien Blanc has his own YouTube channel and has recently posted a now viral video called " White Male F*cks Asian Women in Tokyo (and the Beautiful Methods to It!""
 In fact all the sources they give are not Juliens sources, except the one link which they give towards the company for which he works. So should I believe there agenda when they cannot even back it up?


So what do you get in response from all the people signing the petition?
"I do not have to be from South Korea to want women to be treated with respect and not subjected to the violence this man preaches."
"You call someone who teaches how to rape women a pickup artist? Stay away from Korea."
"what a twat! this pig shouldn't be allowed anywhere! it is never okay to do what he is doing! if i could, i'd sign this petition a thousand times! stop rape culture!"

Is this evidence of the problems with social justice? You be the judge, but let me just add that I reported this petition two weeks ago for false information and pointed them in the right direction. Needless to say nothing has changed. Seems that social justice does not care about the truth.

xxxxxxxx
Maybe as a heads up someone should contact Julien and get him to sue this group. Sorry Julien if you are reading this, I just don't care enough to report it to you myself. Frankly, I think you are an idiot.