Original Genetic Sin

Apparently, sin is genetic and nobody told me (via Slacktivist):

                This scientific picture of a group of early humans raises many questions, including particularly difficult ones related to the Fall. Plantinga and pastor Daniel Harrell both suggest a possible solution: perhaps Adam and Eve were two individuals within the group of early humans. This would preserve Adam as a real historical figure and the Fall as a real historical event. However, the spread of sin to the rest of the group is problematic, since it would take many generations to spread genetically through a population of thousands.

Personally, I find this to be a startling revelation. Just think for a minute about what the existence of an original sin gene (or, more likely, a sequence of genes, since rarely does a gene do anything by itself) means. Sin, then, becomes a little more than a genetic illness; it is something that can be treated. It is something that can be screened at birth, and removed from the human genome. The human species is capable of removing sin, then, and transitioning to a new, sin-free existence in much the same way that it would remove all other illnesses.

Perhaps there is just the tiniest amount of truth in this, surprisingly enough, but it's coming close to a workable answer (that requires a lot of polishing) while going about it in the absolutely wrong manner; it's like solving 2+2 with 5, and going about it as such: 2+1 - 2 - 1 = 3 * 1 = 3 +2 = 5. You're pulling figures out of your posterior, making it up as you go, and eventually coming to a conclusion that's removed from the realm of being correct. But if we consider original sin to include death, and the sequence that leads up to death (which I've heard some people say is the case), then this statement is, surprisingly enough, at least a quarter true. Our genetics contain the keys to our lifespans; these things called telomeres at the end of your genes, which short every time the gene divides with the cell it's in, determine how long your cells last and, by extension, how long you last. So if you include death into the "original sin" label, then that part of original sin is definitely genetic.

Now, here's a good example of the incomplete nature of Evangelical Apologetic thinking: if sin has a material cause, then is it possible to manipulate it? If not, why? Think about what we could do:

• We could screen for sin at conception just like we do other genetic disorders and deformities and remove it from the genetic pool. 
• We could manipulate the sin gene, setting it so that it's switched "off". If the gene sequence defining sin is switched "off", what happens?
• Since it interacts with every generation, ever, it's neither a dominate nor a recessive gene, but it'd have to be something entirely different, like the gene sequences that determine your skin (not skin color, the fact that you have skin), or the fact that you have eyes, four limbs, or something of that manner. Maybe we could experiment with the nature of this "sin gene" and develop other genes that are just like it, which can help control behavior on the same level that we have complex gene patterns that control the fact that we grown skin and the organs we do grow.
  Just like there are fetuses who are born without heads or fetuses who are born without limbs or legs, then, it follows that there are also fetuses out there who are born without sin, since the sin gene failed to trigger. Of maybe the sin gene never fails to trigger. That would lead to phenomenal insights into how genes trigger and how they do, and perhaps allow us to piece together why the sin gene never fails to trigger and then export that pattern to other genes, as well.
• If the sin gene is responsible for self awareness, then we could take it and, through vertical gene transfer, put it into other animals, giving them self-awareness too. What happens if this happens on accident, as vertical gene transfer is apt to do in nature? Can bacteria be fallen - will that bacteria become intelligent?
• I can recreate computerized versions of genes, or we will be able to. If we recreate a computerized version of the sin gene sequence, will the computer doing so become fallen, too?
• Before the decade is out, we will have genetic treatments to postpone death, and anti-aging treatments. Immortality treatments may come before the end of the century, and eventually, true biological immortality will follow. We can defeat death, and if you're going to narrowly define the "original sin" present in the genome as the existence of telomeres that determine when we die, then we'll end up defeating "original sin" in the long run, too. 

This is another example of lazy Evangelical-Creationist apologetics. None of these implications were thought through; they're desperately looking for the ever smaller holes to cram their God into. We have the entire gene sequence of not just humans but also Neanderthals, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and bonobos mapped out, along with other plants, fungi, eukaryotic genomes and a mass of animals that include cats, dogs, dolphins and elephants. We did not find a "sin" gene sequence, because it does not exist. It's fantastic god magic that deserves derision for being as foolish and arrogant as it is. It's also remarkably lazy, since I was able to find all of this information by just typing in "animal genome project" into Google and pressing "go."

Molecular genetics is a surefire way to destroy creationism. There's no way it can survive what discoveries that molecular genetics finds; but then, we didn't need molecular genetics to destroy creationism. A little creative but thorough thinking and Google is more than enough to do that.

Want An Idea of Why Our Science Scores Are Crap?

Paul Broun is a Representative from Georgia. Now, it goes without saying that he's got an R in front of his name; this is Georgia we're talking about here. If I saw traces of the 20th century from that State I'd be shocked. He's a Congresscritter, so my expectations of his knowledge weren't very high, and being a republican, I'm pretty sure someone stole that low bar and buried it somewhere in the Dead Sea.

But here's something else interesting about Paul Broun.

You see, this man was appointed on congress to set on the House Science Committee. So really, I'd sort of expect something better than this:

"God's word is true. I've come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the big bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell," said Broun, who is an MD. "It's lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior."

"You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I've found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don't believe that the earth's but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That's what the Bible says."

You've seen a lot of scientific data. Show it to me, you fucking lair.

Don't ask me why I'd expect something better than that from a Republican elected official from Georgia, but being on the House Science Committee... I dunno. No, really, I don't know why he's even there. Him sitting on that committee is fucking stupid even by congressional standards.

Judeo-Christian Mystery Religion

This has been making its rounds on the Internet for a sometime now, and I've been waiting until I got a free moment before I comment on it.

Texas has a new Republican platform. And it's everything we've come to know and love from these motherfucking shit-for-brain idiots on the right. If you thought the Iowa platform was bad, boy howdy, you ain't seen nothing yet...

With this, the Republicans have finally struck a blow at the reality and in the process, created a gaping singularity of stupid that is slowly draining the collective IQ nationwide.

Platform Shoes

So the Iowa Republican Party has issued their party platform; this is like a mission statement, but likely written in crayon on a piece of construction paper. This outlines all of their beliefs, neatly bundled in one little blackwhite package, proudly proclaiming how they miss the 17th century and how they're going to work their damn hardest to take us back.
I read this and I think about the Party from my novel, but that's nothing unusual. I modeled the Party on the political right. So naturally, there's overlap. Your pot can only get so cracked before it starts looking like every other crackpot. So let's gear up and follow this train over the edge, skydiving from reality into, to borrow a term from Ed Brayton,The People's Republic of Wingnuttia.

Feathered Dinosaur Fossil = Boneheaded Creationists

First, some exciting dinosaur news.

Growing up, I was infatuated with dinosaurs. What kid wasn't? They were big, giant reptiles that walked the Earth millions of years ago. Some of them flew, some of them swam, most of them were larger than Teapublicans but without the diapers or the Medicare-paid electric scooters, and arguably a hell of a lot smarter.

So out of China, we get an exciting new discovery: A feathered dinosaur called Yutyrannus hali; which is the largest feathered dinosaur discovered to date. Y. hali is a tyrannosauroid, or a member of the Tyrannosauroidea superfamily/clade. As you can probably tell by the name, this includes one of the most famous dinosaurs of all time, Tyrannosaurus rex, but the family also included a number of other coelurosaurian theropods. The name means "hollow tailed lizards", and while not an official designation anymore, it's still used to encompass species like the compsognathids, tyrannosaurs, ornithomimosaurs, and maniraptorans, the last category of which includes another very famous dinosaur - Velociraptor (mongoliensis and osmolskae, the creatures in Jurassic Park were actually an amalgam of several different dinosaurs, and would more accurately be called Deinonychus antirrhopus, but Velociraptor sounds cooler). It also includes the smartest dinosaur to ever walk the face of the planet, Troodon formosus, a dinosaur with  EQ six times that of your other dinosaur species (which isn't saying much, considering that puts it roughly on the same tier as ducks).

The feathers on Y. hali are more like down than they are any rigid feather, so they resemble the fluff that baby chicks are born with. Because we have a rough idea that T. rex (more accurately, the family) evolved into birds, we can look at this fossil and we can compare it to new born birds and it just further backs up my notion that the development of an embryo from a single-celled organism up through to a complete organism is a replay of evolution. Every time you watch a child conceive, develop, and eventually arrive on the scene, it's reliving some stage of evolution - the entire process of conception to birth is about 6 billion years of evolution condensed into 9 months. It maybe inexact, but it's pretty damn close. After all, chicks are born with down that develop as they age into feathers, while many millions of years ago, dinosaur chicks might not have been born with the down at all, and developed it as they aged. Evolution is building blocks stacked on other building blocks. Somewhere inside of your chicken or turkey is the DNA to resurrect Velociraptor (in fact, if I were going to resurrect it, I wouldn't use frog DNA like they did in the movie. That's just stupid. You'd pick a species closer to the dinosaurs, like turkeys. Because God knows picking eagles or falcons is just asking for it).

Which brings me to my next issue:

Yahoo! comments are not a place one goes looking when they want intelligent commentary on an issue. That's like expecting a civil, intelligent YouTube conversation. So half the the time, I suspect that 90% of the comments are determined trolls trying to piss everyone off and the other 10% are idiots who actually believe the stuff the trolls are spewing. Anytime someone brings a science issue, you can break them down into predictable comments:

The "Yeah, this is cool" guy who adds nothing to the conversation but seeks to make it known that his opinion is most certainly, "this is cool." Capitalization is optional. May over lap with the same guy who says "this is boring, why don't you talk about REAL news" or "what happened to real news anymore" guy.

The "why the hell are they doing this when they should be curing CANCER" guy, who doesn't seem to understand that paleontology or cosmology doesn't have anything to do with genetics or biomedicine. This, however, will not stop him from accusing the scientists involved of lining their own pockets with the research money and then somehow giving kick backs to the guys in Washington D.C.

Related to the above is the "skeptic", who believes that they're just making this stuff up to get money. Because that's not how they remembered being taught back in High School. No sir.



The Mayan 2012/New Agey guy, who is certain that scientists believe they know everything and that by achieving quantum awareness with Ramthauxuamathamaxqkl, the 35,000 Lemurian Warrior who battled the Atlanteans with incredible magical powers that sound suspiciously like something out of Complete Arcane, Complete Divine, or the 3.5 Psionics Handbook, they can see the truth. Both sides are wrong, and everyone needs to shut up and listen to me and my batshit beliefs. Clearly you can't have evolution when humans came from fuzzy black egg laying hermaphrodites (Theosophy is like Tolkien on crack).

The "President Obama is fake!" guy. Usually overlaps with the "Ron Paul, 20XX" troll, who just randomly spams "Ron Paul iz teh BOMBZ" on all the boards. The topic could be about how cute panda bears in China are flying to the moon, you'll always find "Ron Paul, 20XX". This is amusing when you go back a few years and see "Ron Paul, 2008", proving it worked so well back then.  Sometimes they're also the "Lets see the Birf CertificATE" guy. Again, proper capitalization is option, but these posts usually work better with Random, unpredictable Capitalization of Unnecessary words, no Matter where they Are in The Sentence. 

The guy who takes all the comments literally and wastes his life trying to respond to each one, seriously, thinking it'll make a difference. In the same vein, the guy who takes the comments seriously, and tells everyone that they're getting off topic. A comment section open to anyone in the public is not a forum. Especially when there's no mods who go around and boot out the garbage post kids.

And lastly, the Creationist types, or the Bible thumpers, who think that by posting trite and tired arguments, they can magically "defeat" the theory of evolution, undermine the entire science of biology including all of the related sciences like genetics, microbiology, and biomedicine, and prove that JAYSUS existed 6,000 years ago and the world is only 10,000 years old. Again, it doesn't matter the topic, because you'll find these styles of posts anywhere, although actual reports relevant to paleontology, cosmology, or biology draw these people out in droves.

Creationists aren't a rare breed in the United States, sadly. We have more than enough of them, and the more we yield to the ones that already exist, the more we get. I keep hoping that science teachers will just stop telling the parents when they're going to be teaching evolution, or spend the entire year teaching it in small amounts (evolution is that important to biology. Without evolution, you have no biology), rather than building one unit around it and letting that be that. Thus, you get comments like this, made by boneheaded creationists:

Evolutionists; the most gullible individuals ever to walk the face of the earth.
dont know the difference between evolution (a fact that Christians are not only distinctly aware of, but was a creationist idea prior to darwin) and adaptation.
evolutionists cannot even keep a conversation going due to the fact they cannot define evolution intelligently. they must change its meaning during the conversation.

not one evolutionist will debate Jonathan Sarfati (who destroyed dick dawkins' books and ideas so thoroughly he refuses to debate anyone anymore, because is outclassed and lacks the well-rounded intelligence displayed by a great many other scientists) or any other Creation scientist because their evolutionary theory is so riddled with falsehoods, they cant make any sense of it on an intellectual level.
but, of course, they will claim to be "intellectually fulfilled" athiests. so clueless. ("John")

Sarfati is a New Zealand Christian apologist and a chess master with a PhD in Physical Chemistry. Surely the guy that I would want to get my information about biology from. That's like going to a dentist because you're having foot trouble. Also, the misspelling of "atheist". I would say that's a dead give away of a troll, but the reference to Jonathon Sarfati makes me think twice.

Regardless whether or not he's a troll, he's still talking about of his ass about how evolution hasn't been defined clearly. When you're jamming cotton in your ears so you don't have to hear what others are saying, you would never know.


And then there's this guy, Robby Rush:

The Tyrannosuar & human adult and child footprints in Glen Rose, Texas (USA) are real. I have seen them for myself. In fact, I spoke with Dr. Carl Baugh, the man who discovered them, while I was there in the early 1990's. It was not faked as it was unearthered LIVE! before TV crews and skeptical witnesses. They are human footprints. I have seen them personally and I actually took a photograph of them myself which I have to this day.

And to the guy that made the comment about life history origins of 6,000-years ago, the world we now live on WAS created on the evening of 22 October 4004 B.C. by God.

And as for Evolution, they 'theory' was drafted by a Christian Seminary drop-out by the name of Charles Darwin who made derogatory comments about Black people & Women in general in his book on the subject of his theory of Evolution. He was a racist and Misogynist.

And to the woman who wanted to 'see proof that God exists', all YOU have to do is examine all the lives that HE has touched over time for good. People do bad things because they are people. God does not do bad things. Satan does. Nobody ever had evidence that Jesus of Nazareth hurt anyone, made someone blind, etc... Jesus did exist. Plenty of Jewish and Roman writers who were NOT believers (Josephus, Pliny, etc...) who either saw Jesus or knew of Him during their lifetime wrote about it in their own writings we have to this day. Jesus still exists and he lives in the hearts of my wife, children, and my own heart.

And for those who live in Europe who do not believe in the Bible and what it says, that is one of the reasons why your side of the globe is rotten and falling apart... literally. Take God out of your lives/country, and all you are left with is Communism, Terrorism, sickness & death.

Lessee here:


Misunderstanding how the burden of proof works (hint: If you're making the positive claim, you're responsible for backing it up. If you're going to say "God exists" and expect me to take it a serious, meaningful scientific statement, telling me "Look around" is going to elicit a snarky comment about how God could've done a better job on his worshipers).

Human and T. rex footprints, found together. OMG. Therefor, they existed at the same time.  You know, like they did in the Flintstones.

God does not do bad things. As an omniscient, all-powerful entity he can do no wrong. No, he punts that off on Satan, the divine scapegoat.

Charles Darwin said bad things about blacks and women, and was a seminary drop out. Therefore, he can't be taken seriously. Now if only you bastards held Rush Limbaugh to this same standard...

'Theory' gets single scare quotes. "Theory? Isn't that a wild-ass guess? Like gravity?"

The world was created on October 22, 4004 BCE. That evening, the folks of Predynastic Egypt, and those living in the Ubaid Period watched on in amazement as God created the world. This came as news to them, seeing as how they'd been around since 5000 BCE. This news is also a shocker to John Lightfoot, the guy who, buy using the Bible, calculated the start date of creation at 3929 BCE. I'm sure if you round down you'll get 4004 (remember this is BCE; if you place it on a number line, these numbers would be negative; thus, -3,929 is larger than -4,004. This tripped me up, because prior to this, I was listing events that had taken place in around 3,500 - after the intended date), but I can't think of what system you're using to get there. Base 4, maybe? So it's totally Biblical, guys! It says right there in Genesis uh... Genesis uh... "Six days and nights" there we go. That right there totally says that it took place on October 22, 4004 BCE. Can't you read? Don't you know I take the book literally? ... James Ussher? Who the fuck is that? Some kind of rapper?

Remember kids! Dinosaurs and man walked at the same time together! Up until the 1800s, they dinosaurs were called dragons instead! Because it makes dragons anymore real!

Remember: any information that contradicts any of the above is the work of Satan. Because, while God is all power-full and all-knowing, he still tolerates some arrogant little angel out there mucking around his creation leading people astray so he can throw them in Hell for the rest of eternity where they'll be tortured in such a vicious way. He doesn't want to. He just enjoys it. Because that's totally in the Bible, too. Who the hell is Milton? And I've never heard of this "Dante" guy, either. So there.

Oh, and did I mention the fuzzy dinosaurs and the potential for fuzzy dinochicks? D'awww... so cute.

Now That's Too Much Evolution

I originally started this as a post with three links in one, but after my Intertubez messed up this morning and I had to head out for work, I decided that I would break them up into three different posts. So here go. The first one is from the annals of "evolution verses creationism," because this is a big thing in the United States.

This one comes to me via the Panda's Thumb.

No, I Don't Have Patience For You

I'm running out of patience with global warming deniers.

Anthropogenic climate change is all but a fact. Numerous studies have confirmed it, and in fact, the latest study, carried out by a former ally of the skeptics, is the last nail in the lid of the coffin closed.

Now, by former ally, I don't mean he abandoned them. They abandoned him. The minute he said something that they disagreed with, they jumped shift.

Let's take a look at what Anthony Watts, a fairly common figure on FOX news, has to say, talking about the project that the Guardian is reporting on above:

And, I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.I’m taking this bold step because the method has promise. So let’s not pay attention to the little yippers who want to tear it down before they even see the results. I haven’t seen the global result, nobody has, not even the home team, but the method isn’t the madness that we’ve seen from NOAA, NCDC, GISS, and CRU, and, there aren’t any monetary strings attached to the result that I can tell. If the project was terminated tomorrow, nobody loses jobs, no large government programs get shut down, and no dependent programs crash either.  That lack of strings attached to funding, plus the broad mix of people involved especially those who have previous experience in handling large data sets gives me greater confidence in the result being closer to a bona fide ground truth than anything we’ve seen yet.

How noble.

That was before the project was released. See, he was attacking individuals for "trying to tear the project down before it even started," I can only assume because he had already gotten it in his head that Dr. Muller, the man at the head of the BEST project, was going to church something that agreed with him.

Here's Mr. Watts after the project was released, which almost certainly confirmed the so-called "anthropogenic" climate change theory - i.e., after the facts blew up in his face (bolding original):

Because of the long time periods involved in Muller et al analysis, and because both Menne et al and Fall et al made no claims of knowing anything about siting quality prior to 1979, I consider the paper fatally flawed as it now stands, and thus I recommend it be removed from publication consideration by JGR until such time that it can be reworked.

For me to comment on the conclusions of Muller et al would be inappropriate until this time period error is corrected and the analysis reworked for time scale appropriate comparisons.
The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature analysis methodology is new, and may yield some new and potentially important results on siting effects once the appropriate time period comparisons are made. I welcome the BEST effort provided that appropriate time periods are used that match our work. But, by using time period mismatched comparisons, it becomes clear that the Muller et al paper in its current form lost the opportunity for a meaningful comparison.

It certainly sounds like he was accepting it, doesn't it?

I'm running out of patience with these people. Whether it's "death panels", "vaccines cause autism", "modern medicine doesn't know what it's talking about", "the government caused 9/11" or "the Earth is only 10,000 years old and Noah had to cram his ark full of some of the largest land animals to ever live", the sheer magnitude of the stupid things that Americans are prone to believing is just staggering. It's the same mentality all the way through; it's the same line of thought, just different subject matters and some words switched around.

And I'm running out of patience with it all. I'm not sure why we even listen to these people anymore. Because they have a voice in making policy. And that's scarier than any stupid thing that they could believe.

Post 101: Arguing against Arguments Against Atheism

This is my 101st post. This is also my longest running blog, and as I sit here on this dreary, rainy Saturday, I can only think of how fortunate it is that I've been able to stick with this consistently now for not just 101 posts, but also for 4 months. The blog isn't that old, and while we're a while away from 10,000 hits, it's getting close.

So, as something special today, I decided to head back to the regular tradition of Saturday mornings - philosophy and arguments against them. Rather that pick one philosophy and dismantle it piece by piece, however, I decided to take a look at an argument against a philosophy - two arguments, two philosophies - and dismantle those.

So, without much further ado, let's dive headfirst into our Saturday Morning Philosophical Dissertation, while remembering that this is a special post - we've lived to see 100 posts, so here's to another 100.