How Linnaeus Made A Monkey Of Creationists

Carl Nilsson Linnæus

One of the scientists whom I've always regarded as remarkably lucky was Carl Nilsson Linnæus (23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), known later as Carl von Linné. Linnæus single-handedly devised the Linnean or binomial nomenclature system of classification which is still used today, albeit slightly modified, to classify all living things and was rightly regarded as one of the greatest men of his time. He was probably also the first person to realise that human being were not only animals but apes and should be classified as such

He was born into a slightly eccentric Swedish Lutheran family in the village of Råshult in Småland and, from the outset, his parents spoke Latin to him so that, so it is said, he learned Latin before he could speak Swedish. He also developed an obsessive early interest in plants which he probably acquired from his father, himself an amateur botanist, and preferred looking at flowers to working at his education. The headmaster of his school, also a botanist, noticed his interest in plants and gave him the run of his garden, he also introduced him to the state doctor of Småland, Johann Rothman another botanist.

Rothman taught him about plant sexuality and introduced him to the Tournefort system of plant classification, a system with many flaws based on almost arbitrary groupings, and clearly in need of revision and rationalisation. But is was the sexuality of plants which seems to have intrigued Linnæus the most, to the point where he became almost obsessed with sex, at least as the basis for classification.

His first thesis was Praeludia Sponsaliorum Plantarum on plant sexuality. This choice as the basis for classification was a more or less arbitrary one in those times as there was no understanding of genetics or evolution, or the role of sexual reproduction as a selective factor in the evolution and divergence of species. In fact, when he came to classify the molluscs, finding no obvious genitalia, he based it on how closely the opening in the shell resembled the human female vulva, which he seems to have studied rather closely. In molluscs of course, that has absolutely nothing to do with reproduction.

So there were three stokes of luck here:

1. Knowledge of Latin so he had a basis for nomenclature which had a pan-European understanding and which could be used descriptively as well as binomially to give a systematic naming convention.
2. An interest in botany shared by some influential people.
3. An obsessive interest in sex which had led him by chance to the most sensible basis for classification, given the intimate role played by sexual reproduction and diversification in most multicellular organisms (he did not know of single-celled organisms which had not then been discovered.

Perhaps the third in the above list needs to be explained a little more. For individuals to reproduce successfully, their genitalia need to match or else reproduction would be impossible. Hence the reproductive organs tend to vary only slightly between closely related species, more so between more distantly related species and more so still between even more distantly related species.

So, by doing what Linnæus did and classifying plants on the basis of their fundamental flower structure, such as the number of stamens and pistils, number of petals, form of the inflorescence, etc, he had unwittingly linked his classification to the evolution of the species before there was a general awareness of evolution and before it was the accepted principle under-pinning the whole of biology that it is today.

Linnæus didn't always get it right - indeed how could he with no knowledge of evolution and genetics - but it is a tribute to his system that it gave the first clues to people like Lamarck, Wallace and Darwin that there might be a reason why these varieties, subspecies and species, when arranged in orders, classes, phyla and kingdoms, looked like the branches of a tree. (Linnæus never included families; these were added later)
One of Linnæus' more subtle contributions to science was his insistence that not only should humans be classified as animals but that they should be included in a grouping which includes apes and monkeys.

Linnaeus classified humans among the primates (as they were later called) beginning with the first edition of Systema Naturae. During his time at Hartekamp, he had the opportunity to examine several monkeys and noted similarities between them and man. He pointed out both species basically have the same anatomy; except for speech, he found no other differences. Thus he placed man and monkeys under the same category, Anthropomorpha, meaning "manlike." This classification received criticism from other biologists such as Johan Gottschalk Wallerius, Jacob Theodor Klein and Johann Georg Gmelin on the ground that it is illogical to describe a human as 'like a man'. In a letter to Gmelin from 1747, Linnaeus replied:

"It does not please [you] that I've placed Man among the Anthropomorpha, perhaps because of the term 'with human form', but man learns to know himself. Let's not quibble over words. It will be the same to me whatever name we apply. But I seek from you and from the whole world a generic difference between man and simian that [follows] from the principles of Natural History. I absolutely know of none. If only someone might tell me a single one! If I would have called man a simian or vice versa, I would have brought together all the theologians against me. Perhaps I ought to have by virtue of the law of the discipline".

The theological concerns were twofold: first, putting man at the same level as monkeys or apes would lower the spiritually higher position that man was assumed to have in the great chain of being, and second, because the Bible says man was created in the image of God (theomorphism), if monkeys/apes and humans were not distinctly and separately designed, that would mean monkeys and apes were created in the image of God as well. This was something many could not accept....

After such criticism, Linnaeus felt he needed to explain himself more clearly. The 10th edition of Systema Naturae introduced new terms, including Mammalia and Primates, the latter of which would replace Anthropomorpha as well as giving humans the full binomial Homo sapiens. The new classification received less criticism, but many natural historians still believed he had demoted humans from their former place to rule over nature, not be a part of it. Linnaeus believed that man biologically belongs to the animal kingdom and had to be included in it. In his book Dieta Naturalis, he said,

"One should not vent one's wrath on animals, Theology decree that man has a soul and that the animals are mere 'aoutomata mechanica,' but I believe they would be better advised that animals have a soul and that the difference is of nobility."

From Wikipedia

Even in those days it seems die-hard theologians were insisting that science conform to their theology and were complaining when it didn't, and scientists were having to contend with their arrogant bullying and cat-calling from the side-lines.

Now, of course, we know that theology is wrong because it doesn't conform to what science tells us is right. Science, not theology, has proved a far superior tool for determining truth to the extent that it is now accepted by normal people as a tool for validating theology, or not, and not vice versa.

You will even find fundamentalist creationists frantically trying to use science, albeit usually a bastardised parody version of it, to lend credence to their myths and superstitions, as science, paradoxically, closes more and more gaps into which they try to fit their diminishing little gods.

Partly in honour of his insistence on this classification for mankind, in 1959, Carl Linnaeus was designated as the lectotype for Homo sapiens, which means that following the nomenclatural rules, Homo sapiens was validly defined as the animal species to which Carl Nilsson Linnaeus belonged.

It is more than a little ironic that, when Darwin and Wallace presented their seminal papers on evolution, which did so much to explain why Linnean nomenclature works, to the Linnean Society of London, it went almost unnoticed.

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Christians - Try Not To Think About Matthew.

No Lusting!

What was it with Matthew, or whoever it was writing the stuff attributed to him in the Bible?

Later on in the Bible, Matthew seems to present Jesus as a foolish man and a false prophet, and seems to be trying to warn us about him (Foolish Jesus And The Ravening Wolves). He even goes on to refute the notion that the Gospels were written by eye-witnesses (Hey Christians! Is Matthew For Real?) but here he is making him look like a fool who knows nothing of human psychology, or even as someone cynically trying to trap people.

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

Matthew 5:27-28

I wonder if it's okay for a woman to look on a man to lust after him. Maybe it hadn't occurred to the man who wrote that stuff that women have those sorts of thoughts too... But that's by the by.

Don't think about the elephants!

Try this little exercise. Close your eyes for ten minutes and try hard not to think about elephants. Remember, whatever you do you mustn't think about elephants otherwise something really bad might happen, so you'll need to concentrate. If you think of elephants even once, no matter how briefly, you'll lose and the game will be over so don't let your mind wander just in case.

How long did you last? Did you remember right at the start what you were supposed not to be thinking about?

So you lost right then.

You see, there is no way you can remember not to think about elephants without thinking about elephants, just as there is no way to remember not to lust after someone without thinking about lusting after them. Go on! Try it!

No sane, intelligent, compassionate, loving god would impose a ludicrously impossibly puritanical rule like that on humans and then condemn them if they broke it.

Mind you, a malignant god would. So would a writer who is trying to make this god out to be malignant.

And so, which is far more likely, would a writer who wants to make you feel trapped and riddled with guilt for merely being human and doing what humans can't avoid doing. He might just as well have condemned you for just being born.

Oh! He did that too, of course.

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Other sections of Matthew that Christians might like to try not to think about are:

Matthew 1:23 where Matthew gives the game away about the 'Jesus' prophesy being made up.
Matthew 27: 51-53 Where Matthew makes the entire crucifixion story look like a bad scifi story.
Matthew 2 where Matthew makes the birth of Jesus look like another silly attempt to create myth on the hoof.

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Higgs And CERN Evict God From Yet Another Gap

Professor Peter Ware Higgs

BBC News - Higgs boson-like particle discovery claimed at LHC

It's been the worst kept secret for several days now that the team using the LHC at CERN have found something significant in their search for the Higgs boson - the so-called 'God particle'. In typical scientifically caution language they have found a 'bump' in their data which corresponds to a particle of 125.3 GeV, in other words, just where the Higgs boson was predicted to be, with a confidence "at the 5 sigma point" (that is, with a probability of less then 3.5 in a million of this being due to statistical variance or experimental error).

This is science-speak for saying they are 99.99965% sure they have seen a Higgs boson, which is just about as close as science ever gets to proving anything. Professor Stephen Hawking, who had disputed the existence of the Higgs boson, has conceded that he has lost a $100 bet that the particle would not be found at CERN.

This effectively completes the Standard Model of particle physics because the Higgs field, composed of Higgs bosons, explains why other particles have mass.

Technically, it is the quantum excitation of the Higgs field, and the non-zero value of the ground state of this field gives mass to the other elementary particles such as quarks and electrons through the Higgs mechanism. The Standard Model completely fixes the properties of the Higgs boson, except for its mass. It is expected to have no spin and no electric or color charge, and it interacts with other particles through the weak interaction and Yukawa-type interactions between the various fermions and the Higgs field.

Wikipedia - Higgs boson (written before the above announcement)

The Higgs particle is name after Peter Ware Higgs the British theoretical physicist and emeritus professor at Edinburgh University, who, in 1964, along with others, predicted the existence of this super-massive particle. Higgs is an atheist and dislikes the term "God particle" because "It might offend religious people". That term is attributed to Richard Lederman [correction: Leon M Lederman] from the title of his 1993 book The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?. However, this may have been at the insistence of his publishers, Dell Publishing, who objected to his original title "The Goddamn Particle". Higgs was a member of CND until they moved to campaign against nuclear power as well as nuclear weapons. He also resigned from Greenpeace because of their opposition to GM.

Professor Joseph Incandela addressing a special conference at CERN
4 July 2012

So, what does this mean for particle physics?

We're reaching into the fabric of the Universe at a level we've never done before. We've kind of completed one particle's story. ... Now we're way out on the edge of a new exploration. This could be the only part of the story that's left, or we could open a whole new realm of discovery.

Professor Joe Incandela, University of California at Santa Barbara

But, of course like every other piece of scientific 'knowledge' no serious scientist would claim ever to have proved the Higgs boson beyond any possible doubt. Note how the level of confidence was expressed as the probability of being wrong. Contrast this with religion, where any shadow of doubt is regarded as heresy and none can ever be admitted for fear that the entire edifice will collapse. People have been killed for expressing doubt. What Christian or Muslim would try to put a probability on there not being a god other than zero?

This is an important result and should earn Peter Higgs the Nobel prize.

Stephen Hawking

Note too how this discovery almost certainly validates a prediction of theoretical physics made 48 years ago. This illustrates the nature of science and how a theory is used to make predictions which are then experimentally tested or measurements and observations are made which either confirm or falsify the theory. And of course, either result would be equally good science. A falsified theory will need to be revised or scrapped. A validated theory can be used as a platform on which to stand and build new theories which can be tested in turn. And so science progresses, building on the discoveries of the past to investigate new areas or to understand better where our understanding is incomplete.

What Christian or Muslim would ever make a testable, and so falsifiable, prediction based on their god hypothesis? Indeed, how could such a hypothesis ever be falsified when it is so carefully constructed and hedged around with definitions intended to make it unfalsifiable?

As Joe Incandela said, "...we could open a whole new realm of discovery". For science, the end of one journey is just the beginning of another. Having broken through the Higgs boson barrier, We can now go on to explore the fabric of reality.

Another gap has been closed by science, and, once again, no god was found and none proved to be necessary. This is the great thing about knowing you could be wrong - you set out to find out if you are, or not, and so you find new things to discover and realise there is more you do not know. Religions, by claiming to know all the answers and by being too afraid to question even that assumption, have remained stuck in the Bronze Age, from a time before science invented the wheel, and they have never produced a single discovery which was of the slightest use to mankind.

But then, if religions had any evidence, like science there would only be one, and it would also be science.

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Evolution - Making A Monkey

In this post I'm going to look again at 'speciation' and why it is usually only possible to identify that it has occurred often some considerable time after it has. This may come as a surprise to someone who sees the 'tree of life' as a something on which new branches arise in a single 'speciation' event, like buds giving rise to new branches.

Consider first a hypothetical situation in which no species, subspecies or variety had ever gone extinct, so every twig on every branch of the tree of life had living representatives. Apart from the mammoth task involved in catching and classifying the resultant billions of 'species', how could we possibly classify individuals and place them into a specific taxon?

It would of course be impossible because in reality we would have a mass of living things with no sharp delineation between groups of individuals having characteristics in common and distinct from all others. The dividing lines would be so blurred that we could not easily identify any boundaries. It is only because of regular extinctions and gradual evolution leading an archaic form to change into a modern form across the entire population range, that we can see living things as forming distinct taxa in the first place.

Creationist Nightmares - Abiogenesis.

Abiogenesis:

Noun: technical term for spontaneous generation.

Origin: late 19th century: from a 'not' + Greek bios 'life' + genesis

So, basically, 'abiogenesis' refers to the spontaneous generation of life from non life. I have previously blogged on the definition (or lack thereof) of 'life' in What Is Life? which, interestingly and maybe significantly, no creationist has yet been able to answer, nor to refute my biological definition of life as localised entropy reduction.

What creationists insist on trying to insert into the definition is some form or magic ingredient called 'life' which is always left intentionally vague and ill-defined. Of course, from a biologists perspective, all that is necessary is to define 'abiogenesis' as the origin of replicators since the process of evolution can take it from there. 'Life', for a biologist, is merely shorthand for metabolism, which is necessary in complex systems for reducing the local entropy by increasing it elsewhere.

What A Tangled Web Creationists Weave

Daniel Dennett

Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!

Sir Walter Scott

I came across this passage in Daniel Dennett's must read book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Darwin shows us that questions like "What is the difference between a variety and a species?" are like the question "What is the difference between a peninsula and an island?". Suppose you see an island half a mile offshore at high tide. If you can walk to it at low tide without getting your feet wet, is it still an island?. If you build a bridge to it, does it cease being an island?. What if you build a solid causeway? If you cut a canal across a peninsula (like the Cape Cod Canal), do you turn it into an island? What if a hurricane does the excavation work? This sort of enquiry is familiar to philosophers. It is the Socratic activity of definition-mongering or essence-hunting, looking for the "necessary and sufficient conditions" for being-an-X. Sometimes almost everyone can see the pointlessness of the quest - islands obviously don't have real essences, but only nominal essences at best. But at other times there can still seem to be a serious scientific question that needs answering.

How Fundamentalists Cope With Unwanted Facts

In this post I'm going to discuss the psychological process called 'cognitive dissonance' and how it can explain the often frankly bizarre reactions and 'reasoning' you get when trying to debate with religious fundamentalist.

Plenty has been written about cognitive dissonance so I won't go into too much detail. Briefly, humans try to maintain a coherent and consistent view of the world, so anything which conflicts with pre-existing beliefs sets up a conflict, often almost unconsciously. In modern parlance, the term 'getting my head round it' sums it up fairly well. A simple example is Aesop's fable of the fox and the grapes. The fox wants the grapes which are out of its reach, so after making an effort to get them and failing, he rationalises this by saying the grapes probably weren't ripe anyway and would have been too sour (sour grapes). In this way he is able to pass failure off as a success and so retain his pride. He could have got the grapes if he had really wanted to.

I remember an occasion in the 1960's when you could buy a (very) used car for as little as £50, a friend bought just such as car - a Standard 8 (no wing mirrors, no indicators, rusty wings and door sills, top speed about 60 mph and 25 miles to the gallon on a good day and often started first time in dry weather in summer). Of course, he'd make the 'perfect' decision to buy it, having spent his last penny. He became quite indignant when someone said they thought the E-type Jaguar was the best car on the road. "How can it be when mine is?" he shouted.

How we all laughed. We were very young in those days.

Was The Bible Really About An Evil God?

Readers of this blog will remember how I posed the question, How Do You Know Satan Didn't Write The Bible?, and how it's still giving Christians a seemingly impossible challenge, judging by their inability to answer it. In a couple more blogs, Why God's First Words to Adam Was A Lie and How God Learned About Justice I've shown how this early god in the creation and origin myths of the Hebrews was not presented as an omniscient, benevolent, or even moral god. In fact, these two tales suggest something rather intriguing:

• The very curious tale of the lie to Adam about the consequences of acquiring knowledge and the irritation with the 'serpent' who tells Eve the truth, suggests a god who doesn't want mankind to have 'knowledge' and who will lie to prevent it.
• The equally curious tale of the casual destruction of two cities with all their inhabitants by a god who doesn't seem to know what's going on, has no concept of justice and who is perfectly okay with virgin daughters being offered to a mob as a bargaining ploy, drunkenness and incest between father and daughters, suggests a malignant god indistinguishable from an evil one.

This is reinforced by the inescapable impression that it was an arbitrary and brutal god with the accounts of apparently random dress codes, food taboos, ritual slaughter of sacrificial animals, scapegoating, and genocides and where the consequences of transgressing its rules was usually a rather nasty death.

Of course, we are dealing with a developing mythology which was working for the rulers and priest class as well but the god they were using is clearly based on an amoral and far from omniscient one.

The reason this is so intriguing is because of the way Gnosticism presented this god. First a little about Gnosticism which was itself a major contributor to the medieval 'heresy', Catharism, also called Albigensianism, the persecution of which I described in Feel That Christian Love!

A common characteristic of some of these [Gnostic] groups was the teaching that the realisation of Gnosis (esoteric or intuitive knowledge) is the way to salvation of the soul from the material world. They saw the material world as created through an intermediary being (demiurge) rather than directly by God. In most of the systems, this demiurge was seen as imperfect, in others even as evil [my emphasis]. Different gnostic schools sometimes identified the demiurge as Adam Kadmon, Ahriman, El, Saklas, Samael, Satan, Choronzon, Yaldabaoth, or Yahweh.

Jesus is identified by some Gnostics as an embodiment of the supreme being who became incarnate to bring gnōsis to the earth. Others adamantly deny that the supreme being came in the flesh, claiming Jesus to be merely a human who attained divinity through gnosis and taught his disciples to do the same. Among the Mandaeans, Jesus was considered a mšiha kdaba or "false messiah" who perverted the teachings entrusted to him by John the Baptist. Still other traditions identify Mani and Seth, third son of Adam and Eve, as salvific figures.

The Christian groups first called "gnostic" a branch of Christianity, however Joseph Jacobs and Ludwig Blau (Jewish Encyclopedia, 1911) note that much of the terminology employed is Jewish and note that this "proves at least that the principal elements of gnosticism were derived from Jewish speculation, while it does not preclude the possibility of new wine having been poured into old bottles."

The movement spread in areas controlled by the Roman Empire and Arian Goths, and the Persian Empire; it continued to develop in the Mediterranean and Middle East before and during the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Conversion to Islam and the Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229) greatly reduced the remaining number of Gnostics throughout the Middle Ages, though a few Mandaean communities still exist. Gnostic and pseudo-gnostic ideas became influential in some of the philosophies of various esoteric mystical movements of the late 19th and 20th centuries in Europe and North America, including some that explicitly identify themselves as revivals or even continuations of earlier gnostic groups.

Source: Wikepedia - Gnosticism

So, the question is, were these stories originally written to show the 'creator' as an imperfect, malevolent lesser god whose motive is to prevent mankind acquiring knowledge?

In other words, were these stories derived from ones designed to show Yahweh as an evil god? Have they been changed and adapted to try to conceal that message? It certainly suggests a reason for the otherwise strange story of John the Baptist where, inexplicably, Jesus seems to have needed a human to 'prepare the way' and 'baptise' him. With John as a Gnostic teacher, 'baptism' could be merely a metaphor for teaching 'the knowledge'. If so, it's a shame that later writers changed Jesus into something else, especially since Jesus seems to have hinted that we should ignore Yahweh's laws when he talked about them only being administered by 'those without sin', which renders them all unenforceable, if you subscribe to the 'original sin' idea, that is (=created by Satan?).

So, Christians, three simple questions for you.

1. How do you know Satan didn't create the world?
2. How do you know Satan hasn't rewritten the Bible to fool you?
3. How do you know the real god didn't give you science so you can discover Satan's lies?

Makes you think, eh?

I'm glad I'm not superstitious so I don't have these sorts of problems to keep me awake at night wondering if I've been deceived by the 'Great Deceiver'.

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How God Learned About Justice

Here's another curious tale from the Bible. It's about two cities called Sodom and Gomorrah (which sound more like an Irish curse). It seems to be where God was taught the rudiments of justice by Man.

We are told that God was annoyed that the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the LORD exceedingly - Genesis 13:13. (Unlucky 13 or what?!) So God decided he was going to destroy these cities and everyone in them. Anyway, after a somewhat protracted tale about battles and things and people being chased unto Dan, a place which won't exist for several hundred more years (time travel?) - the Bible eventually gets to the point where God is about to carry out this destruction.

However, a man called Abraham has a word with him:

And the LORD said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know.

Genesis 18:20-21

Nothing surprising there then. Of course, an omniscient, omnipresent god would need to go into a city to find out what was going on.

But what's this?

And the men turned their faces from thence, and went toward Sodom: but Abraham stood yet before the Lord. And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?

And the Lord said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.

Genesis 18:22-26

Phew! Good thing Abraham was in with God and was able to give him a bit of wise counsel there, then.

But why 50? Why just pick an arbitrary number out of the air? Good old Abraham spots this and gradually leads God towards a slightly more humanitarian solution by, each time God thinks he's got it about right, setting doubt in his mind and making him see the arbitrary nature of his 'justice'.

Watch this; it's hilarious. Remember, this god is supposed to be the fount of all wisdom, the source of all morals, omniscient and inerrant. It's a bit like watching a wise old sergeant leading the still-wet-behind-the-ears young captain fresh out of cadet school:

And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes: Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous: wilt thou destroy all the city for lack of five? And he said, If I find there forty and five, I will not destroy it.

And he spake unto him yet again, and said, Peradventure there shall be forty found there. And he said, I will not do it for forty's sake.

And he said unto him, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak: Peradventure there shall thirty be found there. And he said, I will not do it, if I find thirty there.

And he said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord: Peradventure there shall be twenty found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for twenty's sake.

And he said, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for ten's sake.

And the Lord went his way, as soon as he had left communing with Abraham: and Abraham returned unto his place.

Genesis 18:27-33

So, after five changes of mind and after being given a lesson in justice, this omniscient, inerrant source of morals has agreed to spare the cities if they can find just ten righteous people in them.

It still hasn't learned to forgive it's enemies or show mercy. That'll have to wait for another day.

Nor does it keep it's promises, apparently, as it destroys the cities anyway.

Lot's Daughters; Jan Muller c.1600

But let's press on with this tale because there is another curious incident. It happens when God has sent a couple of angels to carry out his orders and these angels have taken refuge in Lot's house (as they do) which is now surrounded by an angry mob, demanding to be let in to bugger the angels. Lot thinks he has to save them. Even though they are shortly going to destroy two cities and all the people in them, a band of randy gay men is too much for them to deal with, apparently.

But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter: And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them.

And Lot went out at the door unto them, and shut the door after him, And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly. Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof.

Genesis 19:4-8

So, righteous Lot has actually offered his two virgin daughters to to be 'used' by a sex-crazed mob!

And this is someone of whom God approves!

Still, at least when Lot has an incestuous relationship with his, up to then, still virgin daughters a bit later on(Genesis 19:30-36), his unfortunate wife having been turned into salt, there no risk of him catching something nasty what with penicillin not having been discovered yet.

Good to see though, that the source of all morals was such a stickler for righteousness, and felt able to teach those wicked people of Sodom and Gomorrah how to behave. Obviously, there was still a long way to go before this god was up to speed with normal humanitarian morality. Perhaps that was why it needed to put in so many appearances in those days.

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Why God's First Words to Adam Were Lies

Adam & Eve in the Gardem

Fernado Botero

Now here's a funny thing.

Browsing my King James Bible, I came across this curious tale. Maybe you've heard of it. It's the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. It makes you wonder just what sort of god the author was writing about. It soon becomes all too obvious why he was writing it in the first place though - and I do mean he.

Firstly, this god is supposed to have created the Garden of Eden, complete with fruit trees for food, and put Adam into it.

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Genesis 2:8-9

No Answers In Genesis - Project Steve

Ken Ham

Attempting to compensate for the fact that few serious scientists agree with a literal interpretation of Genesis, including creation of the universe and all species, extinct or living in a single act of creation 6000 years ago, creationist organisation such as Ken Ham's Answersingenesis.org and the Institute for Creation Research have put together a list of nearly 200 scientists whom they claim support a literal interpretation Genesis.

The list includes Dr Paul D. Ackerman, the psychologist responsible for the appallingly bad creationist 'science' book,"It's A Young World After All" which I have comprehensively demolished in a series of blogs listed in "It's An Old World After All"

A quick Google search on a random selection of these scientists shows that Ackerman is not the only one who has no higher academic qualifications in the subject on which he writes, and who has never published a paper on any of those subjects in a peer-reviewed journal nor presented a paper on any of them to an audience of specialists in these subjects.

Patriot Bible 'University' - Kent Hovind's Alma Mater.

Some of them appear to have obtained 'degrees' from various creationist and Bible 'colleges' similar to the shed from which Kent Hovind obtained his 'doctorate'. Google any name on the list and you will discover that many of them are famous merely for appearing on the list and appear to have done very little else of note.

This list, which was drawn up by the Discovery Institute, is of course, intended to convey the idea that the Theory of Evolution is a science in crises and is being rejected by mainstream scientists rather than being accepted by all serious biologists as the best available explanation for the observable fact of evolution. It is clearly aimed at people who are impressed by letters after a name and who imagine one degree is much like another and a science degree indicates expertise in all sciences, or that a psychology degree or doctorate in Bible Studies bought from a diploma mill, for example, qualifies someone to write knowledgeably on biology, physics or cosmology.

By way of contrast, Project Steve, run by the US National Center for Science Education aims to compile a list of scientists called Steve (or it's various forms like Stephen, Stephanie, etc) who subscribe to the statement:

Evolution is a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences, and the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the idea that all living things share a common ancestry. Although there are legitimate debates about the patterns and processes of evolution, there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its occurrence. It is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically irresponsible for creationist pseudoscience, including but not limited to "intelligent design," to be introduced into the science curricula of our nation's public schools.

Stephen Jay Gould. An evolutionist called Steve

The name 'Steve' was chosen as a tribute to the late palaeontologist, evolutionist and author, Stephen J. Gould. As such is restricts the number of scientists eligible to sign up to about 1% of all scientists.

To date, the number of scientists called 'Steve' who have signed up to this statements is about 1230, two of whom are the only Nobel Prize winning Steves. Scaled up this represents about 99.85% of all scientists who have expressed an opinion. Noticeably, the proportion of biologists on this list exceeds 51% of the total compared to the few biologists on the Creationist list.

Infuriated by this, the Creationist mathematician, William Dembski, Fellow of the Discovery Institute, attempting to widen the net, set up a rival list of scientists who 'reject a naturalistic conception of evolution' rather than just supporting a literal interpretation of Genesis. In two years he signed up just 0.023% of the world's scientists, eight of whom were called Steve. Remember: as a professional propagandist for the Discovery Institute, Dembski is forbidden from claiming 'God did it!' because that would give the game away that the Discovery Institute is not a science body but a front organisation for fundamentalist Christianity which needs to keep its religious and subversive political agenda well hidden.

Inspired by Project Steve, and motivated by media coverage of the Discovery Institute's "Dissent From Darwinism" list, during the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case, R. Joe Brandon initiated a four-day, word-of-mouth petition of scientists in support of evolution in October 2005. During the four-day drive A Scientific Support For Darwinism And For Public Schools Not To Teach Intelligent Design As Science gathered 7733 signatures of verifiable scientists. During the four days of the petition, A Scientific Support for Darwinism received signatures at a rate 697,000 percent higher than the Discovery Institute's petition, A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism, according to archaeologist R. Joe Brandon.

Source: Wikipedia - Project Steve

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Francis Collins - A Case-Study In Self-Delusion.

This is the final blog dealing with Francis Collins' book The Language Of God. In this I look at the section in Chapter Ten headed What Is Theistic Evolution. Here is what Collins has to say:

Mountains of material, in fact entire library shelves, are devoted to the topics of Darwinian evolution, creationism, and Intelligent Design. Yet few scientists or believers are familiar with the term "theistic evolution", sometimes abbreviated "TE". By the now standard criterion of Google search engine entries, there is only one mention of theistic evolution for every ten about creationism and every 140 about Intelligent Design.

Yet theistic evolution is the dominant position of serious biologists who are also serious believers. That includes Asa Gray, Darwin’s chief advocate in the United States, and Theodosius Dobzhansky, the twentieth-century architect of evolutionary thinking. It is the view espoused by many Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and Christians, including Pope John Paul II. While it is risky to make presumptions about historical figures, I believe that this is also the view that Maimonides (the highly regarded twelfth-century Jewish philosopher) and Saint Augustine would espouse today if they were presented with the scientific evidence for evolution.

The Cherry-Picker's Bible

To be fair to Francis Collins, of whom I have been critical, though I think not unjustly here and here, it would be wrong of me not to acknowledge the following:

Thus, by any reasonable standard, Young Earth Creationism has reached a point of intellectual bankruptcy, both in its science and in its theology. Its persistence is thus one of the great puzzles and great tragedies of our time. By attacking the fundamentals of virtually every branch of science, it widens the chasm between the scientific and spiritual worldviews, just at a time where a pathway toward harmony is desperately needed. By sending a message to young people that science is dangerous, and that pursuing science may well mean rejecting religious faith, Young Earth Creationism may be depriving science of some of its most promising future talents.

Believing Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast

In a recent blog, Francis Collins - The Language Of God Delusion I showed how Francis Collins needed to use double standards to maintain the compartmentalised thinking it takes to be both a devout Christian and a scientist, and how he uses the very same straw man fallacy he accuses others of using, albeit possibly subconsciously.

Another example of this can be found in his book "The Language Of God"

The major and inescapable flaw of Dawkins's claim that science demands atheism is that it goes beyond the evidence. If God is outside of nature, then science can neither prove nor disprove His existence. Atheism itself must therefore be considered a form of blind faith, in that it adopts a belief system that cannot be defended on the basis of pure reason.

What Collins ignores in this arguments is that, if God is outside of nature and so beyond the reach of science, this can only be because it cannot interact with nature in any way. If it can interact, then this interaction would be detectable by science and God would be part of nature, and so open to examination by scientific methods.

"There's no use in trying", said Alice: "One can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Lewis Carroll, Through a Looking Glass

Collins appears to hold to two mutually contradictory beliefs simultaneously:

1. God can interact with and influence nature and we can interact with and influence God.
2. God cannot interact with nature and we cannot interact with God.

This ability to hold opposite views simultaneously, and often with equal conviction, is a characteristic of delusional doublethink and compartmentalised thinking. It is a psychological strategy to enables religious people to cope with cognitive dissonance and behave like perfectly normal, rational adults, and yet still believe in the magic invisible friends their parents told them about when they were gullible and susceptible to indoctrination.

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If Doctors Behaved Like Priests.

We depend on our doctor.

We rely on their expertise because medicine is a huge, complex and ever-changing subject that most of us simply don't have the time to learn in enough detail, or to keep up to date with. We depend on their professional integrity, on their diagnostic skills, on their knowledge of the latest medicines and treatment regimes for illness and from where this can be obtained.

We expect their judgements to be rational, informed, evidence-based, impartial and, if required, demonstrably justified. In short, we expect them to be scientific.

But what if they behaved like priests?

What if they told you you must be suffering from an illness because it said so in a 3500 year-old book, and that you needed to say special words and incantations to be saved from it?

What if they told you that, even though there was no evidence for cancer, they were going to prescribe a course of chemo- and radio-therapy anyway because absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, so it is best to assume cancer, just in case?

What if you went to them with a headache and they told you it must be imaginary because they had faith that there was nothing wrong with you and that your problem was that your faith wasn't strong enough and your headache was just a test?

What if you went to them for contraceptive advice and they told you you were evil and should say magic spells to prevent something nasty happening to you later? And no, you just have to have more babies or stop having sex.

What if your were diabetic and they said they would cast some magic words over your because that would be better than medication?

What if they told you that incantations, special hand movements and sprinklings of magic water would cure your child of a virus infection?

What if they told you bunions were caused by an evil spirit which you had allowed to enter your body, so it was your own fault?

What if they told you that modern medicines were not mentioned in their favourite old book of Bronze Age origin myths so they were no good and should not be taken?

What if they told you that they got all their information from an old book which had not been updated for nearly 2000 years; that they never read any modern books on medicine because they were all lies and they knew this because they disagreed with their favourite old book?

And what if you were clearly disturbed and felt compelled to go to them every week and give them a lot of money, and they told you this was a good thing and that you should give them as much as you could afford, at least 10% of your income?

Would you think you have a really good doctor, or would you look for a proper one and report this one for malpractice?

Strange then that exactly this behaviour is tolerated in priests, pastors, vicars, imams, rabbis and other people who make a living as religious clerics.

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A Mind Of Sufficient Grasp

Charles Robert Darwin, FRS (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882)

Reading Daniel Dennett's must read book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea I came across this little snippet of information.

Back in 1859, Darwin set out the formal logic of his theory in the first edition of "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life", popularly know by its later title "The Origin Of Species". It was:

If, during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life, organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organization, and I think this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to the high geometric powers of increase of each species, at some age, season, or year, a severe struggle for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite diversity in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each being's own welfare, in the same way as so many variations have occurred useful to man. But if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will tend to produce offspring similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection.

Charles Darwin, Origin, p. 127

So, which Creationist is going to come forward and explain the fault in that logic. What statement of fact is wrong? What deduction does not flow inevitably from that fact? Because, if you can't you have absolutely no basis whatsoever for denying the fact of evolution by natural selection and the conclusion that it explains the present and past diversity of life on earth.

No, I don't mean which Creationist is going to come forward and try to obscure the argument with quibbles over the meaning of words, or to assert that it can't be right because an old book says so, or that their 'faith' trumps logic and we should just believe what they say. I mean which Creationist is actually going to go through the logic, step by step, and explain why it is faulty.

Because, if you can't you have no basis on which to doubt the truth of Darwin's theory as set out here. You have no real reason to dispute the conclusion that this short piece of undeniable logic was arguably the most profound in all of science.

And, perhaps most importantly, you have no option but to agree with Darwin's statement that, "I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each being's own welfare". What Darwin is saying here is that, if this logic holds, it would be extraordinary if evolution did not occur.

In fact, it is true to say that evolution not occurring would be as extraordinary as a stone remaining hovering in the air when released and not falling towards the centre of gravity.

The extraordinary thing, and something that might need a supernatural being in the explanation if it were true, would be if there were no bio-diversity. It would be as difficult for science to explain as a stone hovering three feet above the ground. It's not ever going to be true though because, as Darwin's logic shows, evolution is as inevitable as is a stone's movement in response to gravity.

In Thomas Huxley's words on reading Origin, "How stupid not to have thought of it oneself!".

Patrick Matthew (20 October 1790 – 8 June 1874)

Maybe the stark-staring obviousness of Evolution by Natural Selection can be gauged from the words of Patrick Matthew. Matthew had actually described evolution by natural selection in 1831, but as an appendix to his book, "Naval Timber and Arboriculture". Learning of Darwin's rising fame as the 'discoverer' of it, he published a letter in Gardeners' Chronicle (ever the master of choosing obscure publications) claiming his priority, which Darwin graciously conceded but excused his ignorance on the obscurity of Matthew's choice of venue. Matthew's response was revealing:

To me the concept of this law of Nature came intuitively as a self-evident fact, almost without an effort of concentrated thought. Mr Darwin here seems to have more merit in the discovery than I have had - to me it did not appear a discovery. He seems to have worked it out by inductive reason, slowly and with due caution to have made his way synthetically from fact to fact onwards; while with me it was by a general glance at the scheme of Nature that I estimated this select production of species as an a priori recognizable fact - an axiom, requiring only to be pointed out to be admitted by unprejudiced minds of sufficient grasp."

So, if you can't fault Darwin's logic and yet still won't accept Darwinian Evolution, maybe Patrick Matthew offers an explanation: you lack an "unprejudiced mind of sufficient grasp".

So, over to you Creationists. It's time to put your money where your mouth is. Do any of you have sufficient confidence in your belief to take up this challenge and show you have an unprejudiced mind of sufficient grasp?

I think people will understand if you haven't.

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Francis Collins - The Language Of God Delusion

Francis Sellers Collins (born April 14, 1950)

I've been asked (or was it challenged?) to look at the book "The Language Of God" by Francis Collins, in which he attempts to argue that it is possible to reconcile Christian belief with science.

Francis Sellers Collins (born April 14, 1950), is an American physician-geneticist, noted for his discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the Human Genome Project (HGP). He currently serves as Director of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Prior to being appointed Director, he founded and was president of the BioLogos Foundation. Collins has written a book about his Christian faith, and Pope Benedict XVI appointed Francis Collins to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Wikipedia - Francis Collins

The first impression is that this is merely another God of the Gaps book and, as such, shows the abandonment of science one would expect of someone who needs the compartmentalised thinking required to hold to a belief in magic, and to live a normal professional life simultaneously. It thus represents a substantive example of the delusional nature of religious faith and particularly the Abrahamic versions of it. But more of that possibly later, in a longer blog reviewing Collins' book in greater depth.

What Has Marriage Got To Do With Religion?

One of the issues currently causing near hysteria in religious circles is that of marriage. The Catholic Church especially is almost besides itself with rage and now the Anglican Church seems to have joined in the mass hysteria. All this is because, like several other countries, the government is considering introducing legislation to end the discrimination against homosexual couples and allow them to marry like heterosexual couples.

Currently, civil ceremonies are permitted between same-sex couples but these are not called marriages and are not legally recognised as such. By some bizarre form of logic, one Tory MP, Karl McCartney, has concluded that it will lead to child marriages.

In England and Wales recently, Catholic priests were ordered by the Archbishop of Westminster to read out a letter condemning the idea of marriage between people of the same sex.

A full transcript of the letter can be read here. In it, the authors clearly lay claim not only to the institution of marriage and the right to define both its form and its purpose, but also to the right to dictate what form our society should take with:

The law helps to shape and form social and cultural values. A change in the law would gradually and inevitably transform society’s understanding of the purpose of marriage. There would be no recognition of the complementarity of male and female or that marriage is intended for the procreation and education of children.

The arrogance of this is breath-taking in its audacity. No one elected them; they did not consult anyone; they are accountable to no one other than their own self-appointed church hierarchy yet they feel competent to dictate to us on matters of personal relationships and the form of society in which we are to live.

Abolishing one of the last vestiges of the times when clerics dispensed morality to the rest of us (often dispensing with it altogether for themselves) and meddled in the most private details of our lives, would be a major step on the road to freeing ourselves from the leash they had us on for centuries.

Marriage should be something people can freely enter into in whatever form they wish. If we want to incorporate some form of superstition in the process or base it on some ancient rites and rituals, we should be free to do so.

Likewise, if we want it to take some other, formal or informal form, or not have a marriage of any sort we should be free to do so. There is no reason save superstitious bigotry why a contract between people to hold goods and property in common should be restricted to just two people of different genders. There is no real reason why it should not be between any number of consenting adults of whatever gender. The physical relationships within that arrangement should be left to the individuals themselves.

There is no reason for any ceremony if none is wanted. There is no reason a marriage could not be registered by completing a form obtainable from the Post Office or posting a notice in the local newspaper, if the participants wish to make it official in some way. It could even be marked by drinks down the local.

And of course people should be free to leave it as and when they wish.

The only considerations where the state need be involved are those concerning care and welfare of any children and a framework of contract law by which agreements can be made and disputes settled if need be. Beyond that there is no place for the state to interfere in consensual personal relationships freely entered into. The state should not be in the business of creating victimless crimes just to give meddling bigots an element of control over our lives.

So what's causing the current hysteria? Why are these superstitious people so upset by the thought that we might be doing what we want to do, rather than what they want us to do?

The answer lies in the question: they want us to do what they want us to do because they want to control us. It's what they are using fear and superstition for. Making this bid for independence is undermining their power and authority. That goes against everything that religions were invented for in the first place.

It's time they accepted that they have lost the argument and have lost control. Civilised societies are quickly ridding themselves of the primitive, inhuman barbarities and meddling interference with which religions struggle to keep us in the dark ages the better to control us and the easier to earn a living 'ministering' to the damage cause by the superstitious ignorance they assiduously promulgate.

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Hey Christians! Is Matthew For Real?

The Watch Over The Tomb

Henry Tissot

When asked for evidence of the historicity of Jesus, many Christians will trot out the standard dogma that the 'Gospels' of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are contemporaneous accounts written by witnesses to the events they relate, and so are good historical sources.

This ignores the fact that they are contradictory in many places and relate details of the conception and birth of Jesus of which they could not have been eye-witnesses, but that's not the main point of this blog.

As Jonathan MS Pearce points out in Matthew and the guards at the tomb, and as is pointed out in the comments to that excellent blog, Matthew effectively debunks that argument itself, as does Luke. The most sensible conclusion is that the claim of being eye-witness accounts was a later claim and not intended by the author. Indeed, no where does Matthew claim to have been an eye-witness to the events he describes and he always writes in the third person, using 'they' not 'we'.