Of course not all atheists are smart, not all atheist people even use science, our only common ground is that we lack a belief in any god. Though this is usually because of being skeptical, skepticism does have an unhealthy extreme.
We call them conspiracy theorists, though theorist is is not the proper word. These people are so extremely skeptical that they even doubt demonstrable facts, which forces them to make it all up.
Ultimately the conspiracy nut is not scientific, and that is where the extremism comes from. Skeptics must remain scientific at all times, it is the only way to know fact from fiction, there really is no other method.
Conspiracy nuts dismiss science as a conspiracy in itself, which betrays their ignorance. They believe science is some elitist club that just feeds people information, which is far from the truth.
Science is a method used to test and verify facts, anyone can contribute but you cannot expect to be taken seriously if you present no evidence to be verified. Once evidence has been tested and verified it is demonstrably fact, though there is a recent issue discovered in the system used for this, caused by our population explosion, which is beyond this blog.
I recently explained how credibility is earned, but conspiracy nuts still think it's bought and sold. An example is wifi, which one of the key developers was an actress, a female movie star with no credentials at a time when women could not get respect.
A simple search of scientific contributions and one will notice that today more youth are contributing to scientific advancement than older people. A disturbing and encouraging trend, disturbing because my generation is seriously failing.
Yet the conspiracy nuts still claim that science is some grand conspiracy to keep people stupid, rather ironic that the conspiracy nut usually doesn't understand basic physics. Often they will cling to those who have been laughed out of the scientific community for submitting papers with false, fabricated, or no evidence.
The method finds those falsifications, which is why it has worked so well, and if you expect to be taken seriously after publishing such then you're a bigger fool than creationists.
Monday, August 31, 2015
Sunday, August 30, 2015
The Order Of The Universe
The fact of the matter is that then universe is imperfect, and that is why life is inevitable. There is no balance, and chemical reactions are the result of the universe attempting to seek balance.
Ultimately, the chemical reactions cannot ever be balanced, there will always be another chemical that will cause another reaction with the compound that is already balanced. So the universe is in a perpetual state of chaos, and life is this chaos manifesting itself.
To appreciate this you will need to study a lot of science, but to see the elegance and beauty in this chaos you only need an imagination. The advent of the gods has worked to destroy this imagination in our species.
Every god claim assumes that there is some inherent order to everything, yet order does not actually exist. Order requires conscience will to be inherent, but we know for a fact that conscience will is not inherent.
Our brains are the result of chaotic chemical reactions, acted on by the imperfect yet ever present pressures to survive. We call these pressures natural selection.
Intelligence seeks order, but life cannot thrive in such a situation because without the chaise nothing can ever improve. That is the part often ignored by humanity, improvement of any type is chaos.
Simply by attempting to make order, we create chaos, in the same manner than moving forward in a lake produces waves. Change requires chaos, and chaos produces change, the two are cyclical in nature.
Gods are the idiotic notion that change can happen without chaos, comforting to the intelligences residing in our brains but these are false comforts. Intelligence is a byproduct of neural chemical reactions, reactions which produce what we call awareness.
Awareness is seen in almost all mammals, it is the very basic concept of "I am therefore I am," sum ergo sum. This means our intelligence is bot unique in nature, but it always requires a chaotic system of reactions to produce.
Chaos is also not random, but it has nothing to do with being planned, people who are selling snake oil will often use unrelated words as synonyms to convince you that they're correct without needing to present empirical evidence. The fact of the matter is that we created a word that describes something which cannot exist, there never is, nor ever will be, any order in the universe.
Ultimately, the chemical reactions cannot ever be balanced, there will always be another chemical that will cause another reaction with the compound that is already balanced. So the universe is in a perpetual state of chaos, and life is this chaos manifesting itself.
To appreciate this you will need to study a lot of science, but to see the elegance and beauty in this chaos you only need an imagination. The advent of the gods has worked to destroy this imagination in our species.
Every god claim assumes that there is some inherent order to everything, yet order does not actually exist. Order requires conscience will to be inherent, but we know for a fact that conscience will is not inherent.
Our brains are the result of chaotic chemical reactions, acted on by the imperfect yet ever present pressures to survive. We call these pressures natural selection.
Intelligence seeks order, but life cannot thrive in such a situation because without the chaise nothing can ever improve. That is the part often ignored by humanity, improvement of any type is chaos.
Simply by attempting to make order, we create chaos, in the same manner than moving forward in a lake produces waves. Change requires chaos, and chaos produces change, the two are cyclical in nature.
Gods are the idiotic notion that change can happen without chaos, comforting to the intelligences residing in our brains but these are false comforts. Intelligence is a byproduct of neural chemical reactions, reactions which produce what we call awareness.
Awareness is seen in almost all mammals, it is the very basic concept of "I am therefore I am," sum ergo sum. This means our intelligence is bot unique in nature, but it always requires a chaotic system of reactions to produce.
Chaos is also not random, but it has nothing to do with being planned, people who are selling snake oil will often use unrelated words as synonyms to convince you that they're correct without needing to present empirical evidence. The fact of the matter is that we created a word that describes something which cannot exist, there never is, nor ever will be, any order in the universe.
Friday, August 28, 2015
The World Will End August 29th 2015
Doom and gloom has an appeal because the downtrodden love the idea of everyone better off getting the short end of the deal. This is why religion sells the idea of an eternal punishment for "everyone except you."
Other notions are the "end of the world" predictions, which scam billions on fools who would rather have quick and easy revenge than work to improve their lot. By knowing of an impending disaster they believe that they can somehow escape the worst of it and watch their evil enemies suffer horrible fates.
Let's pretend that just one such event will happen, consider the number of children who would suffer this "horrible fate" for just a moment, then ask if you really want that to happen. Would you still tame your easy way out, or want to stick around to at least try to help the children who suffer?
Think about it, the world is ending anyway, so there is no hurry to move onto your reward since it is supposedly secure. Yes, you'll suffer from all that horrible stuff, but you'd be able to help thousands of people by doing that.
So would you take the leaders' easy ship or just go on with your life until you can help children who will inevitably suffer without you? If your leaders are so worried about saving people, why are they in such a hurry to leave?
Doctors have been known to risk their own lives in combat just to mend a broken bone. Parents have died in burning buildings to save their children.
Strangers have lost their lives pulling people from harm, freeing others from slavery, or protecting them from tyrants. Altruism is the term used for this, it is an effect of empathy, feeling their pain is worse than our own.
This is not an accident, but it is not divine. Altruism is the only reason our species survived, lacking in strength, natural weaponry, and advanced tools in our early stages.
It was the ability to work together, especially self sacrifice, that allowed us to survive until we developed advanced tools. Without altruism we would have failed, humanity would never have existed.
Cults, religions, that sell panic and quick escapes are simply showing us that selfishness is too popular, selfishness is an effect of a psychotic personality. These followers are lacking in empathy so severely that they are willing to pay money just to see others suffer from what they believe is a safe place.
But here's the flaw, if their leaders actually believed what they said they'd jot ask for so much money anyway. Ask how they'll spend all that money after the world is gone.
One thing to check, just for laughs, they choose dates that are just before major spending periods, like late September. Just after September is when all the major holidays arrive, at that point it would be silly to ask for money from anyone.
But from July to September people have almost nothing to spend money on, making them prime targets. Panic is easier to fuel if tomorrow is the last day of the world.
Other notions are the "end of the world" predictions, which scam billions on fools who would rather have quick and easy revenge than work to improve their lot. By knowing of an impending disaster they believe that they can somehow escape the worst of it and watch their evil enemies suffer horrible fates.
Let's pretend that just one such event will happen, consider the number of children who would suffer this "horrible fate" for just a moment, then ask if you really want that to happen. Would you still tame your easy way out, or want to stick around to at least try to help the children who suffer?
Think about it, the world is ending anyway, so there is no hurry to move onto your reward since it is supposedly secure. Yes, you'll suffer from all that horrible stuff, but you'd be able to help thousands of people by doing that.
So would you take the leaders' easy ship or just go on with your life until you can help children who will inevitably suffer without you? If your leaders are so worried about saving people, why are they in such a hurry to leave?
Doctors have been known to risk their own lives in combat just to mend a broken bone. Parents have died in burning buildings to save their children.
Strangers have lost their lives pulling people from harm, freeing others from slavery, or protecting them from tyrants. Altruism is the term used for this, it is an effect of empathy, feeling their pain is worse than our own.
This is not an accident, but it is not divine. Altruism is the only reason our species survived, lacking in strength, natural weaponry, and advanced tools in our early stages.
It was the ability to work together, especially self sacrifice, that allowed us to survive until we developed advanced tools. Without altruism we would have failed, humanity would never have existed.
Cults, religions, that sell panic and quick escapes are simply showing us that selfishness is too popular, selfishness is an effect of a psychotic personality. These followers are lacking in empathy so severely that they are willing to pay money just to see others suffer from what they believe is a safe place.
But here's the flaw, if their leaders actually believed what they said they'd jot ask for so much money anyway. Ask how they'll spend all that money after the world is gone.
One thing to check, just for laughs, they choose dates that are just before major spending periods, like late September. Just after September is when all the major holidays arrive, at that point it would be silly to ask for money from anyone.
But from July to September people have almost nothing to spend money on, making them prime targets. Panic is easier to fuel if tomorrow is the last day of the world.
Monday, August 24, 2015
Intelligent Design: Saying "God Dun It" Without Saying It
Creationism, often misrepresented as "intelligent design," which is really just another way of saying "god dun it." The fact of the matter is that creationism presents no facts, which is required for something to be scientific and sane.
Creationism itself is not even that old, it was started a few decades ago, after science had established that variety of life is an effect of evolution, the Earth was at least 4 billion years old, heavy elements are created by stars, and the Earth is not the center or reason for the universe. But creationism denies all of this and more.
The industry of creationism was started as a scam, to sell books and videos to uneducated fools. The talking heads of creationism never present facts, they always evade evidence, and know absolutely nothing about the scientific method.
They count on those who are too ignorant to ask questions, this is their target audience, this ignorance is actually born of laziness and lack of self esteem. It takes a lot of work to even understand the scientific method itself, much more effort than required to deny it.
The irony is that most of the people buying this creationism material never actually read it, then they present it as if it was evidence without realizing that all they present is the same debunked arguments used almost two centuries ago. If they read it and learned about the history of the theories they deny they'd feel really stupid for buying it.
Let's look at this as a creationist would, except we'll add facts to make it honest. Creationism was coined in the 1920s to describe Christian fundamentalists.
This movement was vanishing rather quickly, it is impossible to argue against facts that have been verified and most knew that. Then in the early 1990s we saw the arrival of online media, a rather inexpensive method of advertising products to billions.
The flaw was that you could say anything online, a flaw that the creationist con artists exploited to flood the internet with their baseless claims. Having made the internet easy to access for even the most stupid people, the target audience was flooding to these easy platitudes.
Science is hard, and platitudes like "we just can't understand it" instead of "here's the facts" are easy to swallow by the common moron. So with nothing more than simple platitudes, the creationist conmen were able to rope in millions of fools who were ready to buy a simple platitude to get through their miserable lives.
But here's the catch, none of what the creationists claim is even supported by the conmen who sold them the headline. This is why they don't even cite their sources anymore.
Behe, for example, no longer claims irreducible complexity is a thing, nor does he deny mutations in genes. But the creationist who bought his books will claim Behe proved irreducible complexity ... awkward.
The con artists have no interest in correcting their fools, they are the bread and butter of the industry called creationism. So that leaves us skeptics with a bunch of idiots to have fun with, dissecting their idiotic claims with only a few basic facts.
Creationism itself is not even that old, it was started a few decades ago, after science had established that variety of life is an effect of evolution, the Earth was at least 4 billion years old, heavy elements are created by stars, and the Earth is not the center or reason for the universe. But creationism denies all of this and more.
The industry of creationism was started as a scam, to sell books and videos to uneducated fools. The talking heads of creationism never present facts, they always evade evidence, and know absolutely nothing about the scientific method.
They count on those who are too ignorant to ask questions, this is their target audience, this ignorance is actually born of laziness and lack of self esteem. It takes a lot of work to even understand the scientific method itself, much more effort than required to deny it.
The irony is that most of the people buying this creationism material never actually read it, then they present it as if it was evidence without realizing that all they present is the same debunked arguments used almost two centuries ago. If they read it and learned about the history of the theories they deny they'd feel really stupid for buying it.
Let's look at this as a creationist would, except we'll add facts to make it honest. Creationism was coined in the 1920s to describe Christian fundamentalists.
This movement was vanishing rather quickly, it is impossible to argue against facts that have been verified and most knew that. Then in the early 1990s we saw the arrival of online media, a rather inexpensive method of advertising products to billions.
The flaw was that you could say anything online, a flaw that the creationist con artists exploited to flood the internet with their baseless claims. Having made the internet easy to access for even the most stupid people, the target audience was flooding to these easy platitudes.
Science is hard, and platitudes like "we just can't understand it" instead of "here's the facts" are easy to swallow by the common moron. So with nothing more than simple platitudes, the creationist conmen were able to rope in millions of fools who were ready to buy a simple platitude to get through their miserable lives.
But here's the catch, none of what the creationists claim is even supported by the conmen who sold them the headline. This is why they don't even cite their sources anymore.
Behe, for example, no longer claims irreducible complexity is a thing, nor does he deny mutations in genes. But the creationist who bought his books will claim Behe proved irreducible complexity ... awkward.
The con artists have no interest in correcting their fools, they are the bread and butter of the industry called creationism. So that leaves us skeptics with a bunch of idiots to have fun with, dissecting their idiotic claims with only a few basic facts.
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Vegetarian, Industry, and People
Humans are omnivores, like all apes, this basic fact cannot be argued. However, omnivore diet is still mostly vegetables, so too much meat will be bad for us.
But here's the problem with people who call themselves carnivores, our digestive system evolved to consume bugs. Bugs are a type of meat, but the bacteria present is very different.
Bacteria are important to digestion, they are also a source of nutrients, the wrong bacteria can also kill us. For animal flesh we must cook it to make it safe, while bugs can be eaten live without any major risks.
One nutrient we got exclusively from bugs is iodide, necessary for our survival no other source is abundant enough to sustain us. So we add iodide to to our salt to ensure we have a source that is pleasant to consume.
The flaw in vegetarian and vegan diets is the lack of variety in the nutrients. Though some can subsist on a diet of just vegetables, it won't be sufficient for everyone.
This is caused by the variations in our species, making it impossible to create a diet suitable for everyone. Thus some will be forced to consume a meat, but the choices for meat are limited to unethical ones.
This creates a conundrum, you either support a vile and despicable industry or you suffer health problems. This is not how a free society works, nor is it how capitalism works.
Capitalism requires that everyone have choices, that all choices are ethical, and no industry is given government support. This creates a sink or swim environment, where if a business angers the consumers it falls under it's own wait because of boycotts and protests.
In the USA, we see no capitalism, it is skewed by government regulations that are determined by unethical politicians who are siding with those who pay them most. Instead we see religion being treated how business should be, at least now all religions are falling under their own weight, but companies which should are still going strong on government subsidies and handouts.
Tax exemption is not part of this equation so don't assume I am including that, no one should be tax exempt if you can afford to pay taxes.
But here's the problem with people who call themselves carnivores, our digestive system evolved to consume bugs. Bugs are a type of meat, but the bacteria present is very different.
Bacteria are important to digestion, they are also a source of nutrients, the wrong bacteria can also kill us. For animal flesh we must cook it to make it safe, while bugs can be eaten live without any major risks.
One nutrient we got exclusively from bugs is iodide, necessary for our survival no other source is abundant enough to sustain us. So we add iodide to to our salt to ensure we have a source that is pleasant to consume.
The flaw in vegetarian and vegan diets is the lack of variety in the nutrients. Though some can subsist on a diet of just vegetables, it won't be sufficient for everyone.
This is caused by the variations in our species, making it impossible to create a diet suitable for everyone. Thus some will be forced to consume a meat, but the choices for meat are limited to unethical ones.
This creates a conundrum, you either support a vile and despicable industry or you suffer health problems. This is not how a free society works, nor is it how capitalism works.
Capitalism requires that everyone have choices, that all choices are ethical, and no industry is given government support. This creates a sink or swim environment, where if a business angers the consumers it falls under it's own wait because of boycotts and protests.
In the USA, we see no capitalism, it is skewed by government regulations that are determined by unethical politicians who are siding with those who pay them most. Instead we see religion being treated how business should be, at least now all religions are falling under their own weight, but companies which should are still going strong on government subsidies and handouts.
Tax exemption is not part of this equation so don't assume I am including that, no one should be tax exempt if you can afford to pay taxes.
Saturday, August 22, 2015
Video Evidence
No, videos are not inherently evidence nor do they contain evidence. Videos can present evidence but said evidence will have other sources, so to insist that the evidence is only in a video is the same thing as saying you have no evidence.
This is why we often refuse to acknowledge claims of evidence contained in a video without even bothering to watch said video, if evidence was presented in the video you could link it elsewhere. The best source for evidence is scientific papers, unlike the video these papers show their work and how they tested said evidence as well as the results of said test.
To make the evidence empirical, when these tests are repeated the results must be identical, there is no room for interpretation. If none of the tests produce the exact same results then it is not evidence.
The tests must always be exactly the same as well, any variation in the test invalidates that test and thus the results are meaningless. The results must be recorded as well, accurately and verifiably, so claims of said test producing such results are invalid without this verified record.
Videos can be evidence of events, but they must be actual recordings of said events and unaltered. The video must then be verified by several sources and it must be clear.
So no, we do not have to watch your religious videos to know that it's just a bunch of claims and double speak, if you had evidence you'd link a scientific paper when asked for it.
This is why we often refuse to acknowledge claims of evidence contained in a video without even bothering to watch said video, if evidence was presented in the video you could link it elsewhere. The best source for evidence is scientific papers, unlike the video these papers show their work and how they tested said evidence as well as the results of said test.
To make the evidence empirical, when these tests are repeated the results must be identical, there is no room for interpretation. If none of the tests produce the exact same results then it is not evidence.
The tests must always be exactly the same as well, any variation in the test invalidates that test and thus the results are meaningless. The results must be recorded as well, accurately and verifiably, so claims of said test producing such results are invalid without this verified record.
Videos can be evidence of events, but they must be actual recordings of said events and unaltered. The video must then be verified by several sources and it must be clear.
So no, we do not have to watch your religious videos to know that it's just a bunch of claims and double speak, if you had evidence you'd link a scientific paper when asked for it.
Friday, August 21, 2015
Are Humans Apes?
There is only one reason to deny that humans are apes, that reason is to remove the guilt of taking lives for no reason. In other words, it makes us nothing more than automatons incapable of compassion, love, or reason.
The psychological term is psychopath, not all psychopaths are violent but they are all incapable of feeling guilt. The most common behavior in psychopaths is indifference, the disconnect of not being animals allows them to ignore suffering in everyone, including their own species.
Animals have been culled by natural selection to care not only for their own, but for other species, sadly that includes humans. It is not uncommon for other animals to defend us when there is no instinctual drive to do otherwise.
The most well known cases involve domesticated species, though there are many examples of feral animals also coming to our aid, in spite of our habit of harming them for no valid reason. Our behavior stems from the disconnect we created by denying the obvious, we are a species of ape, mammals, animals, life.
Taxonomy classified us as apes centuries ago, one of those rare things we got right. The reason for the origin classification is our skeletal structure, later this was reinforced by our organs and brains, then confirmed by genetics.
To date, taxonomy has had about 20% of their classifications wrong, considering how long ago we started it that is a pretty good record. To deny we are apes today is the same as denying that roses are plants.
The lie of us not being apes spreads by the scam artists trying to say ape is a species, often saying "go to the zoo and see apes." But ape is a huge family, huge because we started burying our dead long before humans even existed.
A buried corpse has a higher chance of fossilization and takes a lot longer to decay. So we have well preserved skeletons of many ape species that are now extinct, and since 99% of all life on Earth has gone extinct since it's appearance, that's a pretty big portion of our lineage preserved.
Human lineage, down to the chimpanzee ancestor, is one of the most complete lineages, due to our desire in trying to prove the notion wrong. Ultimately, because of doubting the connection we actually proved it, a great example of how and why science works.
So to deny that we are apes is simply arrogance, the notion of being "special" or separate from the world. It is a dangerous lie that promotes psychotic behaviors and empowers abusers, killers, rapists, and other horrible people.
This is why we focus on those who deny science, we must protect our future and our sanity.
The psychological term is psychopath, not all psychopaths are violent but they are all incapable of feeling guilt. The most common behavior in psychopaths is indifference, the disconnect of not being animals allows them to ignore suffering in everyone, including their own species.
Animals have been culled by natural selection to care not only for their own, but for other species, sadly that includes humans. It is not uncommon for other animals to defend us when there is no instinctual drive to do otherwise.
The most well known cases involve domesticated species, though there are many examples of feral animals also coming to our aid, in spite of our habit of harming them for no valid reason. Our behavior stems from the disconnect we created by denying the obvious, we are a species of ape, mammals, animals, life.
Taxonomy classified us as apes centuries ago, one of those rare things we got right. The reason for the origin classification is our skeletal structure, later this was reinforced by our organs and brains, then confirmed by genetics.
To date, taxonomy has had about 20% of their classifications wrong, considering how long ago we started it that is a pretty good record. To deny we are apes today is the same as denying that roses are plants.
The lie of us not being apes spreads by the scam artists trying to say ape is a species, often saying "go to the zoo and see apes." But ape is a huge family, huge because we started burying our dead long before humans even existed.
A buried corpse has a higher chance of fossilization and takes a lot longer to decay. So we have well preserved skeletons of many ape species that are now extinct, and since 99% of all life on Earth has gone extinct since it's appearance, that's a pretty big portion of our lineage preserved.
Human lineage, down to the chimpanzee ancestor, is one of the most complete lineages, due to our desire in trying to prove the notion wrong. Ultimately, because of doubting the connection we actually proved it, a great example of how and why science works.
So to deny that we are apes is simply arrogance, the notion of being "special" or separate from the world. It is a dangerous lie that promotes psychotic behaviors and empowers abusers, killers, rapists, and other horrible people.
This is why we focus on those who deny science, we must protect our future and our sanity.
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