Flooded With Data

I had an urge to think through some implications of a world-wide flood, such as the one Biblical Literalists claim happened a few thousand years ago. Let's suppose that it happened, that the entire world was inundated all at once to cover the highest mountain, and that all surviving land animals and short-range birds were preserved in a single boat. What would the ecological landscape look like? gray worldFirst, all land animals would only be found on a single connected land mass. There is no way that any crawling creature could have reached Australia or the Americas from the Middle East. Most especially tropical animals. Secondly, we expect to see floral panspermia. That is, the waters would have carried every species of seed to every land mass all at once. Vanilla and cocoa and peppercorns should all be found growing in the same places throughout human history. Same for and chile peppers and coffee and potatoes. Wheat and maize should also be seen as combined staples of every ancient diet. Or the opposite: The flood waters killed off all the seeds except what was carried on the ark. Therefore, only the plants found in the middle east could exist anywhere in the world. Also, all modern animal species should be represented in every geological flood stratum. After all, a single massive drowning event doesn't distinguish between creatures of comparable size like an allosaur and an elephant or a trilobite and a mouse. Surely there must be abundant examples of these combined fossils. So it is easy to prove that such a flood actually happened. In fact, it must have been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt when Europeans first sailed to the Americas and found everything there to be just the same as back home.

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How to follow the Bible literally.

Writer A. J. Jacobs embarked upon a one-year attempt to follow all of the rules in the Bible. To do so, he first wrote down every rule he spotted in the Bible (he came up with 700). Following those rules was difficult, however, especially when he didn't quite understand them. For instance, where are the "corners" of one's beard? Though his talk is often humorous, Jacobs reveals some serious epiphanies he had along the way. For instance, he found that his behavior sometimes changed his thoughts (he found that visiting sick people made him more compassionate rather than the other way around). He learned to give thanks for the hundreds of things that went right every day, rather than focusing on the few things that went wrong. He learned to have reverence for many aspects of his life, even though he remained an agnostic through the whole experience. He also learned that he shouldn't completely dismiss that which is irrational, and we all have irrational aspects of our lives (is blowing out birthday candles on a cake rational?). You'll enjoy Jacobs' understated delivery and his respect for those who are different. His talk is well worth a viewing, no matter where you fall on the belief continuum.

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My growing impatience with creationists: a side by side comparison of evolutionary biology and creationism

Over the past three years of writing for DI, I have discussed evolution with many creationists who have posted comments at this site. These exchanges have been good for me. They have forced me to think harder about exactly what it is that I understand about evolution and what evidence supports my understanding. These exchanges have also helped me to understand the concerns and mental gymnastics of creationists. I now find myself getting increasingly impatient with the creationists, however. It was initially interesting to banter with creationists because I enjoyed the challenge of trying to understand why they claimed the things they claimed. I’m now getting annoyed with these creationists arguments, and it mostly has to do with the refusal of creationists to acknowledge relevant scientific observations from the real world. My frustration also stems from the anti-scientific mindset of creationists. As a group, creationists refuse to argue even-handedly. They become skeptical only when it suits their immediate needs—they don’t apply skepticism equally both to their own claims and to the claims of those with whom they disagree. As a group, they scurry to find disingenuous arguments to support points that they actually learned in churches, not in science books. Many of them are consciously dishonest, and when you call attention to their obvious untruths, they try to change the subject. There are exceptions to this rule. There are some creationists who aren’t consciously being dishonest, but those creationists tend to be so incredibly ignorant of the principles of the scientific theory of evolution that they lack the ability to meaningfully criticize evolution. Their arguments are aimed at things that no competent scientist has ever claimed. For numerous excellent examples of this problem, see these videos by AronRa here and here. It is well-established that humans are susceptible to committing errors caused by the confirmation bias. We seek out evidence that supports our current beliefs. Scientists are imminently aware of this danger and they work hard to design experiments to counteract this bias. Creationists (who don’t even try to run experiments) excel at feeding their confirmation biases. They proudly exclude evidence that threatens their opinions. Creationists come to mind when I consider David Hume’s quote: “Reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” [A Treatise of Human Nature, (2nd Ed.), Book II, Part I, Section III (“Of the influencing motives of the will”) (1739)].

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Post on Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus is open for more comments

About two years ago, I read a terrific book by Bart Ehrman: "Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why." Ehrman is a bible scholar who concluded that in the past 2,000 years, the New Testament has been changed in thousands of minor ways and dozens of major ways. He therefore put up a caution sign to all of those believers who claim that the Bible is inerrant. "Which version of the Bible?" is always an important clarifying question. Here's the link to my post, which I titled: "Who changed the Bible and why? Bart Ehrman’s startling answers." More than 540 comments were quickly contributed to this post, making this page too long to download and display. The phenomenon of the passionate flood of comments confounded me. Many of the comments were irrational, in that the writers had clearly not even read my post (or the book). They argued about things that Ehrman (and I) did not claim and they failed to address Ehrman's meticulous scholarship. For technical reasons I closed off new comments back in March 2007. Last night, I discovered a WordPress plugin that allows me to paginate comments, thereby protecting this website from the sudden and repeated load of 540 comments displayed on one page. Here's the good news, then. Anyone who has not yet had his or her chance to comment on Bart Ehrman's book may now jump in at the original post and post a comment. That's right! If the 540 comments that came before you didn't address an important aspect of Bart Ehrman's book, you may now remedy that omission in the comments to the original post. Godspeed.

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To avoid conspiracy kook-ery, Obama retakes oath.

After Tuesday's Inaugural oopsie- now obviously Justice Roberts' fault- Obama decided to retake the oath of office. I love the term that Greg Craig used when explaining the redo.  "Abundance of caution".  Read: to keep the conspiracy wingnuts from trying to oust the President on the basis of minutiae. Read:…

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