In real science there is a thing called consensus of opinion. In biological science evolution has overwhelming consensus that it is true, living organisms do evolve even to the point of creating new species. The consensus of opinion in the structural engineering community is that fires in the World Trand Centers combined with structural damage from being struck by large aircraft going 450MPH caused the towers to collapse. And this idea had held water for over 10 years.

The biggest logical falicy used by both is the old “I don’t know what happened”, the old arguing from ignorance. It’s one of the laziest of tactics and also very cowardly, it requires not taking a defined stand, when proven wrong the holder can simple brush it off by saying ” I didn’t say that I was just questioning”.

The quality of the expert is important, a biological scientist with a proven history of reasearch in the study of evolution is going to take precedence over a professor of theology. The opinion of a structural engineer like Leslie Robertson is going to have great weight over an architect like Richard Gage who as far as anyone can tell has never designed a building over one story. While Robertson actually designed the structural elements of the WTC among other large buildings, the proof of his expertise is in what he has acually done not what he said he did.

Just like the creationist loonies the 9/11 truth crackpots have their own brand of unintentionally humor, in this bit Richard Gage seems to think that he can compare the WTC towers to boxes made of cardboard. He has used the cardboard box comparison in his lectures since the summer of 2008. He drops a smaller box of cardboard on top of a taller box of cardboard. Unsurprisingly, the taller cardboard box taking the hit does not give in to the dropping box. In his other hand he holds another small cardboard box and drops it straight to the ground. He does all this to make the point, that the WTC towers should have resisted or stopped the collapse. Of course if you are smarter than the average truther (and who isn’t), you know the towers didn’t fall at free fall or without resistance. But this is exactly the kind of stuff that appeal to the brain dead morons who make up the truther community. Unfortunately for them it is also the type of thing that people who do understand physics snicker at. You are more likely to see this demonstration from “Box Boy Gage” being show on debunking sites because it proves the mans ignorance of physics.

ae911truth – 911guide.

In real science there is a thing called “Consensus of Opinion”. In the science of biology evolution has an overwhelming consensus that it is true, living organisms do evolve even to the point of creating new species. The consensus of opinion in structural engineering is that fires in the World Trand Centers combined with structural damage from being struck by large aircraft going 450MPH caused the towers to collapse. But like creationist, truthers too have a small vocal few who say different and think the vast engineering community has to accept their conclusion as equal to the collective opinions of the much larger group. The biggest of the 9/11 conspiracy theorist groups is ”ae911truth” Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, started by and architect Richard Gage, note like many in his group he is just an architect which has little to do with the all important issue of structural strength of buildings, and more to do with design and ergonomics. In fact none of its members seem to be members of respected engineering groups.   The American Society of Civil Engineers is the largest group dedicated to the engineering and safety of large buildings and structures. Over 76.000 members and I can’t find one of Gages’s gaggle who is a part of this organization. Maybe it’s because if you go to ASCE you won’t find discussions or papers on controlled demolition of the WTC, they deal with the real issue of how fire affected the twin towers. It seems ae911truth is a group who put on a good show of being informed engineering professionals but are nothing more than third rate architects playing structural engineers to push an agenda of conspiratorial thinking.

Ae911truth has about 1400 members. If you consider the individuals you will find electrical engineers, software designers, landscapers etc. The number with relevant expertise and experience to high rise construction is about zero. You see the same with creationist groups, few respected biological scientist and lots of teachers of theology and other non-hard science occupations. In fact I bet you can find more structural engineers signing papers supporting intelligent design than supporting 9/11 truth.

When it comes to sighting experts the quality of the expert is important, a biological scientist with a proven history of reasearch in the study of evolution is going to take precedences over a professor of theology. The opinion of a structural engineer like Leslie Robertson is going to have greater weight over an architect like Richard Gage who as far as anyone can tell has never designed a building over one story tall. While Robertson actually designed the structural elements of the WTC among many other large building projects, the proof of his expertise is in what he has done not what he said he did.

The biggest logical falicy used by both truthers and creationist is the old “I don’t know what happened”, the old “argument to ignorance” (argumentum ad ignorantiam) Because one doesn’t know how evolution can cause speciation doesn’t mean everyone is so devoid of understanding, and it also holds true for people who can’t comprehend how a large structure can completely collapse just from fire and the force of gravity.  This tactic works well when used with another logical fallacy called “god of the gaps”.  The conspiracy theorist sites ignorance of the event and claims there is a big hole in explaining what exactly happened, into this hole they force thier god, for creationist it is literally a god, for truthers it a controlled demolition god. This is the laziest of the conspiracy theorist thinking, one does not need to present hard facts to well composed logic, ignorance is enough and creationist and truthers are real good at doing ignorance.

via YouTube – Alex Jones Says Gay People are Created by the Government.

Not knowing your grade school science and the concept that the refraction of light on water droplets form rainbows makes those rainbows “A Miracle”. “blow your brain,” from “the Milky Way and fucking shooting stars” to “long-necked giraffes” to “fucking rainbows.” The biggest punch line in the video is when one of these Bozos exclaims “Fucking magnets, how do they work?”  WOW! Imaging being proud of the fact you don’t know this, and so proud of it to but it in a video for all to see.

Sad to say but NOT knowing shit has become very popular with a certain segment of society.  You see it in hillbilly types who will shun “Book learn’en” and their polar opposites Rappers. The deeply religious are finding their precious bible stories of creation and Adam and Eve being relegated to quaint  bed time stories by the science of evolution and cosmology.  So it becomes a situation of not knowing these cold enlightened studies and accepting the warm folktales.

Writing stuff off as a miracle is a form of intellectual laziness.  If something shooting stars is too hard for you to understand and would require reading a book or forgoing the entertainment of a latest music video to find out they’re  chunks of rock heated to blazing temperatures by the friction of the atmosphere as they’re  pulled towards the Earth, why take the trouble?  Write it off as a great mystery.

Well luckily Cracked.com has created a dumbed down science book for ICP Juggalos.  Lots of pictures for the cognitive challenged.

Learn Your Motherf#@kin Science: A Textbook for Juggalos | Cracked.com.

So Pat, does that mean I can kill your family members because their old man is such a useless piece of shit?  Maybe we should nuke Germany because of the Holocaust thing, hell we may even get a few Nazis who were alive during WWII.  Why stop there?  Fire bomb the Vatican for their part in the Crusades. Why make this god fellow do all the work?

Maybe I just have a higher moral conception than Robertson’s god, I know if I could prevent the suffering in Haiti I would do it in a heartbeat. I also know if a buffoon like Pat Robertson had tried to pin 9/11 and the Haiti earthquake on me he would have burst into flames right there on TV and would have to been put out by beating with a rake and being pissed on.

Pat Robertson Haiti Comments Spark Uproar – Political Hotsheet – CBS News.

.

This is a step in the right direction.

Task Force Chairman Shirley Dobson said in a statement that she was disappointed in the “lack of participation” by the Obama administration, adding that “at this time in our country’s history, we would hope our President would recognize more fully the importance of prayer.”

Dobson will be a presenter at that event, along with her husband and former president of Focus on the Family James Dobson, author Beth Moore, NFL player Shaun Alexander and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann.

Wait a minute! James Dobson?…. The guy from Focus on the Family? The pandering, homophobic, fear mongering leader of a ultra conservative cult? Dobson who attacked  Ed Perlmutter, running in Colorado’s 7th district, for hiring — get this — gay staffers. That James Dobson???

Can you imagine the braying of the Dobson types if the White House decided to take part in a national Pagan Day of Naked Dancing? Animal sacrifice is popular in some religions, lets have the President slaughter a goat for yahweh. How about a national day of flagellation?

|

To anyone with the least bit of education can easily see where this billboard is dead wrong. It shows a picture of Charles Darwin, a man who while at Cambridge studied Paley’s Natural Theology which made an argument for divine design in nature, explaining adaptation as god acting through laws of nature. Of course his interest in natural history inspired his theory of natural selection, a theory that has proven to be correct in 200 years of research by others in such diverse fields as geology, biology and astronomy. From the age of forty he was, to use his own words, a complete dis-believer in Christianity. He professed himself an agnostic not an atheist. So if you are going pick a man to be the image of the average atheist, Darwin is a rather weak choice, Maybe Benjamin Franklin, Bertrand Russell or Thomas Jefferson would be a better choice. But Christian sure do not want to admit many of the countries founding fathers were not Christians.

And then you have the uninformed idea that evolution is an atheist belief. It ignores the fact there are many religious people out there who accept the biological reality of evolution but believe a god made evolution as a tool for designing man. Even the Pope accepts evolution. So here again Darwin is a stupid choice. Fact is one could be an atheist but not believe in evolution. True not very likely but I can imagine someone out there who thinks man is merely the product of alien experiments and our entire universe exist only in a petri disk in a giant alien laboratory.

You then have the silly idea evolution makes a statement on the issue of existence, it does not. Evolution only makes an observation of the reality that living matter changes over time and that plants and animals, including man, show unmistakable signs of evolving from similar species. The idea of something from nothing is not a biological question, but a cosmological one. Our expanding universe tends to support a Big Bang beginning but makes no statement on what came before, or if time even existed “before”. Science is honest in that regard, saying we may never be able to say what happened at the Big Bang. Religion on the other hand prefers you to buy an intellectual dead end, god did it they says, but ask what came before god and they don’t even want to think about it.

Now imaging if I were to buy a billboard saying “Pull the Plug on Christianity” or “Pull the Plug on Judaism”. I would be accused of promoting religious hatred.

The reason I mention this old story is with the Easter season upon us I have been seeing many Christian candy confections alongside the usual bunnies, eggs and let not forget those tasty little chicks Marshmallow Peeps.

Crosses seem to be very popular, with praying hands next, I myself found a tin of “Ichthus Mints” complete with tiny minty fish, I thought the tin box was cool and the religious symbolism a nice counterpoint to my heathen ways. You do know, Altoids are the work of the devil.

This brings up the big question. If you are given a chocolate dead Jesus on a stick this Easter, do you bite the head off first? do you go for the feet? Or is licking the only Vatican sanctioned way of consuming the Lord an savior? Do you have to go to confession first? What about Jews, is noshing on the son of god kosher? How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Jesus-Pop?

Pope in Africa reaffirms “no condoms” against AIDS

In Africa where more than 25 million people have died from Aids and another 22.5 million have the disease, the pontiff actually told the faithful “It (aids) cannot be overcome by the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, they increase the problem,”!!!!!!!

And me with out a Pro!

|

Makes you wonder why politicians don’t try and cater to this new voting block? I say that jokingly because being A-theistic is not some club you join. As someone once said “getting atheist to ban together is like herding cats”. It’s far easier to get the religious types worked up over an issue, they are far more inclined to follow the herd or the lead cow anyway. When you are not religious, religion becomes just one more of the unimportant things you are not, and in life there as far more things you don’t believe in than you do. Chances are you do not believe in a South seas coconut tree dwelling Tiki god. Hey! me too, To me the Tiki god is in the same box of bologna as the popular sky daddy, virgin born, dead guy on a stick stuff.

Small skink lizards, Lerista, demonstrate extensive changes in body shape over geologically brief periods. Several species of these skinks have rapidly evolved an elongate, limbless body form.

Science Dally Blog

These lizards are looking more like snakes, some having all but useless limbs. If you are to believe the Intellegent Design crowd a “god” made this creature this way, rather bad design I say.