Creationist Debate Update Part 3: The Evolution Of A Pepsi Can

An attendant of the Comfort/Cameron vs. RRS debate has a rough breakdown of the event here.

Comfort used his "can" argument, which is so absurd that it bears repeating. Basically, it says that it is improbable for the big bang to have formed a Pepsi can. Therefore, the can was designed. Since humans are more complex than Pepsi cans, they are designed as well. And design=designer.

There are several major problems with this argument:

1. Cans do not replicate. Humans do. When I look at a can, I know it came from a factory (from experience). When I look at a human, I know that it came from a union of a sperm and egg. Analogizing randomly mutating replicators to cans is like comparing apples and...cans. Whenever creationists pull this kind of argument out, I simply shrug. It's one that wouldn't pass muster in a junior high debate team match, and it's been refuted so many times that all defenders of science are exhausted repeating the obvious: life produces offspring genetically different from itself, cans/watches/747's/cars do not.
2. Design does not equal designer. Cans are the product of a design process, not a "designer." No one person designs any can you may find. It's the result of countless marketers, fabricators, chemical and metallurgical engineers, and government public health officials. To say that any can has a single "designer" is obviously ridiculous, and the analogy to this design process would raise some uncomfortable propositions for evangelicals (ex, how do you know we were designed by a single designer and not by committee? Wouldn't the latter, given all of our flaws, make more sense?). Evolution is a design process as well: species change due to survival and reproductive advantages that naturally arise among genetically different offspring. Again, the analogy is so piss-poor, so egregiously illogical, one wonders how its proponents can get through the day without their brain leaking out of their nose.
3. The argument that evolutionary theory states that complex life arose through a random, spontaneous event is a blatant straw man argument. Simple life took billions of years to develop, and it did so through a series of chemical processes. And that's not evolutionary theory. Once it did develop, it took off, and species have changed dramatically over the span of life on earth. The only explanation for these changes is evolutionary theory. Comfort's "can" argument dishonestly implies that scientists believe that complex species rose from a primordial soup randomly out of the blue. I can't help but point out that people like Mr. Comfort believe that a pro-Semitic space genie created a human male from dust and a human female from a human male rib! To believe life arose spontaneously without evoking a magical sky-daddy would be difficult, but evoking magic makes it no less absurd. Perhaps Mr. Comfort should read what scientists understand about how life arose, and then how it evolved after that, before he starts telling other people how ridiculous science's explanation is.
   

There may be other flaws as well, but 3 is enough to bury any proposition. The big question now is: how do we teach people to detect and reject poor logic?

Guilty Pleasure

For most people their guilty pleasures are the things we have no qualms about liking best: horror movies, scifi novels, bourbon, and our various proclivities. A guilty pleasure I admit to is Groundhog Day. I love that movie, unequivocally.
I have a new guilty pleasure to add to the list for you guys, Night at the Museum. I know, it's a kids movie (PG no less), & that the hated Ben Stiller is the star and Robin Williams is the #2. It's a sappy movie about a divorced dad & his son. I know, I know. But...
History and the museum is the framework, Mickey Rooney calls Stiller 'hopscotch' & 'snackshack' & more (I have a thing for giving nicknames), Owen Wilson and the Alan Partridge-guy play a cowboy and a Roman legionnaire (from dioramas). I think the key is that Williams plays Teddy Roosevelt, one of my all-time favorite men, who tells Stiller that the key to success is self-reliance (shocking).
I discovered today that the whole thing was written by Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon, Deputy Junior and Lieutenant Dangle on Reno 911!, which makes me feel a little less guilty. I know it's out of character, and I hate to admit it, but - I really enjoyed it. Your mileage may vary.

For You Jane's Readers

The USS Hawaii, a Virginia-class nuclear submarine, officially becomes an active weapon system today at a commissioning ceremony at the U.S. Naval Submarine Base in Groton,CT.

I'm sure you guys know all about it, but it comforts me, somehow, to know that we're still making this sort of vessel, despite it all.

(PS - Does this one work?)

Top notch sound bite

Hitchens is hawking his new book and his opening sound bite is one for the ages. Also, check out the other interview to see trash. here

I Hope I Don't Die Between Now And Then

The debate between the hapless Kirk Cameron/Ray Comfort and the Rational Response Squad took place today, but it won't be broadcast on the ABC website until Wednesday at 1 pm.

Comfort stated that ABC was originally only going to give him 4 minutes to make his case, but changed and gave him 13 minutes instead. He then stated that he could easily scientifically prove his god(s) exist(s) without referencing the bible or requiring faith.

It only takes 13 minutes to prove something that scientists have worked centuries just to find ONE FUCKING SHRED OF EVIDENCE FOR? One has to wonder why Ray is so callous as to wait for a web debate to enlighten the entire secular world of his findings? What if I die before then?

Of course, in all likelihood his argument will be so illogical, so silly, and so full of holes that 13 minutes won't be enough rebuttal time for the Rational Response Squad to pick all of the meat off the carcase.

Bromide Beware.

Cash-for-grades scandal rocks campus at Diablo Valley College
More than 70 current and former students at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill are being investigated for allegedly paying bribes of up to $600 to have their grades raised on official transcripts, officials said Thursday.
$600 bucks. I thought the going rate was much higher!

GateTree Better Hide The Brown Party Liquor

Apparently teachers, or soon-to-be teachers, can't have fun. Even legal fun. Who knew that 21st-century technology would be used to enforce 19th-century morals?

Poor Business Plan

If your business, say HD-DVD, is based on a simple string of numbers, say 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0, and you think no one is ever going to figure this out, it's amazing you still have a business at all.

Altered State

After a few too many shots of Glug, Tobermory and I flew into a bev-rage and manufactured an image of our patron squid, Early Cuyler, to provide us with inspiration. Then our pinecone-liquor-fueled dementia led us to do a few dozen lines of CSS/HTML cut&paste and some hexadecimal, psychedelic, color tinkering, man. After a few hours of consorting with the members of the robot race we were able to make the new link box appear just ever so. You can't fax coffee. Enjoy.

As if we didn't know

Mitt Romney is a bigger idiot than I thought. In an interview on FoxNews he said his favorite novel was Battlefield Earth. Oh my... (Link)

I didn't know the Keystone Cops were in Pakistan

Via Jihad Watch:
Pakistan downplays radioactive ad

Pakistan's nuclear authority has said there is no cause for concern after it published press adverts for information on "lost" radioactive material.

The adverts urged members of the public to inform officials if they found any "lost or stolen" radioactive material.

They were published in major Urdu-language newspapers in Pakistan.

A spokesman for the nuclear authority said that there was a "very remote chance" that nuclear materials imported 40-50 years ago were unaccounted for.

International concern over the safety of Pakistan's nuclear programme was expressed in 2004, when the country's top nuclear scientist, AQ Khan, confessed to leaking secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

Dr Khan was subsequently placed under virtual house arrest, and is now suffering from pancreatic cancer.

Read it all at BBC.com.

Summer Project

Trevor and I have a half-idea for the summer:set up a teletype for our place. It's one of the few forms of media not available at the house. The goal is to have the AP all the time.

One word....

SQUIDBILLIES CENTRAL

(Well, damn that party liquor, 2 words then)

"Do It To It"

Worm Dirt

This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow in Salon.

Secularism rules the day in Turkey

Turkey's presidency vote annulled

"The constitutional court in Turkey has annulled last Friday's parliamentary vote to elect a new president.

The only candidate, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, failed to win the required majority after a boycott by secularist opposition parties.

The parties, which accuse Mr Gul of a hidden Islamist agenda, asked the court to rule that there was no quorum."

Read it all at BBC News.