It’s five minutes to midnight on The Doomsday Clock, kept by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists since shortly the atomic bomb was first used.

In case you don’t know, the clock represents how close the world is to annihilation (midnight). Some confusion here because I assumed it had been at five to midnight since it was invented, but apparently, it hasn’t been this close since the height of the cold war.

When BAS scientists met to assess the current threat level, they targeted climate change due to carbon emissions as the new villain. They don’t mean that climate change itself will trigger doomsday but that its impact will lead to wars, which combined with the proliferation of nuclear materials and technology will be likely to go nuclear.

This is a very important point and worth making over and over. And it’s a good use of an image that hits home the message.

All the same, I’m a bit sceptical of the assumption that they have an authority beyond their own field because they are nuclear scientists. Stephen Hawking is brought in to push the message home with his added mystical authority. The message is coming across as “we, as a group who understand the science, also understand the politics, so this is a scientific conclusion.” It’s not “science” but an attempt to make a point about the social consequences of science.

It certainly isn’t science. I don’t know the timescale they are using so it’s not clear if five minutes represents a year, a century or five standard minutes. It’s not possible to predict the social consequences of the mutually reinforcing interactions between atomic technology and environmental change. There aren’t a set of equations that can predict global politics. This lessens the impact of their very powerful “five minutes to midnight” image. It doesn’t stand up to scrutiny as anything other than a conceptual device.

They are obviously intelligent and have reached the obvious conclusions from the evidence. Maybe people will pay some attention. I certainly hope so, although I would rather they didn’t have to set themselves up as secular popes to get the message across.

Tags: Science, Bad Science, doomsday, climate, Carbon Emissions, Global warming, Nuclear Science, Doomsday Clock, Philosophy, society

As mentioned in a previous post, Katie is a 14 year old girl who has Hodgkin’s lymphoma and her parents have eschewed proper medical treatment in favour of alternative therapies and prayer. That alone would be bad, but reading through some of the comments on her blog opens a whole new can of worms.

One might imagine that almost all the comments are basically “we are praying for you Katie” and “with God’s help you will get through this” (neatly ignoring the fact God gave her cancer in the first place, God prevented her parents treating her and God is causing the cancer to spread). In this situation, I can actually forgive the people posting because they are just expressing their feelings towards this in the only manner they know how. It is almost nice that all these people are praying for Katie – I will leave the issue about all the other people who are dying because they dont have a blog so no one is praying for them until another post.

The one which got me was this: (some numbers “x” out to reduce the free publicity)

At 11:23 PM, John Noble said…

DO THIS NOW! Go to www.immunopower.com and order Immunopower for Katie. This formula was developed especially for cancer patients by Dr. Patrick Quillin who was VP and Director of Nutrition at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America for ten years. Then CALL the Center for Advanced Medicine (760) xxx-9xx2 and reserve a phone consultation with Dr. Quillin. If you have questions call Noreen Quillin at (760) xxx-5xx3. You may tell her that John and Rod in Houston referred you. We have been following your story since it made the front page here in Houston. As you may already know, cancer is caused by nutritional deficiencies and toxic overloads. That is why it is so important to immediately contact Dr. Quillin so that he can help find and correct the deficiencies and overloads that caused the cancer to occur in the first place. The key is to restore the immune system with an aggressive nutritional program, which combines a specially designed supplement formula with specific anti-cancer whole foods. This approach has had proven results, especially for advanced cancer patients like Katie.

How shocking is that. Still, it is nice to see we now have a cure for cancer and the world’s medical researchers can rest at last. Given it seems so simple, it is strange anyone dies of cancer any more.

Crackpottery should be made illegal.

Now, this is going to be short (ish) but mainly because I am aware that it is a sensitive issue and I am (oddly) loathe to upset people, however it is something which has managed to get my hackles up.

In a nutshell, there is a blog about Katie, a 14 year old girl who is dying of Hodgkin’s Disease. This is a story which has been picked up by various blogs (Orac for instance, but may others). No matter what, this would be a sad story and I am sure most people’s hearts go out to the girl and her family.

There is just one small problem with the whole story. Katie’s family have chosen to not head down the “conventional medicine” route for her treatment and instead opted for prayer. Now I know it is not the BMJ or anything but Wikipedia has this to say about the cancer Katie has:

Hodgkin’s lymphoma was one of the first cancers to be rendered curable by combination chemotherapy.

You would hope, that as she is young and was otherwise healthy, early (proper) treatment would have given Katie very good chances with this one. Sadly her family thought otherwise. She was denied accesss to Chemotherapy and instead relied on a combination of crackpottery and prayer. Needless to say, it has not worked. I am going to avoid linking directly to her sites or the blogs made by her family. I am not going to really talk about her or her condition any more. This is about the bad science.

Her father has put together some blogs about her / for her. At the top is this bit of shockingness:

Katie is now 14 years old and was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease, a lymphatic cancer when she was 13. This site is a request to pray for her. Call her prayer pager 1-361-333-KATY (5289), enter your ZipCode and # key, to let her know you have prayed for her. Updates of her progress will be posted on the site. The Power of Prayer is Awesome. See beginning story at www.prayforkatie.blogspot.com.

Sadly for Katie, the power of prayer is not awesome. Pretty much every time it has been studied it shows people who are subject to prayer show improvement over those who are not prayed for. People who are prayed for and know about it show less improvement. If your faith does mean you feel praying for Katie will help her, then dont call her “prayer pager” just do it. And if Prayer works, why wont God cure amputees?

It is really sad to see this girls chances have been destroyed because so many people seem to think that “hope” is a better alternative to treatment. It is even sadder to read the comments on Katies blogs and see so many other people seem to rate the value of prayer that you just know there will be other, needless, deaths.

Shame on them. If their God exists, they are going to hell.

In a previous post, I mention that a comment on Uncommon Design was suggesting the book The Privelged Planet was a good one for IDers and creationists to read and use to rebut evolutionary theories.

In that post I didnt really go into the book, as I felt it deserved one of its own. It really is bad science at it’s best so no wonder the ID / Creationism lobby jump all over it. I expect Steve Fuller will be writing about how we need to re-define science to accomodate this books nonsense before too long (although the book appears to be fairly old).

Now I do have to point out, I have not read this book. I doubt I will ever be able to bring myself to spend any money on this book as the thought of giving the authors a penny in royalties makes me want to choke on my own vomit. The book does have a website though, and this serves ample evidence of the crackpottery involved. For example the FAQ provides the following:

Q #1: Is the fact that we can see “perfect” solar eclipses related to our existence?

A: The Earth’s surface provides the best view of solar eclipses in the Solar System. The Earth’s surface is also the most habitable place in the Solar System. Is this coincidence just that? In The Privileged Planet, we argue that it isn’t. The conditions that make a planet habitable also make its inhabitants more likely to see solar eclipses.

That alone is enough for me to realise the book is going to be nonsense.

Well after a long rant against Religious crackpots, it is nice to see Uncommon Descent can still produce a few laughs from their fundamental idiocy.

Part of me feels they fully appreciate the irony of the nonsense they spout and that posts titled “When Arrogance and Stupidity Collide” are actually intended to be the sideways kicks at creationism they seem to be. Sadly, given how clueless some of the commentators are, this may be overly charitable on my behalf.

This post (by William Dembski) in particular begins:

Rubbish like this should steel us to work doubly hard to put these people out of business.

Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism & Intelligent Design
Cambridge House Press, Inc. (release date 02.28.07)
By Barrett Brown, Jon P. Alston

Book Description

What is creationism? Is it science, theology, both, neither? Who’s behind it? What does it mean for Western Civilization? And why should you give a damn in the first place? National Lampoon veteran Barrett Brown and Professor of Sociology Jon P. Alston, Ph.D, answer these questions — and perhaps one or two others — in a superbly unorthodox, serenely offensive and splendidly hilarious look at the forces behind the most talked-about pseudo-theory in modern history.

Now, you really cant help but chuckle at this book and the mountains of Righteous Indignation it seems to have stirred up in the ID/Creationism camps. The comments are priceless.

Amadan writes : “I wouldn’t worry about whoopee-cushion type propaganda like that. Thought Always Rebuts Darwinism.”

Sadly, history appears to show the opposite.

Dodgingcars writes : (emphasis mine) “I think some of you have made good points. At first, it was their policy to ignore ID. Now, because they can’t properly dispute it, they mock it and attack those who accept it. It does appear the tide is turning. We already know that something like 70-80% of Americans believe in ID (though they don’t know that’s what they believe) in some form. Once they’re more educated as to what ID is, the theory of evolution will lose validity in the eyes of most people in America — this is what scares the Darwinists.”

Here we go again. Sadly, ID supporters seem to regularly argue that ID should be a science because so many people believe in it. The mind truly boggles at this nonsense. In reality, if evolution loses validity in the eyes of most people in America, the only losers will be Americans who will produce generations of students who are unable to study how diseases evolve and how species can develop over time. Creationism is a dead end. Sadly, the Christian nutters actually want that. Oh yeah, ID is not a religious idea is it, it isn’t tied to any one religion is it?

Columbo write : (again, my emphasis) “I hope that, beyond lambasting and complaining about this kind of c-rap, defenders of science and general truth-seeking will become real activists in their own neighborhoods. E.g. 1) buy extra copies of “Privileged Planet” and “Mystery of Life” and loan them to co-workers and neighbors; 2) Volunteer to teach a series on this subject to high school and college groups at your church; 3) write book reviews / letters to the editor in your local paper; 4) meet with your representatives and give them succinct outlines and talking points to work from.”

Now, I know that this is not really proof ID and Religion (Christianity) are massively interlinked (yet they are), but I certainly find it ironic that the assumption appears to be all the ID supporters are active members of their church. I suspect they are. (More on the book next time)

As I said before, Christianity is a hard target to avoid when it comes the black humour provided by intolerant, bigoted religious crackpots. This time I may have been able to hit two religions with one post though. (The pictures are nothing to do with the text they are just here to make the blog look pretty 🙂)

Part of the problem seems to stem from Religions, being inherently “faith” based (surely by definition) superstition cults, trying to bring themselves into the modern, post-Renaissance era of logic and reasoned thought.

Continue reading →

OK, most ID blogs are beyond parody but this is quite a stunning archive of tosh uncommondescent.com.

One post that took my fancy says:

Question: What do you call a person who hypothesizes an unseen intelligent being and searches outer space for confirming material evidence?
Answer: A scientist.
Question: What do you call a person who hypothesizes an unseen intelligent being and searches inner space for confirming material evidence?
Answer: A religious nut.

His argument is that SETI fall into the first category and his fellow religious nuts into the second. On the offchance that this isn’t blindingly obvious to you, SETI aren’t searching for “an” intelligent superbeing, who planned everything in the universe. They are searching for mortal beings with enough similar technological knowledge to ours to match our broadcasts. Maybe the name, SETI, confused him. I think I can speak for SETI, having once had its program installed on my computer, when I say that no one would be more surised that the SETI people if they get a response from an Egyptian god living in the distant reaches of the galaxy.

The grasp on reality shown in the second half of that comparison is even slimmer. I thought that meditating on one’s inner god-nature was a Buddhist thing. Certainly, anyone who examines their inner nature in search of some sense of transcendence is experimenting with their consciousness. I can’t really see what that has to do with Intelligent Design. I mistakenly thought that ID involved teaching kids that the theory of evolution was irreligious nonsense.

It appears to be a search for “unseen intelligent being” that lives inside you. Well, I must respect Dave Scot’s and Roddy Bullock’s (the perpretrators of this tosh) attempt to find one, but I think that, on the evidence of the blog, the search is doomed to failure.

It’s probably gilding the lily here, but

(a) the comments show that other ID supporters have failed to locate intelligence inside themselves either. One GilDodgeon says

“This is one of the best essays on the topic I have ever read. It should be framed, and should be required reading in every junior high and high school science class.”

2 paragraphs make an essay? One of the best defences of ID? (Speaks volumes about the rest) Required reading in every school? Argh! Argh! Argh!

(b) There is a line in the article

Darwin would be disappointed to find his eponymous ism has driven such a venomous schism..”

that just screams “Ned Flanders” to me.