About that fake "Shroud of Turin"

The best debunking article about the Shroud of Turin can be found here, courtesy of Jerry Coyne. The article has extensive links that will convince (almost) anyone that the shroud has nothing to do with Jesus.

Archive this link so you can knock down the silly arguments of believers.

Dumb things religious people say

Now and then, Jerry Coyne reveals some of the seedier comments he receives at his blog web site. Here's one he offered this morning. The indented remark is from a deluded reader. The non-indented remark below it (in blue) is Jerry's reponse:

I’m confused why atheists would choose to bring a child into this life when they would only die in 70 or 80 years. At worse, a child could live a life of suffering with something like heart disease or depression. If there’s no purpose in life, what’s the purpose of reproducing? It seems just too cruel.

I’m confused about why religious people would choose to bring a child into this life given that it is likely to burn forever in the afterlife.

That's telling them. How can anyone think there's no purpose in life unless Jeebus gets to play a role? That's so dull-witted it's nearly comatose. No purpose? Everything in life has a purpose: the one we give to it. Humans make meaning; it's what we do. You really have to wonder how religious people can possibly miss this basic fact of life. 

Maybe they're not alive?

Jerry Coyne is a treasure

On Evolution is True, Jerry Coyne's blog web site (he gets furious if you call it a blog), I found this today. He'd been musing about the fact that a quote from Steven Pinker now adorns a Chipotle bag:

Notice, too, that they chose an idealistic and happy quote (like Chinese fortune cookies, none of which ever have fortunes that say, “You suck!”).  I suppose that’s what makes people associate good feelings with the restaurant. It will be a cold day in the Yucatán when they put an atheist slogan on a burrito bag.

I’d love to see this one, for instance:

Pretending to be certain when one isn’t—indeed, pretending to be certain about propositions for which no evidence is even conceivable—is both an intellectual and a moral failing.
—Sam Harris 

*For non-Americans, Chipotle is a chain that purveys bland and Americanized Mexican food.

I love Jerry. He's a smart, militant atheist/biologist who really knows his stuff -- and he's funny, to boot.

Jerry Coyne is a national treasure

On his blog today, Jerry Coyne ruminated about Francis Collins' insistence that religion and science just get along. I loved this bit:

"...I am 99.9% sure there is no God, just as I’m 99.9% sure that there’s no Loch Ness monster.  Is it a “strong a-Nessieist position” to say “I know there is no Nessie”? Is that hubris and arrogance, too? It is curious that for everything as unevidenced as God—except for God himself—people are willing to argue that it doesn’t exist.  God is the one exception, probably because belief in Nessie doesn’t come with an afterlife."

 How can you not love a guy like Jerry? He's my hero.

The folly of theologians

From this morning's post by Jerry Coyne:

...I suspect that the great majority of theologians who confect “proofs” of God were born to a faith, imbibed it with their mother’s milk, and then never grew up, but simply used the intellectual skills they acquired to justify their childhood beliefs. Such people were perfectly able to give up their belief in Santa Claus, but can’t do that for God. But of course Santa doesn’t bring us an afterlife for Christmas.

I love Jerry. No one sticks it to religionists like he does. No one. (Okay, PZ comes close.)

The wisdom of Coyne

Jerry Coyne said something wonderful on his blog this morning. You can read the full post, if you like. Warning: it's rather dense -- a philosophical fight over religion and the concept of "scientism". What can I say? I'm a fan of scientifically-informed philosophy. But the take-out quote is simple and clear:

It’s the combination of absolutism as expressed in faith, and the notion that you have a handle on what God wants, that causes all the evils of religion in this world.

How's that for hitting the nail on the head? It's downright profound.

Jerry Coyne is multi-talented

My favorite blog is Why Evolution Is True, which is written by Jerry Coyne. Not only is he a terrific biologist and atheist -- he can write. This morning I found this on his blog:

While the caravan of science moves on, the dogs of theology bark but don’t tag along.

How can you not love a guy who writes sentences like that?

Filling the alleged hole

Jerry Coyne has an interesting post today about the tomfoolery of religious apologists. They certainly are a craven lot.

One of the arguments religious apologists can't resist hauling out on a regular basis is that we can't take religion away from people because it will leave a big hole in their lives (or souls, or something). Whatever will they do on Sundays?! Horrors. About this, Jerry says:

As for filling those God-shaped holes, I feel, as I said above, that this will happen naturally as religion goes away, like a hole in the beach eventually fills with water.

There you go. It's like the way I feel when the baseball season ends -- like there's a big black hole in my life and I won't be able to go on. But lo and behold, other things quickly and naturally fill that hole. In fact, there doesn't seem to be a hole. It's just a mirage.

Religion needs to go. It wastes time, effort, resources and money that should rightly be directed toward, you know, saving the planet and other real-life activities.

Slow humans

Jerry Coyne has a post about a new test result confirming that decisions are made well before "we" make them -- in other words, before the (illusory) person in our head that we call "us" is aware of the decision. In fact, new experimental results show that it takes four seconds before we realize that some types of decisions have been made. Deciding seems to happen without "our" involvement. The decisions we think we make are actually a done deal way before "we" make them.

He cites this result as further evidence that free will is an illusion. We think "we" make all "our" decisions but the real action happens down under. Way down under. It seems to be a rather mechanical process that occurs on a level of which we are unaware. In other words, we are puppets -- which is a super-scary notion for religious people. Puppets?! What then of sin and punishment?! Horrors, they cry. (If this idea intrigues you, see the linked article.)

This idea isn't new to me. I'm not 100% on the no-free-will bandwagon -- though I do lean in that direction. In my case, I do so because physics tells us that the future is already there. The past and the future are needed to hold up the present. They're bulwarks that must exist or there would be no present. This would imply that there is only one decision we can make at any single point in the future. After all, it's a done deal. But never mind that for now.

This experiment and others like it remind me of something. You know when you're watching a baseball game on TV and the pitcher is almost hit by a ball? When they show the replay in slow motion, I'm always mesmerized by how long it takes the pitcher to see the ball that's coming right at him. There's a relatively long stretch where the ball leaves the bat and flies toward the pitcher -- and he's just standing there with no idea what's coming his way. When the ball gets about halfway to his face, he finally notices it and, in some lucky cases, ducks.

But that delay is so telling. We are aware of things well after the instant they occur. We're so damn slow! This isn't directly related to the time-delay experiment, of course. But then, I wonder when the "decision" to duck really occurs. In any case, I'll always enjoy those replays. Next time you see one, watch how long it takes for the pitcher to react. It's funny, and a bit scary.

BTW, in case this whole thing scares you, don't worry. You can ignore this entirely. Whether free will exists or not, it will always seem that it exists. So we can go on as we always have, believing that each decision is up to us. In fact, it's difficult to think in any other fashion.