Usually we wouldn’t be able to tell a link was supposed to be there at all. This time I could see it in the snippet shown in the recent comments sidebar.
Someone linked this somewhere on Lesswrong but I don’t think it was in a Media Thread. Anyway I really liked it and it’s pretty closely tied to the rationalist/skeptic idea cluster.
I saw this one on Lesswrong as well, in a comment about Hpmor!Snape. It isn’t as relevant but it’s about half as long and pretty funny.
This Binary Universe is a really nice electronic album. The title of this particular track sounds vaguely transhumanist to me, though I don’t know how intentional that was.
I could be churlish and file creationism under “fiction”, but I’ve been reading a metric shitload of the stuff to work on this article for RationalWiki. Which should achieve “cover” status tomorrow. Holy crap this stuff is even more insane than you thought. Did you know the Kuiper Belt is actually “the waters above” from Genesis 1:6-8? GOD SAID SO. The rest of the stuff linked from the left side of the RW page is its equal in quality.
No, still exactly as insane as I thought. (Raised YEC.)
When I came out as an atheist to my dad, he started picking up a bunch of creationist material so he could educate himself enough to argue with me. I dug through a few of the books. A quote from Marvin Lubenow was so insane I had to record it for posterity. He suggests that the death penalty is a fitting punishment for anyone who teaches evolution. It’s hard to top that.
Hey, what did you think of the RW article? I was most cheered that commenters on Jerry Coyne’s post about the article said that it would actually have helped them. Which is quite a good motivation to spend a week of my holiday working on it. If you can put yourself back into your way of thinking back then: how do you think you would have reacted? Would any of the responses just stopped you reading? It’s consciously written for a target audience of people who’ve been miseducated but who will think if you lead them to ideas.
I just finished it. It’s very thorough while still relatively brief. Really good.
As best as I can recall the YEC mindset, when I saw “X theory can explain Y” I read it as “they are excusing Y.” But of course you can’t do anything other than provide current scientific consensus on debated questions, so there’s not much you can do there.
I know you have no control over the order of the list, but it’s unfortunate that so many “X could be young therefore the earth could be young!” arguments are at the beginning. The standard response, that “could be” doesn’t mean “is,” will be brushed off by some YECs. They think along the lines, “You can’t prove it’s old for certain; therefore it’s possible it’s young; therefore I am willing to believe it’s young.” I think the analysis at the end about affirming the consequent should be moved to the top. That might keep a few more people reading when they get to those arguments.
The most convincing rebuttals are the ones point out demonstrably false claims, and these should be hammered home for all they’re worth. The more often they show up, the more likely YEC readers are to think creationist authors are actively lying or terrible researchers than occasionally mistaken. That is, you want to trade their perception of creationists with their perception of scientists. For instance, on the question of how old major mountain ranges are, I would also throw in the age of the rockies, the himalayans, and the alps, all indisputably “major” and all of which are dated (at least in origin if not when they finished forming) much older than 5 million years.
That’s all I’ve got. I don’t know enough about most of the subjects discussed to offer any other advice.
That’s absolutely fantastic and very helpful. (I’ll just go do the mountains one now.) Thank you!
The greatest slam dunks, IMO, are the human history ones. CMI, AiG and ICR all accept the Ussher chronology, which has the Great Flood happening after the Great Pyramid was built and after the first Chinese emperor. But they had to put that stuff last in the list.
That’d be negatively informative, the acronym is at least only uninformative.
They are reader suggestion driven illustrated fiction. Very web 2.0, it’s probably much easier to just check out the threads than trying to get anything from further futile attempts at me explaining it.
Other Media Thread
Music: I’ve been getting into The Flaming Lips. Neo-psychedelia and experimental rock spanning several genres with unorthodox methods and lyrics.
Futurity is a musical by the Lisps, the band that made the song Singularity. It’s about a civil war era attempt at FAI.
The link syntax there is broken. It should be:
Usually we wouldn’t be able to tell a link was supposed to be there at all. This time I could see it in the snippet shown in the recent comments sidebar.
Thanks. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to try doing this on my phone. It’s been a pretty miserable experience.
Someone linked this somewhere on Lesswrong but I don’t think it was in a Media Thread. Anyway I really liked it and it’s pretty closely tied to the rationalist/skeptic idea cluster.
I saw this one on Lesswrong as well, in a comment about Hpmor!Snape. It isn’t as relevant but it’s about half as long and pretty funny.
This Binary Universe is a really nice electronic album. The title of this particular track sounds vaguely transhumanist to me, though I don’t know how intentional that was.
I could be churlish and file creationism under “fiction”, but I’ve been reading a metric shitload of the stuff to work on this article for RationalWiki. Which should achieve “cover” status tomorrow. Holy crap this stuff is even more insane than you thought. Did you know the Kuiper Belt is actually “the waters above” from Genesis 1:6-8? GOD SAID SO. The rest of the stuff linked from the left side of the RW page is its equal in quality.
No, still exactly as insane as I thought. (Raised YEC.)
When I came out as an atheist to my dad, he started picking up a bunch of creationist material so he could educate himself enough to argue with me. I dug through a few of the books. A quote from Marvin Lubenow was so insane I had to record it for posterity. He suggests that the death penalty is a fitting punishment for anyone who teaches evolution. It’s hard to top that.
Hey, what did you think of the RW article? I was most cheered that commenters on Jerry Coyne’s post about the article said that it would actually have helped them. Which is quite a good motivation to spend a week of my holiday working on it. If you can put yourself back into your way of thinking back then: how do you think you would have reacted? Would any of the responses just stopped you reading? It’s consciously written for a target audience of people who’ve been miseducated but who will think if you lead them to ideas.
I just finished it. It’s very thorough while still relatively brief. Really good.
As best as I can recall the YEC mindset, when I saw “X theory can explain Y” I read it as “they are excusing Y.” But of course you can’t do anything other than provide current scientific consensus on debated questions, so there’s not much you can do there.
I know you have no control over the order of the list, but it’s unfortunate that so many “X could be young therefore the earth could be young!” arguments are at the beginning. The standard response, that “could be” doesn’t mean “is,” will be brushed off by some YECs. They think along the lines, “You can’t prove it’s old for certain; therefore it’s possible it’s young; therefore I am willing to believe it’s young.” I think the analysis at the end about affirming the consequent should be moved to the top. That might keep a few more people reading when they get to those arguments.
The most convincing rebuttals are the ones point out demonstrably false claims, and these should be hammered home for all they’re worth. The more often they show up, the more likely YEC readers are to think creationist authors are actively lying or terrible researchers than occasionally mistaken. That is, you want to trade their perception of creationists with their perception of scientists. For instance, on the question of how old major mountain ranges are, I would also throw in the age of the rockies, the himalayans, and the alps, all indisputably “major” and all of which are dated (at least in origin if not when they finished forming) much older than 5 million years.
That’s all I’ve got. I don’t know enough about most of the subjects discussed to offer any other advice.
That’s absolutely fantastic and very helpful. (I’ll just go do the mountains one now.) Thank you!
The greatest slam dunks, IMO, are the human history ones. CMI, AiG and ICR all accept the Ussher chronology, which has the Great Flood happening after the Great Pyramid was built and after the first Chinese emperor. But they had to put that stuff last in the list.
I read loads of FMSPAs, but there are a few amazing highlights that might be of special interest to LWers:
http://www.mspaforums.com/showthread.php?46308-Deep-Rise-An-Illustrated-Xenofiction-Adventure
http://www.mspaforums.com/showthread.php?43247-Wildlife
http://www.mspaforums.com/showthread.php?44613-Dreambattle-Update-53
http://www.mspaforums.com/showthread.php?45420-Blockstuck-SBURB-Enamel-A-series-of-improbable-events
http://www.prequeladventure.com/2011/03/prequel-begin/
http://www.mspaforums.com/showthread.php?42741-A-Pink-And-Watery-Sky-an-unplotted-adventure
You might want to edit that to tell people what FMSPA stands for.
That’d be negatively informative, the acronym is at least only uninformative.
They are reader suggestion driven illustrated fiction. Very web 2.0, it’s probably much easier to just check out the threads than trying to get anything from further futile attempts at me explaining it.