Dr. Pepper 'Evolution Of Flavor' Ad Rankles Fundamentalist Christians On Facebook

Via HuffPo:

Controversy has erupted over the latest Dr. Pepper ad dubbed "The Evolution of Flavor," with a small, but vocal minority of commenters on Facebook posting complaints about the ad's evolution motif. 

The comments began after the ad appeared on the soft drink's official Facebook page Thursday afternoon. 

"I love Dr. Pepper but hate this photo," wrote Kara Duran, "Forget evolution... Jesus all the way!" 

"Well, there goes my support for this company," Jolynn Danae Pilapil wrote.

One of the most recent comments on the Facebook page this morning:

"Another lot going crazy over cartoons rather than when people are killed in the name of their religion.."

'Symphony of Science' Takes On Climate Change

A musical investigation into the causes and effects of global climate change and our opportunities to use science to offset it. Featuring Bill Nye, David Attenborough, Richard Alley and Isaac Asimov. "Our Biggest Challenge" is the 16th episode of the Symphony of Science series by melodysheep.

Creation Museum Scientists Challenge Bill Nye To Evolution Debate

The scientists from The Creation Museum have challenged Bill Nye to a debate. If there's a god, I pray that he makes this happen. On live prime time television.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you're aware that Bill Nye angered quite a few Creationists with a video he made for Big Think, in which he stated that Creationism is indoctrination and inappropriate for children.

Faster than you could say "Adam's rib," the folks at Answers In Genesis (the creationist ministry behind the Creation Museum and the forthcoming Ark Encounter) responded with a facepalm-inducing rebuttal of Nye's comments.

Bill Nye then responded to Answers in Genesis with the following comments:

"When I see reasoning like this, I often feel that we educators have failed to convey a fundamental idea in evolution. We humans, who design and build things, or who plant crops according to a calendar, think in what would be top-down style or method of design. Evolution works the other way; it's bottom-up design. The only designs that we observe in nature exist, because they have been successful from generation to generation."

""Creation Science" is not useful, because it can make no successful predictions about nature or the universe. So, it is reasonable to say the expression is an oxymoron, or simply: it's not science. It has no process of observation, hypothesis, experiment, then predicted outcome. A useful theory about time and organisms would make no distinction between "observational" and "historical" science.
In terms of critical thinking, its claims are completely refutable. When creationists assert that the Earth is 6,000 years old. That claim can be evaluated and shown to be untrue or simply wrong. If creationists claim that ancient dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time, that can be shown to be false. Judge John E. Jones in Dover, Pennsylvania used the expression "breathtaking inanity" to describe creationists' arguments, i.e. claims so silly that they took his breath away."

"My concern again is that we cannot afford to raise a substantial fraction of the next generation of students, who do not have the skills to think scientifically. We are at a crossroads in the history of the U.S. Without scientifically literate kids, we will fall behind other countries as inventors and innovators. We will lose our edge."

Ken Ham of AiG seems a bit pessimistic on whether Nye will accept the debate challenge:

Well, we’ve already seen a lot of web chatter by secularists saying that they don’t debate creationists. They claim creation has nothing to do with science and that Christians like Dr. Purdom (with aPhD in Molecular Genetics from Ohio State) can’t be real scientists if they are creationists.

They argue that there is no debate because evolution is fact. In other words, these secularists use every excuse they can put forward because ultimately, they do not want to debate creationists. They don’t want the public watching such a debate. They realize that when the public hears the creationist information that has been censored from them and learn how they’ve been brainwashed, they will definitely question evolution.

...The secular media by and large support Bill Nye’s false statements about evolution and science, the mainstream media would not want the general public to hear anything else. It’s almost always this way. Most in the secular media aren’t out to report news—most of them have a very liberal anti-God agenda. But we are used to that.

Bill, please accept the challenge. We will get the popcorn ready.

SBM Worldwide: You Too Can Prevent Homosexuality

SBM Founder, Stephen Bennett

Via SBM Worldwide:

Stephen Bennett, 49 years old, struggled with same-sex attraction (SSA) throughout his teenage and young adult years, living an openly-gay lifestyle for more than 11 years until he was 28 years old. In 1990, Stephen, happy with his homosexual lifestyle and in a committed "gay" relationship for several years, was lovingly and biblically engaged about his lifestyle and evangelized with the gospel of Jesus Christ by a Christian friend. Two years later, much to the shock of everyone who knew him — especially his family and friends — Stephen was born again and completely surrendered his life to the Lord. It was at this time that Stephen made the decision to walk away from his homosexual lifestyle, never to return. His journey of "coming out" of homosexuality then began — dealing with many painful, emotional issues he had buried — including being molested at the age of 11. Stephen would never be the same again. 

Stephen left his male partner and began his new walk with Christ in January of 1992. He began dating Irene in October of that year, then the two were married the following year, in June of 1993. Today, more than 20 years later, Stephen no longer struggles whatsoever with homosexuality. He shares his story of freedom and complete change at churches, conferences, events, and in the media worldwide. His encouraging message is that individuals who desire change can know that change is completely possible.

SBM Worldwide describes its organization as "an evangelistic, educational, exhortational, and encouraging Christian ministry dedicated to ministering to homosexual-identifying men and women who are seeking change. SBM Worldwide provides biblical, practical, and prayerful support and resources for men and women who are looking to overcome their unwanted same-sex attractions and identity."

Bennett and his wife Irene appeared on the CTN program "Homekeepers" to talk about Bennett's 'transformation.' Host Arthelene Rippy used the opportunity to plug the NARTH-endorsed Parents' Guide To Preventing Homosexuality.

Watch:

Answers In Genesis Responds To Bill Nye's Anti-Creationism Rant

*sigh*


Of course, comments are disabled on YouTube.

Bill Nye's original post here.

Bill Nye: Don't Indoctrinate Your Children With Creationism -- The Future Needs Them

So many times, when discussing evolution, creationists will say, "Why do you care what I believe?"

Bill Nye answers the question.

"When you have a portion of the population that doesn't believe in [Evolution] it holds everybody back," Nye says. "Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science, in all of biology. It's very much analogous to trying to do geology without believing in tectonic plates."

"[I]f you want to deny evolution and live in your world, in your world that's completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that's fine, but don't make your kids do it because we need them," Nye says. "We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need people...engineers that can build stuff, solve problems."

"In another couple of centuries that world view [Creationism]...just won't exist. There's no evidence for it."

Watch:

Patterns In Data Realization: Maps Depicting Social Ills Look Eerily Familiar

Update (8/27/13): 
The website PornHub has just released a trove of data on America's porn habits. I couldn't help but notice that, once again, it's THAT MAP. I have added the map to the bottom of this previously-published post.

I'm fascinated by data realizations in map form. They say a picture's worth a thousand words.

I'm not going to make any statements about cause and effect, as we all know that correlation does not imply causation. But there certainly is much to be gleaned from correlation.

The below map has been making the rounds recently. It depicts the largest participating religious groups by county in the United States -- basically which religions are most represented in each county.

As fascinating as it is, it probably doesn't come as much of a surprise:

See that large swath of red across the South? That's the Bible Belt. It has a lot in common with many other maps (some of which have been discussed here before).

Here's a map depicting life expectancies for females, by county:

And here's the same for males:

Here we have a map of religiosity in America, with the darker green depicting the most religious areas:

Here we have a map depicting well-being in America. The lighter areas indicate those areas in which residents report a lower sense of well-being.

Here we have a map depicting poverty in the US. Darker portions of the map indicate higher rates of poverty.

In the below map, we can see the divorce rates for men by state (darker colors indicate the highest rates of divorce):

Here we have the same map for women:

The following colorful map depicts the state of same-sex marriage in America. The darker red states are those which are most hostile towards gay-marriage (see key).

And here we have teen birth rates:

Noticing a pattern here?

Here we have a map of active hate groups:

The following map shows the treatment of evolution in schools, by state:

How about the states accepting abstinence education funds (those in orange denied federal abstinence education funds)?

What about high school diplomas?

And here we have the 2008 presidential election red state/blue state map:

Here's a map showing which states spend the most time on PornHub, the third largest porn video site on the internet. Could it be that the most religious, most conservative, most anti-gay, most anti-evolution, most pro-abstinence education states are also the states spending the most time viewing hardcore pornography?

Again, there are many, many factors that play into each of these maps. There are certainly many complex correlations and causations (and some factors perpetuate others). For example, we know that areas of high poverty will likely (for obvious reasons) experience less well-being, lower rates of education, and lower life expectancies.

The religious and political correlations, however, are more curious.

Do lower levels of well-being and lower life expectancies cause higher rates of religiosity?

Are blue-leaning states more likely to deny evolution? Or are evolution-deniers more likely to vote conservative?

Does abstinence education lead to higher teen pregnancy rates? Or do high teen pregnancy rates lead to more abstinence education?

Are hate groups more likely to be comprised of religious conservatives?

Do lower rates of high school graduates play into higher rates of religious conservatism?

Would an increase in graduation levels decrease the number of religious conservatives, evolution denialists, and hate groups?

Is it offensive to ask these questions? If so, why?

Do you have the answers? Please share.

Would The Discovery Of Alien Life Spell Doom For Religion?

The vastness and complexity of the cosmos tends to bolster the faith in a creator for many. Certainly something so intricate and expansive could not have just 'happened.'

For many others, myself included, the more we learn about the cosmos, the more we question the validity of religion.

Mike Wall writes at Space.com:

The discovery of life beyond Earth would shake up our view of humanity's place in the universe, but it probably wouldn't seriously threaten organized religion, experts say.

Religious faith remains strong in much of the world despite scientific advances showing that Earth is not the center of the universe, and that our planet's organisms were not created in their present form but rather evolved over billions of years. So it's likely that religion would also weather any storms caused by the detection of E.T., researchers say.

Many believers tend to compartmentalize their religion and their understanding of the world. How else would we explain geologists, astrophysicists, and biologists who adhere to a young-earth creationist belief system? (Yes, they do exist.) While this seems inconceivable, it speaks to the power of belief, and the unshakeable nature of faith.

While it is not inconceivable that people of faith could reconcile alien life with their faith, it certainly would seem to raise many questions -- questions that I often wrestled with during my time as a believer:

According to the Drake Equation, there are "at least 125 billion galaxies in the observable universe. It is estimated that at least ten percent of all sun-like stars have a system of planets, i.e. there are 6.25×1018 stars with planets orbiting them in the observable universe. Even if we assume that only one out of a billion of these stars have planets supporting life, there would be some 6.25×109 (billion) life-supporting planetary systems in the observable universe.

If we are to make a conservative estimate and say that there are 2 planets in the cosmos with intelligent life, we can extrapolate that there might be three major religions on each planet (if religions even exist on these planets). Considering that humans on earth only stumbled upon monotheism 3000 years ago, and that we have run through numerous deities, it is fair to say that none of these hypothetical alien religions are Christianity, Islam, or Hinduism. What would that mean?

If Christianity is the one true religion, as many Christians will proclaim, did Christ also exist on these other planets?

If Islam is the one true religion, and if Islam doesn't exist on any other planets, are entire worlds of beings destined for Jahannam?

If religions did not evolve on other planets, what does that say about our own religions here on Earth?

Why do our religious texts (many of which are believed to be the word of God) not make any mention of life on other planets? Wouldn't that be a huge omission by an all-knowing creator?

Doug Vakoch, director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, doesn't think the discovery of alien life would have much effect on religious belief:

"I think there are reasons that we might initially think there are going to be some problems. My own hunch is they're probably not going to be as severe as we might initially think."

Rather than being shaken to its foundations by the confirmation of life on another planet or moon, organized religion may accept the news, adapt and move on.
Vakoch cited the example of Baptist theologian Hal Ostrander, who is an associate pastor at a church in Georgia.

"Dr. Ostrander is adamantly opposed to evolution, and yet he has no problem with the idea of there being extraterrestrials," Vakoch said. "He says it's as if a couple has one child, and then they decide to have a second child. Is that second child any less special? So too if God decides to have life on our planet, and then another planet, and another planet. It doesn't make us less special."

I especially believe this would be the case for many liberal religious people -- those who have not had any problems reconciling scripture with evolution, for example. These people do not tend to approach the scriptures literally. They understand that the scriptures were written by people with a limited understanding of the cosmos, and that much of the stories in the scriptures are parables, myths, and embellished accounts.

It is the scriptural literalists who may have problems with the news of intelligent life on other planets. If the evolution debate has taught us anything, we might expect them to doubt the science used to confirm intelligent alien life.

Or perhaps such a finding might finally be what allows these folks to evolve their religious views.

I, for one, welcome our new alien overlords.

American Idiots: 46% Of Americans Hold Creationist View of Human Origins

If the recent political climate has you feeling that not much has changed in the past 30 years, the latest Gallup poll will come as no surprise.

According to Gallup:

Forty-six percent of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years. The prevalence of this creationist view of the origin of humans is essentially unchanged from 30 years ago, when Gallup first asked the question.

It's amazing, right? Despite the oceans of data supporting evolution, nearly half of all Americans believe humans were created in their present form. If Gallop had dug a little deeper, we would have learned that these folks believe that men were molded out of dirt, and that women were an afterthought, fashioned from Adam's rib.

Half of all Americans believe that National Geographic, The Smithsonian, The Science Channel, the Discovery Channel, and PBS are all part of a vast secular conspiracy (along with an overwhelming majority of scientists and every major US scientific organization).

Denial is a powerful drug.

We shouldn't be surprised, then, to learn that "the more religious the American, the more likely he or she is to choose the creationist viewpoint."

Two-thirds of Americans who attend religious services weekly choose the creationist alternative, compared with 25% of those who say they seldom or never attend church. The views of Americans who attend almost every week or monthly fall in between those of the other two groups. Still, those who seldom or never attend church are more likely to believe that God guided the evolutionary process than to believe that humans evolved with no input from God.

Now, if I were to ask you whether Republicans or Democrats were more likely to be creationists -- that's a no-brainer, right? Right.

"58% of Republicans believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years."

Now, before you start laughing at the Republicans' ignorance, get this: "39% of independents and 41% of Democrats agree [that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years.]"

We have a serious problem in America. It's a phenomenon unlike anything else in the world.

We are a different animal altogether.

All in all, there is no evidence in this trend of a substantial movement toward a secular viewpoint on human origins.

Most Americans are not scientists, of course, and cannot be expected to understand all of the latest evidence and competing viewpoints on the development of the human species. Still, it would be hard to dispute that most scientists who study humans agree that the species evolved over millions of years, and that relatively few scientists believe that humans began in their current form only 10,000 years ago without the benefit of evolution. Thus, almost half of Americans today hold a belief, at least as measured by this question wording, that is at odds with the preponderance of the scientific literature.

Robertson: "Demonic Possession" Behind Homosexuality

Offered without comment:

Ken Ham: The Battle Over Genesis, Literal Adam & Eve, Really Heating Up

Ken Ham claims there's a war on Adam & Eve. As the founder of Answers In Genesis and the man behind the Creation Museum, you kind of expect him to say that. His livelihood, after all, depends on it.

Ken Ham: founder, house of cards

Ham spoke to the Christian Post:

"One of the things that we see happening in the Christian culture is that the battle over Genesis – the literal Adam and Eve, the literal fall – is really heating up," said Ham, who leads what is considered the largest biblical apologetics ministry in the United States. "Not just the battle over the age of the earth, between creationists and evolutionists, but now it's gone onto a battle over literal Adam and Eve, their literal fall."

The opponents are "getting much more involved, and really challenging the Church to take a stand on God's way to Genesis," which he stressed as "the foundation for the rest of the Bible."

"That history is the foundation for every doctrine."

If there is no literal Adam and Eve, then why are men sinners, Ham asks. Where did sin come from? Why did Jesus die? "Once we reject Adam and Eve, the rest of the scriptures fall like dominoes," he added.

They sure do, Ken.

Well, they do if they read the Bible as a scientific and historical document, something that most people do not do. (Three in 10 Americans take the Bible literally -- still an unfortunate number of people.)

Ham believes that too many churches are teaching that Bible stories are just that -- stories.

When I teach children I tell them: 'The Bible is a very special book. It's the history book of the universe,'" he explained. "This is history, it's not just stories." Ham also sees the churches approach to teaching the Bible as stories as the reason for young people leaving church. They are being taught that church is not the "real stuff."

he outspoken apologist is a controversial figure, even within the Christian community. He has attracted criticism from other apologists for what many view as more extreme views. For example, Ham believes that the universe is relatively new and that it was created about 6,000 years ago. He also believes that dinosaurs co-existed with modern humans, which is illustrated at AiG's Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky.

Ham is also convinced that the animals carried on Noah's ark produced the biological diversity observed on Earth. To spread that idea he has embarked on a grand project of building a life-size ark in Williamstown, Ky., to serve a similar purpose as the museum – attracting visitors from across the nation and the world.

Ham's concern is certainly good news for rational people everywhere, for it shows us evolution in action. One day, if we want to hear about a literal Adam and Eve and a literal Noah's Ark, we won't be able to hear about it in a church. We'll have to visit a theme park or a tacky tourist trap instead.

Rick Santorum Actually Believes The Entire Cosmos Was Created For Homo Sapiens

Rick Santorum, like many humans, has a problem with perspective.

On "Face the Nation," Santorum attempted to clarify his accusations that Obama's theology is "phony":

"I accept the fact that the president is a Christian," Santorum said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "But when you have a world view that elevates the earth above man and says we can't take those resources because its going to harm the Earth, it's just all an attempt to centralize power and give more power to the government."

Santorum said that while Obama believes "man is here to serve the Earth," he believes "Earth is not the objective. Man is the objective."

Silly Rick Santorum.

Here are a few basic scientific considerations:

• The earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old.
• Anatomically modern humans evolved in Africa approximately 200,000 years ago.
• Scientists estimate that at least 99.9 percent of all species of plants and animals that ever lived are now extinct.
• Based upon evidence of past extinction rates, University of Chicago paleontologists David M. Raup and J. John Sepkoski (among others) have suggested that the average longevity of vertebrate species seems to be 2-4 million years.
• In 7.6 billion years, the earth will be swallowed up by the expanding sun.
• According to the Drake Equation, there are "at least 125 billion galaxies in the observable universe. It is estimated that at least ten percent of all sun-like stars have a system of planets, i.e. there are 6.25×1018 stars with planets orbiting them in the observable universe. Even if we assume that only one out of a billion of these stars have planets supporting life, there would be some 6.25×109 (billion) life-supporting planetary systems in the observable universe.

You do the math, Rick.

To think for a minute that man is the objective, you exhibit an embarrassing (and dangerous) level of ignorance about the vastness of time and space.

Someone who is capable of believing that homo sapiens are "the objective" is either deluded by their faith, or incredibly dense (and very likely both).

Bryan Fischer & The Creation Museum's Scientist Link Evolution To Hitler

Today, AFA spokesman and all-around horrible person, Bryan Fischer, had Dr. Georgia Purdom on his show.

For those unfamiliar with Dr. Purdom, she is one of the actual scientists employed by the Creation Museum. In other words, she is a scientist who has found a way to completely ignore science in order to indoctrinate children with the idea that the earth is only several thousand years old, and that God created humans in their present form.

As I've mentioned before in these pages, evolution deniers like Bryan Fischer, Ray Comfort, and the crew at Answers in Genesis love to play the Hitler card in their attacks on evolution.

Take Fischer and Purdom from today's Focal Point (video segment is below)

FISCHER: So it seems like you could draw a straight line between Charles Darwin, Margaret Sanger, the eugenics movement, and Adolph Hitler. You have an unbroken line from the theory of evolution to Hitler's Germany. Is that an over-exaggeration?

PURDOM: No it's not.

What Fischer and Purdom are trying to do is sully Darwin's name, and his theory of evolution -- a theory which is considered to be a fact by most modern biologists -- by association.

I guess the idea is that if they keep repeating over and over that "evolution = Hitler," the poor souls who pay attention to these loons (over 200 radio stations and over 1 million visitors to the Creation Museum) will simply say, "Welp, Hitler was evil, so evolution has to be a lie!"

Here's the thing:

Evolution doesn't care. Evolution happens, has happened, and will happen, regardless of who embraces it, or who mirrors its mechanisms for whatever nefarious purpose.

It doesn't matter if Mother Theresa, Pope Benedict, or Adolf Hitler embraced the theory of evolution. It doesn't change anything. Because change is always occurring, and it doesn't give a shit about you, politics, religion, or Bryan Fischer.

Next thing you know, Fischer and Purdom will be bad-mouthing Sir Isaac Newton and his theory of gravitation because of the millions who have died by falling.

Get Your Crayons Ready! It's The Creation Museum Dinosaur Coloring Contest!

The folks over at Kentucky's Creation Museum have announced a fun way to get your children on their way to needing remedial instruction in science.

Can you draw a saddle and a human?

The Creationist Disneyland, as NCSE director Eugenie Scott likes to call it, will give your child $5 off their admission for coloring a picture of their friendly dinosaur. (The dinosaur was created by God on day 6, it says on the page.)

Or, if your child likes to draw, they can turn in a drawing of their favorite dinosaur. If a child were to go this route, I imagine they might get bonus points for drawing Adam & Eve, perhaps saddled atop the dinosaur on a romantic ride through Eden.

The contest will be judged in four age groups: preschool, 5–7 year olds, 8–11 year olds, and 12–14 year olds.

While the Creation Museum is a bit vague about what exactly kids might win, they have confirmed that "prizes will be awarded."

One can be fairly certain that science education is not among the prizes.

Here's what some smart people have had to say about the museum:

British scientist, doctor, and professor Robert Winston:

It was alarming to see so much time, money and effort being spent on making a mockery of hard won scientific knowledge. And the fact that it was being done with such obvious sincerity, somehow made it all the worse.

The National Center For Science Education received over 800 signatures from scientists in the three states closest to the museum (Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio) on the following statement:

We, the undersigned scientists at universities and colleges in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana, are concerned about scientifically inaccurate materials at the Answers in Genesis museum. Students who accept this material as scientifically valid are unlikely to succeed in science courses at the college level. These students will need remedial instruction in the nature of science, as well as in the specific areas of science misrepresented by Answers in Genesis.

Lisa Park, professor of paleontology at University of Akron, and an Elder in the Presbyterian Church:

I think it's very bad science and even worse theology... and the theology is far more offensive to me. I think there's a lot of focus on fear, and I don't think that's a very Christian message... I find it a malicious manipulation of the public.

British writer A.A. Gill:

A breathtakingly literal march through Genesis, without any hint of soul...This place doesn't just take on evolution—it squares off with geology, anthropology, paleontology, history, chemistry, astronomy, zoology, biology, and good taste. It directly and boldly contradicts most -onomies and all -ologies, including most theology.

I think they owe thousands of childen an ap-ology.

Tebow 3:16 -- Coincidences, Odds & Our Need To Find Order In A Chaotic World

By now you've probably heard that Tim Tebow is a miracle worker. Last night, the bible verse-wearing, sideline-kneeling quarterback threw an 80-yard touchdown pass in overtime to lift his Broncos past the Steelers.

If the entire season had not already elicited talk of divine intervention, last night's overtime win put the miracle-speak in overdrive.

Tebow passed for 316 yards against the Steelers, completing 10 of 21 pass attempts. In other words, he passed for 31.6 yards per completion.

For those unaware, Tebow's favorite Bible verse is John 3:16.

Anyone who dipped into the Twitter stream last night would likely have seen the coincidences piling up. Many of them making any number of peripheral and mundane facts and figures into signs of the divine.

Sure, it's a neat story. The publicly devout Christian football player has had his share of come-from-behind victories this year. He has overcome the odds on many occasions. He happened to throw for 316 yards in the most important game of the year.

Oh yeah, and his coach's name is John. And he threw that winning pass to a guy who was born on Christmas. And the abbreviation for overtime is OT, which is also the abbreviation for Old Testament.

But does it prove anything? Is it more than a coincidence? I mean, seriously, what are the chances?

Lisa Belkin, in a wonderful 2009 New York Times Magazine piece on odds, coincidence, and our need to find order in our chaotic world, writes:

The true meaning of [coincidence] is ''a surprising concurrence of events, perceived as meaningfully related, with no apparent causal connection.'' In other words, pure happenstance. Yet by merely noticing a coincidence, we elevate it to something that transcends its definition as pure chance. We are discomforted by the idea of a random universe. Like Mel Gibson's character Graham Hess in M. Night Shyamalan's new movie ''Signs,'' we want to feel that our lives are governed by a grand plan.

The need is especially strong in an age when paranoia runs rampant. ''Coincidence feels like a loss of control perhaps,'' says John Allen Paulos, a professor of mathematics at Temple University and the author of ''Innumeracy,'' the improbable best seller about how Americans don't understand numbers. Finding a reason or a pattern where none actually exists ''makes it less frightening,'' he says, because events get placed in the realm of the logical. ''Believing in fate, or even conspiracy, can sometimes be more comforting than facing the fact that sometimes things just happen.''

Belkin reminds us of the mountain of coincidental details that many saw as meaningful after the events of 9/11:

We need to be reminded, Paulos and others say, that most of the time patterns that seem stunning to us aren't even there. For instance, although the numbers 9/11 (9 plus 1 plus 1) equal 11, and American Airlines Flight 11 was the first to hit the twin towers, and there were 92 people on board (9 plus 2), and Sept. 11 is the 254th day of the year (2 plus 5 plus 4), and there are 11 letters each in ''Afghanistan,'' ''New York City'' and ''the Pentagon'' (and while we're counting, in George W. Bush), and the World Trade towers themselves took the form of the number 11, this seeming numerical message is not actually a pattern that exists but merely a pattern we have found. (After all, the second flight to hit the towers was United Airlines Flight 175, and the one that hit the Pentagon was American Airlines Flight 77, and the one that crashed in a Pennsylvania field was United Flight 93, and the Pentagon is shaped, well, like a pentagon.)

Sound familiar? If we were to start digging though other statistics from the game, and from Tebow's life (and believe me, many are busy piling these up right now -- we will continue to see them trickle out this week), we would find an endless stream of forced, and increasingly thin, coincidences.

We would also find the same coincidences by crunching numbers related to our own daily lives -- even those of us who are not devout. The most breathtaking of happenings, Belkin says, could actually have been predicted by statistics.

The mathematician will answer that even in the most unbelievable situations, the odds are actually very good. The law of large numbers says that with a large enough denominator -- in other words, in a big wide world -- stuff will happen, even very weird stuff. ''The really unusual day would be one where nothing unusual happens,'' explains Persi Diaconis, a Stanford statistician who has spent his career collecting and studying examples of coincidence. Given that there are 280 million people in the United States, he says, ''280 times a day, a one-in-a-million shot is going to occur.''

Throw your best story at him -- the one about running into your childhood playmate on a street corner in Azerbaijan or marrying a woman who has a birthmark shaped like a shooting star that is a perfect match for your own or dreaming that your great-aunt Lucy would break her collarbone hours before she actually does -- and he will nod politely and answer that such things happen all the time. In fact, he and his colleagues also warn me that although I pulled all examples in the prior sentence from thin air, I will probably get letters from readers saying one of those things actually happened to them.

Robert J. Tibshirani, a statistician at Stanford University, uses the example of a hand of poker as a great example of how we ignore the millions of meaningless events in our lives, but find meaning in the events which happen to trigger a mental connection.

''The chance of getting a royal flush is very low,'' he says, ''and if you were to get a royal flush, you would be surprised. But the chance of any hand in poker is low. You just don't notice when you get all the others; you notice when you get the royal flush.''

The odds that Tim Tebow passed for 316 odds are similar to the odds that he'd pass for 309. We simply would not have made any big deal out of it if he threw for 309 yards (except for the fact that it was impressive yardage that helped him win a game).

Still, the faithful will continue to insist that there simply has to be meaning. They will continue to say, "Coincidence? I think not," and ask, "What are the odds?" Again, these people are focusing on the seemingly meaningful connection, and ignoring real-world statistics.

Belkin describes 'The Birthday Problem':

There are as many as 366 days in a year (accounting for leap years), and so you would have to assemble 367 people in a room to absolutely guarantee that two of them have the same birthday. But how many people would you need in that room to guarantee a 50 percent chance of at least one birthday match?

Intuitively, you assume that the answer should be a relatively large number. And in fact, most people's first guess is 183, half of 366. But the actual answer is 23. In Paulos's book, he explains the math this way: ''[T]he number of ways in which five dates can be chosen (allowing for repetitions) is (365 x 365 x 365 x 365 x 365). Of all these 365 5 ways, however, only (365 x 364 x 363 x 362 x 361) are such that no two of the dates are the same; any of the 365 days can be chosen first, any of the remaining 364 can be chosen second and so on. Thus, by dividing this latter product (365 x 364 x 363 x 362 x 361) by 365 5 , we get the probability that five persons chosen at random will have no birthday in common. Now, if we subtract this probability from 1 (or from 100 percent if we're dealing with percentages), we get the complementary probability that at least two of the five people do have a birthday in common. A similar calculation using 23 rather than 5 yields 1/2, or 50 percent, as the probability that at least 2 of 23 people will have a common birthday.''

Got that?

Using similar math, you can calculate that if you want even odds of finding two people born within one day of each other, you only need 14 people, and if you are looking for birthdays a week apart, the magic number is seven. (Incidentally, if you are looking for an even chance that someone in the room will have your exact birthday, you will need 253 people.) And yet despite numbers like these, we are constantly surprised when we meet a stranger with whom we share a birth date or a hometown or a middle name. We are amazed by the overlap -- and we conveniently ignore the countless things we do not have in common.

We are pattern-seeking creatures. This is likely part of our biology, a behavior that evolved to help us survive. Early humans needed to be hyper-aware of anomalies in order to detect threats. And while these happy accidents provide many with hope and inspiration, our willingness to attach meaning also works to our detriment. We have, in many ways, become fundamentally irrational beings.

The more personal the event, the more meaning we give it...

The fact that personal attachment adds significance to an event is the reason we tend to react so strongly to the coincidences surrounding Sept. 11. In a deep and lasting way, that tragedy feels as if it happened to us all.

[This] sheds light on the countless times that pockets of the general public find themselves at odds with authorities and statisticians. Her results might explain, for instance, why lupus patients are certain their breast implants are the reason for their illness, despite the fact that epidemiologists conclude there is no link, or why parents of autistic children are resolute in their belief that childhood immunizations or environmental toxins or a host of other suspected pathogens are the cause, even though experts are skeptical. They might also explain the outrage of all the patients who are certain they live in a cancer cluster, but who have been told otherwise by researchers.

While the Tebow divine intervention anecdotes themselves are harmless, and while many may find inspiration and hope in his story, we must remember that there is a down-side to cobbling together random bits of information and forming a conclusion.

In some ways, the Tebow narratives reinforce many people's irrationality. We are simply too caught up in the feel-good nature of the story to realize that this is the same type of thinking that has fueled everything from truthers and anti-vaxxers, to bigotry and grilled cheese sandwich auctions.

Bryan Fischer: HIV Does Not Cause AIDS, Massive Drug Use Among Gays Causes AIDS

I am a horrible person.

By now, it's clear that Bryan Fischer, of SPLC-designated hate group The American Family Association, is either a brilliant work of performance art or simply just a horrible, willfully ignorant, bible-thumping hatemonger suffering from acute narcissistic personality disorder.

He was already vying for 'Worst Person in the World,' but this week Fischer ratcheted up the batshit yet again.

Via Right Wing Watch:

It really should come as no surprise that there is no depth to which Bryan Fischer will not sink in his relentless assault against all things gay, as he is now openly promoting the idea that the HIV virus is not the cause of AIDS.

Fisher dedicated two segments on his program yesterday to interviewing Peter Duesberg, author of "Inventing the AIDS Virus," who asserts that the idea that HIV causes AIDS was a scheme concocted by scientists in order to get research grants and that the symptoms attributed to AIDS are really caused by massive recreational drug use among gay men.

And it is a theory which Fischer wholeheartedly endorses.

The full interview can be viewed below, if you can stomach it.

Anti-Science: In Which 'Age of Autism' Boos Me, And A Scientist Responds

This morning I criticized the website Age of Autism by way of a tweet highlighting their site as part of a list of the 10 worst anti-science websites. They subsequently blocked me, and tweeted 'Boo!' back to me.

As a big fan of free speech, peer review, and dissent, it peeved me that a benign public tweet mentioning AoA as part of a list, would result in being blocked. This is, after all, an organization who, in their own 'About Us' section, condemns those who "aren't interested" in other points of view, and who "don't listen."

Their choice of words, "Boo!", while annoying, perfectly distilled the essence of AoA's willful ignorance. It was the twitter equivalent of sticking fingers in ears and exclaiming, "Lalalalalalalalaaa!"

The science writer, biologist, and autism activist Emily Willingham was also peeved. (Full disclosure: I am one of Emily's followers on Twitter (and she is one of mine), and we have several mutual acquaintances. She has been featured in these pages, and I happen to think she kicks ass.)

Emily wrote a post on her blog, The Biology Files, where the AoA 'Boo!' episode served as a jumping-off point for a screed on the anti-science movement and the value of real science.

She writes:

This nadir of discourse is a perfect example of why the anti-science movement in this country is so damaging. The refusal to think critically, to alter conclusions as necessary based on new evidence, to budge from some pre-set notion regardless of information to the contrary--that "BOO!" sums it all up. It says, "We do not care that you think we're anti-science, and we have taken our ball and gone home." It says, "We are incapable of defending our position, as usual." It says, "We are childishly adherent to our cause, no matter its level of failure, no matter evidence to the contrary." That "BOO!" encapsulates well the attitude and argumentative capacity of those who promote anti-science values.

Yes, I said, "Values." Because the anti-science crowd operates together on a fundamental set of values, whether they're evangelizing against evolution, climate change, or vaccines. They place more emphasis on boastful "gotchas" than they do on getting it right. They use half-truths to get buyers for what they sell--and yes, they're usually selling something--and make people forget that the yin to a half-truth's yang is a half-lie. They value the power of emotion and testimony over method and evidence, and they use emotion and testimony cynically and unabashedly. But most of all, they value the opportunity to say "BOO!" to the folk who rely on the long-term, unemotional, data-gathering process we call "science" to form conclusions.

We see denialism everywhere these days. You can't turn on a news channel today without being bombarded with anti-science sentiment: climate change is a hoax, evolution is 'a theory that's out there,' a blastocyst is a person, Gardisil causes mental retardation. The list goes on and on.

Willingham on the damage caused by anti-science:

This clash of values between science and anti-science intersects every sphere of our lives. People turn to the anti-science practitioners and place their health and lives and their children's health and lives in jeopardy. People turn away from the conclusions of science based on available evidence and endanger everything from the food we eat and water we drink to the very balance of the biosphere. People turn away from educating our children in science, preferring the value of ignorance over the value of knowledge. People turn our nation away from being competitive by making a mockery of the value of knowledge and emphasizing instead the anti-science value of embracing half-truths and promoting scientific illiteracy. Were they able to spin in graves, our founding fathers, many of whom were extraordinary critical thinkers, would be spinning like tops to see the people of this nation they founded so proud in their emphatic and willful ignorance.

We live in a world in which, more than ever, critical thinking abilities and a broad and deep knowledge across the spheres of life and the rest of the physical world will be required tools for function and advancement. The anti-science emphasis on and exploitation of values of half-lies, ignorance, and illiteracy can only endanger us and the world around us, sometimes fatally. It's difficult for me to understand the mental processes of a person or a group of people who prefer ignorance and failure over method and evidence. But then again, my values don't involve resorting to playground childishness like "BOO!" as a retort to legitimate criticism.

Read Emily's entire post here. Share it. Tweet it to AoA, if you want. Warning: you will be blacklisted.

Science: What's It Up To?

The Daily Show's Aasif Mandvi brilliantly skewers the science denialism embraced by so much of the religious right. The clip addresses Herman Cain's climate science denial, Rick Santorum's denial of evolution, and Michele Bachmann's claim that HPV vaccines cause mental retardation.

Mandvi is joined by Republican strategist, Noelle Nikpour, who unwittingly provides most of the comedy in the clip.

Noelle Nikpour: It’s very confusing for a child to be only taught evolution to go home to a household where their parents say, “Well, wait a minute. . . God created the Earth!”

Aasif Mandvi: What is the point of teaching children facts if it’s just going to confuse them?

Nikpour: It confuses the children when they go home. We as Americans—we are paying tax dollars for our children to be educated. We need to offer them every theory that’s out there. It’s all about choice; it’s all about freedom.

Mandvi: It should be up to the American people to decide what’s true.

Nikpour: Absolutely! Doesn’t it make common sense?

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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How Evolution Works, in Comic Form: So Easy a Caveman Could Understand It

Until my dream of an IMAX 3D evolution documentary is realized, we have accessible, educational, and imaginative works by artists like Darryl Cunningham

Evolution is probably the most misunderstood concept on the planet. I still have some misconceptions to this day, I'm sure. I was an English major who grew up in Southeastern US public schools. I have no recollection of evolution being taught, and have been playing catch-up for quite some time.

I never really doubted evolution, for some reason, but I just didn't totally 'get it.'  When it finally clicked for me, after a devouring a handful of well-written primers on the subject, it was as if I'd unlocked a whole new way of looking at everything. Which I had. When you fully understand that every living thing shares an ancestor with every other living thing, it has a profound effect on how you view those things.  And when you understand how biological complexity arises in nature, you start to see examples of more complex, and less complex, mechanisms all around you.  You begin to see that many of the concepts and mechanisms found in evolution also have applications in non-biological areas, such as technology, religion, language, art, etc.

A recent Gallup poll shows that 4 in 10 of Americans do not accept evolution.  Granted, most of those who deny evolution do so because of their literal readings of scripture.  But, I do believe that, in addition, part of the problem is that people have misconceptions and misunderstandings about evolution.  They either have been willfully given misinformation by an opponent of evolution, or they have been the victim of oversimplifications, or flat-out wrong assumptions, such as the much-repeated fallacy that humans evolved from monkeys.

I've often thought that evolution could really use a boost from CGI.  I realize that there have been some short, and minor uses of CGI to demonstrate aspects of evolution on television documentaries, but I would love to see either a full-length documentary or a mini-series that really plunges in depth, leaving no stone unturned.

I imagine this thought experiment passage from Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth done in CGI -- IMAX 3D, even.  Picture it:

I’ll call it the hairpin thought experiment. Take a rabbit, any female rabbit (arbitrarily stick to females, for convenience: it makes no difference to the argument). Place her mother next to her. Now place the grandmother next to the mother and so on back in time, back, back, back through the mega years, a seemingly endless line of female rabbits, each one sandwiched between her daughter and her mother. We walk along the line of rabbits, backwards in time, examining them carefully like an inspecting general. As we pace the line, we’ll eventually notice that the ancient rabbits we are passing are just a little bit different from the modern rabbits we are used to. But the rate of change will be so slow that we shan’t notice the trend from generation to generation, just as we can’t see the motion of the hour hand on our watches – and just as we can’t see a child growing, we can only see later that she has become a teenager, and later still an adult. An additional reason why we don’t notice the change in rabbits from one generation to another is that, in any one century, the variation within the current population will normally be greater than the variation between mothers and daughters. So if we try to discern the movement of the ‘hour hand’ by comparing mothers with daughters, or indeed grandmothers with granddaughters, such slight differences as we may see will be swamped by the differences among the rabbits’ friends and relations gambolling in the meadows round about.

Nevertheless, steadily and imperceptibly, as we retreat through time, we shall reach ancestors that look less and less like a rabbit and more and more like a shrew (and not very like either). One of these creatures I’ll call the hairpin bend, for reasons that will become apparent. This animal is the most recent common ancestor (in the female line, but that is not important) that rabbits share with leopards. We don’t know exactly what it looked like, but it follows from the evolutionary view that it definitely had to exist.

Like all animals, it was a member of the same species as its daughters and its mother. We now continue our walk, except that we have turned the bend in the hairpin and are walking forwards in time, aiming towards the leopards (among the hairpin’s many and diverse descendants, for we shall continually meet forks in the line, where we consistently choose the fork that will eventually lead to leopards). Each shrewlike animal along our forward walk is now followed by her daughter. Slowly, by imperceptible degrees, the shrew-like animals will change, through intermediates that might not resemble any modern animal much but strongly resemble each other, perhaps passing through vaguely stoat-like intermediates, until eventually, without ever noticing an abrupt change of any kind, we arrive at a leopard.

Various things must be said about this thought experiment. First, we happen to have chosen to walk from rabbit to leopard, but I repeat that we could have chosen porcupine to dolphin, wallaby to giraffe or human to haddock. The point is that for any two animals there has to be a hairpin path linking them, for the simple reason that every species shares an ancestor with every other species: all we have to do is walk backwards from one species to the shared ancestor, then turn through a hairpin bend and walk forwards to the other species.

Fortunately, Dawkins' thought experiment is so elegantly written that we really don't need CGI to grasp it, but then again, we have the pesky problem of how to get that 40% of Americans to pick up a Dawkins book.

There are some other really wonderful (and accessible) books by less-controversial figures, such as Jerry Coyne, Sloane Wilson, and many others.

We also have a rising number of graphic artists serving up some pretty amazing works. There's Jay Hosler's Evolution: The Story of Life on Earth and Michael Keller and Nicole Rager Fuller's Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species: A Graphic Adaptation.

And then we have Darryl Cunningham's forthcoming book, Science Stories, which will feature a version of an amazing comic strip about Evolution (he says the version on his blog is a beta version).

What I love about Cunningham's comic is his approach from the perspective of two people who are discussing evolution. One doesn't understand it, or does not accept it, and the other is very comfortable addressing these questions (all very common questions that we see time and time again). Cunningham allows us to learn about evolution through doubt, which is really how it works in real life for so many Americans.

I hope that Cunningham's strip receives a lot of attention, and hopefully reaches a much wider audience. At least until we have that CGI IMAX 3D movie I've been dreaming about.

Here are a few frames to enjoy. They are excerpted from the middle of the piece, to demonstrate his approach. Please visit his blog for the evolution comic from start to finish:

Again, I urge you to check out the entire piece.

Sarah Palin: 'I Love That Smell of the Emissions'

The International Energy Agency just released a report showing that greenhouse gas increased by a record amount last year. We had the highest carbon output in history. 

Faith Birol, the chief economist of the IEA stated, "Such warming would disrupt the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people across the planet, leading to widespread mass migration and conflict. That is a risk any sane person would seek to drastically reduce."

Birol stated that we could avoid catastrophe if governments heed the warning.

Enter Sarah Palin, possible GOP candidate for President of the United States, who is currently traveling around the country on a mysterious bus tour.  Her first stop was at a motorcycle rally in Washington, DC, where she stated to reporters, "I love that smell of the emissions!"