Author Archives: Paul Braterman
Why climate skepticism is not skepticism
Sourcing Skepticism … what factors drive questioning of Global Warming?
Copied wth permission of the author, Adam Siegel, from http://getenergysmartnow.com/2007/09/13/sourcing-skepticism-what-factors-drive-questioning-of-global-warming/
The original was posted on September 13th, 2007 and attracted 23 Comments
Now it seems more relevant than ever, with such “skepticism” the posture of governments from Australia to Washington while the Arctic ice melts and methane begins to rise from the tundra.
Image Diane Tuft, http://dianetuft.com/the-arctic-melt-gallery
Skepticism … the ability to question unquestioned beliefs and stated certainties is a powerful intellectual tool.
Sadly, “skepticism” is receiving a bad name through association with those ready, willing, able, and enthusiastic about denying the reality before their (and our) own eyes about the global changes in climate patterns and humanity’s role in driving these changes.
Questioner … Skeptic … Denier …
Clearly, not every question, not every challenge to data, not every voicing of concern is the same. Nor is every motivation the same. This is not simply about “fossil-fuel-funding” — although it can be at times. This is not simply about seeking Rapture and the end of times — even though it can be. This is not simply about political beliefs creating thought structures for dealing with science — but it can be. Read the rest of this entry
Is Creationism racist?
Henry Morris’s “scientific creationism” taught that red, black, and yellow races were descended from Ham, and destined to serve the Europeans and Semites descended from Japhet and Shem. Evolution science, with the help of genetics, wrote in 1977 that “race” applied to humans is a hopelessly blurred concept, that Europeans, Middle Easterners and East Asians are more closely related to each other than to Africans, that the greatest human genetic diversity is within Africa, and that human group differences are trivial compared with individual variation.
Which do you prefer?
I reblog here some comments by my friend the Rev. Michael Roberts on this subject, linking to the original discussion here by Libby Anne:
That should get tongues wagging. Most creationists will deny that and Ham of Answers in Genesis tries to blame evolutionists for racism.
I have no idea what the quote from Revelation means but then fundamentalists use the Bible is odd ways
This article deals with some of Henry Morris’s comments on race, with the sons of Ham being born to serve! (This comes from Genesis 9 where Ham found Noah drunk after the flood. and was cursed Gen 9 vs25. Bad old anthropology had the “sons of Ham” who were to serve. This was used to justify Apartheid among other things as the sons of Ham were Africans)
This attitude is typical of the whites in the Southern States and was held by some Southern Presbyterians at the time of the civil war.
However, here we see the founder father of modern creationism being overtly racist. I didn’t realise that…
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Evolution of the River Nile
Reblogging from Steve Drury at wileyearthpages. In an earlier post (How to learn from creationists), I mentioned the case of the buried Nile canyon as one where I had learnt from answering creationists’ questions. This piece gives much more detailed interesting information, and I am surprised (not for the first time) to learn how young great river systems are in their present form.
The longest river in the world, the Nile has all sorts of riveting connotations in terms of archaeology, Africa’s colonial history, the romance of early exploration and is currently the focus of disputes about rights to its waters. The last stems from its vast potential for irrigation and for hydropower. It is probably the most complex of all the major rivers of our planet because it stretches across so many climatic zones, topographic systems geological and tectonic provinces. Mohamed Abdelsalam of Oklahoma State University, who was born in the Sudan and began his career at the confluence of the White and Blue Nile in its capital Khartoum, is an ideal person to produce a modern scientific summary of how the Nile has evolved. That is because he has studied some of the key elements of the geology through which the river and its major tributaries travel, but most of all…
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Abortion: There is No Ethical Dilemma
Carl Sagan said this decades ago. I think my friend John Zande actually says it better. If the end of brain activity is the end of an individual’s life, then before there is coherent brain activity, individual life has not yet begun.
How can you “kill” something that cannot “die”?
This is arguably the most significant question in any discussion concerning the legality of abortion, and because facts matter, the following seventeen words are critical in understanding that before gestational week 25, although more accurately week 28, there is no ethical dilemma in terminating a pregnancy because nothing is being killed—or worse, to use the careless language of some, murdered.
At no stage does life magically appear in a zygote, a blastocyst, an embryo, or a foetus.
Life began on earth 3.8 billion years ago and has not been interrupted since. There is no ‘divine spark,’ no ensorcelled moment when the inanimate abruptly transforms into the animate. A foetus was never inorganic and suddenly becomes organic. The egg and the sperm are already parts of the living system—a 3.8 billion years old system driven by chemiosmosis, where the rechargeable…
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The Scopes “Monkey trial”, Part 2: Evidence, Confrontation, Resolution, Consequences
This weekend sees the 93rd anniversary of the Scopes Trial, and I am reposting this and its companion piece to celebrate.
I would point out two things. One is that the actual William Jennings Bryan was nothing like the ogre of Inherit the Wind, which was an allegory of McCarthyism. The other is how remarkably well the scientific evidence has stood up to almost a century of examination. There is even a mention, based on serological evidence, of how closely related whales are to hoofed land animals.
Darrow: Did you ever discover where Cain got his wife?
Bryan: No, sir; I leave the agnostics to hunt for her.
Both sides, I will argue, were long-term loses in this exchange. But why were such matters being discussed in Tennessee court of law in the first place?
Part 1: the story so far: An extraordinary case indeed, where a school teacher, with the encouragement of his own superintendent, volunteers to go on trial in the State court for the crime of teaching from the State’s approved textbook, and where that same superintendent will be the first witness called against him. And where a mere misdemeanour case, with a maximum penalty of $500, could attract the participation of William Jennings Bryan, former US Secretary of State, and Clarence Darrow, America’s most famous trial lawyer and an agnostic.
Billy Sunday preaching
In the run-up to the case, we even have the…
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The Scopes “Monkey trial”, Part 1: Issues, Fact, and Fiction
This weekend sees the 93rd anniversary of the Scopes Trial, and I am reposting this and its companion piece to celebrate.
I would point out two things. One is that the actual William Jennings Bryan was nothing like the ogre of Inherit the Wind, which was an allegory of McCarthyism. The other is how remarkably well the scientific evidence has stood up to almost a century of examination. There is even a mention, based on serological evidence, of how closely related whales are to hoofed land animals.
What is the purpose of this examination?
We have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United States, and that is all.
Dayton Courthouse today
Inherit the Wind, the prism through which the public sees the Scopes Trial, is a travesty. William Jennings Bryan, who prosecuted Scopes, was neither a buffoon nor a biblical literalist but moved by deep concerns that continue to merit attention. He did not protest at the leniency of Scopes’s punishment, but offered to pay the fine out of his own pocket. Nor did he collapse in defeat at the end of the trial, but drove hundreds of miles, and delivered two major speeches, before dying in his sleep a week later. Scopes, on trial for the crime of teaching evolution in Tennessee state school, was never at risk of prison. He was no martyr, but a willing participant…
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Can we trust radiocarbon dating?
Willard Frank Libby, inventor of the method
Can we trust radiocarbon dating? Young Earth creationists tell us that we can’t. After all, it makes the same range of assumptions as other radiometric dating methods, and then some. Other methods benefit from internal checks or duplications, which in the case of radiocarbon dating are generally absent. There are numerous cases where it appears to give absurdly old ages for young material, while apparent ages of a few tens of thousands of years are regularly reported for material known on other evidence to be millions of years old. So can the Young Earth creationist1 objections be rebutted, and if so how?
The principle of radiometric dating is simple.2 If we know how much of a particular radioactive substance was present when a material formed, how much is still there, and Read the rest of this entry
A new argument against evolution
This from the Hebrides News:
If, as evolutionists claim, all of mankind evolved from the same primitive life-source, then how did we end up with 7,000 different languages? The Bible teaches in Genesis 11: 7-,9 that God created all the different languages at Babel…
If mankind had advanced through a so-called evolutionary process, then there should still be developing languages today. However, the stark fact is mankind’s languages are vanishing from civilization at an alarming rate – thus proving that evolution is a lie. And if evolution were true, then the process by which mankind has obtained 7,000 languages would be continuing today. Has the evolutionary process ceased? According to the Bible it never happened in the first place.
The Earth, of course, is 6,000 years old. As for purported evidence to the contrary, Read the rest of this entry
The Case Against Evolution – turning Chick on its head!!
From Old Earth Ministries by way of my friend Michael Roberts. Covers the scientific bases clearly and comprehensively, before exposing the contorted theology of Young Earth Creationism, and the arrogant presumption of its claim that evolution is incompatible with Christianity.
Disclosure: I see difficulties with religious beliefs, but these are not increased (perhaps the contrary) by our knowledge of evolution, and since they are not my difficulties it is not my place to comment on them, other than to point out that the YECist claim to “own” Christianity (or any other religion) is plainly false
Another good strip cartoon arguing for evolution in the style of Jack Chick – without the spite
Source: The Case Against Evolution
Grand Canyon Unconformities –and a Cambrian Island
I have discussed the Grand Canyon myself at https://paulbraterman.wordpress.com/2018/03/09/why-science-needs-philosophy-cont-and-why-it-matters-with-examples-from-geology/ , and strongly recommend this beautifully written and illustrated guide to its unconformities
A prominent ledge punctuates the landscape towards the bottom of the Grand Canyon. It’s the Tapeats Sandstone, deposited during the Cambrian Period about 520 million years ago, when the ocean was beginning to encroach on the North American continent, an event called the Cambrian Transgression. Above the ledge, you can see more than 3000 feet of near-horizontal sedimentary rocks, eroded into cliffs and slopes depending on their ability to withstand weathering and erosion. These rocks, deposited during the rest of the Paleozoic Era, are often used to demonstrate the vastness of geologic time–some 300 million years of it.
View of the Grand Canyon from the South Rim trail. Arrows point to the Tapeats Sandstone.
But the razor-thin surface between the Tapeats and the underlying Proterozoic-age rock reflects the passage of far more geologic time –about 600 million years where the Tapeats sits on top the sedimentary rocks of the Grand…
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