Cap’n Refsmmat’s Blog of Doom

Evangelical minister Ray Comfort recently put out a “150th Anniversary Edition” of On the Origin of Species, with a Special Introduction attacking Darwin, the theory of evolution, and atheism.

Yeah, big deal. It’s been all over the Internet lately. Well, as an assignment for one of my university courses, I wrote a nice report on Comfort’s edition, comparing it to the original 1859 first edition, which we conveniently have a copy of in a library here on campus.

It was very revealing.

You can see the entire 11-page report here, though don’t be frightened by its length: it’s double-spaced and in a nice, large, easy-to-read font.

Enjoy, everyone! Feel free to spread this around the Interwebs as much as you’d like.

For the impatient, here are the highlights:

• Ray Comfort’s table of contents omits page numbers entirely, so you can’t skip to specific chapters. In fact, new chapters start in the middle of pages, and chapter headings are in tiny font, so you can’t even find chapters if you want to find a specific detail. It’s worthless as the edition for “universities and higher education” it claims to be on the back cover.
• The text of his Special Introduction is in a nice, large font, whereas Origin is in a tiny, unreadable font. It is painfully clear that Comfort does not even want you to read Origin, just his introduction.
• The nice, 12-page index is completely omitted.
• Darwin’s credentials, once present on the title page, are left out.
• The one figure included in the first edition, a nice tree of life diagram, is omitted, leaving four pages or so of Darwin blabbing about a figure illustrating his point with no actual figure to illustrate his point.
• Comfort’s claim that atheists wanted book-burnings and generally had a huge violent outcry is mostly unsubstantiated. Though one atheist on RichardDawkins.net calls Comfort out on his “ideological masturbation fantasy.” (Yeah, the paper’s worth reading just for that quote.)
• I did not, in fact, see much response at all from the religious online community, besides some criticisms of Comfort.

What does this lead me to believe? Well, here’s my conclusion:

Comfort’s edition of On the Origin of Species is not the product of a society that has rejected Darwinism. It is the product of a society that accepts Darwinism more than ever, whose acceptance has driven Ray Comfort to the conclusion that society is rejecting God. To a deeply religious minister, that is cause for action. Thus, a new Origin was produced, one designed to bring people back to God by emphasizing a religious message and discouraging anyone from even reading Darwin’s words. In his view, after all, Darwin is the man who drove them away from God in the first place.

This is no ordinary edition of Origins, with a nice introduction stating the “other side” of the story, as Comfort makes it out to be. It is an outright, but very subtle, attack. And it deserves to be treated that way.

Deep in space, a fire burns.

It is not an ordinary fire. It is the heat of uncountable gazillions of tiny pairs of protons and electrons being squished together at incredible temperatures, releasing scads of energy. The energy is transmitted outward, through clouds of zillions of other pairs, until finally it reaches the surface of this giant ball of fusing protons. Off it goes, zipping through space at ludicrous speed, until some of it — a tiny portion of it — is stopped.

This particular portion happens to have collided with a collection of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms arranged in such a fashion that its energy contributes to a complex chemical reaction, helping to link twenty-four globs of proton, neutron and electron together into a giant chunk of atomic soup. This chunk is passed around in a veritable sea of watery goop, until finally it is broken apart again and used for fuel.

That atomic soup was partially composed of water, another oddity. This particular water was part of a huge collection of water much like it, interspersed with various salt molecules, which simply sits, unsure of what to do with its life, on a giant bed of sand and rock. For fun, it slow-dances to the rhythm of the coming and going of another chunk of rock a quarter of a million miles above it, shifting around on its bed slowly, like it’s about to pass out.

But back to that atomic soup. Eventually the structure housing it is ripped from its comfortable bed of ground-up rocks and organic matter, mashed into small bits, and then doused in a bath of acids which gradually separate some of those balls of protons and electrons. From there it moves on to a long fluid-filled tube where some of those chunks are absorbed through the walls, into a stream of watery, reddish fluid with iron in it.

That fluid, being pushed in its containing tube by a pump made of soft organic matter that pulses in a particular rhythm, gradually works its way up. Reaching its destination, our chunks are ingested by tiny wriggling balls of chemicals which use them as building materials and energy sources for further wriggling and squirming.

Let’s not forget where this is all happening: on a giant ball of rock, soft on the inside and crunchy on the outside, bathed in water and hurtling through space at a speed generally considered unsafe for travel. It’s circling around the aforementioned giant fireball, which circles around a chunk of stuff so huge other stuff can’t help but fall right in.

And this chunk of rock, this fireball, this other huge chunk, are all but one of billions and billions of their kind floating around the universe.

Whatever your religious affiliation, or lack thereof, I hope this post has made you think of just how fantastically insanely weird and complex our universe really is. Maybe God did it, maybe it’s a consequence of our complex rules of physics and the patterns that spring from them; regardless, this is one hell of a crazy place to live in. So stop acting so unsurprised at everything.

Can anyone explain to me why people love talking about things like they’re experts when they really don’t know anything about the subject?

Like this guy:

I’m often asked questions about things that are out of my area of expertise. Rather than make stuff up, like Mr. LHC Guy, I at least admit that I’m not sure. (My refusal to be absolutely certain has gotten me in trouble in the past, because when you’re trying to sell things it pays to be confident in yourself. Oh well.)

(To be fair, I act like an expert on things I’m probably not an expert on, but I’ve never yet caught myself being a complete and utter moron.)

Is there a psychologist around that can explain why people don’t recognize when they’re utterly out of their depth and shut up? I think that needs to be a mandatory skill.

(Video shamelessly noticed at Splendid Elles.)

Michael Shermer wrote a book called Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time, which I own and have read several times. I always find it fascinating, but recently I’ve been thinking about Shermer’s main point: why, in fact, people do believe weird things.

Shermer’s point can be summed up with a few quotes:

More than any other reason, the reason people believe weird things is because they want to. It feels good. It is comforting.

Immediate gratification. Many weird things offer immediate gratification.

And finally, Shermer lists the last reasons as: simplicity, morality and meaning, and “hope springs eternal.”

I disagree.
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I recently bought Michael Shermer’s latest book, The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics.

The book starts off highly interesting: it brings up points about free trade few people have likely considered before, and in general makes interesting observations. Readers of Shermer’s other works, however, will notice a common theme between books — Shermer brings in evolution and intelligent design for yet another battle, and some of his examples from Why People Believe Weird Things are used over again in the new book.

While it is interesting, The Mind of the Market seems to suffer from a catastrophic failure to make a point. Shermer brings in studies and stories and numerous interesting facts, but yet never draws these studies together and offers his own hypothesis or uses them to make a broad point about economics. One can’t help but think that the book is more a compilation of interesting evolutionary economics rather than Shermer’s attempt to advance his theory. There just doesn’t seem to be a common thread between the stories.

So while the book is interesting (like all of Shermer’s work), it seems like it needed some more work and perhaps a strong-willed editor. If you’re looking for an interesting read, get the book — you’ll learn things you’ve never heard before. If you’re looking for a persuasive discourse on evolutionary economics, look elsewhere.

I spend quite a bit of my time helping high school students understand physics and mathematics concepts, so I’ve also spent some time wondering how I can better help them understand things. It’s a tough challenge, because I’ve never been like other people in terms of understanding — I’ve always been such a voracious reader that I can use my prior knowledge to make sense out of things.

I do not, however, see many other people doing the same.
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Limericks are fun. Science limericks more so.

A woman in liquor production
Owns a still of exquisite construction.
The alcohol boils
Through magnetic coils.
She says that it’s “proof by induction.”

(You’ll want to think about the pun there for a little while.)

– via limerickdb.com