Building Support for War with Iran: GOP's Rapture Base

This scary-ass video (embedded below) of people itching to go to war to precipitate their perceived "rapture" -- escape from earth's reality into perfect utopia -- must be seen in its broader context: political support for endless militarism in the Middle East.

The context is the growing chorus of voices ready to strike Iran pre-emptively, even with nuclear weapons (see video 5:09). Support for this sort of terrifying foreign policy is steadfastly rooted in the rapture crowd, drummed up by the likes of Hagee. The Religious Right loons see peace in the Middle East as the work of the Antichrist, so there really is no winning with them. They will oppose all ideas of peace, as they feel it is "the devil's false peace", in favor of jingoistic "support for Israel": how intelligent, to say that you oppose a peace because it is "false" in order to support bellicose pre-emption.

Rapture Ready: The Unauthorized Christians United for Israel Tour from huffpost and Vimeo.

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RSS Feed

I've been using my feedburner feed as a meta redirect for the RSS for some time now. After making the blog private, Blogger's feed functionality shut down. Thus, I have to use the RSS feature of my facebook notes to have a private feed, and I manually write a new note for each post (I can't take advantage of their auto-import function sine the source is non-functional in private mode). Each one of these notes will be a simple redirect link back here to the original URL. The reason is I cannot directly copy & paste the HTML, and I refuse to re-code the stupid span tags for each of my posts.

So...long story short, you can use my feedburner feed as a way to keep up with new posts, and you'll just want to click on the http://blog.danielmorgan.name/... URL provided. If you click the title of the post in the RSS feed, it will redirect you to my facebook notes. (Not a big deal, since you could simply then click the post URL from the facebook note, unless you aren't my facebook friend.)

New IQ study on theists vs. atheists

Honestly, I don't put much stock in IQ tests generally. I've never had mine tested.

Thus, the recent Danish study showing atheists have, on average, about 6 points higher IQ than theists means little to me, although it means more to some.

Helmuth Nyborg is the same guy whose previous study landed him in a shitstorm, when he talked about males having a higher IQ than females on average:

• "Sex-related differences in general intelligence g, brain size, and social status", Personality and Individual Differences, 39(3):497-509, August 2005

I guess he likes controversy, huh?

Lots of other studies have purported to show that atheism and IQ have a positive direct correlation. Whether or not the results are true, I have no doubt that future generations will get progressively more stupid on average. This is why.

Aside from IQ, it is certain that science education and religious belief are inversely correlated. Repeated studies have shown that fewer than 50% of scientists believe in God, that more than 60% are atheists and agnostics, and that belief in God among "elite scientists" (NAS Members) is a mere 7%. 95% of NAS biologists are either atheists or agnostics. See:

• SciAm Article 1999
• Nature 1997

While this may be true for scientists and god-belief, more vague measures of things like "spirituality" are not so well correlated. I commented some on another recent study involving professors and "spirituality" measures a while back, in which 80% of respondents called themselves "spiritual" -- even 22% of atheist scientists!

I don't necessarily believe that IQ and religion have a logical relationship that always holds true, but I do agree that education and religious belief are inversely correlated, as this is borne out by numerous studies. The methodology of scientific thinking is anathema to religious thinking. The one demands evidence and withholds committed belief until it arises, while the other threatens and prods one into commitment of belief before evidence is presented.

PS: My thoughts on the idea that religion will ever be eliminated by science. (In short: "no.")

One of the major reasons we should oppose the death penalty

From the NYT Select: (read it free with a .edu email)

In April, Jerry Miller, an Illinois man who served 24 years for a rape he did not commit, became the 200th American prisoner cleared by DNA evidence. His case, like the 199 others, represented a catastrophic failure of the criminal justice system.
...
Brandon L. Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia, has, for the first time, systematically examined the 200 cases, in which innocent people served an average of 12 years in prison. In each case, of course, the evidence used to convict them was at least flawed and often false — yet juries, trial judges and appellate courts failed to notice.

And people wonder why I'm against the death penalty...

Ego, or something like it

I privatized my blog to "by-invite-only" status. Thus, I had to send out some invites to a few friends. I don't think that I'm being egocentric with this; I actually don't believe that many of the people I invited to be able to read my stuff actually will. However, for those that have stopped by my site once or twice, and now find themselves locked out, I wanted to extend a warm welcome. In addition, most people who would otherwise stop by and peek at your stuff from time to time tend not to write you to ask for a reader invite.

So why do I feel bad for sending out those invites? Am I a fuckin' megalomaniac?

I don't really understand this. It isn't like we all don't surf the web and browse people's sites. Otherwise, what in the hell is the 'book all about? Isn't the whole social networking experience fueled by ego (especially friend whoredom)? But, it makes people look too dependent, I suppose, or their life too boring, for them to ask you for an invite. Or, they don't think you're all that great, and they don't want to give you the mistaken impression that they do (ego, again).

And, it makes you look desperate for attention if you send it to them. Or something.

Eh...

For those of you reading this, thanks for stopping by. I invited you because you're my friend, and I like sharing my views and things I find interesting with like-minded people. Since Amber and I are moving soon, I think this serves as a good way to keep in touch, too. Till next time...

The enemy of my enemy...

Is still not my friend, but I'll give him a gun anyway.

The most troubling aspect of this, to me, is the idea that these Sunni militias we're arming are summarily executing "suspected" Al Qaeda fighters. How does the US ensure that they are not just rounding up rival Shiite leaders? They don't.

One of the famous "benchmarks" is the disbanding of armed militias, and political reconciliation between Sunni and Shia factions. Is this serving to further that goal?

UF Speaker Harun Yahya now in the NYT

Harun Yahya made NYT headlines last week for mass-mailing his book of lies to hundreds of university professors around the US.

He was at UF in February:

"Feel Good Inc." - starring Bush, Cheney and Rove

This came out ten days ago, but it is worth highlighting: Nick Anderson's brilliant rendition of Gorillaz' "Feel Good Inc." starring Bush, Cheney and Rove.

The Advance of the Cyclic Model of Cosmology

I find this very exciting.

I was recently discussing Hilbert's Hotel with a theist, and I said the following:

As for time, that problem is basically unsolved either way. You claim that an "actual infinity" exists -- God -- while philosophers claim that an actual infinity exists -- causation. No one thinks that space-time is infinite from the singularity to now, the question is about what the singularity represents (a breakdown in our understanding).

One of the two following things is true:
there is an infinite chain/cessation of cause and effect (p)
-or-
there is not (~p)

We may write:
1) All things have a cause (p)
2) Some things, or one thing, are uncaused (~p)

Even if we assume that p is impossible, the problem is in proving the case that God is the uncaused thing, versus the set of all existents (the universe).

Also, most people aren't aware of this, but the resurrection of the cyclic universe model came in recent times. What allowed it is advances in our understanding of particle physics and mathematics, brought on by investigations into supersymmetry and string theory. The original paper was in the highly-respected journal Science.

The physicist Paul Steinhardt, Albert Einstein Professor of Physics at Princeton, on the cyclic universe and "before the big bang" at his webpage. Steinhardt co-wrote the original papers with Neil Turok of Cambridge. On Steinhardt's website, he has a very useful FAQ that deals extensively with the technical issues involved, especially the question of entropy. His reply to critiques from physicists is also useful.

These arguments are light-years ahead of public awareness. They present a serious and viable challenge to the old concept of the "singularity", without contradicting the vast evidence to support the Standard Model (aka the "Big Bang"). Both models (cyclic and big bang) are compatible throughout 99.999999999999999...% of the universe's existence, only in "the beginning" and "the end" do they diverge.

But it is with that tiniest fraction, of course, that we are fascinated.

I also have some layman-oriented (sort of) papers on the cyclic model and the long-standing issues with trying to understand the nature of the singularity, and fixing the long-standing issues with the standard model:

1. Seed article by Steinhardt -- link
   
2. A summary of issues with the cyclic universe -- link
   
3. A physicist's take on the issues with the big bang and their solutions with a cyclic model -- link

More technical papers:

1. 2003 Nuclear Physics paper -- link
   
2. 2004 bouncing universes with varying constants -- link
   

Please note that these are peer-reviewed papers in respected journals, not mere pop-sci.

Get in on the conversation here.

CNN-YouTube Democratic Debate Question

My CNN-YouTube debate question for the Democratic candidates was accepted, and can be found HERE. I've embedded it below: