Defaithed

Shadow People! 

Shadow People?

Yes, Shadow People! They could be creeping up behind you... right now!

I think the recent Skeptoid podcast episode on Shadow People was the first I'd heard of this new (?) supernatural threat. We've probably all had the experience of thinking we see a flicker of movement in a dark shadow; some people even claim to have seen ghostly humanoid figures in their darkened bedrooms at night. Therefore: Shadow People, those spectral demons (or interdimensional beings, or ghosts of the departed, or something) that haunt the living (or flit away to avoid the living, or astrally project themselves into random places, or something).

They often wear hats. Really.

There's no need to rehash Shadow People details here; as you'd expect, thoughtful discussions of the topic quickly begin and end with the damning fact that there's no evidence for such a thing. And that's pretty much the end of that story, until someone can show the smoking gun (or smoky fedora, as many stories would have it).

Rather, what interested me about the Skeptoid piece was that it goes into a topic that really fascinates me: the awesome power of the human brain to create its own reality – and the way in which "open-minded" believers in the supernatural are so often close-minded toward the brain's wonders. Readeth thou more

Humans have a sad propensity to bomb, beat, and strangle each other over just about anything. Religion extends the list of potential conflict triggers, with novel contributions like "your God is false" or "your Book is blasphemy". Yet deep within humanity there's also a fragile desire for peacemaking, and no one can deny that religion is capable of working that noble goal into its doctrines too. Whatever our quibbles with religion, we can't criticize pacifism inspired by faith.

Usually. Readeth thou more

I don't want to make a habit of reposting things that have already been spotlighted by a far huger site. But I like the following so much, I want to repost just so I'll see it again and again.

From the clever designer at Somethink Fun. Spotted on Pharyngula.  

Time for another bit of Jehovah's Witness nonsense:

A few weeks back, PZ Myers pointed out a scan from the sect's Watchtower magazine, warning young people of some of the temptations that might lead them into sin. It includes some "dangers" you'd expect from a religious bunch, including

• Someone dares you to smoke a cigarette
• You are invited to a party where alcohol and drugs will be freely available
• "Why don't you post your profile on the Internet?" someone suggests
• A friend invites you to watch a movie that features violence or immorality

No need to laugh that off just yet. Some of those do pose potentially real concern, not just of the scriptural infraction variety, to people sufficiently young or careless enough. Pretty mild dangers (with the exception of drugs and alcohol), but still things that, say, parents of young kids have to grapple with. 

But then there's the one that provokes the ire of PZ and his readers:

• A well-intentioned teacher urges you to pursue higher education at a university

Yes, that's right: The Jehovah's Witnesses genuinely do discourage their followers from getting (non-JW) education.  Readeth thou more

If Adolf Hitler was an atheist, as some argumentative religious loons keep insisting, he was the oddest atheist ever: a member of the Roman Catholic church who wouldn't shut up about his self-proclaimed role in doing God's holy work.

Hitler was a Christian (if one of a particularly warped nature) and a man of faith even beyond the borders of religion. That's so obvious and well-known that you have to wonder why True Believers keep bringing up "Hitler the atheist" when the claim backfires on them every time. Yet what's pointed out far less frequently (although it's not the least surprising) is that Hitler the Christian was also Hitler the flaming Creationist. Readeth thou more

Don't laugh – it's every bit as good as the rest of the evidence for Young Earth Creationism.

Via Eat Liver. 

From a silly Photoshop contest at CRACKED magazine (I read it so you don't have to, okay?) comes this reader-submitted masterpiece. Ah, now that explains much about our universe! The frigid, lifeless gulfs of infinite space... the murderous cataclysms of our own planet... its trackless dry wastes and unsurvivable polar regions... flesh-eating bacteria... brain-devouring viruses... our own greed, bloodlust, and savagery... With Cthulhu properly identified as the Inhumane Designer, we no longer have to ask whether mankind's miseries point to an evil God. Now we know.

Besides, what but an Inhumane Designer explains the sanity-rending aesthetic ugliness riddling creation, crawling just below its patina of butterflies and puppies? I'm looking at you, arachnid faces, tumescent monkey butts, and human feet. No, wait, I'm not looking at you. AHHHH! Go away!!

Dang it, another "Death of Darwinism" prediction has up and fizzled. In Death of "molecular Darwinism" imminent! I noted ID luminary William Dembski's prognostication:

In the next five years, molecular Darwinism — the idea that Darwinian processes can produce complex molecular structures at the subcellular level — will be dead. When that happens, evolutionary biology will experience a crisis of confidence because evolutionary biology hinges on the evolution of the right molecules. 

That grim portent came from the July/August 2004 issue of Touchstone magazine, and even allowing a generous deadline of the end of August, 2009, the five-year clock has run out while "molecular Darwinism" is still dancing a merry jig. (Come on, Doctor Dembski, when you give a patient a fixed time to live, at least have the decency to kill him off if he persists in surviving!)

Are there more prophecies to track? Dembski still has the meter running on a 10-year claim for the "Taliban-style collapse of Darwinism"; let's check on that in 2014. But what else do we have? Readeth thou more

I had a throwaway comment I wanted to add in regard to PZ Myers' post on a kook who's been "updating" Norse creation mythology. The Pharyngula site won't take comments now without registration, and currently won't let me register either, so here's the gist of my rejected comment with a little added padding:

It appears that a Norwegian musician named Varg Vikernes is "updating" Norse creation mythology with elaborate ties to modern cosmology. That makes for a blending of two awesome themes, and I'm all for their illicit coupling – assuming there's a proper sense of tongue-in-cheek goofiness behind it all, of course. Based on Pharyngula readers' comments about Vikernes' mental state and his apparent seriousness about his religion, though, I think I'll wait for someone else to meld Odin and the Big Bang before I jump aboard to play along.

Anyway, a commenter named Greg F took note of the relative mediocrity of the Abrahamic creation myth. That's so true; of all the wild and woolly origin myths out there, Genesis' tale is about the most boring I've come across. The rest of the Bible doesn't get much more exciting. That's why any kiddie Book of Bible Stories is always so dull too; it's working with pretty bland material, and all a bored kid can do is read the Ark story, and David & Goliath, over and over. The magic gets pretty thin after that. Readeth thou more

Tiny T. rex fossil discovery startles scientists. Therefore, God!

Okay, I don't know why I'm posting this. Just because any new dinosaur discovery is always cool news. But also, I can't help but wonder about the implications of statements like the following. From one of the scientists who announced discovery of the human-sized, presumed ancestor of the famous T Rex:

"The most interesting and important thing about this new fossil is that It is completely unexpected... It's becoming harder and harder to find fossils like this that totally throw us for a curve."

A perfectly innocuous comment. But how long do we have before a Ray Comfort, or other human-sized Creationist slug, seizes upon this instance of "unexpected" as an inadvertent admission that evolutionary theory can't actually make predictions? Just wait and see.