This was my first year attempting the Hourly Comic challenge. Consider this penance for having slacked off on my sketch posts. (Oh, and yeah, the lack of practice shows.)

It was grueling. It was fun. The results are below. (Also available on the Hourly Comic forum)

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Blair selectively quotes from my editorial, leaving out crucial context in order to give the impression that I advocate a “double standard”:

The most stunning example of this double standard comes when Golas writes, “Ideas and beliefs, however, are automatically entitled to neither respect nor even tolerance.” Then he writes, “motivation to enter a discussion … requires the impression that one’s position will actually be heard and considered.” Golas reserves the right to openly scorn others, granting “neither respect nor even tolerance,” but demands a respectful audience to discuss his own views.

Neither quote of mine is represented faithfully. The first had nothing to do with scorning other people; it was a statement about how ideas and beliefs must be judged on their merits¹. I stand by that statement, and emphasize that it applies as much to my ideas as anyone’s. Meanwhile, my request that atheists’ arguments be given consideration was made specifically within the context of our being invited into debate by the religious. I demand no special audience from anyone. If someone invites me to hear their argument in honest academic discourse, however, then they ought to grant me the courtesy of reciprocating that consideration.

Perhaps what confuses Blair is that I reserve the right not to enter into debate at all. Murray was eager to find a way to coerce his opponents into debating him, and assumed that those who failed to meet his challenge were either cowardly or incapable of defending their position. He ignored, however, all the legitimate reasons as to why someone perfectly capable of holding their own in religious debate would nonetheless choose not to. Maybe they have better things to do. Maybe they just aren’t interested or don’t feel like it. Maybe they feel that debate would be futile. Regardless, justification isn’t necessary; no one is required to enter into debate if they don’t want to.

But never did I suggest that I or any other atheist deserved to be granted a special audience even if we chose to abstain from debate. I find Blair’s attack particularly galling in light of the fact that that’s precisely the attitude I rebuked Murray for holding; indeed, that was the main point of my editorial! Murray, frustrated at finding people who disagreed with his beliefs, sought to draw them into open debate so they’d consider the merits of his position. However, Murray offered no indication that he was prepared to consider counterarguments from them in turn. “[R]eserves the right to openly scorn others . . . but demands a respectful audience to discuss his own views” hits the nail on the head.

As for Lerman’s comic strip and its relation to my supposed “double standard”: I might have been inclined to chastise Lerman for “‘belittling and insulting’ Murray for his beliefs” if I had thought that was what his comic was doing. As I read it, Lerman’s comic wasn’t mocking Murray’s beliefs so much as it was criticizing his hyper-sensitivity to having someone disagree with them (not to mention his apparent difficulty in writing a coherent editorial column). In no way did calling Murray’s beliefs “fairy tales” negate this criticism². Clark and Blair, however, trumped up those two words as if the entire strip were nothing but a grave insult in lieu of substantial criticism.

A “fair hearing” for both sides is all I ever asked for. Blair claims that “intellectual Christianity welcomes honest, reasoned criticism.” But he, like Murray, seems unable to conceive that those of us who smirk, laugh at, or otherwise publicly express disagreement with religious sentiments are capable of levying such criticism. Instead, Blair assumes our position is “based on nothing but the dogma of secularism’s intellectual superiority” and “rests on the assumption that people who disagree with [us] are stupid.”

He boasts about The Apologia’s having interviewed Dan Dennett last spring. Now, Dennett has done his fair share of smirking at religion. Presumably The Apologia did not accuse him of “cheap insults” or “assumptions of intellectual superiority” when they approached him for an interview. Why not extend that same courtesy to fellow members of the Dartmouth community?

In the course of this exchange, neither I nor Lerman ever called anyone stupid. I know far too little about Murray, Clark, or Blair to think any of them stupid³. I think they’re wrong. Wrong, wrong, a thousand times wrong! But not stupid!

Nor is my position based on dogma. Perhaps Blair simply has difficulty accepting that there are those of us who have heard the arguments in favor of religion and yet find them wanting. He, Clark, and Murray all call for open dialogue about religion, failing to realize that the dialogue is already happening and (in my humble estimation) they’re losing.

Allow me to reiterate my position on tolerance, since it seems to have gone unheeded by Blair: there is nothing “false” about our tolerance for the religious. We aren’t trying to silence them, get them expelled, or burn them at the stake. As much as I disagree with their beliefs, I nonetheless believe in my heart of hearts that they have a right to self-determination. But as Amanda Marcotte recently put it:

Look, I think believers and atheists should practice tolerance and get along. Of course I do. But practicing tolerance doesn’t mean that you have to pretend that a truth claim isn’t a truth claim. As believers feel free to make claims about the way the universe works, then they should be challenged on it. That’s what happens when you make truth claims. That your claims are hard to back up is unfortunate, but that isn’t the fault of atheists, and calling atheists mean because this is true doesn’t change that. Having your arguments disproven isn’t assault, and using terms like “pummel” implies coercion that is not going on. You’re free to believe that the moon is made out of green cheese, but being free to believe that doesn’t require that other people coddle that delusion.

Murray, Clark, Blair, and others are free to believe what they will. They are welcome to try defending those beliefs with reason. But they need to be prepared for disagreement.

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First, some backstory: On 17 Nov, Justin Murray ‘13 published an editorial in The Dartmouth (America’s Oldest College Newspaper™) decrying the lack of respect that his religious beliefs are shown:

I have a special talent: I can identify nearly every skeptic in any crowd without asking questions. All I do is announce that I’m Catholic and wait to see who smirks.

Murray went on to accuse the “cynics” on campus of hiding behind tolerance as an excuse to avoid religious debate. Because clearly, the only reason we wouldn’t want to debate him is because we’re cowards. One of The D’s cartoonists, Drew Lerman ‘10, gave Murray’s editorial the rebuttal it deserved. But Charles Clark ‘11, editor-in-chief of Dartmouth’s Christian apologetics magazine, wasn’t impressed. He published an editorial in The D on 23 Nov, supporting Murray and dismissing Lerman’s comic as intolerant, ad hominem, and anti-intellectual. (Lerman had an answer to that, as well.)

Today, I am proud to say that The Dartmouth published my column, under the headline Calling It Like It Is, giving an atheist’s perspective on the state of religious debate at the college. A sample:

The assumption, inherent in Murray’s column and echoed in Clark’s dismissal of Lerman, is that heresy against religion is equivalent to intolerance of the religious. We nonbelievers are put in a no-win situation. If we speak our minds, then we’re accused of being disrespectful and intolerant. If we keep our opinions to ourselves, as we all too often do to avoid stirring up fruitless argument, then we’re called disrespectful, intolerant and apparently craven.

You can read the whole editorial on The D’s website.

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I’m looking forward to the next crop; we’re due for some variety. We’ll have to include cilantro this time, I think. Dill was nice to have, and spearmint has been requested for juleps. Any other suggestions?

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I know it looks all-dead, but it’s just dormant as we in the northern hemisphere head into winter. It’s also still a work in progress–a living piece of art, so to speak.

There’s something beautiful about a half-dead tree, since despite being half-dead it is still fully alive.

We have an heirloom apple tree in my front yard back home, brought as a sapling from Germany about 100 years ago. A full half of the tree is dead wood (which we dare not cut off lest we put the tree off-balance), and yet the other half grows full and lush every year, providing apples that my grandmother turns into the most incredible applesauce and apple crisps.

For several years now, I’ve been trying to clone the tree from cuttings. It’s a race against time; every summer, I fear that a hurricane or something will knock the tree down before I can take new cuttings. I came damn close last year, growing a one-inch-long section of root from a hardwood cutting completely by accident. Before that, I wasn’t even sure I could root from this type of tree at all, let alone one so very old. Now that I know what I’m doing, this might be the year I finally succeed in preserving my pomaceous birthright for future generations.

This isn’t a picture of my apple tree, mind you. This is a different half-dead tree, with a character all its own. (When a tree loses its leaves, that’s when you can tell part of its true character that’s obscured for most of the year.)

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A year or two ago, I decided to pull those old rulebooks out of retirement, with my brother’s blessing. (He was still as eager to get some use out of them as I was.) It took a bit of study, but the rules came more easily this time. Once again, I was novice Dungeon Master to a party of novice players, and although our play sessions so far have been too irregular to get a real campaign going, we’ve played through a few low-level adventures and have had a wonderful time of it. Hooray for learning!

One of the most complicated parts of D&D is the magic system. The Player’s Handbook contained something like 600 magic spells, all with their own requirements and nuances. More than a third of the book is filled solely with spell descriptions. It was daunting to try and make sense of all that back when we were first trying to learn the game. Even now, constantly needing to reference spell details in the PHB costs significant time and can interrupt the flow of play.

So, at some point, I decided to give myself a project: to create the “ultimate spellbook,” an application to take some of the complication out of playing a D&D spellcaster.

Hence, my relative quiet these past few months. This project has been more than the subject of idle tinkering; it was an excuse for me to seriously exercise my web development skills, as well as teach myself several new ones. Consequently, it ate up a fair bit of my free time. I think it was worth the effort, however, and I am finally ready to show off the results.

The D&D Spell Library uses rules and spell descriptions from Dungeons & Dragons v3.5 (revised 3rd edition), which has been freely released online as Open Game Content. The application has three core aspects: (1) it dynamically generates lists of spells based on parameters you define, (2) it displays the full description of any spell with a single click, and (3) if you log in, you can create and save character profiles, and the application will manage your character’s spell slots. Taken as a whole, the D&D Spell Library streamlines game preparation and actual gameplay, (hopefully) minimizing the time spent staring at a book, notes, or a screen when you should be interacting with your other players.

You can try the application here, or check it out on the newly-minted Projects page, and we’ll see how this works. I’d be thrilled if you decided to try it out, play around, and leave feedback here if you’d like. Be warned, however, that I still consider it a project in development. Don’t be surprised if it changes over time. And I’ll try not to break it or delete saved data, but I make no promises.

And with that, I have a little bit of my freedom back. We now return you to my life, already in progress.

PS – It’s possible that I’m not the first person to come up with this idea, and that other, better web apps for managing D&D spellcasters already exist. If this is the case, I’m not sure if I want to know.

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I attended the lecture with the Boston Skeptics. It was was mostly one stale, nonsensical creationist talking point after another, spanning everything from geology to astronomy to biology (in case you hadn’t guessed, by “evolution” he meant “every field of secular science that challenges Young Earth Creationism”), with bits of pieces of pure absurdity sprinkled in for flavor. I had to chuckle a bit when he brought up Irreducible Complexity; and here I had though Behe had gone out of style. There was, however, one claim he made late in his talk that caught my interest as a biologist: he suggested that the variation between species in a protein called cytochrome c (“cytC”) actually refutes common descent.

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Now THAT was satisfying. His prior explanation was good and plausible as an alternative explanation to claims of the paranormal. But in this one, as CD says, “we can pretty much see exactly what’s happening.”

I’ll have a lot more to say about the trip and related topics once I’ve recovered a bit more from late nights, red-eye flights, and jet lag.

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However, though my sketchbook has been collecting dust, my fingers have not been completely idle.

Photos will be on the way once I get a chance to take some during daylight hours, but until then here’s a bit of a preview:

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Many of his rantings have fallen into the classic fallacy of argument from incredulity: “I personally can’t imagine how X could be possible (and I’m going to ignore your attempts to explain X), therefore X is impossible.” It’s hardly worth addressing such resolute and deliberate ignorance.

But one post of his, which appeared at the Disco ‘Tute the other week, contained a particularly glaring abuse of logic. He uses a recent study, an investigation into the potential evolutionary origins of laughter, as an excuse to lash out at the evidence backing common descent:

Evolutionists group species by similarities, thinking this reveals patterns of common descent. Then they find another similarity (not surprisingly with the same pattern) and they conclude it must have evolved. After all, it fits the pattern.

Hunter goes on to call common descent “laughable.” But I’m absolutely stymied by his parenthetical note above. If he rejects common descent, why isn’t he surprised to see a new similarity fit the same pattern? I therefore pose this question to Hunter, or anyone who thinks they can suggest an answer. Please, enlighten me.

Why would otherwise completely unrelated traits exhibit common patterns of shared expression between species, unless those traits conform to an overarching pattern of inheritance via common descent?

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