Here’s a link to the original article which appeared in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Citing several studies in moral psychology, the authors highlight the finding that despite differences in, or even an absence of, religious backgrounds, individuals show no difference in moral judgments for unfamiliar moral dilemmas. The research suggests that intuitive judgments of right and wrong seem to operate independently of explicit religious commitments.

This is obviously false. The fact that you can’t have morality without Jesus proves the morality doesn’t exist without Jesus which proves that this entire study is false.

Maybe you atheists should try using logic for once instead of blindly accepting whatever some scientist says just because he has “evidence”.

I would add another reason for not using it more often. I think it is effective in part because people genuinely believe that they are getting something helpful. If it is widely known that doctors are prescribing placebos then it loses it’s efficacy because people would no longer believe as strongly that it will actually help.

A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective. – Edward Teller

One show in particular stands out to me because of the audience response. If you go the Mythbusters forums on this topic you’ll see a thread with posts into the thousands. I am, of course, talking about the (in)famous Plane on a Conveyor Belt episode. Here’s Adam Savage describing the problem on the show:

Let me spell it out for you, normally a plane sits on the runway, spins up its engines, moves forwards gets enough air over its wings and takes off. But in this case, the plane is sitting not on the runway, but a huge conveyor belt that is matching the planes forward speed in reverse, and the grand question is can the plane take off? The myth is that it can’t

Just in case you haven’t seen the show I’ll continue below the fold so that I don’t spoil it for you.

Since it isn’t actually the focus of this post, allow me to simply give it away. The plane takes off. If you want more detail, check out the forum for all kinds of explanations.

Anyway, the reason I wanted to point this out is because many people have this mistaken idea that only creationists and possibly conspiracy theorists make the type of cognitive errors that render their beliefs immune to logical refutation. The fact is that such errors exist everywhere in all forms and can be quite independent of someone ideology. This example in particular is focused on a physical question. It’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s not a religious dogma. It isn’t open to interpretation, and it isn’t some vague idea with loosely defined variables. It’s a well defined and scientifically answerable question. If you read the thread you’ll find terms that are explicitly defined, an organization of the points into those that are relevant and irrelevant along with explanations of why, and mathematical equations demonstrating the forces that are work (not all in one comment, but spread throughout). There’s even a link to a YouTube video that both explains and demonstrates what’s happening.

And yet there are those who ignore all of that and claim that it is simply wrong. All of the evidence that is presented is simply ignored. There’s no ideological underpinnings to the belief that a plane on a conveyor belt will not take off. There is no hope of exposing some secret organization for the evil creature that it is. There doesn’t seem to me to be any real reason to not accept the conclusion. It’s simply a cognitive error that makes it impossible for someone to accept evidence that is contrary to their own belief.

The crux of all this is that of course a creationist may be dishonestly ignoring evidence and using faulty logic to support their beliefs. But then again they may also believe as they do because they have a cognitive disfunction that renders them incapable of properly evaluating evidence to the contrary. Kind of  like those people who believe a plane on a conveyor belt cannot take off in spite of seeing it happen with their own eyes.

One great example of this is the XKCD comic Height. It uses a logarithmic scale with a base of 2 so that every tic represents twice the height of the previous one. I fell in love with that image when I first saw it. But of course, “real” scientists have done him one better. Below is a (slightly and ineptly edited…by me) image of the logarithmic universe which apparently was posted waaaay back in 2005. It shows pretty much the entire universe. I’ve limited this image here to just the area near the earth. Click on it to see the complete image (warning it’s a big image…remember it’s the entire universe).

Physicists are often approached by amateurs that claim to have proven that Newtons Laws of Motion are wrong, or that in fact E ≠ mc². Heck, I’m no physicist and I’ve been approached by other amateur “scientists” who know me as a science buff with similar claims. In the vast majority of cases the person is simply misunderstanding some key point in the science, and in a large portion of those cases any attempt to correct that misunderstanding simply results in the claim that I and the entire scientific community are the ones misunderstanding it.

Yes, it’s theoretically possible that every other human being on the planet somehow missed this idea of yours that completely changes our understanding of the universe. It’s theoretically possible that no one ever considered the physical results of a person throwing a baseball far from any other gravitational body. It’s theoretically possible that every calculation ever done based on the known scientific laws were only right because every scientist before now was willing to “fudge” the result to make it fit with what they already knew to be true anyway. And yes, it’s theoretically possible that you understand something better after a few hours of study than other people do after a lifetime.

It’s just not very likely.

The images in this compilation are from the Landsat 7 satellite and were created to introduce the general public to the Landsat Program.

Various combinations of the eight Landsat 7 spectral bands were selected to create the vivid RGB composites that we have featured.

Go here or click on the image to see for yourself. I highly HIGHLY recommend it.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1234430/Mystery-spiral-blue-light-display-hovers-Norway.html

Having just seen this for the first time, and without having to investigate any further I can say without reservation that this is absolute proof that aliens are among us. Now that we have this proof, it is up to you to prove everything that has ever been claimed about UFO’s is absolutely false before you can claim otherwise. That’s how real scientists work. Umm…isn’t it?

And then someone goes and makes a video like this, blasting the two most “damning” quotes out of the water.

As usual it’s not looking good for the deniers, and I’m sure that as usual they’ll simply ignore that fact and continue to proudly proclaim their “victory”.

(Thanks to Pharyngula for this one)