Richard Dawkins' Twitter Followers

I remember the first time I met Muslim apologist Adnan Rashid. He, Hamza Tzortzis and other members of the Islamic Education and Research Academy were running a stall on my route home and he attempted to convince me evolution could not be true because of 'irreducible complexity'. As he waxed lyrical on the complexities of bacterial flagellum (a whiplike appendage that enables movement in bacteria) I realised he was liberally borrowing from the work of Christian creationist Michael Behe.

Rather than point out the incongruity of relying on such a source I said it seemed odd to offer a mechanism that allows the spread of devastating diseases like Legionnaire's as evidence for a loving God. He paused, folded his arms, fixed me with a gaze that conveyed seriousness and then asked "what would happen if all the cells in your body lost their flagellums?".

Some with an interest in biology may have chuckled at the above. Bacterial flagella by definition are attached only to bacteria, facilitate movement, and as a general rule the cells in my body have no particular need to independently decide to relocate. It demonstrated the lightest skimming of Christian creationist material and a near complete misunderstanding of Behe's rather poor argument. (Those interested can see it debunked in full here. You can watch footage of Rashid losing an argument with PZ Myers here.)

The second time I shared a room with Rashid was at the World Atheist Convention in Dublin, 2011, when he asked a ponderously long and dreary question of Dawkins. I shared my anecdote with Dawkins who chuckled briefly. I thought it might be interesting to look at his Twitter account.

Word Cloud
I took a sample of five thousand of Dawkins' followers and examined their Twitter biographies, running them through a program that counts the frequency of words folk use to describe themselves and assembling an image where most frequently used words are shown in greater sizes. Dawkins' followers are likely to describe themselves using words like student, science, university, teacher and atheist. (On a general note, an improbably high number of tweeps describe themselves as writers. I do hope they have day jobs.)

Words noted by their absence include homeopath, Hare Krishna, acupuncture and miracle. It seems the head of the foundation for reason and science has done an admirable job of attracting those interested in both fields.

Gender
These results are indicative only. Again working off the same sample of five thousand Twitter accounts, I ran the first names through a script I wrote to estimate gender. It isn't overly complex - I have a list of known masculine names and a list of known feminine names. Based on the results it seems that 75% of Dawkins' followers have masculine names.

Guest Post - Christianity's Worst Enemy

Some time ago I was asked on Twitter what evidence I felt made the best case in favour of Christianity. In the same tweet I was asked what presented the strongest evidence against the faith. Mindful of the character limit I answered both questions the same: Some Christians I've met.

I've given perhaps undue focus to those who represent Christianity badly. This is not intended as a tirade against believers; flicking through my past issues I see a preponderance of faith healers and attackers of science. I think it's important to debunk these, but I'm starting to realise that this blog presents a jaundiced view of Christians in general.

With that in mind I'm happy to announce my second Christian guest post. I offered Roger the opportunity to write about the subject of his choice. He could have chosen to evangelise. He could have written counters to any number of posts I've written. He could have turned his focus on atheists in general: we are not flawless. Instead he took the opportunity to examine those who profess Christianity.

Roger says that there are few further apart than he and I on the spectra of religion, politics and societal matters. It is true, and that is why I enjoy our conversations - when we cease to disagree it means only that we have nothing left to learn from each other.

I hope you enjoy his post. Do consider following him on Twitter and checking out his blog.

---

First let me express my gratitude to Geoff for this opportunity. I have only ‘known’ Geoff for a short time, but have grown to value his gracious and gentlemanly spirit and count him as a ‘friend’ already. I once said that I think there are very few things that Geoff and I would agree on, but I have enjoyed discussing the issues we have discussed.

You see, I am a Christian. I am not just a ‘Christian’ in the generic sense of the word but I am one of those ‘evangelical, born-again, Bible believing’ Christians. I doubt there are very many people who could be farther apart on the religious/political/social spectrum than Geoff and me.

Discovering the Discovery Institute

I've written about Intelligent Design Creationism before. Hovering at the intersection of bad science and bad Theology, its origins depend heavily on William Dembski, an anti-vax Biblical inerrantist who believes in a literal global flood, a historical Adam and Eve, and the confounding of Tongues at the tower of Babel. I devoted an article to him previously.

They summarise themselves as believing that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection" and propose their group as the true defender of the scientific method, wishing to 'teach the controversy' about evolution. The Judge at their trial found to the contrary, saying that "[T]he overwhelming evidence at trial established that ID is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory."

The movement has expanded to include other quacks and loons, blossoming into the Discovery Institute, which refers to itself as the "Intellectual [sic] home of the modern intelligent design movement and the scientists and scholars challenging Darwin's theory of evolution on the basis of science [sic]."

Much as I would love to continue my polemic greater voices than mine have covered much ground. What have I to offer?

Twitter stats.

I found myself wondering who else tickled the fancy of followers of @DiscoveryCSC, the Twitter account of the Discovery Institute. I pulled a list of all their followers, then for each follower pulled a list of all accounts they followed. I then put the results to a table and present for your viewing pleasure the top twenty:

Hamza Tzortzis and The God Delusion

As regular readers of  this blog are likely aware, some two years ago Hamza Tzortzis released what he described as his response to the God Delusion. Back in February I happened upon it and noticed it bore marked similarities to the work of William Lane Craig. After PZ Myers featured my article, Hamza updated his piece to indicate it was a pastiche of Christian authors, including Paul Copan, William Lane Craig, J. P. Moreland, Frank J. Tipler, John D. Barrow, Keith Ward and Roy Abraham Varghese.

Thanks to an anonymous commenter I'm only now realising the delicious irony in his opening line:

"What I read were rehashed, incoherent and outdated arguments that made me realize that Richard Dawkins is not very well read in philosophy"

Emphasis mine, but I digress. Hamza and I had a pleasant Twitter chat after the events, during which he suggested I respond to the content:

After two years his collage of Christian authors stands at version 0.3: I jokingly responded that I would await version 1.0. Dawkins is well able to defend himself; writing further on the matter seemed superfluous. Still, there seems to be appetite for this stuff.

Particularly avid readers of this blog - likely those who make notes - will recall I wrote another piece on Islam, months ago, where I described exemplary behaviour from Muslim apologists despite extreme provocation. You'll note that before the physical and verbal abuse of these fine gentlemen started I was discussing Halal fish oil supplements. Softgel capsules are generally made from porcine gelatin and a gym friend of mine was looking for a Muslim-friendly alternative.

Signature in the Cell - Part 2. A digression on Dembski

In Part 1 of my review I ended by observing that Meyer is unwilling to draw any conclusions as to the nature of his proposed intelligent designer. Thankfully we have at our disposal an ID proponent relied upon by Meyer who is willing to oblige. William Dembski is a Biblical inerrantist. He believes in a global flood, a literal Adam and Eve, and Noah's ark.

"... Genesis 6–9 but also Jesus in Matthew 24 and Peter in Second Peter seem clearly to teach that the Flood was universal. As a biblical inerrantist, I believe that what the Bible teaches is true and bow to the text, including its teaching about the Flood and its universality."

"As a biblical inerrantist, I accept the full verbal inspiration of the Bible and the conventional authorship of the books of the Bible ... I accept that the events described in Genesis 1–11 happened in ordinary space-time, and thus that these chapters are as historical as the rest of the Pentateuch. (3) I believe that Adam and Eve were real people, that as the initial pair of humans they were the progenitors of the whole human race, that they were specially created by God, and thus that they were not the result of an evolutionary process from primate or hominid ancestors." (William A. Dembski, http://www.baptisttheology.org/documents/AReplytoTomNettlesReviewofDembskisTheEndofChristianity.pdf)

Signature in the Cell - Part 1

One Valentine's day a friend dipped his spoon into a bowl of soup and found unexpected resistance. On further investigation he discovered a half-eaten bread roll lurking beneath the broth. With sinking heart he realised the restaurant was reusing crockery without washing to improve the profit margins of the night.

But what to do? Finding an alternative table for two after sunset on February 14th seemed unlikely. He could alert the staff to their error, but his date did not seem the sort to stay in a venue if she knew of such transgressions. His cooking at the time was functional at best - returning to home base would not do. Seeing no other options he smiled, made romantic small-talk, and ate the evidence.

I experienced similar emotions while wading through Signature in the Cell. Despite wishing to stop and having good reasons to do so, I'd made a commitment to review and no honourable avenues of escape presented themselves.

Podcast Interview with a Young Earth Creationist

In an earlier post I mentioned I'd offered my services to a young earth Creationist who bemoaned the absence of debate. We met for coffee a fortnight ago and recorded a short interview. Although not swayed in my belief that the earth is older than 10,000 years I quite enjoyed the experience - Anthony's a likeable chap who let me do most of the talking, paid for the tea and biscuits, let me duck a question on the rotation of galaxies and put the whole interview up unedited. We talked for an hour overall, but kept the recorded section to under 15 minutes to maintain interest.

You may like to visit his blog. Alternatively, you might see him on Temple Bar. He attends on some Saturdays and holds a Jesus sign for identification. Do tell him I said hi.

The podcast is available here. The title is "Does science disprove faith?" (Not my choice of title) and includes a longish intro before the interview. If you don't find it, it may have been moved to his archive.

Yes, that is what I sound like. Some feedback would be great - it's easy to write blog posts with reference materials to hand, but somewhat harder to do these things on the spot.

One Handed Keyboards and Evolutionary Computing

If you’re reading this you likely have one advantage over me when it comes to typing. You can type the word QWERTY faster than I can.

These letters are found in order on the top row of the majority of the world’s keyboards and typewriters. The arrangement prevents keys jamming together, a design flaw inherent in 19th century typewriters that has long since been remedied. The arrangement was not intended for speed.

So, why am I so slow to type QWERTY? My keyboard is different. I’ve been using a Dvorak keyboard layout for just shy of a decade. Where you have QWERTY I have the letters ‘,.PYF. For your ASDF I have AOEU. The rest of the keyboard is similarly rearranged, the goal being to design an arrangement more conducive to efficient typing.

Lennox, evolution and honesty

If you have a moment, perhaps you could add a comment to my Amazon review of God's Undertaker? There are four creationists commenting on it at present (generally polite chaps) and regrettably I don't have the time to give all of them lengthy replies.

Debating creationists in Dublin

Anthony Brazabon, Dublin street preacher, blogger and podcast host is disappointed at the lack of debate on young earth creationism.
So I've volunteered my services.
I'll let you know if he gets back to me.