A while back, I mentioned this essay contest by Answers in Genesis in which the prize was a $50,000 scholarship to Liberty University. If you’re curious about the winner and one of the runners-up, Zeno has the story: the winner’s essay is all about how anti-matter supports the Bible, and the third place winner has become the official advisor on ID to a presidential candidate (in the sense that my crazy second cousin was a presidential candidate, once upon a time). It’s all rather creepy and sad—poor kids. So young and already sucked into the lunatic fringe.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Lunatic, yes, but sadly not so much fringe.
The really sad thing is that I wouldn’t mind reading that– sounds like some seriously bizzaro-world sci-fi.
I’m just reading that big bang essay now. As a physicist, I have to say I burst out laughing when I came across this:
‘The evolutionist physicists did more experiments with K mesons, and then
built two “B Factories”– particle accelerators used to produce B mesons– in
order to further investigate CP violation. ‘
Evolutionist physicists. Brilliant. It’s in a section on particle physics – that area of science we all know is due entirely to Darwin.
“Evolutionist physicists”
Yeah, that’s the way they write. Young-earth creationists are always at special pains to label as “evolutionist” any scientist or field of science that goes against a literal reading of Genesis. In other words, virtually all scientists and science. Their other cant phrases are “true science” (that is, creationism) and “science so-called” (the real stuff).
My original post on the essay contest discusses the top three essays in some detail. It’s here.
Next time around let’s we could all submit pages from Time Cube and similar and see who gets to win. I’m sure an experience loon like TimeCube-guy could trounce the young up and coming loons.
See, now my thought was that this was an excellent opportunity to teach kids that creationist groups are full of people who will gladly exchange money for bullshit.
Did any of the runner-ups get a prize that was easily convertible to some sort of cash?
His conclusion: If there is a God, a Creator, then we are all accountable to Him; we must obey Him and follow Him. That idea is uncomfortable to us sinners; therefore people try as hard as they can to believe that God does not exist. However, not believing something does not make it false.
I think I finally understand why Jesus said: “Let the little children come to me.”
Religion is designed for the people who never want to grow up. They live in a happy fantasy world. It’s like they never graduate from their Disney fantasies into the real world.
It’s very sad.
Gotta love this, from the “official ID advisor” kid’s website:
It is historically proven that these men [the Founding Father] were involved in Freemasonry. But long ago, the Masons were seemingly not the schemeing secret society of today. Rather, the Mason group was more like a Rotary Club.
So young, and already succumbing to paranoid schizophrenia. Now, let’s all get drunk and play ping-pong!
However, not believing something does not make it false.
Similarly, believing something does not make it true.
Oh, maaaaaaaaaan – the kid couldn’t even be bothered to put up his pile of bovine excrement as an HTML page?
I clicked a couple of his links, which took me to AiG articles. I tried reading them, but they were such gobbledygook I couldn’t even follow the writing, much less figure out what the guy was trying to say. Unintelligent design, for sure, and this guy’s brain is Exhibit A.
Gaak. These whackballs give us Christians a bad name. I wish they’d knock it the f— off and start using their God-given brains for a change!
On second thought, I wish they’d just f— off.
$50,000 to go to Liberty University?
Wouldn’t it be much cheaper, faster and just as effective to write off for a degree from one of those places that advertise themselves on matchbooks?
However, not believing something does not make it false.
That, I think, is the first thing I’ve read by a creationist whacko that I agree with whole-heartedly.
I think it would be gobs of fun to actually submit something to this contest next year. Just write the most bizarre, nonsensical possible, and cram it full of god jargon– see if it makes the cut. If you win, you could always go to the media and have a field day showing what idiots these folks are. It would be a hell of a jam, that’s for sure.
I’d love to see the fallout that would result from teaching these AiG fools about the zitterbewegung in Dirac’s formulation. I can practically see it now: “It may seem hard to believe, but Evolutionist Physicists are trying to sneak Darwinism into Quantum Mechanics! Dirac’s formulation of relativistic quantum mechanics predicts a ‘Darwin Term’ to explain the fluctuations seen in electrons. This, clearly, will lead to high crime rates and eugenics programs. In fact, Dirac was known to participate in Satanic rituals at the ACLU headquarters.”
And yes, the Darwin term was named for Charles Darwin. Just not that Charles Darwin. The Darwin Term was introduced by Charles Galton Darwin, the grandson of the elder Charles Darwin, and son of the mathematician George Darwin.
Much more frightening than the “ID Advisor” kid’s thought processes is the fact that his parents let their young teenage son get involved with Gene Chapman. See http://www.chapmanforpresident.blogspot.com for the skinny on his weirdo background, which includes “death fasts”, exorcisms performed on buildings, trying to set himself on fire to “end the IRS”, and (not surprisingly) a month-long involuntary stay in a psychiatric hospital.
As if that’s not bad enough, he’s also been monitored by the FBI for years, even being assigned an FBI “handler”.
The kid looks completely sane and rational in comparison, but he won’t be for long if he keeps hanging out with crazy Gene.
@Daephex “I think it would be gobs of fun to actually submit something to this contest next year. Just write the most bizarre, nonsensical possible, and cram it full of god jargon– see if it makes the cut.”
Many years ago, I knew a chemist who won a substantial award ($1,000 in 1950) from a multimillonaire named Babson (as in- Babson College) for an essay. The topic was something like: “the liquid properties of gravity.” My acquaintance knew he could write a better essay than anyone who actually believed the nonsense. A scholarship to a christian college, however, is not worth the time and trouble.
Yeah, too bad it ain’t a cash prize. I’d find a nice godless biology department to donate it to.
Zeno may have commented on this, but it is true that all three of the spawning creationists were homeschooled. Why does that not surprise me? In fact, I wish it were possible to look at the entire cross-section of the contestants and evaluate this particular parameter, as well as their parental backgrounds…
Why would sane people even send their children to take part in an essay contest by AiG?
A scholarship to a christian college, however, is not worth the time and trouble.
oh.. but think of the monkey wrench you could play if you did have the time…
for those that spend a lot of their time here enjoying argument with the likes of Sean Henry, how much more enjoyable would it be to spend that time doing it “for real” at an actual college of the bogus arts?
The saddest thing about this is that we live in a world where Liberty University exists – and there are people that actually WANT to go to it
Unfortunately lunaticitis can be caught at a very young age.
George,
You absolutely nailed it. Well said. What you said is one of the reasons I woke up one day and said, “ENOUGH!”.
It’s children’s stories. And children’s stories are good, up to a point. Then you wake up one day, and you’re 12. Time to put away childhood things. Winnie the Pooh; Hot Wheels; Cinderella; and… The Bible.
I am personally sorry for the adults out there who live their entire lives by something they’ve probably suspected isn’t true since they were about 8. To all you university students who think they’re not living by fairy tales, I have this to say: WAKE UP. It’ll be far easier to educate you when you’re head is out of the fog.
Kids out there will, next year, be able to live their dream of attending Patrick Henry college. Yuck. Lotsa luck in your chosen profession if that’s where you go to college; unless, of course, you choose to perpetuate fairy tales for a living. In that case, welcome to the club.
For the record, I am doing everything in my power to ensure my 9 and 12 year old never enter the foggy quagmire of religion. “No point in getting lost in that foggy, swampy forest, kids. You may never come out.”
This is scary. Generals with access to WMD’s.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/10/AR2006121000883.html
A military watchdog group is asking the Defense Department to investigate whether seven Army and Air Force officers violated regulations by appearing in uniform in a promotional video for an evangelical Christian organization.
In the video, much of which was filmed inside the Pentagon, four generals and three colonels praise the Christian Embassy, a group that evangelizes among military leaders, politicians and diplomats in Washington. Some of the officers describe their efforts to spread their faith within the military.
“I found a wonderful opportunity as a director on the joint staff, as I meet the people that come into my directorate,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Jack J. Catton Jr. says in the video. “And I tell them right up front who Jack Catton is, and I start with the fact that I’m an old-fashioned American, and my first priority is my faith in God, then my family and then country. I share my faith because it describes who I am.”
SCARY
Hmph… I’m just a former NROTC cadet who washed out and lost my Navy scholarship owing to bad eyesight in the days before LASIK was available and acceptable to the military, but General Cotton needs to be politely reminded that his DUTY, Sir, is to UPHOLD AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES against all enemies, foreign and domestic, including the First Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights and all subsequent amendments.
The goings on at the USAF Academy really freak me out, too;
These f*ckers have their fingers on the BOMB, and actually look FORWARD to Armageddon.
I agree, scary scary scary. Though those purely secular Generals advocating “stay (almost) the course” in Iraq are no less scary to me, for different reasons.
I’m worried that the best of the Officer Corps has either been mustered out, killed, or taken early retirements, whittling down the brass to a few hardcore fanatics with mediocre minds, never a good combo…though I’m not too crazy about ANY standing professional Army anymore these days.
Another scary thing, somewhat actually related to this thread–the Army has been consistently lowering the educational requirements for its Chaplain Corps…and more and more of the Chaplain’s billets are being filled with those from denominations that have, shall we say, less rigorous educational standards for their Clergy…such as Assemblies of God, Baptists, etc…which also means, more conservative, more fanatic.
James Randi did something similar (moles in a public contest) once. Very effective, too; the problem is, proving you faked psionic tests as opposed to proving you made up any old woo-woo won’t help. These people will claim divine inspiration in the words of a bipolar maniac, after all. The source doesn’t matter, just the woo-woo.
MikeM, I know what you mean about not wanting to your kids to fall into the foggy quagmire of religion. This was reallly a fear for me since we are *gasp* homeschoolers and we have participated in many activities that were religion based and many of our friends are very religious. I found that exposure to religion is actually an inoculation against it if you encourage a lot of discussion and have good comunication with your kids. We look a lot of stuff up. When my daughters english teacher told her that ice cores supported a young earth we researched it. Guess what, it’s not true. My daughter scored “pastor” on a bible quiz thing and she’s a total athiest.
Nothing like million year old ice to support a 5,000 year old planet, huh? How do they come up with this stuff?
Oh, that’s right. It’s the meth.
I understand the open hostility towards the AiG. They masquerade “creationism” as science, which does a disservice to both creationism and science. And Mr. Chapman is certified froot loops.
But the open hostility towards religion in general is unnecessary. Science does not and cannot provide all the answers to all of the questions, specifically the following: why? Science does not answer why. Some people turn to religion or spiritual philosophy or Objectivism or many other belief systems that are founded on basic assumptions that are unfalsifiable.
I agree with anomalous4 that some whackos give Christians a bad name, but there are many that give Atheism a bad name as well. After all, if I do not agree with MikeM’s basic premises, then my head is stuck in the fog and I am a mental 8 year old.
Yiela is right, though. Encouraging discussion is always a good thing. If that leads your child to be an atheist, then that is fine. Personally, I was an atheist until college when I started studying physics. Discussion, study, and yes skepticism has lead me to where I am today. I’m no “true believer”, but I believe in god.
It’s always the believers that take offense. Criticism is necessary. Truth is important.
Tempering the argument might be smart, but shying away from it is not.
You presume the question is meaningful and has an answer.
Yiela, Chris, et al:
Yes, I think you are more likely to come up with the correct answer when the mystical answer is immediately ruled out.
I just don’t think there’s any doubt about it.
Why is an English teacher teaching about ice cores? Why don’t I just show up in Morris one day, claiming to be PZ Myers, and start teaching his biology class? Would that be the best use of that class’s time? (I hold a degree in Computer and Information Sciences…)
I hold quite strongly to my feelings that the Bible just just middle-eastern mythology. Every culture seems to look for mystical answers, when all they have to do now is look into a microscope and realize, for example, that bubonic plague isn’t caused by spirits. I wonder how many hundred years Europeans believed that?
I keep thinking, what if Pat Robertson had been alive at the same time as Louis Pasteur. How many more lives would that simple accident of history have cost?
“Why is an English teacher teaching about ice cores?”
Beats me. It is as ridiculous as a pastor teaching about evolutionary biology. I’m certainly with you there.
“I hold quite strongly to my feelings that the Bible just just middle-eastern mythology.”
There is certainly nothing wrong with that. I happen to agree. But there is a distinct difference between understanding disease (a very scientific endeavor) and understanding what one’s basic moral foundation should be, which is a question of values and is not subject to scientific scrutiny. There are quite a few highly competent scientists who are also practicing Christians, Muslims, Jews, etc. There is no conflict between religion and science so long as you are not dogmatic about either.
“It’s always the believers that take offense. Criticism is necessary. Truth is important. Tempering the argument might be smart, but shying away from it is not.”
There is a difference between criticism and outright hostility. I’ve exchanged words with the “official ID adviser” concerning ID and his responses have not differed much from responses I’ve received from atheists when discussing the limits of science — outright rejection based on dogmatic belief. I’m not saying that that is how I’m being responded to here, necessarily.
The truth is important, but science does not hold a monopoly on truth (though it does and should hold a monopoly on the truth about the behavior of nature). In fact, there are many questions that science cannot answer, such as: what makes someone a good person? How should I treat my fellow man? Why is science a good thing?
Although Bronze Dog may believe these questions to be meaningless and unanswerable, I do not. Are they easy to answer in a manner above reproach? No. But we all have to answer these types of questions for ourselves every day.
There is no conflict between religion and science so long as you are not dogmatic about either.
tell that to Francis Collins; he seems to feel a need to construct entire fallacious arguments into book form in order to “meld” the two in his mind.