I don’t know how we can get any plainer than this: evolution really happened and is happening.
Evolution is a simple fact. We can choose to remain ignorant of it, we can stick our fingers in our ears and refuse to think about it, we can even rail against it and shout and scream that it is not allowed to be true. But facts are facts, and will not go away just because we don’t like them. We don’t get to vote for our preferred method of having come into existence as a species, any more than we can choose to have been delivered by stork rather than conceived and born in the usual way.
Candidates who stick their fingers in their ears and reject reality simply don’t deserve to hold office.
(Also on Sb)
Lovely post altogether. Recommended reading!
Apparently I’m just cranky today, because I have a criticism here too: Evolution didn’t happen, evolution is happening. All around us and within us. Otherwise I agree entirely.
This paragraph from Kirby’s article needs to be emphasized over and over again:
Finally, a great article in the mainstream media. About time.
I liked this part of Kirby’s piece:
She doesn’t explore this metaphor in any detail, but its implications are illuminating — for instance the childishness of willfully believing something ridiculous in spite of all evidence to the contrary.
You want to ask, “would you elect a politician who said he was ‘skeptical about our economic problems’ or ‘watching the controversy over jobs/growth’?” We need reality-based leadership and someone whose idea of progress is medieval (prayer, in 2011?!) is not living in the same world as the rest of us.
I don’t understand why Perry isn’t being prayerboated to death right now? “What’s your economic recovery plan, Perry, a national day of prayer for the economy?”
Grr.
Must. Stop. Reading. Comments. There.
Sophisticated theism! Scientism leads to inhumane capitalism! Theism and science lead to the same conclusions! Genesis is pretty accurate for a 3000-year-old-text! Science is faith!
It’s like a fucking field of strawmen.
Judging from how he runs Texas, that is simple.
Texas had a 27 billion USD deficit.
Unemployment is 8.2%, making Texas 26th in the USA.
Texas has the highest number of uninsured people in the USA, at 28%. Child poverty in very high at 25%. Texas is high in social problems such as teenage pregnancy and low in education.
Perry would simply cut government services such as social safety net programs and education even for children. The economy would still stall out. He would then tell everyone how great he is and try to outlaw abortion and destroy the US constitution.
I suppose if we are really lucky, he could start a few more wars somewhere. There are always Moslems to beat up on.
Stork!
I’ve thought for a while now about how I’d explain what it’s like to be an atheist in America to a religious person.
I decided a couple of years ago that I’d explain it this way:
“Imagine you wake up every day in a country where almost everyone thinks babies are delivered by storks. You can’t publicly say that you don’t buy the stork “theory” without running the risk of being harassed, verbally harangued, possibly assaulted and even fired.
Every politician praises the stork, many obstetricians even think the stork is somehow putting the baby in the womb before they themselves deliver it, the currency features the stork, Presidential candidates must belittle non-storkism, one said non stork believers aren’t real citizens, and the country is burdened with a massive debt generated by wars to annihilate the evil Cabbage Patch baby origin adherents.”
Of course I realize that I wouldn’t manage to get past the first sentence without getting cut off with a comment like “Don’t be silly. We’re not talking about storks, we’re talking about GOD!”
But…can’t we get rid of evolution somehow? I don’t like antibiotic resistance, for example.
Maybe we should put those highly skilled ID scientists on the task. Any attempt to get them to shut up is worthwhile, anyhow.
I know, the problem is that they’ll just try to legislate it out of existence.
Glen Davidson
No accommodationist she! It is in fact true that evolution completely destroys the Christian doctrine of original sin and redemption through the sacrifice of Christ yadda yadda.
Many Christian apologists have now come forward publicly to recognize this, and claim that, therefore, evolution cannot be true because the doctrine of original sin and redemption is true. QED. So this is the real problem — people who think backwards.
This was my favorite paragraph from Paula Kirby, and I just published it at the Christian Post to give those assholes another reason to be terrified of biology.
Evolution poses a further threat to Christianity, though, a threat that goes to the very heart of Christian teaching. Evolution means that the creation accounts in the first two chapters of Genesis are wrong. That’s not how humans came into being, nor the cattle, nor the creeping things, nor the beasts of the earth, nor the fowl of the air. Evolution could not have produced a single mother and father of all future humans, so there was no Adam and no Eve. No Adam and Eve: no fall. No fall: no need for redemption. No need for redemption: no need for a redeemer. No need for a redeemer: no need for the crucifixion or the resurrection, and no need to believe in that redeemer in order to gain eternal life. And not the slightest reason to believe in eternal life in the first place.
http://darwinkilledgod.blogspot.com/
But they DO hold office … and they get re-elected !
great article.
Occam@6:
Who’s going to do it? The other candidates for the Republican nomination are just as god-soaked as he is (or at least, want to appear so). The possible exceptions are Romney and Huntsman, neither of whom wants to bring up religion because of their “Mormon problem.”
Obama isn’t doing it now because there’s no point in going on the offensive until the Republicans have committed to a candidate. He probably won’t do it later, mainly because he doesn’t want to come off as mocking prayer, and partly because it’s not a fruitful line of attack for him. The guy who campaigned on “Hope” is in no position to make fun of “prayer” as a policy, and it’s hard for an incumbent to make fun of Perry’s lack of a recovery plan because the obvious retort is “and how’s your plan been working out?” (And yes, I know that the economy isn’t really Obama’s fault, but most voters don’t think that way.)
OMG No! I have just discovered the washingtonpost.com comments section, and the amount of ignorance on it! Someone is wrong on the internet, and now I have to pump that keyboard till me fingers bleed to remedy this.
It’s like a fucking field of strawmen.
Strawmenny fields forever.
My god, it’s full of strawmen!
Holy buckets. I thought that was going to be a rehash of the hash I’ve already read, but it was great! Worth reading again actually. I love the way she unraveled the chunky sweater of Christianity.
Bookmarked.
THX PZ!
Oh, ph00 – I’m gonna be left praying that the left-leaning librul media does.
cervantes #11 wrote:
Yes, this also impressed me quite a bit. In the mainstream press it’s standard to attack creationism but pander to religion, offering Christians the soothing panacea of “many Christians happily accept evolution” and “maybe God chose to create us using evolution” and full stop there. To her infinite credit, Paula Kirby goes forward with the argument and attacks the sop to spiritual sensitivities: if you follow the implications of evolution consistently and apply it to the tenets of faith, you can’t “happily” accept both evolution and creationism. You could only do so by reverting to various forms of intellectual dishonesty.
I like Paula Kirby. Good one.
Right now, the only room for god in any way shape or form, is… god farted and thus there was a big bang. of course, that begs the question what created god ^.~
fucking turtles all the way down…
Seriously though, what the hell is wrong with our country? And not a single decent democratic candidate has stepped forward, we just got Obama to look forward to.
Whatever else you think of Obama, he is not a creationist. And I think his Christianity is more based on a choice to identify with African American ethnicity than anything else. He doesn’t go around thumping the Bible or talking God trash, except for the obligatory “God bless” at the end of his speeches. So we don’t need an alternative on that basis, anyway.
What a fantastic piece of writing. Paula Kirby did incredibly well. The best part, for me, was spelling out the anti-accomodationist aspect of accepting evolution, which I’ll paste in here:
“Not only does evolution not need to be guided in any way, but any conscious, sentient guide would have to be a monster of the most sadistic type: for evolution is not pretty, is not gentle, is not kind, is not compassionate, is not loving. Evolution is blind, and brutal, and callous. It is not an aspiration or a blueprint to live up to (we have to create those for ourselves): it is simply what happens, the blind, inexorable forces of nature at work. An omnipotent deity who chose evolution by natural selection as the means by which to bring about the array of living creatures that populate the Earth today would be many things – but loving would not be one of them. Nor perfect. Nor compassionate. Nor merciful. Evolution produces some wondrously beautiful results; but it happens at the cost of unimaginable suffering on the part of countless billions of individuals and, indeed, whole species, 99 percent of which have so far become extinct. It is irreconcilable with a god of love.”
Whoa!! Goddamn, that was almost better than sex.
Not that others, like PZ, haven’t said the same things before but it was sooo well expressed. Unfortunately, the religidiots still won’t get it. Horse-to-water and all that.
This woman just made sweet love to my mind. It’s always seemed to me quite obvious that if you accept evolution as true, and that meaning that there’s no Adam, it completely destroys the one thing all Christians must believe. No Adam…No Fall, No Fall…No Redemption, No Redemption…No Redeemer, etc. It seems like the one thing that any intellectually honest Christian wouldn’t be able to reconcile. The only thing I can come up with either than their full of shit is that most moderate Christians don’t even know why they believe Jesus died for their sins. They’ve never even thought about how those things can be related and certainly haven’t taken the time to you know…read the bible.
This is why while I’m sure that young earth creationists are idiots, at the very least they’re intellectually honest.
Linguistic evidence of God abounds. And not only that, every letter in DNA rings with the voice of Jesus. I feel sorry for you. . . . I do. You have all been terribly brainwashed. You’re not only members of the cult of atheism — but of the cult of Myers. You’ve given all your ability to judge to other men and women, instead of living with the free will accorded to us by the Man. What’s more, the Cambridge-educated scientist Dr. Meyers is not to be discarded like a banana peel, which itself shouldn’t be; it is even a little bit divine. Everything is.
In 1972 I got my degree in Kantian-psychology and for my thesis applied it to psychopathy and interdependent criticism of Hamlet and Dawkins et al. The sad thing is, atheists and agnostics conform to my findings of what a Kantian (linguistic) psychopath is. They fear death. They feel empty. They feel omniscient. They constantly propound the reasons for the universe.
If you want some of my recent papers, please comment. And I’ll provide a link. Otherwise, I won’t provide my e-mail. (The Dawkins-ham one was frequently called “Excellent” by my advisers. I have written about five, 2 this year.) Don’t want to be spammed to death by intolerant psychopaths.
Nor will I provide links for rude people.
Sincerely,
Michael
Christ we love.
Oh great…now I’m in a cult??? This doesn’t mean that I have to start wearing cephalopod ties, does it?
Yeah, Michael, we know Kant. He’s the one who wrote that he had to deny knowledge to make room for faith.
Looks like you do too, moron.
Glen Davidson
Glen,
No links for you!
You bastard!
I was just getting into the mood for some mental masturbation.
Glen Davidson
Michael, do you live in City Livonia?
“Linguistic evidence of God abounds.”
That just means religion has infected our language. Nothing more.
Must be a Poe.
Think you contradicted yourself here. How can you feel empty and omniscient at the same time?
I’ve never even seen an atheist who feels omniscient. The universe doesn’t appear to have a reason, it just is.
Since you appear to be seriously crazy, who cares?
(I think this is a Poe but who knows, maybe this Mike actually thinks he is saying something coherent.)
I recently met someone at a Democratic event that was running for school board. I asked him his views on creationism/evolution, and he said “What?” and “I really don’t understand the question.” It made me wonder what planet he was from. I’ve been trying to figure out how I should explain it to him. Maybe I’ll just send him a link to Paula Kirby’s article.
@27 Mike
My goodness gracious me, what a total, toffee-nosed nincompoop you are. Your degree in Kantian psychology seems to be highly out of date.
But to humour you I’ll contradict your little psychonalysis: I’m an atheist, I’m not afraid of death, I feel brimming with ideas almost to frustration, I feel I don’t know half as much as I would like to know, and although interested in the universe, I don’t think it has “reasons”. Did you mean how it originated? I’m interested in that but I don’t propound anything, I try to educate myself about such things from the relevant scientific sources.
As for linguistic proof of your god, wasn’t that a linguistic proof for the *nonexistance* of God? I’m pretty sure that God disapears in a puff of logic after having the babelfish pointed out to him.
Mike | 25 August 2011 at 12:47 pm :
Finally we know who wrote Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John! It was Guanine, Adenine, Cytosine, and Thymine. I guess Paul’s epistles were written by Uracil.
Time for those damn naughty atheists to stop saying DNA stands for “Deities Not Apparent”.
Well, I suppose for certain definitions of “pretty”, it is.
But “pretty accurate” also implies “not the most accurate of all”. And certainly there were some peoples puttering about 3000 years ago who held a more accurate view of the origin of life, the universe (and everything!) than Genesis.
And the thing is, emphasizing that “pretty accurate” part overlooks the other part, the “3000-year-old-text”.
21st Century humans ought to aspire to be a little bit more accurate than the second-tier or accuracy from 3000 years ago….
As language exists only inside human brains, than would mean that God also exists only as a conceptualization within human brains.
Thanks for conceding the argument, bud.
“How can you feel empty and omniscient at the same time?”
Have you never seen a mother sending her son off to college? What she feels is sadness and happiness: sadness at his leaving, happiness at his becoming.
Your comment shows how one-dimensional atheism is, how it infects the brain like a pernicious little mouse and grows into a rat after feasting on a person’s brain.
I can still provide papers for those who are nice enough to ask politely, not like psychopathic automatons.
Sincerely,
Mike
Christ we love.
Mike @ 27,
Thank you for your sonorous, ponderous proclamation. It never occurred to me to consult a Kantian psychologist for insight into the meaning of the letters of DNA. I have never noticed them ringing, but perhaps there are other ways of ringing. I can’t help but wonder, though, if you’d been born a Muslim, would they ring with the voice of Mohammed instead? Is the fact that I’m an atheist the cause of the lack of “ringing” I perceive? If I convert, will they then ring? If I lose faith, will they stop ringing? Does ringing constitute proof? If so, why “prove” to those who already have faith, which eliminates the requirement of proof? Then why refuse to “prove” to those who would require proof to believe?
Maybe you’re being poetic with your ringing. In which case, what do you hope to achieve by saying it? Poetry proves nothing. You might as well use a sunset to prove Pythagoras’ Theorem.
“Poetry proves nothing”
Poetry–the arrangement of phonemes into words, and words into sentences–proves intelligence. Like DNA.
Christ we love.
Sincerely,
Michael
Exactly! Or rather, wtf are you gibbering about?
Please, we need more diagnosis, Godbot.
We find your judgment to be compelling, for you and a million other Jeebus zombies say the same damn things. That you must be right is plain to see from sheer repetition.
And isn’t it clear that I need links to you fapping away? My very lack of politeness clearly demonstrates that I need it.
Glen Davidson
But,if you really analyze that situtation, it is not at the same time. What she feels is sadness, then happiness, then sadness, oscillating back and forth over the spectrum in rapid succession.
At any rate, sadness and happiness are not mutually exclusive entities, the way omniscience (by linguistic definition!), and emptiness are. It is (linguistically!) possible to be both sad and happy at the exact same time. But it is not (linguistically!) possible to be both omniscient and empty at the same time.
The definition (linguistic!) of omniscient precludes that, linguistically.
Lovely. So no true Christians in the Republan party?
Then how does it prove a god? How does it not prove Star Trek?
Poetry–the arrangement of phonemes into words, and words into sentences–proves intelligence. Like DNA.
Oh yeah, the good old watchmaker argument. There is no new thing under the sun . . .
Translation: Mike’s got nothin’. If you really wanted us to see your silly papers, you’d have already provided the links. Either there are no papers or you know that they won’t stand up to scrutiny.
Poor show.
LOL, wut? You want some ranch dressing for that word salad?
A couple of thoughts:
1) I have never even heard of poetry used as a measure for intelligence. Maybe you’re on to something!
2) Isn’t it fascinating that non-Christian cultures have no poetry and no literature? Oh wait…
Show me a poem that goes like:
I met a traveler from a distant asdljapoirpiawerja
dlkjfasdfipasdfjadfjasepojafal;sdkjfa;lksjdfpaoweijadflasdkjfogkjavlanvadhfoiawheadlasjdflkasjdhflahlkjahfliwuhelkadsfklaj land who said “two aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa vast and trunkless twinkle twankle litle str hoaw e wadnor what you ore legs of stone awerujsfpeoasjfepiuraslkjfpoaiuafqoeuwel
jhaldhauagfaeflauyowaefajdflskajhdfashfiwee
with
Look of my works, ye Mighty, and Despair!
found only in another book four volumes later,
and then we can talk about DNA and intelligence.
“Mike’s got nothin’.”
I do, but then, you’ve all been rude. What’s more, you’ve not asked. I don’t mind that. I just put the option out there, so that you might take a chance and leave your weak, boring, narcissistic lives of atheistic orgy to join my side, where there is not much sex, but plenty of wisdom.
Jesus we love.
Sincerely
Mike
“atheistic orgy”
You mean that isn’t a euphemism?!? We’re supposed to be having actual, sexual orgies!?!?!
Damn! I need to start going to some atheist conventions!
“You want some ranch dressing for that word salad?”
“Word salad” implies faulty grammar or garbled thoughts. That sentence was grammatically correct, and it made a point, which you, in your atheistic denial, refuse to see: order means intelligence. Even Darwin knew this. He was, as you know, an agnostic. But he was also something else. He was a sort of gateway man for Christ. He found out God’s plan. He showed us how God did what he describe in utter perfection in Genesis. This is undeniable.
The rules of general relativity break down after the big bang. Therefore all of science can’t be trusted. Laws are not laws if they break down.
Lord Christ we love,
Sincerely,
Mic
Actually, I feel like a frazzled Boomer with creaky joints, 10 extra pounds, several cats, and a sick 401(K) plan. I don’t have time for existential angst. There are millions of us.
(BTW, this Mike is a poe.)
@amphiox:
Quick! Publish that poem! It’s the greatest thing I’ve ever read!!
Mike: go fuck yourself.
NO, Mike, don’t go, how can we live without your wisdom?
True, the orgy is nice, but we’re intrigued by the fact that language proves God. The logic is compelling.
Unicorns prove God as well, of course, only everybody already knew that (we just deny it for orgiastic purposes).
And we do like our chew toys, so don’t suppose that you’re not actually appreciated.
Glen Davidson
Well, I think the fact that the five letters of the genetic code together spell
UG CAT
tells all we need to know about the true nature of terrestrial creation on the profoundest of levels….
Wait, atheist orgies are weak, boring, and narcissistic? Someone has been to the wrong parties.
Atheistic orgy? What when where?! I missed the invite :(
Naturally. That’s why I worship the spirits that make quartz crystals.
Actually, it’s before the Big Bang, unless your Kantian psychology proves otherwise. Surely we’d accept your profundity over Hawking’s childish banter, but you won’t give us the links, so we’re stuck with the latter.
Relativity isn’t a law, it’s a theory. Except, I suppose, in your mentally-superior world.
Wow, you really are a philosopher, if by that you mean wanker.
Glen Davidson
Oh, I get it! Mike’s trying to play mind games!
*yawn*
I still doubt that there’s any papers. Otherwise, Mikey wouldn’t be trying to jerk us around.
P.S. Come on, I didn’t even include a single “fuck”. I’ve hardly been rude.
Katherine,
I thought you had the invite, the one with pearls in it?
@Dhorvath:
Ohh… I see. Yes, I got that one.
Dear Michael,
If you’d do me the honor, I’d care to peruse said scholarly works. However, I must reserve the right to critique them openly, in this forum. Might you deign to share them with me, given that caveat?
In Christ we don’t believe,
Sincerely,
McWaffle
mike:
No. Order implies order.
Consider mathematics. It exists without intelligence. It takes intelligence to formalize mathematics into symbols, but the Fibonacci sequence exists outside our naming of it, outside our formalizing it.
No, my cuddly-wuggums. While your limited imagination might require an explanation of “intelligence” for order, order does not imply intelligence.
Some order might imply intelligence, such as a building or sculpture. But really, Sweet Pea, the universe exists without intelligence.
Okay, Josh.
I’ll go. Thanks for all the talk, even the hateful stuff. I learned a little. Some of your comments (but not your names) will be in my next paper.
I love you all, regardless of your condemned hearts.
I will pray for you.
Sincerely,
Mike
Mike, mike and mikephilosopher should get together and fuck each other.
“Evolution poses a further threat to Christianity, though, a threat that goes to the very heart of Christian teaching. Evolution means that the creation accounts in the first two chapters of Genesis are wrong. That’s not how humans came into being, nor the cattle, nor the creeping things, nor the beasts of the earth, nor the fowl of the air. Evolution could not have produced a single mother and father of all future humans, so there was no Adam and no Eve. No Adam and Eve: no fall. No fall: no need for redemption. No need for redemption: no need for a redeemer. No need for a redeemer: no need for the crucifixion or the resurrection, and no need to believe in that redeemer in order to gain eternal life. And not the slightest reason to believe in eternal life in the first place.”
Which is precisely the reason so many chronically besotted jeebus droolers rail and gnash toothy pegs and get their metaphorical sticky knickers all of a doo dah!
They fully realize what Evolutionary theory means in xian terms and are well aware of that ever lurking danger to their delusion. they have been aware of it for over 150 odd years, and they are literally shitting themselves, so be it..
It also explains their sticky knickers methinks!
Hey Mike? You have the same problem Bill Craig does: you think knowing a little philosophy qualifies you to make factual statements about the world. Got news for you, cupcake: it doesn’t. And if the last few rants of yours I read on the subject are any indication, you don’t even understand philosophy too well.
Hint: Kant is not God. Neither is your own mind, despite your best efforts. Kant worked in a time before we know the things we know now. We have explanations for things Kant, despite all his brilliance, could only guess at. Get his rotted zombie dick out of your ear for 10 minutes and THINK.
Mike
Do not pray for me.
I do not want recommendations from a miserable sinner.
Please color your paper within the lines, Mikey.
If you’re going to include our comments, you at least ought to color nicely.
But don’t tell us that you learned a little. It appears that you have learned nothing after a bit of cheesy “philosophy.”
Glen Davidson
Mike,
Please give me a link to your papers.
Sincerely,
‘Tis Himself
Mike, take your self-sanctifying godbotting and sneering condescension, roll it up tightly, then stick it up the ass of a dead porcupine. Then take that porcupine and insert it backwards into your smug, self-righteous, holier-than-thou rectum.
Fuck off, you brainwashed fuckweasel.
I don’t suppose I’m the first person to notice that the Godophiles are always deranged.
You’re not even in the first thousand.
Mike:
I am politely and obsequiously begging, on bended knee (which, with the condition of my knee, is extremely painful), for links to your papers in which the proof of god(s) existence is proven.
Brother Ogvorbis
Except you don’t. You fear us. That’s why you went to the trouble of creating a novel definition of psychopath just so you could apply it to us.
You’re not particularly good at either linguistics or psychology, are you?
No matter.
I’m just pleased as punch that you fear me. Not because I particularly care about you, but because I hope this means you’ll stay the fuck out my way.
You can have all the heavens you want. Honestly, you are welcome to all the afterlife there is. Eat it right up, and ask for more.
But here, on Earth? This is my territory.
Mathematics exists without intelligence? So it’s ordered… And it exists without intelligence. And order is a sign of intelligence.
See where I’m going with this?
@Tis (and other interested parties)
I don’t think Mike is going to come back with links to his papers, but through Google I’ve made a guess and found a few things. They are all behind paywalls though, so I guess unless you want to shell out 20 bucks to read them, it’s not worth it.
Mike #41 wrote:
Well, I guess I’m nice enough to ask politely — but I’m afraid I’m not crazy enough to ask to read a paper written by someone who accuses his critics of being “psychopathic automatons.” So I’m out.
Mike/mike/mikephilosopher/mikegoodbye has apparently left. Okay. Given his attitude, his insults, and his tendency to morph nicks, I was wondering if maybe he’d heard that there was a recent … vacancy … in our atheist community.
Is there a chance that we could have Kirby at our next skepticism convention without her getting cornered in an elevator?
And also, can we get Mike the Philossofer to come with his secret papers and sandwich board for comic relief?
Hilarious!
Mouse growing into a rat, it’s evolution, baby!
I’m not a linguist myself, but Jesus spoke Hebrew, right? Are there G’s, T’s, C’s, and A’s in that language?
Now I’d like to pass the mic! (to who?)
Mike:
“And not only that, every letter in DNA rings with the voice of Jesus.”
Maybe, but Occam’s Razor suggests you get yourself tested for tinnitus.
Psst, Aramaic.
May have known Hebrew if fairly well educated, but we have no way of knowing.
Or is Mikey telling us that baby Jesus spoke DNA?
Glen Davidson
In case the Christard doesn’t stick the flounce:
Guess what–your thoughts are garbled, and your grammar isn’t anything to write home about.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Yeah, right.
Here’s your braindead attempt at writing:
“Like DNA” is technically incorrect. While it’s not a big deal to use it in a casual setting like this, or even in some fiction, my English teachers would have dinged you for that, and deservedly so.
Sucks to be you.
Mike,
You insult us then claim we are rude.
Project much?
Dammit, I know I closed my tags!
Mike:
By the same token, Jesus refused to help a woman until she debased herself. Therefore Jesus cannot be trusted. A redeemer who has sinned cannot redeem.
Glen Davidson #30
One day in the late mid-eighties, I was in my early late-twenties. I had just been dismissed from University after delivering a brilliant lecture on the aggressive influence of German philosophy on rock ‘n’ roll entitled “You, Kant, Always Get What You Want.”
-Hedwig
To rephrase my argument @80 more clearly (the benefit of further thought, the curse of no edit button)
#85
Glenn, actually everybody ‘speaks’ DNA, on the cellular level. For what is DNA doing in the cell but processing information and thereby communicating with other parts of a cell?
(Yes, I have a ‘different’ way of looking at things. :) )
Got to love this debate. The whole thing is against something called “Darwinism” right? So.. Having gotten part way into reading the book Darwin wrote, for the first time, I am struck by a fairly long bit in there that declares, basically, that if you have a completely empty world, with nothing but plants, and maybe insects (assuming they somehow managed to survive and pollinate), in principle, any species with abundant food, and no major causes of death, like predators and/or competition, would expand to fill that massive void in a geometric progression, resulting in a few hundred years being, in theory, enough to cover the whole planet with the damn things, which would also rapidly involve a whole hell of a lot of variation.
Mind, there is one **tiny** flaw in trying to do that, which comes from the inconvenient issue of making sure that there are no predators released too early, since they would most likely wipe out whole “kinds” in short order too, sort of screwing the whole process. lol
Still, these idiots either didn’t notice this, can’t come up with a sufficiently plausible idea about how old Noah released them back into the wild, such that they didn’t immediately eat each other, before say birds spread out ever place first, then herbivores, then finally predators, or they haven’t read and understood the damn book. Otherwise they would have to come up with some word other than “Darwinism” to argue against. It would be, in short, damn easy, with geometric expansion of species, and some control over which order they where let loose, to do the, still, very stupid, idiotic, job of turning a few “kinds” into a whole damn mess of different species. And, isn’t that the very bullshit they are claiming is one of the “alternatives” to “Darwinism”?
In short – they are arguing against what did happen, using a theory that is, at least plausibly, supported by the very thing that they appose, for daring to uncover reasons why it, not so much couldn’t, but simply **didn’t** happen the way they want it to have. And that is even more idiotic than what we are already dealing with. I could come up with this realization in less that 10 minutes. These imbecils have had 150 years to figure out that Darwin himself suggested how their nonsense could work, in his own book on the subject, which they claim to hate. But then, as I said, what they hell would they argue against, if they actually had to brains to figure out that such a thing is in there?
It’s a beautifull article.
Now I just need a way of forcing certain people in reading it… all of it.
Loved the fuzzy sweatshirt part!
This is incorrect anyway and shows Mike has no idea what they are talking about.
The theory of general relativity starts after the Big Bang and holds for the rest of the universe. Which may be infinite time in an open universe which looks the case
The TOGR yields singularities at large masses, i.e. black holes. We don’t really know what that means although it might well just mean that singularities exist. That is, in fact, the prevailing notion.
Science can be trusted because it works. Everyone does, every day whether they admit it or not. Mike is babbling his idiocy on a science produced device, a computer connected to the internet. Because it works.
Religion is just mythology and it isn’t even worth pretending that it can be trusted. It evolves, gods come and go, religion die and are born. No one agrees on which religion is true and there is no way to determine that except wars.
Ignore Mike! One comment, and the whole thread is focused on a misinformed moron.
Anyway….
I’ve been reading more posts by Paula Kirby, and I think she’s awesome! Like PZ!
Thanks again for the link. New stuff to put in my head now!
Did I mention to fucking ignore Mike yet?
I’m not a historian either. Still, in light of that, could “G”s, “C”s, “T”s, and “A”s ring out in the voice of Jesus? I’m particularly skeptical about the “G”.
@ ThirdMonkey #53
D’you need a lift? ;-)
/@
I don’t know about the C, G and T, but imagining Jesus on his crusifix… I can definately get a sense of the “A” ringing loud and clear.
Though, there is at least one suggestion that you can’t *tell* the difference between something which is a super-liquid, of a large size, but massive gravity, versus one that actually have formed a singularity. Both would have such huge mass that no measurement could be made of another “except” the mass itself (which doesn’t tell you its “size”, as in diameter, per say). Thus, singularities are simply “presumed” to be real, not verified. On of the problems is that once you “have one”, then GR breaks down and no longer applies at all inside of one. So.. If you get close to, but can never form a true singularity, GR continues to work, and you don’t have to throw out all the math, just the assumption of singularity.
Don’t ask me what is keeping it from forming that singularity though.. lol
Dark energy. Quantum mechanics.
I’ve read both theories but don’t ask me what all that means. The people who came up with them didn’t seem too sure either. LOL.
Alternatively perspective. From the outside time stops at the event horizon and eventually the black hole will evaporate so in a sense it’s reasonable to say that a singularity doesn’t occur at all.
Finally made it over to the new (and seemingly more verbose) Pharyngula. Had to bribe the elevator boy, and right then and there tripped over Mikey the messianic moron. Ah, well, should be fun at least & sometimes informative.
With double-barrel blasts from both Dawkins and Kirby, Rick Perry must think these angels of hell must be terrified of his holy power to lead the nation. Poor deluded fool that he is. This man’s popularity goes to demonstrate just how little many Americans value presidential competence. But he must be attracting criticism from rational people like a cow pat attracts flies. Some time soon, surely the people will get the message that dumb ain’t no longer purdy.
Perhaps, but if he did, then per mythusmage, he must have spoken it only half was well as everyone else, seeing as he was haploid.
Actually, no. DNA doesn’t process information at all. It just stores it. The processing of the information is done by RNA and proteins.
There is no such thing as wisdom without sex.
Well possibly, but it’s really unhappy wisdom.
The odious anti-evolutionist and Fellow of Dembski’s ISCID, Roland F Hirsch has just appeared in the WaPo comments to Paula Kirby’s article.
With a string of lies and half-truths. What a weasel.
And he gets personal. Hirsch just said:
“…most species try to reproduce as little as possible (something she [Paula Kirby] fervently hopes will NOT EVER change for her personally!!!),”
A disgusting display.
every letter in DNA rings with the voice of Jesus
Yes. You said it. Jesus is a drooling moron. He goes GAGAGAGAGA! A CAT CAT CAT CATCATCAT! GAGAGAGAGAGA AA CAT GAGAGAGA.
Yeah, cats have that effect on me, too…
+1 to Cath!
Also the TAP TAP TAP of drool falling to the floor from the slavering gobs of his supporters. See, DNA really does have something for everyone
Amphiox, #105
You’re right. I did overlook the contribution of RNA and proteins. Though I will assert that the information processing does require the, contributions, of DNA as well.
How cells process information may be analogous to how computers do it, but it isn’t exactly the same.
About 105,
Being haploid there were probably times when Jesus went off half-assed.
I’ll say one thing for Mikey. He appears to have stuck the flounce. That will hurt him in my new CHEWTOY SCORING SYSTEM. I’m still working on it, but what do you guys think?
1. Insults community on first comment (1-5 points). Add a point if PZ is explicitly insulted.
2. Lays claim to superior education (1-6 points, depending on degree of arrogance and appeals to their own authority) Inclusion of actual institution of higher education that has conferred degree(s) with dates is -1 point to base score.
3. Claims to have written extensively and convincingly on a proof of God’s existence (1-5 points depending on just how pathetic the attempt to get people to read their stuff is). Failure to provide links add 1 point; writings can only be viewed if paid for add 2 points to base score.
4. Insists atheists are 1) living empty lives; 2) hate God; 3) pretend not to believe in God so we can be really, really naughty (1-8 points, the more variations on this theme the higher the score).
5. States that we are mindless followers of PZ (1-3 points, depending on how insistant they are on this point). Mention of echo chambers, add 0.5 points to base score.
6. Does not answer any questions from community members (1-3 points) Replies of “answers are in my writings” (see 3, above) add 1 point to base score.
7. States as obvious facts things that have repeatedly been shown, in peer-reviewed journals, to be false and refusal to acknowledge any comment pointing this out (1-8 points depending on degree of frustration engendered).
8. Complains about insults and bad language (1-5 points depending on how hard pearls are clutched).
9. States that they have done all they can in this den of vipers (or equivalent phrase) and that they will now leave, then continues to argue (1-5 points depending soon after they flounce that they return).
Extra points to add to overall score
1. Misspells Myers, add 2 points
2. Sticks the flounce, subtract 1 point
That was traumatic when my friends told me there was no Santa Claus. I called them liars, fat booby liars. I put my hands over my ears and repeated over and over, “Yes there is, yes there is…” I went to my other friends and we talked about SC. “Are those other guys stupid, or what?” we ridiculed.
It was obvious – look at the evidence, presents under the tree, stockings hung by the mantle with care, knowing that Santa Claus soon would be there (that was one of the songs of praise and worship we sang). We left sacrifices at the altar which he would consume if they were worthy, and sure enough, the milk and cookies were gone in the morning. We sang devotionals attesting to the omniscient nature: He knows when you’ve been sleeping, Hee knows when you’re awake, He knows when you’ve been bad or good, so be good for Santa’s sake.
We communicated with Him through very personal letters, revealing our deepest thoughts and asking for His presents to be revealed to us.
We were ultimately judged: we got either condemned to fire and coalstone, or we were ‘saved’ from meaningless existence and we came to KNOW what ALL was inside the His presents. This knowledge of what His great plan for us was, revealed by looking inside His presents. This revelation produced an ecstatic joy and celebration. All was taken care of, and more! Red Rider DoubleShot BB Guns, boxes of ammo, and socks! How wise He was! It all made sense! Pure heaven!
No kissing, girls had flees anyways, and Santa would know. No crying, that’s what sissies practiced, known as ‘sad ‘o me’.
But, who cares, we got to shoot and kills stuff! And we had a purpose to life, FFS!
In spite of all the evidence, the ancient traditions and songs of praise, the stories, the books… look how many people believed! – most the kids, our parents(those were the prophets, they carried His message and promises of reward to us), the politicians(they put up decorations everywhere and made it a holyday), the media had reports of blips on the radars up North, etc., etc…..
In spite of all this, the other goofball quitters tried to sway us with fantastic lies and so called ‘reasons.’ It was obviously a conspiracy amongst them. Their lives were without purpose, no reasons to behave themselves. They said they could make their own purpose and get their own presents from the store by saving allowance, and other BS. I shook my head and pitied them and I told them that I would write letters to Santa Claus for them.
The only kids worse were the heathen christains. They said christmas was about some bastard dying – on purpose!
Now that was really fucked up. -o*
(I didn’t even get to my story about Kant! One day in grade ten physics class, the teach wasn’t there, and in walks this substitute after we were all seated. He walks up to the board and writes K – a – n – t on it.
He turns around and says “Cunt. Emmanuel Cunt.”
He lets that hang for a minute, the sounds still echoing of the walls. Then he says, “Emanuel Cunt. That’s how his name was pronounced. People say ‘Kant’, but it is really Cunt, so that’s how I pronounce it.”
Honest to Santa, it was by fucking far the most astoundingly bizarre thing I ever witnessed in my life. The guy just rattled it off nonchalantly and then started into the physics lesson for the day. I remember nothing else from that day, but strangely, from that day on, I suddenly decided I wanted to be a Theoretical Physicist (I was planning bio-chem before that).
“… was a real piss-unt, who was very rarely stable…”
Nuh, doesn’t rhyme as well, sorry…
Kagehi:
Singularity or not, another possible answer is to quit trying to force QM to model gravity the way other forces are modeled, especially in extreme cases where the model takes a dump.
mythusmage:
Even better, it is hardly analogous at all. In some extremely limited ways, you can can make comparisons for illustration to people who understand computer hardware or software, but the metaphor just doesn’t scale.
Latest Christian Troll:
This bit is so rich:
Thanks for the laugh. Otherwise, you are quite the sanctimonious hypocrite.
DNA isn’t made from letters. Overall poetic image fail, not even wrong.
Analogy fail. Covered rather well previously.
You demonstrate one-dimensional pre-programmed thinking in this very sentence. You had better remove the sequoia from thine own eye. Mice are not pernicious, and do not become rats in adulthood. Where they may be vectors, they are not pathogens. Atheism is hardly infectious, it is either an original state or a conclusion.
DNS is nothing like poetry. You just can’t manage an analogy, can you? DNA does not prove intelligence.
You, sir, were rude from the first post. You seem to think that conveying your venom in a formal or pseudo-polite tone makes it not rude.
More word salad. Your thoughts may seem clear to you, but you do not make sense, and provide non sequiturs with faulty assumptions and bad conclusions as bookends.
What is atheistic denial? Why must this adjective precede nouns you choose for your argumentum ad hominem? Are Hindus who disagree with you in Hinduistic denial? And this because someone has not accepted your argument? (And why not, you can’t construct a valid argument, a persuasive argument, or an argument based on fact.)
Order does not mean intelligence. I rather suspect that you have a rather hazy notion of order, and that you will claim order anywhere you want to claim it as proof for an intelligence, which again is something I suspect you do not understand. And stop making up things about Darwin, or back up your claims. You can’t just say they are undeniable, any of them, as if this were some sort of proof.
This makes absolutely no sense at all.
Does not follow, even if the previous statement were true.
This makes no sense for any definition of the word “Law”, or any conflation of meanings you intend. “Break down” doesn’t even really make sense in relation to “Law”. People violate societies’ laws all the time. Scientific “laws” may only be true in a given set of circumstances, especially as most lay people understand them, or may be very good general approximations (for which there are sometimes even more accurate approximations). Newton’s Law of Gravitation is still a law, even if it doesn’t describe gravity as completely as Einstein’s Field Equations. When you encounter something Newton can’t describe, all gravitationally bound objects in the universe don’t suddenly fly apart.
But I do see your non-existent pattern of “law” and “order” which you ascribe to a non-existent law-giving intelligence. How transparent and facile.
otrame #114
You should also add: Atheism is a religion, it takes more faith not to believe in God than to believe in God. 1 point.
mikmik
Reminds me of the time I learned the awful truth about the Tooth Fairy.
As children, we can quickly realize the silliness of Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and Easter Bunny, but when it comes to God and religion, the difference is that there are people in authority telling us that they’re true and here’s how we know.
Why do we lose that logical nature?
Hmm – stopped believing in Santa when I was 7 – kept up the charade as I worried my parents would be sad… As they seemed to get alot out of it… Funny how things work out.
More people make money from the existence of god(s) than from the existence of the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus. Therefore it’s in the priests economic best interests to reinforce goddism after belief in the Easter Bunny and the Great Pumpkin have vanished.
mike @ 54 said
At very high energies (i.e. shortly after the big bang), we don’t have the theoretical understanding to determine what happened. About 20 years ago, that was 3 minutes (see The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe, Steven Weinberg, ISBN 978-0465024377). Now, if I understand correctly, it is closer to 10^-37s that our physics breaks down. (Why is <sup> not allowed?)
Because it’s in God’s plan not to allow <sup> in FtB. The ways of God are mysterious and not to be questioned. :-þ
@Tis Himself:
I thought it was because the Three Goats traveled above the Bridge and therefore the realm above (or superscripted text) is theirs, while we exist on the same level as the Bridge, and the Enemy resides under the Bridge.
Tis @118
Of course. I’ll add that and move this to TET.
#51 amphiox,
At first I thought I was reading Vogon poetry. Then I got to the bottom of your comment. And I’m still laughing.
That’d make for an interesting game of Dreidel.
Is Kantian Mike still around? I really actually do want to read his papers.