Ray Comfort can’t even keep the question straight

Ray Comfort has this new cheesy “movie” in which he claims he destroys atheism with one scientific question — which reviews revealed was where did the DNA molecule come from? I explained that that was not very challenging and was actually a rather stupid question. But now he’s got new ads out that present a completely different question.

A thought-provoking question to ask an atheist is whether or not he thinks that his brain was intelligently designed.

No.

Well, that didn’t provoke much thought now, did it? All I have to do is look at Ray Comfort, who has the same kind of brain I have, and it’s obvious that if it were designed at all, it was done badly. Alternatively, I could look at a chimpanzee and see that its brain is smaller but otherwise very similar to mine, and it’s obvious that we have a modified generic ape brain, which is a kind of mammalian brain, which has all the hallmarks of a standard vertebrate brain.

If the whole premise of his movie is that he’s got this killer question that will rock atheists back on their heels, why is it that every question that’s leaking out of it is just kind of pathetic? Doesn’t he try out his question on informed subjects to see how they really react to it before he builds an entire movie that claims he has some kind of potent approach?

Any story of Kent Hovind needs more Nazi imagery

RationalWiki has an expanded front-page feature on Kent Hovind, and it’s pretty thorough — I learned a few new things. I hadn’t known that he claims to have four doctorates, and it has a good breakdown of several examples of his bad math. However…

Does it feature any apocalyptic imagery? No.

How many times does it mention Hitler? Only once.

Does it have a doom-laden industrial soundtrack? Nope.

Sorry, RationalWiki, but you are hampered by that “rational” thing. When you’re talking about Kent Hovind, you need to bring the gold-plated stupid to the fore. Kent knows this. Kent knows how best to summarize his life: with lies and screeching and threats of imminent destruction.

Like in his trailer for a possible “documentary” that Creation Science Evangelism is making (warning: grisly scenes of death and corpses, and truly over-the-top Godwining).

That is so metal.

I notice, though, that for all of his Hitler-howling, most of the trailer is somehow about how he was an innocent man thrown into prison for blamelessly preaching the Gospel, rather than mentioning that he was really imprisoned for blatant tax evasion. C’mon, Kent, own your badassery: you were arrested for defying those Satanic tax accountants. You can’t simultaneously claim to be be a brave rebel while hiding behind claims of pious innocence.

Also, the title needs work: An Atheist’s Worse Nightmare? Seriously, Kent, comparing yourself to a banana is so wimpy.

I do feel a lot of sympathy for the RationalWiki crew, though. Imagine if this Hovind “documentary” ever actually happens — the fact-checking will be exhausting. It’s going to be measured in errors/second, or lies/second.

I want to turn this world upside down

Behold Eric Greitens, who is running for office in Missouri by advertising his ability to fire really big guns.

He’s getting millions in donations for his campaign.

Now here’s Daisy Ridley, who attended an event that recognized the victims of gun violence, and wrote this:

Thinking about how lucky I am like……… Serious bit: as I sat in the audience yesterday tears were streaming down my face at the tribute to those that have been lost to gun violence. I didn’t get a great picture of the incredible group that came on stage but they were so brave. It was a true moment of togetherness. We must ‪#‎stoptheviolence‬

Weeping at the useless deaths of so many people so strongly antagonized NRA fanatics that they hounded her off instagram.

I want to live in a world where the Eric Greitens are laughed at and don’t have a chance of being elected to office, and the humanism of the Daisy Ridleys is appreciated and praised.

This is not that world.

Mike Pence, creationist

In 2001, a French anthropologist discovered some very interesting specimens in West Central Africa: the skulls of some 6-7 million year old apes that showed some chimpanzee-like features and some human-like features. He called it Sahelanthropus tchadensis.

In 2002, Mike Pence used the bully pulpit of the house of representatives to denounce Sahelanthropus and the entire theory of evolution, in a pointless exercise of flouting his ignorance. Why, I don’t know; perhaps he thought he could use a scientific discovery to somehow legislate against science? The performance has been caught on video.

It’s an extended riff on the “just a theory” argument, revealing that he doesn’t understand what a scientific theory means. He cites the 1925 Scope trial as the moment where this mere “theory” was legislated into the classroom and taught as fact; wrong. The Scopes trial was the result of a law that tried to prohibit teaching evolution, the side of science lost the case, and the theory has been taught in classrooms ever since because it is the best-supported explanation of the history of life. And evolution is a fact — life has not been static, but species change over time.

Then he claims that we all remember our classrooms illustrated with that linear portrayal of humans evolving from little monkeys to Mel Gibson. Well, I’ve been teaching for 30 years that that linear sequence is wrong, and that evolution is all about branching descent, which is also, as it happens, how Darwin thought about it (that popular Time-Life illustration is a true curse on evolution education).

darwinsdrawing

But I also challenge Pence on his claim that this portrayal was ubiquitous in classrooms. I had a public school education, in the liberal stronghold of King County, Washington, and never once heard the word “evolution” pass the lips of my teachers. What I learned about evolution before college I got from sneaking into the “Adult” section of the local public library, because this was a subject they didn’t even allow children to read about.

Pence reads about Sahelanthropus and claims to be surprised, that this represents a new theory that human evolution was taking place all across Africa and on the Earth. Uh, what? He also criticizes it because the textbooks will have to be changed, because the old theory of evolution…is suddenly replaced by a new theory.

I really want to play poker with Mike Pence. The astonishment on his face when the second hand dealt to him is different from the first will be something to behold. He will be aghast that the rules of poker get changed with every deal.

And then he gets to his point. Every theory is equivalent. We ought to also teach the theory that the signers of the declaration of independence believed — that humans were created by a creator. The Bible tells us that God created man in his own image, male and female he created them, and I believe that. He also thinks that scientists will come to see that only the theory of intelligent design provides even a remotely rational explanation for the known universe. Alas, scientists have scrutinized intelligent design explanations for a century or two now, and have generally found them to be useless crap.

It’s clear. Mike Pence is not only a babbling loon, but he’s a generic Biblical creationist who sees Intelligent Design creationism as a loophole to smuggle his religious ideas into the classroom. He’s wrong about virtually everything in that pompous little speech.

He’s lucky in one thing, though: he’s got Donald Trump boldly distracting most of the media from making any noise about Mike Pence’s incompetence and ignorance. Even without Trump, I don’t want this goober anywhere near high office.

Cruel and unusual punishment

Today is the day that Answers in Genesis begins their Renew-A-Thon. For a mere $299 (with additional expenses for hotel and meals, but hey, that includes free parking and admission to the Creation “Museum” and Ark Park!), or $459 for a family of 5, you can sit through two long miserable weeks of bullshit from a parade of liars. I took a look at their schedule, and I was tempted — not $300 tempted, but more like $1.99 for a couple of lectures tempted — because dear gog, this looks awful, like here’s a giant blob of jello and me with a chainsaw awful.

Here’s a piece of that schedule. It goes on for ten days beyond what I’ve cut and pasted here.

AiGSchedule

I’m just goggling at it all. Start with the first lecture: The eyes don’t have it, by Tommy Mitchell. The molecular and morphological history of the animal eye is one of those beautiful examples of the evidence coming together to support evolution; this bozo is going to tear at it with weaponized ignorance, and the audience is going to eat it up. The second talk is Big Bang: exploding the myth, by the ridiculous Terry Mortenson. Mortenson spoke here in Morris 5 years ago, and it was two nights of non-stop dishonesty and garbage. Ken Ham? Irrelevant. The Genetics of Adam and Eve by Georgia Purdom will be a total misrepresentation of what science says.

One of the biggest debates in Christianity today concerns the first two people: were Adam and Eve real or are they the product of myths? Those who claim we have evolved over millions of years believe that Adam and Eve, as the Bible teaches about them, have no place in human history. They argue that the science of genetics proves we cannot be descended from only two people. Many Christians have accepted this position and propose that their historical existence is irrelevant to Christianity and the gospel. In this session, I will show how current findings from scientists who study DNA actually support the biblical position that Adam and Eve were real people. More importantly, I will demonstrate how absolutely necessary Adam and Eve are to understanding original sin and the redemptive work of Christ on the cross. Come find out why there can be no Jesus without a real Adam and Eve.

That’s simply not true. The molecular evidence says we did not descend from just two people, that our species evolved over 100,000 years ago, and that the hypothesis that we evolved from only Adam and Eve a mere 6,000 years ago is completely untenable. But of course, her real argument is that the Bible requires this counterfactual BS.

My blood pressure is rising just reading the schedule. It’s probably for the best that I’m not going to be there, because I wouldn’t make it past the first day.

I wonder how many attendees they’ll have?

Scientist smackdown!

John Benneth is a homeopath, and he wants to explain something to those godless scientists.

Atheists hate homeopathy because [this is going to be good] they worship science[wait for it…], and not knowing the science behind it they thinkthe pharmacy is inert [wait for it…]. They think the solute molecule disappears due to dilution [get ready…], when in fact it is “quantumized,” ionized into plasma by dissociation into the diluent as a perpetuating entangled wave[BOOM! Kook explosion!].

Whew. Was it good for you, too? Quantum plasma entangled argle bargle bibbity boo!

Wait. After the climax, there has to be a little letdown.

Some people just need to shut up about homeopathy until they learn more about it and it’s actual chemistry…

I call that “smugma,” the slime you get from arrogant cranks trying to look down on real scientists.

You’ve been on the edge of your seat, waiting for the question

Ray Comfort’s new “movie”, The Atheist Delusion, is available for download today. It’s another of his ambush interview shows, where he and his handheld camera go to random people on the street, he asks a loaded question of some sort, and then he pretends to have stunned them with some deep insight, aided by selective editing of the video. It’s cheesy and dishonest, and really boring — it’s the same way he’s made his previous schlocky messes.

This time, he’s been promoting it for months with this kind of promise:

kirkcameron

ATHEISM DESTROYED WITH ONE SCIENTIFIC QUESTION. Right. Like ol’ Ray would recognize science if it were a miniaturized complex electronic device that he could hold in his hand and then use to edit and upload video images to a larger network of computers accessible to the entire world, or something.

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I’m just going to call him the Amazing Racist from now on

He’s done it again. The Amazing Atheist is very upset that people are calling him a racist because he says racist things, so he’s made a video in which he demands that everyone stop calling him a mean name. His argument for why calling him a racist is unjust is basically that he claims everything he said was true…but then, that’s what every racist says about their arguments.

He claims there are two main reasons people accuse him of racism, and then proceeds to make the same old racist arguments with greater vehemence, like that will persuade. The two things he tries to defend are:

  • He’s pro-gentrification. He argues that it improves neighborhoods, and that is a good thing, which is true. The problem, though, is that it does so in a way that does not benefit the people in those neighborhoods. He even acknowledges that gentrification displaces people: he argues that it makes no difference, they’re living in a “shithole” and they’ll just move to a different “shithole”. Treating black people as a fungible mass is racism. You don’t deny that you’re racist by ignoring systemic effects of historical oppression and acting as if current oppression is no big deal.

  • He claims that black culture is a victim culture, and boy, does he ever hate victim culture. Feminism is also a victim culture, don’t you know. Apparently, victim culture is whenever a group or person that has been targeted for victimization actually speaks up and complains about the problem, says the atheist complaining loudly that he’s being victimized by SJWs.

Martin Hughes notices the irony.

Here’s the point I want to make absolutely clear. I don’t particularly care whether you label The Amazing Atheist a racist or not. What I’d like to say is that when The Amazing Atheist talks about race, he simply does not know what he’s talking about, and a lot of his fan base doesn’t, either. He’s an ignorant asshole.

And either one of those things is fine. I like ignorant people who will admit that they are ignorant, and I can stand assholes who actually have the intelligence and knowledge to logically back up their condescending tone. But the two of them together is as annoying as nails on a chalkboard.

And this combined with the fact that he is a hypocritical crybaby is grating. I can stand crybabies. Just be consistent about it. But the crybabies who go out of their way to label other people victim cults for hurting their feelings…and hypocritically sets up a victim cult of hundreds of thousands that caters to their every sniffle…. I’m sorry. I don’t get that.

I also don’t get that the Amazing Racist has never really said anything compelling or interesting about atheism, but has become popular by raging against feminism and minorities, neither criticisms that are particularly well-supported by atheism (and many of us would argue that they are antithetical to the humanist implications of godlessness), yet he sets himself up as a prominent, representative atheist.

YouTube, where atheism goes to rot

I haven’t been on YouTube for quite a while. I wonder why?

Oh. This is why.

I stopped bothering because I didn’t want to be associated with these goons, and it didn’t matter what I said…any video would be swarmed with abuse. Every once in a while I tell myself I shouldn’t surrender the medium so easily and that I should at least make a little effort now and then, but meh…I’d have to come up with a vainglorious name, figure out how to animate a goofy avatar, and learn how to overlook a lot of gross logical fallacies.

Maybe I should take up some invitations to appear on more youtube podcasts, but the latest one I got just today…hoo boy. I don’t accept blindly, so I looked up some of their recent videos, and first thing I saw was one announcing that transgenders are mentally ill, and decided that no, I can just ignore that person forever and not miss anything of interest.

We might be able to get a few of us on FtB to try a joint project, but again, I think they all share Steve Shive’s impression of the youtube atheist community.

Tim LaHaye: No rapture for you!

One of the loudest purveyors of that absurd (and coincidentally, completely un-biblical) End Times/Rapture bullshit, Tim LaHaye, has ceased to exist. His brain has stopped functioning, his self has dissipated into the cosmos as nothing more than a final sigh of heat, and he is not frolicking about in Heaven or roasting in Hell, because those places don’t exist, and because neither does he, any more. He is not discovering now that he was wrong about everything in life, because he is dead, and it’s only the living who have to deal with the lies he promoted while he was alive.

The only thing I’m sad about right now is that he doesn’t have to suffer the consequences of the misery he dealt to LGBTQ people, to teenagers who were inculcated with an unjustified mortal terror, and to all those people who wasted donation dollars to his fraudulent organization.