Another reason to avoid visiting Answers in Genesis

Those porn sites you’ve been browsing? They’ve been slurping in more of your private data than you think. A paper has been published documenting the invasive practices of many websites. They’re doing something called history hijacking, using code that grabs your entire browsing history so they can monitor every site you’ve visited. Cute, huh? There are tools you can use to block this behavior if you’re using Firefox, at least.

Several people have written to me about this because of Table 1 on page 9 of the paper. There among the porn and gaming and commercial sites one stands out as unusual. It’s the only site with the category of “religion”.

It’s Answers in Genesis.

Yep, don’t be surprised. Answers in Genesis wants to know where you’ve been.

Even better, a reader named Ivan extracted the sleazy history hijacking code from the AiG site. Wanna see it? It’s actually rather amusing. I’ve put it below the fold.

[Read more…]

Hooo-weeee! Look what the state of Kaintucky is gittin’ for $37 million!

This ain’t gonna be free: the state guvmint is kickin’ in $37 million in tax incentives to help a gang of Bible-totin’ theocrats build a fancy Disneyland for ignoramuses. This is what it’s gonna look like, they think:

i-62094e9f35db8e6e9d63214a1ea08749-ark.jpeg

Lookie there: the centerpiece will be a genuwine, life-sized, full scale copy of Noah’s very own ark, all 300 cubits by 50 cubits by 30 cubits of it, and they say it’s gonna be built with materials and methods as close to possible as the ones in the Bible. Where they gettin’ gopherwood? And are they really gonna build it with handsaws and mallets and wooden pegs? That’s gotta be impressive, but it’s gonna be tough to git’r done by 2014.

But wait a consarned minute: it ain’t floatin’. And there’s no talk of stockin’ it with 8,000 pairs of animals, or however many they say there ought to be in there. I’ll give ’em a pass on fillin’ it with dinosaurs (well, maybe not…some say they’re daid, but the folk at AiG say they’re just hidin’), but I want elephants and hippos and giraffes and sheep and pigs and cassowaries and kangaroos and rhinoceroses and monkeys and squirrels and everythin’ tucked in there, to give me the true and odoriferous varmint-rich Ark Experience.

They also claim this big ol’ project is going to make 900 jobs in Kentucky. I don’t believe it. Read your Bible. The original Ark did float, and it did carry a whole menagerie, and it only employed eight people. They’re cuttin’ corners here with their non-floatin’ critter-free ark, so I’m expectin’ they’ll hire six, at most. And that’s generous.

OK, and maybe a couple more to sell tickets, and a few more to hand out kewpie dolls at the booths, and sell cotton candy. But heck, you can just hire a bunch of carnies to do that, and they work cheap.

They’ll be especially cheap since Governor Beshears is workin’ hard to make sure the entire freakin’ state of Kentucky is populated with people qualified to work as carnies, and not much else. Yeehaw!

Gov. Beshear has been twittered

We have at least a cursory account of the creationist press conference in Kentucky, in which Governor Beshear proudly announced the state’s cooperation with Answers in Genesis in promoting lies to children. It’s via Twitter, so just read it from bottom to top:


joesonka
Video of the press conference (Kentucky’s Shame) coming soon. Yaba Daba doo!


31 minutes ago


joesonka
Press conference over. Kentucky has had many humiliating days in its history, but this has to rank near the top


32 minutes ago


joesonka
I ask if Beshear supports young earth creationism being taught in public schools. He says we’re not here to talk about that


35 minutes ago


joesonka
No rollercoasters!!!


about 1 hour ago


joesonka
Judge Exwcutive says he agrees with aig’s religious beliefs


about 1 hour ago


joesonka
Flack journalists asking about dimensions of ark. Dude…


about 1 hour ago


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I ask if dinosaurs will be in the Ark. Beshear gives icy stare. AiG flack says YES


about 1 hour ago


joesonka
Beshear says this is all about the bling bling. If they can support Nascar, they can support these nuts


about 1 hour ago


joesonka
Beahear says it’s not unconstitutional


about 1 hour ago


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Gushing about how supportive and enthusiastic Beshear and Gov office has been on this project


about 1 hour ago


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Answers in Genesis dude says it’s “high tech and cutting edge”


about 1 hour ago


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Plan is to open Spring 2014, get 1.6 million dolts to visit in first year


about 1 hour ago


joesonka
Gov here and excited about bringing “Biblical stories” to the bluegrass. Surreal


about 1 hour ago


joesonka
Still waiting on Steve Beshear and Ken Ham and Fred Flintstone


about 1 hour ago


joesonka
Answers in Genesis people here saying it’s been great working with the Gov. Say Geoff Davis told them he wishes he could be here.


about 1 hour ago


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Damon Thayer here. Says he’s excited that this is in heart of his district


about 1 hour ago


joesonka
More wow from the press release: http://yfrog.com/7331hcj


about 1 hour ago


joesonka
Press release says Creationist Theme Park will be $150 million to build. Is Dudley Webb in on this?


about 1 hour ago


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Wow http://yfrog.com/em1fc01j


about 1 hour ago


joesonka
The press kit: http://yfrog.com/44caq0j


about 2 hours ago

I bet the governor didn’t actually call the AiG flacks “nuts”. Although he should have.

And of course dinosaurs will be on the Ark. You can’t imagine how fanatical AiG is about their literal interpretation of the Bible: if it says Noah gathered all of the kinds of animals on the Ark, there can be no exceptions, all, including dinosaurs, must be on the Ark.

Ah, Kentucky. We’re going to be laughing at you for many years to come.

Short notice and bad creationist politics

Answers in Genesis is planning to build an idiotic creationist theme park in Kentucky — we’ve known that for a little while now. The latest news, though, is that they’ve brought Steve Beshears, governor of Kentucky, on board to participate in a press conference announcing the latest accomplishment of creationism. That’s right, the Democratic governor of Kentucky is going to endorse this latest monument to ignorance and miseducation.

Early tomorrow morning. That is, Wednesday. At 9:30. It’s a smart move, giving us little time to respond.

So, belatedly, I’ll ask you all to register your displeasure with the governor’s office. Especially if you are a resident of Kentucky, someone whose vote matters to this clown, let him know that you’re outraged…but outsiders expressing their polite disrespect for a pol pandering to anti-scientific wackaloons is also useful.

You can call him at:

Main Line: (502) 564-2611
Fax: (502) 564-2517
TDD: (502) 564-9551

Or use the contact form.

It’s almost certainly too late to convince him to back out of this deal with the goofball, especially since this notice is going up in the middle of the night and only a few hours before the meeting, but getting public disapproval piling up on his desk even after the fact will help him think twice before doing this kind of thing again.

Purpose, purpose, purpose

I once gave a lecture in which I summarized Intelligent Design arguments as simply repeating the word complexity a lot. I was wrong; I left out a word. They also use the word “purpose” a lot.

The latest example of the same tired old nonsense comes from Michael Behe, who really is just repeating the same thing he’s said many times before — in fact, he’s said it so many times that at this point it’s clear his brain is not engaged, and this is a reflex action by his typing fingers.

My contention is that ‘the purposeful arrangement of parts’ to achieve a specific purpose is the criterion that enables us to recognise design.

Wow. Circular argument is circular. What is design? The purposeful arrangement of parts. How do you know it’s purposeful? Because it has a purpose. How do you know it has a purpose? Because it looks designed. Repeat.

Let’s simplify his statement: “My contention is that things are purposeful because they achieve a specific purpose and that is the criterion that enables us to recognise purpose.” Yeah, that helps.

He has a counterargument to evolution:

The Darwinian alternative is to propose a phenomenon never observed anywhere, namely that complex machinery can assemble itself without any planning or direction.

Yet we do observe that all over the place, in the operation of the cell. Unless, of course, he’s now going to claim that thermodynamically-driven cellular processes are actually led along by tiny little invisible agents of the Lord.

P.T. Barnum was right

There’s a sucker born every minute, and you’ll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

The Creation “Museum” is expanding and building a theme park. It’s simply a fact that Ken Ham’s Institution of Ignorance is doing business like gangbusters — it is well-attended and successful, has low-brow appeal, has negligible operating expenses (unlike a real museum), and is drawing in crowds of rubes and doing a great job of separating them from their money. I’m not at all surprised that Ham is rubbing his hands together and calculating new ways to fleece the flock; it’s what his kind does.

It’s a bit embarrassing having this gigantic, growing symbol of the failure of American education metastasizing in our midst, but it’s not their fault. The way we’ll fix it is not to shut down the stupid place, but to teach people that creationism is foolishness, so that Ham’s flock shrinks.

Otherwise, though, there’s also the hope that this may be a fatal attack of hubris. There have been other cases of evangelical Christians building theme parks, and they don’t end well. Balancing on that thin line between preachiness and fun isn’t easy, and I don’t think the thin-skinned and frighteningly dour Ken Ham can do it.

What is it with kinesiologists?

I know it’s a respectable field; kinesiology is the study of human movement, and I’ve known some who are sensible and well-trained (applied kinesiology, on the other hand, is total bunk). But it’s becoming a bit like engineers and the Salem hypothesis — I also run into creationists who proclaim their kinesiology degrees, like the frothing mad Joseph Mastropaolo. I’m beginning to think there must be some deep conceptual hole in the formal educational background of kinesiologists.

Anyway, here’s another example: a professor of kinesiology, Phil Bishop has written the most wonderfully condescending and wrong letter to the Crimson White at the University of Alabama. I have to marvel at the ignorance of an individual so handicapped by stupidity and religion (whoops, pardon my redundancy), yet who still managed to flop his crippled way upwards to achieve a position with some intellectual authority.

Show compassion for atheist friends

Evolution has been a hot topic in the CW as of late. I understand the emotion that evolutionary theory carries for my atheist friends, but I can’t figure why my theist, deist and agnostic friends feel so much passion against Darwinism.

For Muslims, Jews and Christians, whether or not evolution happened is irrelevant. For these people, God created, but how He did so is not specified in detail.

However, for my atheist friends, Darwinism is essential. A Christian can believe in evolution or not, but an atheist must contrive some natural means for life and speciation that must, for philosophical consistency, exclude any Divine intervention.

An attack on evolution threatens the very foundations of atheism, so it is a “life and death” issue, and consequently an emotional one. Darwinism may have some serious problems, but hey, it’s the best they can do for now. So, Christians, show a little compassion for our atheist friends.

Ah, such a lovely illustration of the backwardness of religious thinking. Evolution is not a philosophical rationalization; it is not a desperate exercise in weird, wild apologetics that exists solely to justify an ideology. It’s the hard rock of reality in the path of your philosophical peregrinations. You can look like an idiot and try to butt heads against reality, or you incorporate it into your understanding. Creationists do the former. Rational people do the latter.

Get it? For atheists, evolution and other aspects of reality and the natural world come first, and the atheism comes second as a consequence, not a cause, of our understanding of the universe. For the fanatical Christian, apparently, their delusions come first, and any natural, real phenomena must be warped in their imaginations to fit their weird and unsupportable interpretation of how the universe ought to be. And they seem to think other people’s minds are distorted in the same way.

It’s like looking at a dancer and arguing that she must have invented the concept of a floor in order to carry out her heathenish gyrations, and oh, fortunate Christian that he is, Phil Bishop gets to pretend that his dance is free of the constraints of gravity and frames of reference and the stage and the music. Which is probably why he looks like a spastic klutz with no rhythm when he trips onto the dance floor.

Death Cult Ray is feeling peevish

Poor little Ray Comfort is out of sorts because I accused him of promoting a death cult. He does, of course; he wanders about, accusing people of being sinners damned to hell, and pretending that they can be save by believing his Jebus stories.

The amusing part about his latest whine is that he misspells my last name multiple times, even gets my initials wrong once, and also misspells Larry Moran‘s name. I don’t think his brain is working right. He also accuses me of backing out of a radio debate with him — he knows that is not true, and was informed by the radio station that it was their decision.

In addition to the bad brain, I think he just likes lying.

Magnets. How do they work?

That’s not the Insane Clown Posse…it’s Ray Comfort again, screwing up once more.

First, he complains about Richard Feynman (I know! Comfort vs. Feynman sounds a bit like Bambi vs. Godzilla), because he didn’t give a simple answer to the question about how magnets repel and attract, but actually goes on at length about what are good questions before explaining succinctly that these forces are everywhere, we just take them for granted. It might be annoying if you want a one-sentence answer, but aren’t willing to accept “go master Maxwell’s equations” as that explanation.

Comfort’s explanation is to watch this video. You will discover that it says nothing about how magnetism, but is only a cheap trick that he uses to hook people into his hateful evangelical baloney. This whole “everyone is evil” crap is Christianity’s worst contribution to humanity, and it’s the entirety of Comfort’s schtick.

If Comfort tried that game with me, I’d take his box away, ask him to show me whether he’s good or bad, and when it automatically announces that he’s a bad man, ask him why I should believe one word out of his lying mouth.

CSE: Not crazy enough for Joshua Joscelyn

Joshua Joscelyn is a fellow who, once upon a time, worked within Kent Hovind’s creation science ministry. No more, though; he has just posted his resignation letter on facebook. Has he finally seen the light of science? Has he at last seen through the fact that Kent Hovind was a deluded and not-very-bright con artist? No, of course not. He’s still a true believer.

I first came to work with CSE in mid 2007 as a park guide at Dinosaur Adventure Land, swiftly moving into my roles as head of publications and the apologetics departments as well as producer for the popular series, Creation in Common Sense. This was shortly after Dr. Kent Hovind, a personal hero of mine from the time I was a child, had been unjustly sentenced to a despicable sentence of ten years by a kangaroo court at the hands of an evil woman who pretended to be a judge of the law. I managed Dr. Hovind’s blog through those years, and communicated frequently with him. He is a Godly man. But from the time I had begun there, I had noticed a subtle attitude of disagreement with and even scorn for many of Dr. Kent Hovind’s beliefs and methods for managing the ministry.

Hovind’s trial was an open and shut case; he hadn’t been paying taxes, was paying all of his employees cash under the table, and Hovind himself tried to defend his actions by accusing the court of “subornation of false muster”, insisting that the IRS had no jurisdiction in a case of tax fraud.

But apparently loony Joshua thought all that stuff was just great. He’s very unhappy with the new Creation Science Evangelism because they have bowed down to Mammon and done things like reincorporate as “God Quest, Inc.”, and actually tried to obey the law.

I stood by and curiously watched as God Quest, Inc. signed my checks and withheld federal income tax as well as social security, etc. I grieved when I had to assist in overseeing the gutting process whereby the Seminar Series and College Series were stripped of so much that was deemed “controversial” or “irrelevant.” The idea was to remove all content that might seem radical or offensive. His father’s longstanding policy to never ask for money (since God always provided anyway) was overturned, and marketing and fundraising became more and more commonplace.

CSE is impure. They no longer insist on the absolute literal truth of the King James Version of the Bible over all others (all others are “false and corrupt”), they pay taxes, they allow Calvinists to appear on their programs, they didn’t pay Joshua enough for his work, and they aren’t sufficiently dedicated to the cause, favoring money over all.

It’s a bizarre and fascinating rant. Kent Hovind was a fast-talking yokel, a racist moron with a fake degree and a head full of lies, yet he was somehow persuasive to a lot of really stupid people…and still is, actually, with his videos still being distributed and watched. I’d seen him perform live, and didn’t get it: he’s an odd speaker with some strange affectations who raced through a hodge-podge of slides at a ridiculously rapid rate, so fast that he’d never dwell on a point for more than 10 or 20 seconds, and his one skill was the ability to babble with unthinking confidence.

He didn’t so much pass information to his audience as stand at the front of the room and yell “I’m right, I’m right, I’m right” so fast that no one could get a word in edgewise. It worked, I guess; some people are still under his spell. It’s weird, because if anything, he radiated anti-charisma — it was as if someone gave the village idiot a few pounds of crystal meth and put him on stage. It says something about a person when they regard that as noble and heroic.