Kent Hovind will hate this

Did you want to listen to a podcast that does a deep dive on Kent Hovind? This one is rather savage, so I enjoyed it. It covers his early career — getting a fake degree from a Bible college, his years spent teaching “high school biology” (which turns out to be entirely at unaccredited Christian schools) — and then gets into his tax fraud and infatuation with sovereign citizens.

And then it ends, just before the prison years. I guess we’ll have to wait for part two.

Tucker Carlson has always been ignorant & nuts

His madness was exposed on Joe Rogan’s show — and Carlson made Rogan look intelligent, which is quite a feat.

The 3-hour conversation, which racked up 5 million views on Rogan’s Youtube channel in just 3 days, left many online baffled after Carlson claimed, among other things, that scientists had given up on the idea of evolution.

“It’s visible,” Rogan replied. “Like, you can measure it in certain animals.”

In response, Carlson alleged that adaptation could be measured but that the theory of evolution as articulated by scientist Charles Darwin was not true.

I have a lot of dogs, I see adaptation in dogs through… litter to litter. But no, there’s no evidence at all, none, zero, that people evolved seamlessly from a single cell amoeba, Carlson said. No, there’s not. There’s no chain in the fossil record of that at all.

While the transition from unicellular to multicellular lifeforms is still a murky field of inquiry [No. Also irrelevant. The evidence of common descent is crystal clear], some experiments and findings have affirmed the theory. In 2010, a study published in Nature by the biochemist Douglas Thomas found that the theory that all life comes from a shared genetic heritage with single-celled microorganisms, called the theory of universal common ancestry (UCA), is “millions of times more probable than any theory of multiple independent ancestries.”

Carlson went on to state that he had his own theories, which boiled down to the belief that God created people, distinctly, and animals.

I think that’s like what every person on Earth thought until the mid-19 century, actually, Carlson said before breaking into a deranged laugh.

Yeah, that deranged laugh. Look it up. It’s pure madness. And what he said was just wrong, errors compiled from straight-up creationist lies. One of the clues is that reference to single cell amoeba — only creationists claim we think humans are descended from an amoeba, which is a rather highly derived protist (which is also a polyphyletic group, but one that doesn’t include any animal ancestors).

But Carlson’s fallacies don’t stop there. He’s lately been touting psychic prophets.

Tucker Carlson clearly thinks highly of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, telling Joe Rogan that he believes he is a psychic prophet who predicted 9/11. (Note: Alex Jones did not predict 9/11.)

He’s channeling something, Carlson said. I’ve asked him about it. ‘How did you do that?’ At length, during dinner on my barn recently. We’re talking about this. ‘How’d you do that?’ ‘I don’t know. It just came to me.’ And that’s real. That is real. The supernatural is real and I don’t know why it’s hard for for the modern mind, I guess because it’s a materialist mind to accept that.

That’s not a new phenomenon. It’s happened throughout history. There are people called prophets, and there are people who were prophets who weren’t called prophets, but there are people who have information or parts of information, bits of information, visions of information come to them and then they relay it, Carlson said.

The man’s brain is broken. It’s probably been broken since the start of his bow-tied career, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the loss of his privileged position at Fox News has sent him into an ugly tailspin.

Grendel was a T. rex?

You’ve got to appreciate a little theological infighting. I don’t usually bother to read Catholic Answers, but this example made me laugh.

First, though, the Catholic church isn’t equivalent to Ken Ham’s or Kent Hovind’s weird little cults. Catholicism is a bit more waffly about the science, so this article starts with a disclaimer: the Church doesn’t take a strong stance on evolution, so you can’t use the truth or falsity of evolution to defend the faith.

I want to make it clear that the Catholic church does not have a teaching about the theory of evolution or the extinction of the dinosaurs. You can be a faithful Catholic and deny or accept evolution. You can be a faithful Catholic and believe the sun revolves around the earth. The Church doesn’t teach on these scientific questions. Now Hall says he does not want to dogmatize young earth creationism and I appreciate him saying that. He just asks that people like me not use evolution to evangelize others.

OK, it’s a troubling position to take, but I get what they’re going for. If I want to promote stamp-collecting, philately doesn’t concern itself with 20th century steamships, so don’t use your ideas about the sinking of the Titanic to convince people to collect stamps. It’s irrelevant and unnecessary.

On the other hand, though, it does rather undermine the expectation that Catholicism is at all interested in truth when they avoid the science, but that’s a different debate. Some other time…

What I found interesting is that they talk about a different breed of young earth creationist argument that I hadn’t heard of before. Isn’t it delightful that they keep coming up with increasingly insane beliefs? I had heard the claim that the dragon in the myth of St George and the Dragon was an example of a dinosaur that had persisted into the Middle Ages, but this is a new one on me: Grendel in Beowulf was a dinosaur. Specifically, a T. rex. This guy at the Kolbe Center says Grendel perfectly matches the description of some sort of T. rex dinosaur.

However, Hugh Owen, the director or the Kolbe Center says these historical sources do describe dinosaurs in medieval England. He cites the creature Grendel in the 10th century English epic poem Beowulf as an example.

Okay. First, Grendel is a male not a female and Beowulf rips out his arm and kills him before killing Grendel’s mother with a sword. Second, it’s silly to say that this means Grendel was a T-rex with stubby arms and a human being really killed a T-rex in this way. The idea that Grendel was a T-rex attacking 7th century Danish people comes from Creationist Bill Cooper’s book After the Flood. The problem is that, contra Owen and Cooper, Grendel is not specifically described in Beowulf. Grendel is said to be a descendant of Cain and that he is to be larger than any other man and Grendel’s mother is said to be in the form of a woman. They were probably some kind of hominid or human life monster, they definitely weren’t a pair of T-rexes.

To quote myself, “It’s hard to be funny about creationism because it is such obvious bullshit that I feel like all you need to do is transcribe what they say literally and stand back and go “See? See?” while underlining and circling their own words.” That’s a perfect example.

It’s gone past funny to depressing

Creationists are pathetic and detestable.

The alt text on this comic reads, “Disappointed with myself that I haven’t done a creationism joke in years. Six years is like 0.1 percent of the past.” I sympathize. It’s hard to be funny about creationism because it is such obvious bullshit that I feel like all you need to do is transcribe what they say literally and stand back and go “See? See?” while underlining and circling their own words. They make comedy about creationism redundant.

What’s worse is that creationists are so damn serious about their fairy tales. Look at Stephen Meyer or Ken Ham — they’re so full of themselves and so committed to stating such ridiculous garbage while keeping a straight face. And it’s so sad to see people so adamant about wasting their lives defending the indefensible, and expanding the mythology by compounding the nonsense.

They’re trying to wear me down

I get email from creationists all the time, and it is so discouraging: there are a few people who manage to pump out so much noise and garbage, and there are a few people willing to engage their nonsense, and I guess I’m one of them. But I can’t possibly keep up! For instance, one obnoxious creationist has sent me a couple of links to his horrible website, Darhiwum, which just goes on and on with bogus misinterpretations at endless length. This particular article first quotes Conservapædia, and then explores the author’s misbegotten thesis, which is…let’s see if you can figure it out.

The cause of evolution does not exist in evolution. Evolution as a cause does not contain a response to the cause that makes it consequent. It does not give an account of itself, why is evolution possible in the first place? It is merely a programmed biological process on an assembly line.

“Evolutionary units must know the “trick” of reproducing, they must have heredity, hereditary variation… The basic problem is that the first evolutionary units could not have evolved in an evolutionary way, because they did not have the necessary properties at that time.” /Evolutionary biologist Eőrs Szathmáry/.

Where did they get this “knack” – they have no idea!

A pre-existing ability cannot be developed afterwards, and if the ability to evolve /reproduction, mutation, variation, natural selection, heredity/ is not there in the first place, the evolutionary process cannot even start. Evolution can only work if all its components are present and working simultaneously. Where do we get these capabilities by which the alleged evolution takes place?

First, I have to get something out of the way, this contemptible habit creationists have of quote-mining scientists. Eőrs Szathmáry is a theoretical biologist who published with John Maynard Smith, wrote articles presenting the mechanisms for evolution, and was never arguing for creationism. This creationist, though, throws out a mishmash of Conservapædia and established scientists to somehow lard his ideas with some trace of authority.

Their article goes on for thousands of words, but their central stupid idea is that evolution needed to evolve a specific mechanism for mutation, but evolution cannot proceed without mutation. Error is apparently intentional and designed; error is the “capability” that needs to be put in place by design.

I tried to read this bozo’s work with an open mind, but as it sank in what he was trying to argue, I realized that he was just stupid and not worth the effort.

How desperate are you for a job as a teacher?

There’s an opportunity for you to teach physics, chemistry, and algebra, and all you need is a bachelor’s degree and student teaching experience. Easy! These are minimal qualifications that lot of newly graduating students could meet. Some of the other expectations, though…

The qualified individual must be an evangelical Christian committed to living a biblical lifestyle in all areas and in full agreement with the school’s statement of faith. The teacher is expected to be in alignment with the science and biblical positions held at Answers in Genesis and able to teach physical sciences (physical science, chemistry, and physics) and possibly math (Algebra 2/Pre-Calc.) from a biblical worldview in the classroom. The teacher must also be able to distinguish operational vs historical science as well as be able to articulate the evolutionary beliefs correctly while being able to refute them biblically and scientifically. The teacher must also have a good understanding of AiG’s presuppositional apologetic approach and know how to incorporate it in the classroom.

The teacher shall be one who feels called of God to the teaching profession. The teacher must maintain a teachable spirit while demonstrating patience, humility, integrity, and kindness while performing his/her day-to-day duties. He/she must be devoted to prayerfully work with administration, faculty, students, and parents to develop and maintain a school which is thoroughly Christian and academically exceptional. The teacher shall prayerfully help students learn attitudes, skills, and subject matter that will contribute to their development as mature, able, and responsible Christians to the glory of God.

Boy howdy, that’s a lot, especially given that AiG’s “operational/historical” categorization of science isn’t shared by any legitimate educational organization. I think their idea that their institution must be academically exceptional is going to be butting heads with their demand that it be thoroughly Christian.

But that’s not all! Their list of expectations go on and on and on, like they were lingering over the exercise, masturbating with their Bible while gleefully adding more and more Jebus to the job.

  • Adhere to the statement of faith
  • Be deeply committed to a consistent daily walk with Jesus Christ
  • Spend time daily in personal devotions and prayer
  • Faithfully attend a local, Bible-believing church
  • Be a Christian role model in attitude, speech, and actions towards others. This includes being committed to God’s biblical standards for sexual conduct (Luke 6:40)
  • Show by example the importance of Scripture study and memorization, prayer, witnessing, and unity in the Body of Christ
  • Follow the Matthew 18 principle in dealing with students, faculty, parents, and administration
  • Motivate students to accept God's gift of salvation and to grow in their faith
  • Possess the ability to work gracefully with parents, students, and other school staff to develop a unified and successful educational program
  • Demonstrate the ability to accept and carry out responsibilities and make competent, professional decisions
  • Be willing to eagerly participate in professional development
  • Recognize the role of parents as primarily responsible before God for their children's education and be prepared to assist them in that task
  • Maintain a personal appearance that is a Christian role model of cleanliness, modesty, good taste, and in agreement with school policy
  • Respectfully submit and be loyal to constituted authority. Teachers should notify the administration of any policy he/she is unable to support. Teachers should also be willing to provide input and constructive recommendations for administrative and managerial functions in the school

There’s much much more, most of it basic stuff about being able to work with students and parents, compose lesson plans, refuting false religions, etc. It’s all a big long warning that you are going to be completely micromanaged by a gang of authoritarians who will demand total dogmatic obedience.

Are you sold? Then all that’s left is a few final steps:

  • Completion of on-line application
  • Salary Requirements
  • Salvation Testimony
  • Creation Belief Statement
  • Confirmation of your agreement with the AiG Statement of Faith
  • Completion of a Background Check and Pre-Employment Drug Screen

They don’t say what they’re paying, though. I’d demand a few million dollars a year to debase myself that much.

Is astrology low-hanging fruit? How about creationism?

It’s odd that I haven’t seen much skeptical criticism of astrology lately — it’s one pseudoscience that has been laughed into the shadows. On the other hand, I see a lot of flat earth and creationist nonsense, and they’re just as or even more ridiculous as astrology, so I’m curious how nonsense gets promoted or dismissed in popular culture.

It may simply be a matter of what bits of popular culture we choose to read. John Gruber finds an example in the magazine Women’s Health.

So, what makes the Great American Eclipse of April 8, 2024 so special? Ancient astronomers — who, by the way, were also astrologers — believed that the geographical area where any eclipse was visible would energetically feel its effects the most.

Gruber has a nice simple rebuttal.

So here’s my “by the way” retort to Montúfar’s aside: how many astronomers today — not in “ancient” times — are also astrologers? Spoiler: the answer is fucking zero.

How many astronomers believe the Earth is flat? 0. How many physicists believe the Earth is 6,000 years old? Not quite 0, but pretty close. Similarly, how many biologists reject evolution? Again, practically 0, and the exceptions are all driven by weird religious ideologies and make no contribution to science.

Meanwhile, astronomers have discovered a black hole of 33 solar masses a mere 2000 light years away. Isn’t that more interesting than imaginary astrological forces following along in the wake of an eclipse’s shadow?

In yet another discursion, Angela Collier’s latest video (I know, some of my readers don’t care for her, but bear with me) is about the obvious grift of ‘spectacle debates’ in contrast to real scientific debates. She uses as an example the Nye-Ham creationist debate, and I 100% agree with her that that was a terrible debate. You know Ken Ham still brings it up in his talks quite frequently as a triumphant moment for creationism, right?

I laughed when she talked about how Nye just helped Ham pocket $400,000, and did publicity for Ham to get tax-free donations to build an ark and “definitely not private jets or whatever that guy does” because…Ken Ham does have a private jet, one that makes regular, mysterious trips to the Cayman Islands.

It’s a Cessna Citation V, ID N190JK, if you want to keep an eye on it. I wonder what a religious organization is doing making all those flights to well-known tax haven? Perhaps they’re busy converting the natives. Or just socking away all the profits from their spectacle debates and pseudoscience and stupid fake ark tourist trap.

More of the same old creationist junk

A new movie has come out!

Look at that ad — for a moment, I thought someone was finally going to make Jim Pinkoski’s vision real. I’d like to see a movie about T. rex battling foolish ancient Hebrews in a cataclysmic rainstorm.

Unfortunately, then I watched the trailer. The narrator sounds bored. It seems to be a set of CGI segments spliced together, retelling bits of the book of Genesis as if they’re historical. Now I’m bored, too.

This is the work of a guy named Dan Biddle, who runs an organization called Genesis Apologetics. They basically parrot whatever the Institute for Creation Research or Answers in Genesis says. I am amused that they say they will avoid “fringe” evidence provided by other creationist organizations.

Our ministry provides practical and easy-to-understand web, video, and written products for pastors, parents, and students. The materials provided will be those that are “core” to the Creationist position, which are generally held in agreement with leading creation ministries, such as www.answersingenesis.com and www.icr.org. We generally avoid “fringe” evidences that are controversial between these and other Creationist associations.

If you’re eager to see this movie, it’s only available in theaters today and tomorrow, at venues that aren’t specified (do you think the theatrical release is only to allow it to qualify for an Academy Award? We’ll find out next year.) If you miss it, don’t panic, I’m sure it will be playing in church basements for years to come, and I think they usually dump their cheap crap to YouTube for free.

Will Knowland knows nothing

Will Knowland was a teacher at Eton who was dismissed for making a video claiming that patriarchy was good after being told not to — I’m not keen on the idea of firing someone for expressing an opinion, but I do think it’s reasonable to fire teachers for ignorance and incompetence. Knowland has gone on to make more videos to demonstrate just how stupid he is. He has chosen to claim that evolution is false. Big mistake. Especially since his arguments are pathetic.

I have the transcript. Let’s see how big a dumbass Will Knowland is.

here are eight things about Evolution that I wasn’t taught in school

Correct. He wasn’t taught the following things in school because they are wrong.

0:05 number one because Free Will is real and humans are rational any materialistic account of our Origins is certainly false this means darwinian materialistic evolution is and that’s why people who hold that worldview end up denying human rationality and Free Will including their own the two stand or fall together

I think free will arguments are all bad, no matter what side you take, so I’m not going to touch that one. The argument about rationaility, though, I think, is already refuted, because his claims are all irrational. Humans aren’t particularly rational — we’re all creatures of emotion and bias, and I note that Knowland fails to provide any supporting evidence or arguments otherwise. It’s an assertion with no rational support.

It’s also false to claim that science and evolution, specifically, require the rejection of rationality.

0:32 number two the oldest rocks on Earth date from 3.8 to 3.98 billion years ago but life was present 3.81 billion years ago so life had only 100 to 170 million years to evolve that is an instant a blink of the eye in evolutionary time

Remember that: 100 to 170 million is a blink of the eye. I’m inclined to think that 100 million years is an incredibly long time — lots can happen in a million years or a thousand. The origin of life was a process of chemical evolution. How many chemical reactions can occur in that span of time?

0:58 number three there’s no evidence for concentrated organic pools on early Earth no empirical evidence whatsoever and without a blueprint to direct it and convert it raw energy isn’t usable anyway but since these are only produced by life this is the Catch-22 and don’t say life came from space that just pushes the problem one step back where did it begin if it came from space

How concentrated is concentrated? Is he claiming to be a quantitative organic chemist now?

The best models for the origin of life now suggest it arose in deep-sea volcanic vents, which are rich in the precursors for organic molecules, and also provide the energy necessary for the reactions to produce them. Right now, electrons are being shuffled across inorganic substrates, reducing compounds and creating the building blocks of life without “blueprints.” It’s all chemistry. All of life is chemistry.

OK, I won’t say life came from space. That’s just bullshit anyway. Why does Knowland feel the need to put bogus arguments into his critics’ mouths?

1:33 number four there are millions of transitional forms organisms observable across successive Generations appear fully formed they have no ancestors or Bridges and they don’t change and don’t say punctuated equilibrium that is empirically equivalent to creationism

At least he admits that there are many transitional forms, but it’s weird that he then claims they can have no ancestors. All organisms are functional, or they wouldn’t exist. Evolution is all about changes from one fully functional organism to a different fully functional organism by small successive variations. We’d be very surprised to discover a species that arose from a non-viable population of incomplete organisms.

Again, he puts a bogus argument in our mouths. Punctuated equilibrium is about rates of change in subsets of a population. It’s not a version of creationism. Eldredge and Gould would be very surprised to be told that they have invented a creationist theory.

1:57 number five some structures require the whole structure to be in place to be functional imagine having one tenth of an eye or one one hundredth of a heart or one one thousandth of a penis

Most birds, to name one counter-example. Most birds (excepting ducks, obviously) lack a penis and mate by cloacal kissing. Clearly you don’t need a whole massive 3mm long penis to successfully reproduce, as he should know since he has 7 children.

Similarly, we evolved from organisms that have little more than a muscular tube for a heart and an open circulatory system, or that have only an eyespot that can only sense light and dark. We have a plethora of examples of simpler hearts, eyes, and reproductive organs that are entirely functional.

2:19 number six there are built-in limits to genetic material Darwin thought natural selection worked a bit like dog breeding but humans can’t make a dog the size of an ant or a whale and we definitely can’t create a new species out of dogs and that’s despite centuries of intelligent intervention speciation has never been observed

What are the mechanisms that impose these limits? He doesn’t say. Creationists never do. Besides, speciation has been observed.

Refer back to his objection number two, where he says 100 to 170 million is an eyeblink, yet now he argues that the limitations of a few centuries refutes evolution.

2:49 number seven DNA is literally not figuratively a code it embodies meaningful information it’s like the typewriter not the message there’s currently a 10 million dollar prize for anyone who can demonstrate a naturally encoding and decoding system nobody can

Man, that metaphor went kablooieeee. So DNA is literally a code, like a typewriter? What? None of that makes sense.

The existence of loons who want to offer a prize for demonstrating something that silly is not a point in its favor, especially since they’re going to automatically reject the existence of the “encoding and decoding system” embodied in cells. This $10 million prize does sort of exist, at least as a PR stunt and hype engine for Perry Marshall, a guy with a degree in electrical engineering and no understanding of biology at all. He doesn’t have $10 million to give away, so the entire “prize” is contrived to make sure no one can possibly win. That is not a point in its favor.

3:12 number eight cells edit their own DNA in real time in response to threats this isn’t random and there is variation and adaptation before natural selection can occur talking about selfish genes also assumes the very teleology and purpose that Darwin explicitly denied

I don’t think he’s talking about gene editing here — that’s a completely different phenomenon. Since it’s “in response to threats” I suspect he’s mangling the idea of modifying gene expression in response to the environment. There’s nothing in that counter to the idea of evolution whatsoever. It’s a natural and well-understood biochemical and physiological process.

The selfish gene concept does not assume teleology. Some gene sequences can use cellular machinery to amplify their representation in the genome. That’s all.

3:37 and then we’ve got metaphysical problems life didn’t come from non-life animal life didn’t come from plant life man the rational animal didn’t come from non-rational animals these are all differences in kind not degree go into your garden pick up a stone and look at it and think of it one day evolving into being able to compose a symphony solve a theorem write a novel you can’t evolve a thin line into a thick one by simply extending it that’s what it’s like trying to get life from non-life animal life from plant life rational life man from non-rational Life The Brute animals

Those look like metaphysical assumptions, not problems. Animals evolved independently from the lineage that gave rise to plants, for one thing. Life had to have come from non-life, unless you think life has existed eternally. Stones don’t evolve, since they don’t reproduce. This all sounds like incoherent word vomit from a guy who doesn’t understand anything he’s babbling about.

Now for his grand conclusion…

4:24 so what do I think about Evolution now the church fathers are clear that God could have worked through evolutionary processes in creating man’s body but certainly not in creating his intellect and at least some creatures were created fully formed and many stemmed evolution of the others was involved

I don’t give a flying fuck what the “church fathers” said. They aren’t authorities on evolution by any stretch of the imagination.

Well, that’s all he’s got. Once again, a creationist demonstrates the paucity of intellect behind their reasoning, and their whole position goes down in flames. Maybe he needs to stop assuming that he is a rational being and try to earn that adjective.