Ken Ham claims to have turned 60 years old yesterday. I don’t believe him. For one thing, I wasn’t there, and for another, if we apply the same magnitude of error to his age that he does to the age of the universe, he’s actually less then 15 minutes old. And I’m sorry, Kenny, you don’t get presents for being 15 minutes old. You get a spank, a couple of shots, and an Apgar score, nothing more.
Nah, not really. This is supposed to be the last day of our existence, according to Harold Camping, but not even the Christians believe him, and they’re pretty kooky.
Rocky Mountain, N.C.’s Glenn Lee Hill, a retired pastor of Meadowbrook Christian Church, has told The Christian Post, “The late night comics tend to make fun of Christians anyway and when this happens it gives them an opportunity to mock us.”
Hill fervently refutes Camping’s latest rapture claim that “the end is going to come very, very quietly, probably within the next month. It will happen by October 21.”
According to the retired minister, “That is an erroneous prophecy, I don’t believe the world is about to end. Jesus has provided the choice for people to live forever.”
That’s from a Christian news site which then concludes on this note.
Fifty-eight percent of white evangelical Christians say Christ will return to earth by the year 2050, by far the highest percentage in any religious group, according to the survey.
By the year 2050, 23 percent of Americans believe that Christ will definitely return, and 18 percent more believe he will probably have returned to earth by that date.
It seems to me that if you’re one of those evangelical Christians, you’re just as insane as Harold Camping. The only difference is that you believe the Bible verse that says no one can prophesy the date, and Camping is skeptical.
You get mad raving nonsense.
In my opinion, Adam and Eve were born with a small organ attached to their appendix tube. An organ that produced stem cells which kept their perfect human body perpetually healthy and forever the equivalent age of thirty years old. In my opinion, this now missing human organ is the Tree Of Life depicted in the Bible’s book of Genesis; an organ that grew from a now missing 24th human chromosome in the human genome. To ‘take fruit’ from the Tree Of Life is to live forever… immortality.
As most of us know, Adam and Eve contaminated themselves by eating the forbidden fruit (cells) from the Tree Of The Knowledge Of Good And Bad. The forbidden fruit (cells) was the ingestion of cells, chromosomes, genes and DNA found in the flesh of mammals. This destroyed the 24th chromosome in Adam and Eve’s reproductive cells (sperm and egg), and also destroyed the Tree Of Life organ attached to their appendix tube. With the 24th chromosome gone from Adam’s sperm cells, and the 24th chromosome gone from Eve’s egg cells, hereditary immortality could not be passed on to their offspring, and hence, to all human beings thereafter. To ‘take fruit’ from the Tree Of The Knowledge Of Good And Bad is to positively die… mortality.
Most of us also know that God took a rib from Adam in order to build Eve. The rib was taken before Eve came into existence. The rib was taken before any kind of contamination to the human genome. The rib was human flesh, blood and bone; human cells, chromosomes, genes and DNA. The rib was made of human cells that have the 24th human chromosome that produces the Tree Of Life organ attached to the appendix tube. Adam’s rib cells are immortal human cells with 48 chromosomes (24 pairs), rather than our present 46 chromosomes (23 pairs).
My theories will also show you that Jesus was born from an uncontaminated rib cell. Jesus was born with a 24th pair of human chromosomes in his body cells, which produced the Tree Of Life organ attached to his appendix tube. Adam and Eve were born immortal (to begin with). Jesus was born immortal. My theories will show you that all human beings are destined to become immortal, after the ‘first’ death.
An opinion is not a sound foundation for a scientific hypothesis—or even a pseudoscientific one. Show me evidence.
There is no evidence of a magical small organ ever being attached to the end of the appendix.
We already produce small numbers of stem cells throughout life. They don’t confer immortality, nor is there any reason to expect they would.
A large collection of pluri- or toti-potent stem cells might have some advantages in enhancing regeneration. They’d have the disadvantage of also being a source of cancers.
Chromosomes don’t map to organs. Organs don’t grow from chromosomes.
Other apes do have 24 pairs of chromosomes. They aren’t immortal.
Eating fruit, or even magic fruit made of mammalian flesh, won’t selectively destroy a chromosome. And if it did, it wouldn’t have the mild consequence of knocking out an organ.
Where did Jesus’ mother get that uncontaminated rib cell?
48 chromosome Jesus just confirms my hypothesis that Jesus was a chimpanzee. You can’t prove I’m wrong!
He goes on for many pages of absurd speculation. Did you know that when Doubting Thomas was poking around in Jesus’ wound, he was actually inspecting his appendicular organ?
(via Adam Rutherford)
Eugene Delgaudio, a fellow calling himself the “Public Advocate of the United States” and from an organization called “Traditional Values”, writes to me a lot. To be fair, I think some kook somewhere signed me up for his newsletter — I get a lot of peculiar email that I only get because random organizations have an open sign-up process that allows them to be used for harassment — but poor Eugene is such a persecuted sad-sack that I thought I’d point and laugh at him a bit. He’s always complaining.
Dear PZ,
In the past, the radical homosexuals have attempted to kill me, even threatening and stalking my family. [Evidence?] However, all that did was make me more determined than ever to fight them. [Oh, come on, Eugene. You’ve been salivating over gay men for ages]
And with Public Advocate supporters’ help, I did.
Together, pro-family Americans have really rocked the Homosexual Lobby. We’ve held off so much of their agenda for so many years. [Like equality? Way to go!]
But now they want to take supporters like you out of the fight.
I’ve received letters from three different government agencies ordering me to stop sending mail to members like you. [Well, you know, I sympathize with the agencies here, since I’m a perfect example of a recipient of email abuse. I didn’t sign up for his deluge of paranoia, but he has such a sloppy opt-in sign-up that anyone can sign anyone else up for his crap.]
One letter from a Post Office bureaucrat actually declared my correspondence with Public Advocate members to be obscene! [This is one of his milder efforts. He actually is obsessed with homosexual practices, and tends to fantasize graphically about them.]
You see, in their sick world radical homosexuals can desecrate churches [Like that would bother me], spread their filth across the internet [I could send him lots more heterosexual porn, if he’d like], and run naked through the very halls of Congress [Has anyone seen that? I haven’t.].
But when I try to tell people about it, my letters are labeled obscene by those who serve the homosexuals’ purposes. [Like the post office? Your mailman might be gay, Eugene!]
And if they can find a judge who agrees with them, the legal consequences could be severe. Even if we win, the legal fees could destroy your Public Advocate. [Tell someone who cares.]
That’s why I’m desperate for you to send a contribution of $50 or even $100 today. I need your help right away, so I ask you to send whatever you can afford today.
Wait, what? This feeble complaint is a fundraising gimmick? I have seen the light! Christians have been poisoning the body politic for centuries, they send me threats, they frolic in the halls of Congress (clothes mostly on, but maybe you should read about the degenerates in The Family), I find their prudery obscene, and look! Wackos are sending me harassing email! Send me money. Paypal accepted. Cash in small bills also accepted. OK, very large bills are also fine, if you insist on forcing them on me.
Creationists have this idea that history can be nothing but an unremitting decline — their version of the second law of thermodynamics is a weird thing that has everything ratcheting down into chaos equally, with no possibility of local decreases in entropy at the expense of an overall greater increase. They have almost convinced me. I once would have said no one could be dumber than Kent Hovind, but I have seen the works of his son Eric, and it’s a forthright demonstration of creationist thermodynamics.
Eric Hovind has disproven the K-T meteor theory of dinosaur extinction.
It’s impossible for a couple of reasons for an asteroid to kill them [dinosaurs], because the asteroid, they say, was millions of years ago. The earth isn’t millions of years old. And second, they’ve lived with man, as is very very evident.
I’m so sorry. I’m looking at that quote, and realizing that as soon as I press the “publish” button, it will sweep out in a wave of electrons all around the world, and trillions and trillions of innocent neurons will die in agony as they try to parse it. And I think, I have the power to do that, but do I have the right? Is it ethical to inflict such cognitive pain on so many people?
Eh. Atheist, scientist, slightly mad.
I press the button. Bwahahaha!
(Also on Sb)
He calls Mormonism a “truly American faith”. I don’t think Brown actually knows anything about the Mormons other than the whitewash they’ve been given in their efforts to become more mainstream.
Mormonism is detested by some American evangelicals because it is “not Christianity” – but perhaps more because it is the first, great, truly American religion. It is founded on claims that no outsider can take seriously, but validated by one of the greatest epics of the settlement of the west, and secured by prosperity and tithing.
David Barton and Sally Kern have a conversation.
Barton: With all of the protection we have for free speech, there’s still a number of areas where you’re not free to speak out on certain things. If you touch homosexuality, be prepared to pay a price, not just attacks, it’s gonna cost you economically, other things as well, may cost your life. This is, the way people respond to what you say about homosexuality if you criticize it and we got Sally Kern today, State Rep from Oklahoma who experienced that first time, what happens if you exercise your right of free speech and happen to say something disparaging about homosexuality.
I know there are a fair number of gay readers here, so ‘fess up: how many heterosexuals have you killed? I had no idea we had gangs of homosexuals casually beating and murdering the poor oppressed heteros.
Kern: I have to be honest with you Rick, when I was sitting there in my car that day and when she told me that those emails were coming from homosexuals, honestly, fear gripped my whole body, because I was very aware of the homosexual lobbyists and the power that they have. And people say, ‘oh you’re so brave, so heroic,’ but I’m not, I’m just a sinner saved by grace and I was gripped with fear that day. I just said, ‘Lord, what have I done?’
She did say one true thing: sitting in a car trembling in fear of the gays is not brave. Actually, it’s rather cowardly to use your fear of a class of people to push legislation that really does cause fear and anxiety.
This is what religion does: it institutionalizes and rationalizes stupidity, like these signs in New York neighborhoods.
The large signs started popping up in the neighborhood more than a week ago. They had a Yiddish message that translates as: “Precious Jewish daughter, please move to the side when a man approaches.”
Neighborhood residents were annoyed the plastic signs, which were bolted into the wood, were taken away.
“The signs don’t bother anybody,” said Abraham Klein, 18. “Men and ladies don’t go together. It’s just our religion.”
Yeah? Well, your religion sucks. And the signs bother me.
Orthodoxy and misogyny seem to go together like a bad sandwich: shit and slime, two awful flavors that taste worse together and don’t stand alone so well, either.
Students in California were participating in a big project: they were helping to raise tens of thousands of salmon to be released into San Francisco Bay. The release of the smolts was imminent, and a party was planned to honor the people who had helped, when animal rights activists cut the nets and freed the salmon prematurely.
I really do not understand how these kooks think. Nothing was gained by this action, other than to disappoint some kids who’d been working to help restore salmon stocks. I don’t even know what they want: do they just want the salmon to die out? Are they even aware that they released the salmon from an environment where they were sheltered and fed, into a wild world where food is more scarce and they will be actively preyed upon?
Peter Young, in a “Voice of the Voiceless” journal for the Animal Liberation Movement, weighed in after the first episode of vandalism, calling the perpetrators “anonymous saboteurs.”
“If this was the act of animal liberators, it would be the largest recorded animal liberation ever in the U.S.,” he wrote, noting that the largest previous one was the release of 14,000 mink in an Animal Liberation Front raid on a fur farm in Iowa.
“Those who cut the nets may not have known the fish were slated to be released in the coming weeks,” he went on. “Or, they could have chosen to risk themselves anyway to give the fish a few extra weeks of freedom, sparing them the psychological suffering of being kept in intense confinement with approximately 40,000 others in a small net.”
Oh. They were suffering psychologically. How does Young know? Which is happier, a salmon confined to a net with a steady food supply, or a salmon fleeing from an orca or a seal?
Referencing the mink farm release is also telling. Imagine 14,000 voracious predators released into the local environment: every other animal in the environment is going to experience intense “psychological suffering”, and ultimately most of the released mink are going to starve to death.
These people don’t think.
(Also on Sb)
Students in California were participating in a big project: they were helping to raise tens of thousands of salmon to be released into San Francisco Bay. The release of the smolts was imminent, and a party was planned to honor the people who had helped, when animal rights activists cut the nets and freed the salmon prematurely.
I really do not understand how these kooks think. Nothing was gained by this action, other than to disappoint some kids who’d been working to help restore salmon stocks. I don’t even know what they want: do they just want the salmon to die out? Are they even aware that they released the salmon from an environment where they were sheltered and fed, into a wild world where food is more scarce and they will be actively preyed upon?
Peter Young, in a “Voice of the Voiceless” journal for the Animal Liberation Movement, weighed in after the first episode of vandalism, calling the perpetrators “anonymous saboteurs.”
“If this was the act of animal liberators, it would be the largest recorded animal liberation ever in the U.S.,” he wrote, noting that the largest previous one was the release of 14,000 mink in an Animal Liberation Front raid on a fur farm in Iowa.
“Those who cut the nets may not have known the fish were slated to be released in the coming weeks,” he went on. “Or, they could have chosen to risk themselves anyway to give the fish a few extra weeks of freedom, sparing them the psychological suffering of being kept in intense confinement with approximately 40,000 others in a small net.”
Oh. They were suffering psychologically. How does Young know? Which is happier, a salmon confined to a net with a steady food supply, or a salmon fleeing from an orca or a seal?
Referencing the mink farm release is also telling. Imagine 14,000 voracious predators released into the local environment: every other animal in the environment is going to experience intense “psychological suffering”, and ultimately most of the released mink are going to starve to death.
These people don’t think.
(Also on FtB)
