For a good taste of the intellectually vapid, juvenile nature of the retorts to atheistic arguments, one need look no further than the Master of Projection, Townhall columnist Doug Giles.
In this article, Giles pursues one long and unsupported ad hominem argument that surely titillated his prepubescent fans (of which there are no doubt many) beyond repair. One really has to read it to believe any serious journalist or journalistic organization would publish such a thing:
”Atheists would love for everyone to believe that their motive for not believing is an intellectual one. Yes, the atheists ardently suppose that they are wise and the Christians, well, we’re the buckle-shoed buttheads.
Yes, darling, the atheists would love all of us to suppose that they cannot believe because they are so astute and rational, and we theists, heck we’re toads . . . a veritable troop of abecedarian simpletons who believe in God and Christ simply because we’re straight goofy.
I think the atheists believe in not believing, however, not because they’re intellectual little dandies but because they want to be autonomous, loose and randy.”
As one reads such words, one can easily see the rhetorical version of a child holding his breath, stamping his feet, and calling “big poopie heads”, everyone who insists his imaginary friend isn’t real. There is no substance of a rebuttal, no attempt to understand the arguments put forth against his pet belief. There’s just juvenile anger. Oh, and a reference to someone almost as ignorant of atheism as Giles is, that great manipulator of the media, Dinesh D’Souza:
”As Dinesh D’Souza said about the atheist’s faith in no faith in his new book What’s So Great About Christianity: ‘Atheism is not primarily an intellectual revolt, it’s a moral one.’ God, that’s got to hurt you guys because you pride yourself on being so wise . . . so sophisticated . . . and here he/we are saying that your atheism rises out of hedonism instead of intellectualism. Ouch. Need a bandaid?”
Hardly. Christians that ignore the substance of atheistic arguments and argue ad hominem that atheists are immoral is old news, to put it kindly. That Giles thinks this would come as a surprise to us, or otherwise have any effect on our views, only confirms how truly clueless he is with regard to what makes unbelievers tick. One might as well ignore the fact that “Atheists”, by definition, do not believe in any gods, and blithely claim we are just afraid of their judgement.
”Look, I’m not buying that the atheists’ altruistic self-professed pursuit of reason is what undergirds their conclusion that God does not exist; I believe it’s because they want to believe that they’ll never be called into eternal accountability for their temporal actions by a holy God. Talk about an opiate for the masses!
But to heck with what I think, eh? I’m just a hayseed, cross-eyed Christian with an IQ of 50 who believes in Jesus, loves his mama, salutes the flag and collects guns. I’m an idiot.”
Well um, yes, Doug, if the ignorance and stupidity that literally drips from this column is any indication of your intellectual prowess and honesty. Rather than deal with what atheists actually think, you create a straw man to beat on. That might elevate your flagging ego a bit, but for us it’s just the same old boring irrelevant nonsense we are used to getting from, well, hayseed, cross-eyed Christians with IQs of 50.
In the true spirit of intellectually dishonest cranks, Giles then goes on to quotemine atheists, and then distorts the meaning even beyond that.
”Let’s go to the atheists and hear it from the horse’s mouth—or backside (411 taken from D’Souza’s book, What’s So Great About Christianity): “
Let me get this straight Doug. You think taking Dinesh D’Souzas claims of what atheists think and say at face value, qualifies as hearing it from the horses mouth? Have you been working with the FEMA press people or something? If you want to know what atheists think, ask atheists. Its not complicated, that is, as long as it is truth you seek, and not some narrow socio-political agenda. The latter can only explain his twisted interpretation of the following:
”• Biologist Stephen Jay Gould: “We may yearn for a higher answer—but none exists. This explanation, though superficially troubling if not terrifying, is ultimately liberating and exhilarating.”
Biologist Julian Huxley, the grandson of Darwin’s buddy and ally Thomas Henry Huxley, put it this way: “The sense of spiritual relief which comes from rejecting the idea of God as a supernatural being is enormous.”
• Julian’s brother Aldous Huxley, not to be outdone by his bro, stated, “I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently I assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption . . . For myself as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation . . . liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.”
Bertrand Russell: “The worst feature of the Christian religion is its attitude toward sex.”
• Christopher Hitchens: “The divorce between the sexual life and fear . . . can now at last be attempted on the sole condition that we banish all religions from the discourse.”
Sounds like these atheist apostles are simply putting a nuevo twist on an ancient bent. They appear to be humming the Marquis de Sade’s tune more than Sagan’s. Looks and sounds like a moral revolt to me. Yes, this is Epicurus all over again. “
Pointing out the stupidity of religious views with regard to sex, and the damage they do pursuing the enforcement of these views on society, isn’t in the same ballpark as de Sade or Epicurus. Its not even the same sport. Contrast the sexual habits of your average atheist with the likes of Ted Haggert and the rest of the men’s room gropers on the religious right, and it is hard to take Giles insinuation that atheists are the sexually unhealthy ones with any seriousness at all. In fact, if one peruses the writings of the religious and the nonreligious and compares the rate at which they discuss sex, it is pretty clear who is obsessing over sex - the ones overly concerned about what the rest of us are doing. Those looking to ban or limit some activity are almost always more concerned about it than those who participate.
And yes, realizing that one is not under the thumb and cruel judgement of a nutcase like Yahweh is certainly liberating. Does a feeling of liberation at the acceptance of a truth now make it not a truth in Giles twisted world? No Doug, your ignorant irrational rantings do nothing to dissuade atheists, I assure you. They serve only to highlight, yet again, the intellectual dishonesty that pervades the religious right. They are all too eager to drudge through history books grasping at any quote that sounds like it might support their case, searching desperately for anything to stop the onslaught of reason directed at their cherished fantasies. They are willing to do just about anything, except, of course, dealing honestly with what atheists actually believe, and the evidence that supports their view that the gods are fiction.
People like Giles and D’Sousa have to hurl epithets, for they have no substance. They must quote mine, because they can’t deal with what atheists really think. They much make insinuations and ad hominems, because they have no substantive arguments of their own to make. Their every utterance adds to the atheist cause.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Monday, October 29, 2007
Ghost Poll
More Americans believe in ghosts than in the job President Bush is doing. That is depressing on so many levels.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
D'Souza's Arguments via Kengor: Hardly Persuasive
In an interview with Dr. Paul Kengor, Dinesh D'Souza lays out some of his major arguments in his book What’s So Great About Christianity. Needless to say, I was neither surprised nor impressed.
"In a way, the atheist attacks on God and religion are a bit odd. I don’t believe in unicorns, but I don’t go around writing books about them."
Well no, that is because there is no group of unicornists running around trying to outlaw ice cream cones because of their resemblance to the Holy Horn, or trying to suppress scientific findings and indoctrinate children with bronze age creation myths, or trying to prevent people from using birth and disease control. Many atheists lack belief in astrology and the Loch Ness monster as well, but we don't attack that nearly as much as we attack religion. Same reason: the astrologers for the most part leave us alone and don't try to force their views on the rest of us. Let Christians develop the same tolerance for differing views, and rest assured, the atheist attacks on them would abate.
This is a Coulteristic non-argument. It's just a smart aleck claim akin to what a 10 year old might conjure up. Why isn't it spelled out logically? Because D'Souza knows how absurd it would sound to say "Gosh, atheists sure criticize belief in God a lot. They must really believe in Him." It is not the stuff of serious scholarship, and certainly not the sort of thing that is going to be a challenge to atheists.
"I suspect what has given atheists a boost is the Islamic radicalism we’ve seen in the wake of 9/11. The atheists glibly equate Islamic fundamentalism and Christian fundamentalism, and then conclude that religion itself is the problem. "
It is not glib, it is an acknowledgement of the basic similarity between the two. Christians believe by faith, Muslims believe by faith. Christians believe paradise awaits them in heaven, Muslims believe paradise awaits them in heaven. Those Muslim hijackers were driven by the exact same blind faith that Christians so revere, and which so many incomprehensibly believe is crucial for a head of state to have. When D'Souza can explain exactly what is different about the way Christians discover truth and the way Muslims do, then his objection will have some substance. Until then it is just so much reality denial of the dangers of blind faith.
"My book What’s So Great About Christianity is consciously written in the C.S. Lewis tradition...I want to show Christians and religious believers that theism makes vastly more sense of the world and of our lives than agnosticism or atheism. I also want to persuade genuine seekers that they should take Christianity seriously, and give it real consideration. I don’t expect to convince dogmatic atheists, but I do intend to expose and refute and embarrass them."
Well DiNesh, if you follow in the Lewis tradition of MSU - Making Shit Up ("the thing that controls instincts cannot itself be an instinct" - really? Why not?) and playing semantic games (which is all his talk of the Natural Law was), you will have as little success as he did. As long as you pretend there is such a thing as a dogmatic atheist, you have no chance of success, for such reveals a complete lack of understanding of how the opposition thinks. We atheists deal with facts and logic, not faith and dogma.
"There is a whole body of data showing that the world is growing more religious. One reason for this is that religious countries and religious people are having more children, while secular countries and secular people are not reproducing themselves... This is very disturbing news for atheists."
Hardly. While we are certainly not thrilled by the growth of religion in the world, the implication of the argument D'Souza makes here is that the religious are winning the cultural war, not because they are right, or because they have the more persuasive arguments, but simply because they have more children. The conversion rate strongly favors the atheists, as believers converting to atheism outnumber atheist conversions to religion 1,000 to 1. Being angry at the gods doesn't make you an atheist, as so many Christians claim when attempting to refute this. If it were not so, the world would become almost completely religious in short order, since the best correlate of a child's religious view is his parents religious view. Instead, the world is about 30% or so nonreligious, and in some places like the United States, that figure has been steadily growing for decades.
"Not so long ago the typical atheist could be comforted by the idea that as the world became more modern, more urbanized, more educated, it would also become more secular. Religion would wither away. This hasn’t happened, and the trend is actually in the other direction. In fact, religion is booming in rapidly modernizing countries like India and China. Perhaps the new atheism is a backlash against the unforeseen success of religion."
Without a doubt, it is. Religious thinking has plunged us into meaningless wars, denied birth control to millions who need it, and stunted the science education of millions of innocent children. You are damned right it is a backlash against the success of religion in it's superior rate of procreation, and against it's failure in every other aspect.
"There is no sustained historical clash between science and religion. In fact, Christianity was crucial in giving birth to modern science, and the vast, vast majority of leading scientists over the past 500 years have been Christians."
D'Souza is making a very flawed argument here. His tacit assumption is that the social balance between atheism and Christianity has remained constant all these years, and it hasn't. Christianity was the dominant belief system for all but the last couple of hundred years in Europe, even among prominent scientists. So of course there wasn't much of a clash between atheism and Christianity, because there wasn't a whole lot of atheism. To give Christianity credit for advancing science because so many great scientists were Christians would be like crediting slavery on the same basis, or even patriarchy. His argument here is circular, because he does not seem to understand that correlation does not imply causality. The causality he assumed.
" Well, on the Christian side we have Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Brahe, Descartes, Boyle, Newton, Leibniz, Gassendi, Pascal, Mersenne, Cuvier, Harvey, Dalton, Farady, Hershel, Joule, Lyell, Lavoisier, Priestley, Kelvin, Ohm, Ampere, Steno, Pasteur, Maxwell, Planck, Mendel and Lemaitre. Einstein too was a believer in God as a kind of supreme mind or spirit discernible through the complex and beautiful laws of nature."
More MSU from D'Souza. Newton denied the trinity, and Einstein most forcefully denied believing in a personal god or anything like it. Einstein's religious views were far more compatible with Dawkins' then they are with D'Souza's.
The question that begs to be asked in any case is: so what? Practically everyone was a Christian back then. I would likely have been a Christian then, as would most of you reading this. The question is not what is reasonable for a person to believe based on 17th century knowledge (or less), but what is reasonable for a person to believe with 21st century knowledge. If D'Souza is going to argue that all these men would have been Christians were they alive today, he need to back up that claim, not just tacitly assert it. At first glance, it appears preposterous.
"... science itself, in its assumption that the universe is rational and obeys laws discoverable by the human mind, is based on Christian precepts and cannot in fact be done without Christian presuppositions. "
[Yawn] More MSU. The Greeks, as well as other cultures, made the same assumptions long before Christianity came to be. In fact, it is difficult to see how any sane person could assume anything else. One doesn't have to be too observant to notice regularity in the world around us. It is not as if we find ourselves disappearing and appearing, or walking into invisible walls, or finding ice cream burning.
This is just another of the many numerous occasions where Christian apologists co opt others' discoveries as their own. Thus, they claim to have laid the foundations of the constitution (English common law and John Locke did that), the golden rule (which appears in practically every culture, many predating Jesus), and science. None are the slightest bit true. Science is based on falsifiable experimentation, and collective public evaluation of the evidence. There is nothing in Christianity that comes close to expressing such views.
If this is the best D'Souza has to offer, he will be merely another clanging bell of criticism as the atheist train runs merrily by. What he needs to ask, is not whether many scientists of antiquity, people of their culture and time as we all are, fell for the Christian myth. He needs to come up with a good explanation for why, with modern knowledge of the universe, a tiny percentage of scientists are traditional Christians, or why belief in gods is so consistently correlated with a lack of intelligence and education. Arm waving about what Kepler did or did not believe doesn't change the good reasons why Dawkins, Hawking, and yes Einstein, didn't.
"In a way, the atheist attacks on God and religion are a bit odd. I don’t believe in unicorns, but I don’t go around writing books about them."
Well no, that is because there is no group of unicornists running around trying to outlaw ice cream cones because of their resemblance to the Holy Horn, or trying to suppress scientific findings and indoctrinate children with bronze age creation myths, or trying to prevent people from using birth and disease control. Many atheists lack belief in astrology and the Loch Ness monster as well, but we don't attack that nearly as much as we attack religion. Same reason: the astrologers for the most part leave us alone and don't try to force their views on the rest of us. Let Christians develop the same tolerance for differing views, and rest assured, the atheist attacks on them would abate.
This is a Coulteristic non-argument. It's just a smart aleck claim akin to what a 10 year old might conjure up. Why isn't it spelled out logically? Because D'Souza knows how absurd it would sound to say "Gosh, atheists sure criticize belief in God a lot. They must really believe in Him." It is not the stuff of serious scholarship, and certainly not the sort of thing that is going to be a challenge to atheists.
"I suspect what has given atheists a boost is the Islamic radicalism we’ve seen in the wake of 9/11. The atheists glibly equate Islamic fundamentalism and Christian fundamentalism, and then conclude that religion itself is the problem. "
It is not glib, it is an acknowledgement of the basic similarity between the two. Christians believe by faith, Muslims believe by faith. Christians believe paradise awaits them in heaven, Muslims believe paradise awaits them in heaven. Those Muslim hijackers were driven by the exact same blind faith that Christians so revere, and which so many incomprehensibly believe is crucial for a head of state to have. When D'Souza can explain exactly what is different about the way Christians discover truth and the way Muslims do, then his objection will have some substance. Until then it is just so much reality denial of the dangers of blind faith.
"My book What’s So Great About Christianity is consciously written in the C.S. Lewis tradition...I want to show Christians and religious believers that theism makes vastly more sense of the world and of our lives than agnosticism or atheism. I also want to persuade genuine seekers that they should take Christianity seriously, and give it real consideration. I don’t expect to convince dogmatic atheists, but I do intend to expose and refute and embarrass them."
Well DiNesh, if you follow in the Lewis tradition of MSU - Making Shit Up ("the thing that controls instincts cannot itself be an instinct" - really? Why not?) and playing semantic games (which is all his talk of the Natural Law was), you will have as little success as he did. As long as you pretend there is such a thing as a dogmatic atheist, you have no chance of success, for such reveals a complete lack of understanding of how the opposition thinks. We atheists deal with facts and logic, not faith and dogma.
"There is a whole body of data showing that the world is growing more religious. One reason for this is that religious countries and religious people are having more children, while secular countries and secular people are not reproducing themselves... This is very disturbing news for atheists."
Hardly. While we are certainly not thrilled by the growth of religion in the world, the implication of the argument D'Souza makes here is that the religious are winning the cultural war, not because they are right, or because they have the more persuasive arguments, but simply because they have more children. The conversion rate strongly favors the atheists, as believers converting to atheism outnumber atheist conversions to religion 1,000 to 1. Being angry at the gods doesn't make you an atheist, as so many Christians claim when attempting to refute this. If it were not so, the world would become almost completely religious in short order, since the best correlate of a child's religious view is his parents religious view. Instead, the world is about 30% or so nonreligious, and in some places like the United States, that figure has been steadily growing for decades.
"Not so long ago the typical atheist could be comforted by the idea that as the world became more modern, more urbanized, more educated, it would also become more secular. Religion would wither away. This hasn’t happened, and the trend is actually in the other direction. In fact, religion is booming in rapidly modernizing countries like India and China. Perhaps the new atheism is a backlash against the unforeseen success of religion."
Without a doubt, it is. Religious thinking has plunged us into meaningless wars, denied birth control to millions who need it, and stunted the science education of millions of innocent children. You are damned right it is a backlash against the success of religion in it's superior rate of procreation, and against it's failure in every other aspect.
"There is no sustained historical clash between science and religion. In fact, Christianity was crucial in giving birth to modern science, and the vast, vast majority of leading scientists over the past 500 years have been Christians."
D'Souza is making a very flawed argument here. His tacit assumption is that the social balance between atheism and Christianity has remained constant all these years, and it hasn't. Christianity was the dominant belief system for all but the last couple of hundred years in Europe, even among prominent scientists. So of course there wasn't much of a clash between atheism and Christianity, because there wasn't a whole lot of atheism. To give Christianity credit for advancing science because so many great scientists were Christians would be like crediting slavery on the same basis, or even patriarchy. His argument here is circular, because he does not seem to understand that correlation does not imply causality. The causality he assumed.
" Well, on the Christian side we have Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Brahe, Descartes, Boyle, Newton, Leibniz, Gassendi, Pascal, Mersenne, Cuvier, Harvey, Dalton, Farady, Hershel, Joule, Lyell, Lavoisier, Priestley, Kelvin, Ohm, Ampere, Steno, Pasteur, Maxwell, Planck, Mendel and Lemaitre. Einstein too was a believer in God as a kind of supreme mind or spirit discernible through the complex and beautiful laws of nature."
More MSU from D'Souza. Newton denied the trinity, and Einstein most forcefully denied believing in a personal god or anything like it. Einstein's religious views were far more compatible with Dawkins' then they are with D'Souza's.
The question that begs to be asked in any case is: so what? Practically everyone was a Christian back then. I would likely have been a Christian then, as would most of you reading this. The question is not what is reasonable for a person to believe based on 17th century knowledge (or less), but what is reasonable for a person to believe with 21st century knowledge. If D'Souza is going to argue that all these men would have been Christians were they alive today, he need to back up that claim, not just tacitly assert it. At first glance, it appears preposterous.
"... science itself, in its assumption that the universe is rational and obeys laws discoverable by the human mind, is based on Christian precepts and cannot in fact be done without Christian presuppositions. "
[Yawn] More MSU. The Greeks, as well as other cultures, made the same assumptions long before Christianity came to be. In fact, it is difficult to see how any sane person could assume anything else. One doesn't have to be too observant to notice regularity in the world around us. It is not as if we find ourselves disappearing and appearing, or walking into invisible walls, or finding ice cream burning.
This is just another of the many numerous occasions where Christian apologists co opt others' discoveries as their own. Thus, they claim to have laid the foundations of the constitution (English common law and John Locke did that), the golden rule (which appears in practically every culture, many predating Jesus), and science. None are the slightest bit true. Science is based on falsifiable experimentation, and collective public evaluation of the evidence. There is nothing in Christianity that comes close to expressing such views.
If this is the best D'Souza has to offer, he will be merely another clanging bell of criticism as the atheist train runs merrily by. What he needs to ask, is not whether many scientists of antiquity, people of their culture and time as we all are, fell for the Christian myth. He needs to come up with a good explanation for why, with modern knowledge of the universe, a tiny percentage of scientists are traditional Christians, or why belief in gods is so consistently correlated with a lack of intelligence and education. Arm waving about what Kepler did or did not believe doesn't change the good reasons why Dawkins, Hawking, and yes Einstein, didn't.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Bobby Jindal: Saving the Republican Party?
The Republicans haven't had much to cheer about lately, but now they have Bobby Jindal, new Governor of Louisiana. Some are touting Jindal as the future of the republican party. The fact that he is the son of Indian immigrants doesn't hurt any for countering the GOP's lily white reputation.
Unfortunately too much of Jindal's rhetoric is the same old evidence-averse nonsense pretending to be science. Yep, Jindal is an intelligent design advocate. Worse yet, he seems to have memorized and employed with malice of forethought, all the same deceptive language:
"The reality is there are a lot of things that we don’t understand. There’s no theory in science that could explain how, contrary to the laws of entropy, you could create order out of chaos. There’s no scientific theory that explains how you can create organic life out of inorganic matter. I think we owe it to our children to teach them the best possible modern scientific facts and theories. Teach them what different theories are out there for the things that aren’t answerable by science, that aren’t answered by science. Let them decide for themselves. I don’t think we should be scared to do that. Personally, it certainly makes sense to me that when you look at creation, you would believe in a creator. Let’s not be afraid to teach our kids the very best science."
This is all just code language for teaching creationism. This implies that Jindal is not one of the innocent believers deceived by the dissembling Behe and Dembski, but is in on the scam as well.
Is it too much to ask that the "party of reason" have candidates that accept basic science? I'm starting to wonder.
Unfortunately too much of Jindal's rhetoric is the same old evidence-averse nonsense pretending to be science. Yep, Jindal is an intelligent design advocate. Worse yet, he seems to have memorized and employed with malice of forethought, all the same deceptive language:
"The reality is there are a lot of things that we don’t understand. There’s no theory in science that could explain how, contrary to the laws of entropy, you could create order out of chaos. There’s no scientific theory that explains how you can create organic life out of inorganic matter. I think we owe it to our children to teach them the best possible modern scientific facts and theories. Teach them what different theories are out there for the things that aren’t answerable by science, that aren’t answered by science. Let them decide for themselves. I don’t think we should be scared to do that. Personally, it certainly makes sense to me that when you look at creation, you would believe in a creator. Let’s not be afraid to teach our kids the very best science."
This is all just code language for teaching creationism. This implies that Jindal is not one of the innocent believers deceived by the dissembling Behe and Dembski, but is in on the scam as well.
Is it too much to ask that the "party of reason" have candidates that accept basic science? I'm starting to wonder.
Happy Belated Bishop Ussher Day! A Walk through Genesis
It's a little late, but October 23 was Bishop Ussher Day, the day that Bishop Ussher, working backwards from Biblical texts, declared to be the day of creation. According to him, it happened in 4004 BC. Of course, the Chinese might have had something to say about that, since they have a history that precedes that date. However, we should be hesitant to be too critical of the good Bishop, for his work was impressive scholarship for his day.
However, there is no excuse for this in a modern society:
"The Bible opens with the description of God creating the universe in six days. That report is accepted as literally true by 60% of the adult population. This passage brought out major distinctions across people groups. For instance, while 73% of the adults who did not attend college believe this account to be literal, just half as many college graduates (38%) hold that view."
With what we know about the world, these results are nothing short of pathetic. To be clear, I am not talking about believing in gods. The Bible is not God. Some believe it is the word of the gods, but they could be mistaken. Criticism of the Bible is not necessarily criticism of god belief. Those beliefs may be lacking evidence, but rarely is there absolute proof that they are wrong (depending on how they are defined), as there is with certain passages of the Bible. Genesis is wrong, plain and simple, and since so many own the Bible, and so few read it, let's get into exactly how wrong it is. To wit (from the Revised Standard Version):
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters"
There was no water on the early earth, that came later. It was literally earth, not formless, not void.
"And God said 'Let there be light', and there was light... and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day."
Even the most basic of knowledge of astronomy refutes every bit of this. The sun is much older than the earth, so light preceded earth, not the other way around. Further, once the earth is formed and rotating, day and night are inevitable. Interesting, isn't it, that the difference is very arbitrary in the description above, rather than something like "God set the earth in motion, thus making day and night". The reason is obvious: the authors of Genesis didn't know the earth was spherical.
"And God said 'Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters'. And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day."
As our space travels have demonstrated, there is no firmament above the water on earth, and consequently no water above it. Any attempt to interpret this as a description of the water cycle of evaporation and rain would have to explain what was different about the laws of physics then, and where the firmament went.
"And God said 'Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.' And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. And God said 'Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth...and there was evening and there was morning, a third day."
The evidence is overwhelming that the first life forms on earth were single celled organisms, and this was the case for about a billion years. And again, the earth was molten rock first, then came water, not the other way around.
"And God said 'Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth...And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also...and there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day."
None of this makes any sense in light of what we know about the universe. Stars existed before the earth, as did the sun, they were not created afterwards. The sun of course is the only major light in our sky, with the moon merely reflecting sunlight. Further, the moon existed long before there were seeded plants and fruit trees. And if the sun was made to mark days and years, how were the first three days designated?
"And God said 'Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth, across the firmament of the heavens. So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind..."
The evidence is quite clear that birds were late arrivers on the animal scene, somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 million years ago, long after the earth had been populated with living things.
"And God said 'Let the earth bring forth living creatures, according to their kinds: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.' And it was so..."
Cattle too were a late arriver on the scene, along with the rest of the mammals.
There is no nice way to put this. Anyone believing this is literally true is either a moron, or profoundly ignorant, perhaps by not ever having really read the passages. I hope I've at least cleared that up for some. It is the sort of story that was plausible in the time that it was written, but in our modern era, it is the kind only a child could believe.
However, there is no excuse for this in a modern society:
"The Bible opens with the description of God creating the universe in six days. That report is accepted as literally true by 60% of the adult population. This passage brought out major distinctions across people groups. For instance, while 73% of the adults who did not attend college believe this account to be literal, just half as many college graduates (38%) hold that view."
With what we know about the world, these results are nothing short of pathetic. To be clear, I am not talking about believing in gods. The Bible is not God. Some believe it is the word of the gods, but they could be mistaken. Criticism of the Bible is not necessarily criticism of god belief. Those beliefs may be lacking evidence, but rarely is there absolute proof that they are wrong (depending on how they are defined), as there is with certain passages of the Bible. Genesis is wrong, plain and simple, and since so many own the Bible, and so few read it, let's get into exactly how wrong it is. To wit (from the Revised Standard Version):
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters"
There was no water on the early earth, that came later. It was literally earth, not formless, not void.
"And God said 'Let there be light', and there was light... and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day."
Even the most basic of knowledge of astronomy refutes every bit of this. The sun is much older than the earth, so light preceded earth, not the other way around. Further, once the earth is formed and rotating, day and night are inevitable. Interesting, isn't it, that the difference is very arbitrary in the description above, rather than something like "God set the earth in motion, thus making day and night". The reason is obvious: the authors of Genesis didn't know the earth was spherical.
"And God said 'Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters'. And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day."
As our space travels have demonstrated, there is no firmament above the water on earth, and consequently no water above it. Any attempt to interpret this as a description of the water cycle of evaporation and rain would have to explain what was different about the laws of physics then, and where the firmament went.
"And God said 'Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.' And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. And God said 'Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth...and there was evening and there was morning, a third day."
The evidence is overwhelming that the first life forms on earth were single celled organisms, and this was the case for about a billion years. And again, the earth was molten rock first, then came water, not the other way around.
"And God said 'Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth...And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also...and there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day."
None of this makes any sense in light of what we know about the universe. Stars existed before the earth, as did the sun, they were not created afterwards. The sun of course is the only major light in our sky, with the moon merely reflecting sunlight. Further, the moon existed long before there were seeded plants and fruit trees. And if the sun was made to mark days and years, how were the first three days designated?
"And God said 'Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth, across the firmament of the heavens. So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind..."
The evidence is quite clear that birds were late arrivers on the animal scene, somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 million years ago, long after the earth had been populated with living things.
"And God said 'Let the earth bring forth living creatures, according to their kinds: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.' And it was so..."
Cattle too were a late arriver on the scene, along with the rest of the mammals.
There is no nice way to put this. Anyone believing this is literally true is either a moron, or profoundly ignorant, perhaps by not ever having really read the passages. I hope I've at least cleared that up for some. It is the sort of story that was plausible in the time that it was written, but in our modern era, it is the kind only a child could believe.
Friday, October 26, 2007
FEMA Fake Press Conference
We used to laugh at other countries for doing stuff like this. According to Al Kamen, FEMA had a "press conference" where questions were asked by FEMA employees, not the press:
"But something didn't seem right. The reporters were lobbing too many softballs. No one asked about trailers with formaldehyde for those made homeless by the fires. And the media seemed to be giving Johnson all day to wax on and on about FEMA's greatness.
Of course, that could be because the questions were asked by FEMA staffers playing reporters. We're told the questions were asked by Cindy Taylor, FEMA's deputy director of external affairs, and by 'Mike' Widomski, the deputy director of public affairs. Director of External Affairs John 'Pat' Philbin asked a question, and another came, we understand, from someone who sounds like press aide Ali Kirin. "
Apparently their excuse was that they were asking the same questions they had been asked by the press via phone and email. Right, the press was asking about victims of the fire impeding FEMA operations. I haven't felt so insulted since Saddam had his people in the supposed milk factory wear shirts that said, in English, "Milk Factory", on their backs. This is Baghdad Bob shit. It's a serious issue turned into professional wrestling. If FEMA wants to get back the confidence of the American public, acting like they can't handle questions from the press isn't the way to go about it. Do a good job guys, its that simple, then we'll all love you.
"But something didn't seem right. The reporters were lobbing too many softballs. No one asked about trailers with formaldehyde for those made homeless by the fires. And the media seemed to be giving Johnson all day to wax on and on about FEMA's greatness.
Of course, that could be because the questions were asked by FEMA staffers playing reporters. We're told the questions were asked by Cindy Taylor, FEMA's deputy director of external affairs, and by 'Mike' Widomski, the deputy director of public affairs. Director of External Affairs John 'Pat' Philbin asked a question, and another came, we understand, from someone who sounds like press aide Ali Kirin. "
Apparently their excuse was that they were asking the same questions they had been asked by the press via phone and email. Right, the press was asking about victims of the fire impeding FEMA operations. I haven't felt so insulted since Saddam had his people in the supposed milk factory wear shirts that said, in English, "Milk Factory", on their backs. This is Baghdad Bob shit. It's a serious issue turned into professional wrestling. If FEMA wants to get back the confidence of the American public, acting like they can't handle questions from the press isn't the way to go about it. Do a good job guys, its that simple, then we'll all love you.
Deaths from Staph Infections pass AIDS Infections
In a story to chill the hearts of both the evolution deniers, and their cousins, the ones who don't understand the problems with over prescribing antibiotics, deaths due to staph infections now may exceed those caused by AIDS. We apparently have a new super bug:
"The new study offers the broadest look yet at the pervasiveness of the most severe infections caused by the bug, called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA."
I guess the Intelligent Design crowd will attribute this to the gods designing these diseases to frustrate our medical efforts. Nice guys.
"The new study offers the broadest look yet at the pervasiveness of the most severe infections caused by the bug, called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA."
I guess the Intelligent Design crowd will attribute this to the gods designing these diseases to frustrate our medical efforts. Nice guys.
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