All my Canadian friends are chattering about James Lunney right now, a member of parliament who resigned from his party because people were making fun of his deeply held and cherished beliefs…like his views on evolution.
Mr. Speaker, recently we saw an attempt to ridicule the presumed beliefs of a member of this House and the belief of millions of Canadians in a creator. Certain individuals in the media and the scientific community have exposed their own arrogance and intolerance of beliefs contrary to their own.
Any scientist who declares that the theory of evolution is a fact has already abandoned the foundations of science. For science establishes fact through the study of things observable and reproducible. Since origins can neither be reproduced nor observed, they remain the realm of hypothesis.
In science, it is perfectly acceptable to make assumptions when we do not have all the facts, but it is never acceptable to forget our assumptions. Given the modern evidence unavailable to Darwin, advanced models of plate techtonics, polonium radiohalos, polystratic fossils, I am prepared to believe that Darwin would be willing to re-examine his assumptions.
The evolutionists may disagree, but neither can produce Darwin as a witness to prove his point. The evolutionists may genuinely see his ancestor in a monkey, but many modern scientists interpret the same evidence in favour of creation and a creator.
The origin of all life may have occurred 4 billion years ago, but it’s an ongoing process, so we can reproducibly observe evolution now, and even test it experimentally. And of course, when we can document this process, and see snapshots of it in the fossil record over hundreds of millions of years, and see shared properties in the molecular biology of extant organisms that push knowledge of common descent back billions of years, we can make solid inferences about origins…inferences that contradict the Bible stories.
His little misspelled roster of evidence against evolution consists only of sloppy creationist rationalizations that have all been debunked. See the Talk.Origins index of creationist claims — they’re all in there. If Darwin were here, he’d be impressed with the additional data that reinforces his ideas, and would be giving those wacky creationists the side-eye.
I’m more than a little tired of the standard Answers in Genesis lie, that we’re all looking at the same evidence, and only differing in our interpretation. It’s simply not true. Creationists selectively ignore 99% of the evidence.
What a hoser.
This is why Harper exerts such iron control over his caucus. The last thing he needs is backbenchers revealing the dark id of the CPC (Conservative Party of Canada).
Sorry, that may have been a little too inside Canadian baseball…
coo roo coo coo
I’ll see your Lunney (I wonder how often it gets spelled or pronounced Loony) and raise you Bachmann, Gohmert, King, Paul(s), …
The joy of a parliamentary system is that only the true wingnuts advertise themselves. Any pol with a sense of self preservation keeps a lid on it or gets to sit as a independent. Harper’s greatest political achievement is keeping all the usual social conservative crap out of the press and off the agenda.
Again with the Darwin-as-Prophet thing. Take off, eh?
I think we Canadians lost any claim to being “sensible” some time ago. Certainly at the point where we gave Harper a majority.
@Mark the Snark #3:
The
joyunfortunate part of a parliamentary system is that only the true wingnuts advertise themselves.Fixed it for you. :-) Seriously, though, I see that as a bug, not a feature. If the baying hounds of right-wing extremism had not been so effectively muzzled, I don’t think we’d be on year 9 of Harpergov.
I’m so sick of this catchphrase. No one has explained why such beliefs deserve more protection in the law than casually held beliefs. And how would one measure “deepness” anyway?
@chigau, #2:
I prefer:
Even if the difference is only in interpretation, not all interpretations are equally good. The interpretations of evolutionary biologists are consistent internally, consistent with the available evidence, and consistent with other scientific disciplines. The interpretations of creationists are not very consistent with anything.
The neat thing is that he was so far gone into creationism that he had to quite the Conservative Party.
Has that every happened with one of your Republican Congresspeople?
What if they’re deeply held but despised? What then?
And how does one show that one cherishes one’s belief? Cuddle them? Or would that only cause their originator to abandon them?
Perhaps Lunney uses gloves to place them gently back in the nest from whence they came? If St Paul doesn’t come back with food, does Lunney pre-chew some insects and worms and gently spit them back up into the mouths of his beliefs?
Oh, the precious little beliefs.
Won’t somebody think of the beliefs!
He’s also a chiropractor, a climate denier, and thinks there may be a link between vaccines and autism. A walking example of crank magnetism.
Doesn’t the Creation museum basically admit that a 6000 year old earth is not something that can come from the evidence – it is just based on the bible. They have posters up all over the place comparing “man’s reasoning” to “God’s word”
@Eamon Knight:
But you won’t see it escalating into record-setting territory until you see him emit more than one “Tesla”.
I have an old college buddy — with a PhD in Psychology no less, but his wife is ultra religious and has converted him — who’s drank the creationist cool aid and has been pummeling me with DVDs on birds and pretty butterflies as evidence of design. I can’t get to him. It’s been a year now. It doesn’t matter what I say, and I pointed him to Talk.Origins and Pharyngula and WEiT (even though I don’t like Coyne), but he has a fixed idea of what Evolution is supposed to be and since he’s unwilling to read anything and actually understand the concepts, I’m at an impasse.
So, I just decided to try something else: To accept his contention that nature has been designed for the sake of argument, as long as he accepts the simple inference that any design reflects on the designer’s abilities and personality and therefore we can infer some facts about him. It just so happens that I just had a case of the shingles on my face and it was pretty awful (get the vaccine if you’re over 50!) so I emailed him yesterday and asked him if his designer sat down and draw blueprints designing the shingles virus and documenting all its horrid effects (blisters, pain, neuropathy, scarring). And how about all the other horrors of the natural world? The worm that gets into children’s eyes in Africa and eats the eyeball from the inside out? The benign looking leaf in Australia that causes pain that is so horrific that people have committed suicide to make it stop? If he continues to believe in a designer, he has to accept that he’s an incompetent sociopathic monster who delights in creating torture devices for living creatures.
I’m sure I’m not the first one to try this approach, but I’m curious how he’ll respond. He’s not stupid; just presently benighted.
@13: Yep, that’s exactly what I wrote after I visited the place:
Pick a horse and ride it, mister. If it’s a “hypothesis” then it’s not only scientific, it’s also not the sort of thing you can demand “tolerance” for — as if you were talking about people respecting your race, sexual orientation, lifestyle, or personal preferences.
And note how I don’t include “religion” in this list of things which ought to command an automatic deference and polite social tolerance. So thanks for making it so easy to show why and how your spiritual beliefs are so full of it.
@johnrockoford #15 – I’m afraid his answer will be: the Fall.
As an obnoxious Masshole, I will just try to derail this into a loosely related, similar argument, going on in Indiana. The “deeply-held cherished religious beliefs” of Indianian businesses, as well as people, is now firmly protected by law. So ‘deeply held beliefs’ are protected from ever having to deal with customers with aspects, the business owners’ religion finds abhorrent. yada yada yada. The trigger for this here rant, is, the Indy500 speedway has firmly announced their opposition to this ‘law, allowing discrimination’, by announcing that EVERYONE (regardless of …) is WELCOME (to the Raceway audience bleachers).
What triggered me for this derail, is that no one has noted that this announcement does not protest this law, but is actually exploiting it. Essentially saying, “The law says we CAN, but we WONT, so come spend all your money here!!!!” Unlike actual protests that say they will refuse to do business anywhere in Indianistan with this law in effect, Indy is blatantly profiting from it and will silently resist any repeal of that misbegotten law. The implication is that the law REQUIRES businasses [pun typo] to discriminate against LGBTs, while it really only allows businesses to do so, by giving them the privilege of the, “My religion forbids it”. defense to any civil suit of discrimination. So saying “Welcome, everyone” is not, in the least, any kind of “Protest”. tsk, tsk, tsk, Brickyard.
/derail
Sehough, we are sensible because he was mocked out of a government position instead of being given the chair of the science commitee
rietpluim:
Yep, I wonder whether he’ll go there — and if he does we’re done. Up to now he’s been trying — or at least pretending to be trying — to keep the arguments over evidence.
If The Conservative Party of Canada evolved from The Reform Party,
why are they still flaming assholes?
@21: Check out some of the more bizarre examples of parasitism — the kind with multiple hosts in their life-cycle, or that have to do about three physical or biochemical things at once to infest the host, ie. candidates for what the Intelligent Design crowd calls “irreducible complexity”. It is held that IC systems can’t evolve by Darwinian means, which implies that God must have designed them in the first place, right? How would the Fall produce that? Insist on details, not hand-waving in the direction of magical non-explanations.
“Creationists selectively ignore 99% of the evidence.”
Creationists are the spiritual 1%.
Another thing I don’t get is how these laws and principles enshrine deeply held but WRONG “religious” beliefs. After Hobby Lobby, I guess you don’t have to be right in your belief, say, that this or that contraception is tantamount to abortion. You only have to BELIEVE that it’s true. And it doesn’t matter what your holy book actually says about abortion or homosexuality or whatever. As long as you believe it, sweetie.
Tashiliciously Shriked @20
Gary Goodyear – also a chiropractor was Federal minister for science and technology. At least the current assclown was only provincial and in opposition.
@chigau #22:
If The Conservative Party of Canada evolved from The Reform Party, why are they still flaming assholes?
The Reform Party did not evolve from the Conservative Party. The Reform Party murdered, exsanguinated, and skinned the Conservative Party. Currently, the Reform Party is wandering Centre Block, smiling and waving, all while wearing the Conservative Party’s tanned hide as a grotesque flesh suit.
“observable and reproducible”
I’ve never understood why evolution is unreproducible and thus unacceptable as science while that is not the case for astronomy and cosmology.
=======
The bible is evidence. But it’s weak evidence, you say? In fact it’s evidence so incredibly weak it isn’t evidence at all? Not so says Ham. You see, in some observer centric “were you there” logic, evidence is only as strong as the interpretation of the direct observer and as the origins of the world have only *one* direct observer his evidence is the only acceptable evidence at all and it is the strongest possible evidence there is.
Or something like that.
====
So you are basically pointing out that there is evidence that God accepts and is satisfied with great suffering.
I’m not sure that he’ll find any contradiction in that. God’s huge; complex; infinitely judgemental but also infinitely merciful; the fall— yadda, yadda, yadda.
What? To your mind “psychopathic asshole” is a more apt description? Welll, that’s your opinion but you are viewing it from a narrow and limited human perspective and can’t perceive the vast and great balance of a cosmic scale and yadda, yadda, yadda.
militantagnostic@26: At least the current assclown was only provincial and in opposition.
Which current assclown? Lunney is federal, however he has been defending Rick Nicholls, an Ontario Tory MPP. It’s a whole assclown car (to the embarrassment of the Ontario PC party). Story here:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/b-c-conservative-mp-james-lunney-tweets-against-evolution-1.2978984
@27
That…that’s beautiful. I’ve never seen it put so well before. [wipes away a tear]
@wondering #30:
Thank you! I actually toned that down a bit from my initial version.
doubter #27
Lovely image.
But the Conservative Party was dead when the Refoooooorm Party got there.
Myron Boloney killed it.
@32: It’s frightening to me how some of the conservative politicians (on both sides of the border) I despised 30 years ago now seem like such reasonable folks. Heck, I was at a Dying With Dignity event the other year, and Joe Clark was there — and Maureen MacTeer was moderating the panel (which included Udo Schuklenk). I can’t imagine many of the current crop of federal Conservatives being at all supportive of assisted dying (not publicly, at least).
@Eamon Knight #33
Aside from Steven Fletcher? (kudos where they’re due, the Reformatories earn so few of them)
There were no witnesses of the murder, plus the victim is already dead, therefore we can’t reproduce and duplicate the actual murder itself, which means that despite the shittone of forensic evidence, we can never leave the realm of hypothesis. Ah no, wait, ALL of the evidence says it could only have been that guy over there, and all the attempts to frame somebody else have been falsified…funny that….
@johnrockoford #21 – All right, I wish you luck. Hopefully this is not the decline of a long and beautiful friendship.
Eamon Knight @29
I have trouble keeping all those Reforamatory* assclowns straight.
I am definitely stealing that one. Ibis.
Eamon Knight @33
Brian Mulroney was actually pretty good on CFCs and AGW, I would say better than Chretien and Martin who were fairly indifferent on environmental issues. Ironically the thing that earned him the most enmity with the public was the most honest thing he did (admittedly a low bar) – replacing the hidden 12% manufacturer’s sales tax with a a visible 7% Goods and Services Tax. The fate of the PCs in the election after he resigned is one of the best examples of why the Candaian electoral system is flawed. The PCs, Reform and Block Quebecois all got similar numbers of votes, but the latter 2 were regional parties. The BQ became the Official Oposition with one more seat than Reform and the PCs were reduced to 2 seats.
Go Ian Capstick! http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/Politics/ID/2661902488/
The CPC has been trying very hard to keep its fundamentalist roots well dyed. Ever since Harper’s predecessor. Stockwell Day, destroyed his career by admitting to being a 100% YEC, Harper has kept his religious affiliations under wraps ( he belongs to the same church as Day, and the founder of their party, Preston Manning. ) Harper would quickly muzzle any backbencher who professes their true beliefs.
I am thinking of writing a letter to the editor to my local paper about the misconceptions of evolution. Recently, Kirk Durston did a talk at a local church about science and evolution and we have a large Old Order Mennonite community. Education can go a long way into being not ridiculed.
James Lunney has his constiuency office in my town. I remember him most for trying, and thankfully failing, to reopen the abortion debate because he believes that too many women are using abortion as birth conrol. That’s the kind of intellect we’re dealing with here. So far disconnected from reality that it would take a star ship to get him back home.
It doesn’t surprise me that he’s a wing nut on more than one issue. What a national embarrassment.
Did anyone see Lunney talk with Evan Solomon yesterday? In the little I heard I’m pretty sure I heard him tell Solomon that half of scientists don’t believe in evolution. The rest sounded like standard creationist gobbledegook.
“…a 6000 year old earth is not something that can come from the evidence – it is just based on the bible.”
No, it’s not; there in nothing in there to support such a notion.
“is nothing”
Canadians invented Poutine. I think we’ve lost all claim to being sensible from that alone.
Um…. okay….
Maybe maybe not, but that’s completely irrelevant to gshelley’s point. S/he was specifically referring to the Creationism Museum which promotes a very specific young earth model. The creationism museum*does* indeed claim God’s word and the bible *always* takes precedence over any physical evidence no matter how compelling the interpretation. The creationism museum *does* acknowledge that the physical evidence does appear that they earth is magnitudes older than they claim it is but argues that even so “God’s word” *always* trumps “man’s reasoning”. I’m not sure the museum cedes there is *no* evidence for a young earth. (They do abuse pretzel logic and radio carbon failings and isolated catastrophism to show *some*.) But they do thump that the bible is more important.
Perhaps some old world creationists apologists argue that the bible doesn’t claim a young earth (a bit of a liberal interpretation stretch) but the methodology of the CM says it does. gshelley’s observation still holds.
Oh fuck, not another Chiropractic. Just like this asshat.
The Reform party really attracts the lowest forms of politicos.
@45: That’s Quebec’s fault (and arguably a good reason to allow — nay, encourage — them to separate). I’d never even heard of the stuff before I moved to Ottawa (which is right across the river from QC). That was 35 years ago, and I’ve *still* never even tried it.
Maybe? It is simply a fact that no such dating schemes are present in the Bible itself.
The only kinds of possibilities you’d have to consider are absurd things like “well, gee, maybe we’ve been dreaming this whole time, and that’s why we’re wrong about what the Bible actually does say about how old the Earth supposedly is.” Sure, maybe that’s the case, but if we’re ignoring that kind of bullshit which disregards it as evidence, then “the evidence” which we’re considering seriously (i.e., the contents of the Bible) is simply against them.
If you just open the book and read however much of it you want, supposing that in fact it says whatever it says, then it’s clear they would be just plain wrong to claim that as part of the Bible. (I think most YECs know enough not to make that claim specifically, although they do try to suggest it or approach it, if they can get away with it.)
But that can’t be based on what the Bible says, even if they falsely claim it is, because in fact the Bible doesn’t say such things. The idea was based on Ussher‘s “calculations” that it’s been 6000 years. Notice how absurdly fucking specific he was:
Do you think anything like that is actually in the Bible? No, it isn’t. It’s utter crap that he just made up. If they were consistent and honest, they would call this “man’s reasoning” as opposed to “God’s word” itself, but they’re not consistent or honest. That doesn’t mean we need to be inconsistent or dishonest about it as well.
@Eamon Knight
If there were gods, poutine would be one of their foods for sure. Yum. Just make it yourself or go to a good frites truck or diner (no chain fast food places please!) to try it.
Lunney has been an embarrassment to Nanaimo for too long. Maybe he’ll go away completely now without the support of a party machine. I’ve never understood how come Nanaimo voted fascist anyway – and it’s really not much of a stretch to refer to the Tories that way.
But in good news, I walked past a homeopathic ‘doctors surgery’ the other day and got completely cured of any wish to consult one! A miracle!
Ibis3@50: I like my chips crisp. I hate chips with gravy.
@Eamon Knight
When I eat chips as chips, I like ’em crisp too. The only exception I make is for poutine. Chacun son goût.
consciousness razor:
I seriously haven’t got the slightest idea what point you are trying to make.
Uh, so what? who the fuck claimed there was?
How so? They claim that bible says god created the world from nothing to poplulated with plants, animals, people and fishes within a six day period. The bible says god created the world from nothing to poplulated with plants, animals, people and fishes within a six day period. They claim the bible implies but does not state that this happened within the last ten thousand years or so. The bible list the generations of humans impliying a period of time within the last ten thousand years or so.
But what the bible does and doesn’t say and what the creationism museum believes it says is utterly irrelevant to gshelley’s point. His/her point was that the museum more or less admits there is no physical evidence for their dates and that the admit it is purely biblical interpretation. I think this is somewhat accurate. (I think the museum tries for some pretzel logic of some physical evidence about stupid trees embedded in stupid rocks so they do claim some physical evidence. So I don’t agree entirely with gshelley’s point. But I agree that the museum does try to claim the bible trumps physical evidence.) What the museum’s biblical interpretation is and whether it is a correct or valid interpretation is *utterly* beside the point.
So, what? Are you claiming that the bible claims the earth is 4.5 billion years old and the universe is 13.5 bya? The bible doesn’t claim anything specific about dates but everything in it clearly occurred very recently.
But again, so what if the museums interpretation of the bible is invalid? It doesn’t matter what the museum’s interpretation is and what the “true” interpretation should be. The issue is whether the museum claims their hypothesis is based on evidence or entirely upon the bible. (Mostly on the bible; not entirely but mostly.) Whether their interpretation of the bible is valid is utterly irrelevant.
They don’t claim it is God’s word itself. They claim it is *gag* good science based on a foundation God’s word *gag*
What the heck are we being dishonest about?
One could have ‘poutine’ without the chips.
Big bowl of gravy with floaty curds.
yum?
Yet you respond to what I’m saying, as if it were comprehensible to you.
No. Why ask this, when I implied no such thing? The Bible says nothing about that. It’s similar to the way that listing generations of people in the Bible doesn’t imply the age of the Earth either. It just plain does not follow.
It’s not at all clear how recent Genesis is supposed to be, assuming it’s taken as a historical document… But how is that supposed to support your argument? By “everything” do you mean everything or not everything?
Are you going with “entirely” or “mostly”? There was no “mostly” before, and now you still can’t seem to decide even after you’re shifting the claims around this way.
Irrelevant to what? If their “interpretation” amounts to saying things about it which are simply false, that is not the same problem as having an “invalid interpretation” or a different interpretation or one reasonable people might be able to disagree about. It’s just false, and straightforward facts like that are generally relevant for a whole lot of shit.
Does anyone remember when it was called the Progressive Conservative Party?
The name was the first thing the Regressives dumped.
Lunney whines:
The old and tired criticism is persecution and we’re being persecuted memes. Of the course the subtext is that Lunney like so many of his fellow thinkers desire and want all criticism of their nonsense to cease.
@kevinalexander
I liked it better when, after the merger of the ultra-right christian party : The Reform Party and the Progressive Conservative Party, they called themselves the Conservative Reform Alliance Party. ( yep CRAP) but, after the reporters stopped laughing, quickly changed it to the CANADIAN Conservative Reform Alliance Party. (yep CCRAP. i.e see crap) Then somebody sat them down and patiently explained what was actually wrong with the first one So they changed the name to the Conservative Party of Canada.
They never had the word “Party” in their official name.
The Media thought it was funny to add it.
Your individual sentences were. Your overall point was not.
gshelley @13 stated “Doesn’t the Creation museum basically admit that a 6000 year old earth is not something that can come from the evidence – it is just based on the bible. ” That is the issue under discussion. I think the answer to that is “not entirely”. The creationism museum tries to claim a bunch of stupid evidence of trees buried vertically in strata and dumb things like that. But all the whole, yes, the creationist museum claims the claim is based on the bible more so than physical evidence. But again they hem and haw and lie about how what the physical evidence says.
That their interpretation (basically a complete acceptance of usher and a world of 6,000 years rather than, say, 10,000 or 15,000) isn’t spelled out in the bible or even if it’s an impossible interpretation of the bible isn’t relevant. We are not discussing whether their results are sound (they are not). We are discussing whether the CM admits they don’t use physical evidence. (Sorta, not really, kinda.)
Of course it does. The bible sets up the first human being as six days after the creation of the world and then list generations up to the current time of the folklore. No, you can not pin-point that to precisely Oct. 23 4004 B.C. but it does do put the entire history within 10,000 years give or take 5,000.
It puts the origins of the earth within a dozen generations of the human culture that created the folklore. That’s *very* recent considering the earth is actually 3.5 bya and humans are millions of years old and human culture 100s of thousands of years old.
“supposed to support my argument”. My argument is that the CM (maybe) claims the age of the earth is derived form the bible rather than physical evidence. So far as I can tell *your* argument seems to be: the bible taken literally in no way at all implies a young earth, and therefore since the bible is utterly neutral on whether the world is thousands, billions, or trillions of years old, and therefore creationist museum (presumably being logical and rational as you are and reaching of the same conclusion) would therefore *never* make the claim that they based their age of the earth on the bible. Seriously, *THAT* does not follow.
I’m waffling a ghelley’s original claim. I do not know if the creationist museum claims their age of the earth can not arise from evidence. I think they don’t actually as they like to fake bogus evidence. However they do use, as a defense, the argument that whatever physical evidence will come God’s word (the bible) must take precedence.
ghelley’s statement of @13
Um, huh? Whose claiming what here? I don’t care whether their interpretation that the bible implies a young earth is wrong (although I don’t think it is; the bible *does* imply a young earth) or that your interpretation that the bible is utterly neutral is right (which it isn’t). They are simply wrong because their claim that the bible trumps evidence is simply false. But this issue being discussed is whether they claim that physical evidence can not prove a young earth. On that, I’m not sure.
kevinalexander wrote:
Not exactly. The first thing they dumped was the Red Tories (casualties of the “Alliance” party). Once that ideological purge was complete, they had no need for the “Progressive” part of their name.
The Reform Party was a protest party against the Progressive Conservatives of Mulroney, a Quebecker; full of anti-francophone bigots* and well-primed by their weekly lessons in fundagelical culture warfare with the Byfield family publications as the messenger – ‘Alberta Report’ anyone? – and the Manning family of preachers; Ernest père and Preston fils.
The Progressive Party in the 1920s and 30s was an amalgam of Fabian socialists, United Farmers and polpularists who eventually devolved into the sham of Social Credit.
The Tory tradition is much older than any conservative party and not always connected.
(*the bigotry is centuries old; part of the anglosphere’s long-standing traditions of xenophobia imported via the Orange order of Dutch Calvinism so prevalent in Scotland – via Knox – and Ulster via the anti-Catholic Plantation and infecting North America with the plague of Puritans )
For those interested in Ussher’s methodology for dating the earth on, the Annals of the World is on-line.
Apparently Stephen Jay Gould defended Ussher’s attempts:
Other attempts were made to calculate the Anno Mundi by talmudic scholars :
yhwh started creating on 25th of Elul AM 0 [year zero].
Byzantian , Muslim and mediaeval scholars came up with a different dates.
Most – if not all – referenced the bible as historical text with calculable dates based on the reported lifespans and gospel genealogies