Since several have asked me to post these strange emails prompted by the WingNut Daily article, here’s a couple of the cleaner, more coherent ones.
Batboy satanist
I believe that you are a satanist.Pukehead.W.M.
It is a shame that such a learned individual can be so afraid of opposing viewpoints. How can one explain maintaining a point of view about something (evolution) that most scientists secretly admit is bunk. Despite the years of research and billions in funding spent on this idiotic “theory”, never has anyone been able to produce ANY hard evidence to support this theory. In fact, more evidence exists to disprove it. Yet, our tax-payer funded schools are being forced, despite the will of the people in this “democratic” nation, to teach this bunk to our children, while being blocked from teaching ANY opposing viewpoints. And, those who dare will find themselves in court so fast it will make their head spin.
I dare you to read this
Jesus loves you even if you are a pig-####### ############. [I edited that last bit]
“…ejaculations from a godless liberal
Why are godless liberals the only ones who seem to have faith in the Darwinic system of beliefs? Evolution was a great belief when it was first introduced. After all there were brass microscopes and all kind of modern tools to study this new found faith. Today evolution is as ###### as it was in the past and people who hold no faith in religion or evolution can see it for what it is. A farce!
You can see why I don’t dump more of these here: they’re boring. Especially after you get 20 or 30 of them.
Ok PZ, we’re busted. Time to give up the goat. Yes all scientists secretly admit Evolution is bunk and they’ve created this great conspiracy to fool the masses. During the annual “Evolution Coverup” conference in Transylvania we plan out how best to contiune to make up new evidence and which country’s responsibility it is this year to create and distribute new foissil finds.
Since we’re coming clean lets go ahead and spill all the beans. While we hate to admit this, Gravity is also bunk and so was the moon landing.
Forgive the typos. In the overwhelming emotional release of being able to disclose the secret master plan, I got rushed and didn’t proof-read.
I think “pig-####### ############” has an “#^$&” in it, too. Then again, you have to admire the writer for being able to translate it from the original Aramaic.
Oh, well — must be off to work so that I can consume some of those billions of dollars in research funds. Nice to know that we biologists are getting even more money than is going to corporate favors and the war in Iraq.
I’m stuck trying to figure out what the 12 letter naughty word is. Can I buy a vowel? Maybe more than one?
It’s Kennedy’s sermon for next Sunday.
Some PR man mailed you a copy.
“Billions in funding”? Oh yeah, evolutionary biology gets tons of funding. Yup, we put the physicists with their large particle accelerators, NASA and the Pentagon all to shame.
They haven’t looked at the grant applications of evolutionary biologists have they?
“Teaching ANY opposing viewpoints.” I guess it would be okay if children were to be taught that were cloned by aliens, like the Raelians believe.
I’m stuck trying to figure out what the 12 letter naughty word is. Can I buy a vowel? Maybe more than one?
I’m thinking it begins with mother-…
Seriously, these are the coherent ones? What do the rest look like, line noise?
Wait a minute, I thought it said very specifically in the Bible that pig-####### ############s should be immediately put to death.
I wish these guys would at least read the book that they base their entire opinions on. Not one of them has even found out that the middle 300 pages of the Bible are blank, yet.
Well, you certainly fooled me by designing my AI Armored Core from Silent Line in advance and somehow making it look like a gradual improvement. And here, I thought evolution had been put to use in impractical as well as practical use in our everyday lives.
Boy, it’s fun to eat all this random-color corn, since no one was able to selectively favor yellow and other traits that favor human desires in corn.
-Bronze Unselectively Bred Wolf
“How can one explain maintaining a point of view about something (evolution) that most scientists secretly admit is bunk.”
Somehow, I’m skeptical that the author of this letter knows any professional scientists, much less a sample large enough to form directly an opinion of their views. So where does he get this erroneous idea? The lies told by the ID propagandists are the obvious source. The interesting thing is that, regarding the views of scientists, this author is more willing to tend to this propaganda, than studies that show otherwise, or even just the blogs of numerous scientists on the web. This shows two unfortnate things. (1) These lies work. (2) This author really does have faith.
Ok we asked for it, and we got it. Enough. It makes the mind spin trying to figure out how people get like this. There is a clue in the Sherma article above:
“Like most creationists, you just know what you read in creationist books. When you read them, it makes the theory of evolution sound completely idiotic. What moron could believe in this theory? When you actually take a class in the science of it, it’s a completely different picture.”
I suspect science will always fail in the general population because to understand the research is hard work.
Now the “faith in Darwin” comes haunting you. IMHO we should stop with this whole theory and yada, yada two sides argument and just put it out straightforward. One can either accept jesus in his world, or the earth being a geoid or find his own personal way. For me and many others accepting the earth is a “sphere” is just nothing that involves faith, for it is a direct cause of my environemnt. It would have been way harder a hundred years back. Someone who has never seen any animal or insect or plant, that is never seen nature at all, evolution might in fact be something to theorize about. And it wasn`t till the 21st century since the concept of this permeating similarity of all of living things, and in fact a new definition of life itself arose.
By now it is fairly easy, in fact the only rational way to understand that in the end there is one highly functional machine that is capable of producing all sorts of products as an outcome. There is a direct flow of information involved.
Now where life actually started is a whole nother issue, and something that is in fact left to be theorized about. We now know that planets themselves are actively exchanging material with each other, and IMO it will be one of the most fascinating points in history to try to find out our origins. Both scenarios are everything but unlikely, but i personally and clearly favor that ultimately we “came from space” as we now know that life arose 4 billion years ago pretty much at the time where the occurance of life became environmentally possible.
So there is some believe in one way or another left for each generation, and they will all differ as our posterity will already build their world upon theories that our generations have proved or disproved in a straightforward and beautiful manner so that in fact anyone with a knack to rational thinking can follow those ideas.
That may be a bit confusing, i am talking about the earth and a certain believe in that it is spherical to some extend.
With
“Someone who has never seen any animal or insect or plant, that is never seen nature at all, evolution might in fact be something to theorize about.” i mean the directly visible implication of the diversity of live that one would have to be an total and utter idiot not to see further than to the level of cloths and makeup. Prolly even prehistoric men knew about evolution, (darwin merely shattered certain minds in a dificult time, his greatest archivment was one that was circumstantial due to the heavily religious dogma at that time). I can see how a lighnting bolt is extraordinary, and is so just as well in its mathematical and theoretical description, but cannot comprehend how one can blind themselve to just but a blanket over a dog, and suddenly it is not a dog anymore, in analogy to men but makeup and cloths on a man and suddenly there is a total lack of similarity to other natural beings. That bundled with a rudimentary understanding of DNA and cells in a two hours course is enough to………..well regardless i should be smart enough to understand that religion is not to be understood in social arguments but in neuroscience.
In the end life of any higher lifeform is all about one thing, the reward pathway along with it`s by now well understood plasticity.
What really impresses me are the ones like everyone’s favorite here, the “scientists secretly admit is bunk” letter. Because until you reach that statement, it opens so nice and civil and grammatically correct, and you’re thinking “okay, well at least this one can form coherent ideas and communicate thWHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!?”
They sneak up behind you and whack you with their ignorance/stupidity/craziness. I like that.
Some of these Christians have got real pottymouths on them, haven’t they? Very obsessed with the sexual behavour and penetration of non-believers. If they’re not careful we will think it’s displacement behaviour by people brought up in a culture that represses and demonises the normal expression of human sexuality.
Someone buy that man a brass microscope!
That last one is a bit odd. Not sure what other options he has left.
Taking up my question from the other thread, has anyone from this or another science blog taken up the task of stuffing WND’s mailboxes full of “evil satanist liberal” emails?
I’v received a bit of hate mail now and then, but no one has ever accused me of having unnatural sexual relations with our porcine friends. What’s a girl gotta do to goad someone into calling her a pig-*****? :)
How can one explain maintaining a point of view about something (evolution) that most scientists secretly admit is bunk.
An lot of IDism can be attributed to religiosity and/or naivete, but this particular line and its variations–that ID has any, or is gaining any, traction among real scientists; that ID-vs-evolution is, in any way, a debate in the scientific community–is a flat-out, intentional lie.
And we should be calling them on it, every time.
Loud.
Let ’em try to deny it.
This is a key point. Science, or even psuedo-science, can be hard to follow if you’re not into science yourself. But everyone understands what a lie is.
Moreover, if you don’t understand something technical, you’re forced to trust the judgement of people who do–which is why IDers try to steal the credibility of scientists by telling their audiences that the judgement of people who do understand biology supports ID. Not only do these people deserve not to be lied to, but if they hear instead “Here’s what we believe, here’s our case–but no, almost no one in the scientific community is buying this, and the few that do only do it because they think Jesus will like them better” . . . it takes a lot of wind out of the IDers’ sails.
I suspect science will always fail in the general population because to understand the research is hard work.
oldhippie, I suspect that kind of elitist attitude is what got us into this mess in the first place. People aren’t inherently this stupid; they’re just poorly educated. Because of a lack of decent science education, the God of the Gaps grows. Throwing up your hands like this doesn’t help.
Jennifer Ouellette: One way would be to well, ***** a pig, no? Or, it seems, run a popular blog on evolutionary biology and other such matters. Isn’t it amazing how one can achieve the same goal by many difference means?
The hypocrisy always amazes me.
Personally, I’d like to know how with so many billions of dollars spent ‘funding’ religion down thru history by its proponents, never has anyone been able to produce ANY hard evidence to support the ‘theory’ that gawd exists!
“oldhippie, I suspect that kind of elitist attitude is what got us into this mess in the first place. People aren’t inherently this stupid; they’re just poorly educated. Because of a lack of decent science education, the God of the Gaps grows. Throwing up your hands like this doesn’t help.”
It was not meant to be elitist, I am having hard time trying to learn enough to understand some of the modern genetics stuff, and I have a very distant science background, but not a biology one. So I know it is hard work, and I know many people would have neither the time nor the inclination for it.
But neither am I exactly throwing up my hands. We need to communicate better, but not only that, we have to understand the mechanisms of how and why people so easily latch onto false information, so we know how to counter it.
I now understand CREATIONINSM (aka Intelligent Design), Currently watching this pseudo documentary “Unlocking the Mystery of Life” – with some background search one would prolly find they got partly funded by christian cults and folks that favor ID.
What ID is all about is that these loonies take Darwinism completely 1:1 and translate it directly into our world. Every claim is pretty much the same: “Natural selection can`t build you a home, natural selection can`t built you a watchtower, natural selection can`t built you a flagellum”…..I mean cmon back then Darwin didn`t even have the tools to know the intricacies of this “device”, in fact the only thing we have such abstractions as this motor moved by the “electromotiveforce” (the term itself being outdated) is to enable a top down learning methodology, otherwise you would have to use the quantum mechanical picture right away.
Anyhow there`s some biochemist on the ID board and i cannot believe how naive this guy can be, the only way is that he is just virtually totally ignorant of quantum mechanics, which would depend on how those curricula were back in the days.
All in all however i don`t see how ID will ever make headway in science, given that the economy demands what is in the curricula, and todays scientists is way more complex than the ID argument “natural selection cannot built X, Y,…” in fact natural selection would reduce their argumentation to just 1 irrefutably stupid assertion, and heck there are many things that natural selection doesn`t explain such as these dumb assertions and how many of those even got a PhD (even those they often are in philosophy)….
The conclusion is those idiots saw in natural selection their new religion that would explain everything to them, got angry when it failed and made up their own new version of idiotism, so stupid even the church disapproves of it, in fact for good reasons!
oh yeah i don`t mean this disrespectful.
You don`t have to be a quantum mechanics freak to be a good biologists (or molecular biologists – although you have to be one to be a good chemists, but that`s another story), what i am getting at is that pretty much all students that i know of AREN`t to stupid as to have a built in irreducable complexity barrier, meaning their limitation of imagination ends at a driveshaft a rotor etc, in their thinking, but DO understand that these are modells that go far deeper but for their own sake is a good modell, which in case it doesn`t satisfy their curiosity can be studies further at cited source 1, 2,…n.
“i mean the directly visible implication of the diversity of live that one would have to be an total and utter idiot not to see further than to the level of cloths and makeup. Prolly even prehistoric men knew about evolution.”
Probably not. Evolution did not spring from Darwin’s mind, absent some significant facts that he was trying to explain, and that were not well-known in times previous. The first was a rough picture of the global tree of life. When people mostly knew their own region, they knew species each as its own kind — intimately, yes, but still locally — and told tales of what kind of strange plants and beasties lived over the hill. It was obvious that species were grouped, that mules and horses were alike in a way that mules and ivy were not. That led to Aristotle’s views. But there was no global structure to how peopl saw life. If you look at the stories of strange beasties, in both ancient times and medieval, you don’t see the evolutionary tree that we see. Instead, there are tales of species that would indeed drive a stake into evolution’s heart: plants producing people, animals whose lower half was reptilian and upper half mammal, etc. A more global view evolved with the modern era. The naturalists of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries did a lot of hard and important scientific research, creating the first scientific global picture of what kind of life exists on this planet. Partial, yes. But vital. That was Darwin’s meat.
Second, Darwin worked when there was just the start of natural history. People long knew about fossils. But it wasn’t until the modern era that fossils and geology were seen as a way to glimpse at the earth in times past.
Let me be clear that this is to Darwin’s credit. Scientific genius doesn’t come from ignoring the data, but from thinking on it.
I guess Jesus also loves you if you’re an admitted muleXXXXXXer like Republican Neal Horsley.
There are no geniuses, not in the traditional sense anyways, when people worship other people just because they lack the chronological historical order and fail to see the mutual progress undertaken it really worries me.
Secondly, the only geniuses that could be identified as such, even though the term wouldn`t be used, would be impaired people, e.g. blind etc, whose neural plasticity allowed them to advance certain abilities that are beyond those of the mainstream individual, for there is a scientific cause and effect not just the blind admiration of a group of people towards an individual.
At last, when i speak of prehistoric man i don`t mean the ancients, logically but rather who were much more animalistic in their behavior in that they really had to work their ass off to survive and get something to eat, in stark contrast to making up some iditotic pseudo theory about xy, and plundering the shelves of the supermarkets, while plotting 12hours a day on how to drag others down in in the same stupid scheme.
I really dunno how likely it is whether or not prehistoric man saw it`s similarity to nature, but i am sure it exceeds that of modern man, who can`t even identify with themselves anymore.
Much of Darwins sucess was ultimately also due to his position,and respect. One of the most naive views to have is that one invidual created or complete new vision of the world, it is rather than one individual gets accredited in accordance to a certain cirumstancial movement that allowed the idea to flourish. The conservation of energy was accredited to its fifth discoverer for instance.
No doubt Darwin influenced many of his time, but it is not just his effort at that time that helped advance our view, a view that has gotten greatly enhanced and refined….
BTW: Darwin himself had no chance of konwing how similar a human and plant really is, only thanks to 21century breakthoughs in pyhsics the finally logical picture emerged that there are certain sets of “functional units” (conserved homologies) that go down all the way to the DNA sequence, in fact as a consequence. And it is the interplay of gene expression with the environement that causes this extreme flexibility.
Ultimately to get back to ID, what worries me is the professional propaganda that is going on. ID is all about one thing really, a bunch of people who set their limits how far they wanna go in their scientific journey and beyond that everything becomes directly translated into drivewheels and cars and whatnot, that is human intelligence, and science humans are inapt to create something like DNA it has to be a god who sired us.
What really galls me about these religious morons is that they claim that they know better, and yet, when I ask them to explain to me about what the Bible says about things like placoderm lifestyles and evolution, they just gawk at me as though I just cursed them and their children in Chaldean.
Why does it seem like it is always the most violently angry miserable people who are overly religious? It’s just amazing how hate filled they are. I don’t want to get disemvoweled but I can think of a couple examples that we have been subjected to lately. The rest of us aren’t reacting negatively to religion but the people who roar the loudest about how Christian they are really are kind of creepy. By the way, does anyone know of any IDiots who aren’t devout CINOs?
“Batboy?”
RedMolly, I believe that’s an indicator that the correspondent remains scientifically au courant by faithfully reading the distinguished research journal Weekly World News.
Oldhippie:
I’m more inclined to be optimistic than that. When you look at the biological differences between the average scientist and the average minister, you don’t see a lot of variation.* This suggests that intelligence is a more or less standard trait and almost anyone can acquire the same degree and depth of knowledge on a given subject as almost anyone else possesses without putting forth more or less effort.
What draws so many people to the mythic seems to be manifold. For one, there’s the sense of comfort you get from thinking there’s a big parent in the sky looking out for you. For another, there’s the sense of intellectual superiority you get from thinking you know more than someone else, particularly if it’s about a “secret” that’s also “out in the open” (“There are those who have ears and do not hear”, etc.).
For non-canonical superstition there’s the added bonus of being on the fringe (“Sniff, no one accepts me because I’m a warlock … but someday I’ll have my revenge…”) as well as the added punch of knowing even more, deeper secrets that are rejected by the majority of the superstitious. (The glorification of victimhood. Well, perceived victimhood. Most of these clowns would shit purple Twinkies and avidly recant their beliefs if they ever experienced any real persecution.)
I’m sure there are other lures. For instance you don’t have to actually work to become an expert, which would seem to go along with your suggestion; you just have to read a book or two that agrees with your limited, us-vs.-them mentality, and “pray” for “wisdom” (which is emphatically not the same thing as praying for wisdom, which is more in keeping with meditating on or deeply cogitating a question to explore it from many perspectives).
Of course I’m talking here about lay minister types, as well as street-corner evangelists and others who both blat their cretinous folderol and at the same time wear their ignorance proudly, as a badge of honor. True, educated theologians with a background in humanities and the “real” world are much less likely to descend into assholery than their right-wing fanatic wacko cousins.
====
* Though the minister might have marginally more venereal disease exposure.
Jesus loves you even if you are a pig-####### ############.
What good is he then, if he doesn’t have any taste? Why can’t he grow a pig-####### spine?
Mena…
I think the miserable folks who are the loudest Xtians are so for that very reason. They see this life as miserable, some sort of trial or something to be gotten through to get to the 72 Virgins… Wait, strike that… to get to the clouds and harps afterward. That makes this life a throwaway. Hence, they’re miserable, and loud, and can’t wait to get to their afterlife. Which is sad on many, many levels.
Thanks for reading!
When you look at the biological differences between the average scientist and the average minister, you don’t see a lot of variation.
It’s the company one keeps. If you think about God every day, it becomes real for you. Also, the Concord Fallacy drives one to maintain an action/worldview with a stubborness in proportion to the amount of time and energy already vested in it, leading to a vicious circle.
I have always thought that if Bible study members (of which I was one) could differentiate the tedious Scriptural point that it was God and not Moses, but working through Moses, who ostensibly “parted the Red Sea,” then they could understand that we did not “come from apes” but share with them a common ancestor!
As oldhippie said, “We need to communicate better,” but we also have to repeat our points, and repeat and repeat them. Repetition, repetition. Because there’s so much competition, competition.
could it be that it is knowledge of evolution and, broader, of scientific principles which convinces holders that liberalism is the sensible path? that morality is, as Peter Singer opined, rooted in the interchangeability of one’s own interest and others? that authoritarians do damage when left unchecked, even if they achieve ends which if viewed in the narrow may be good? that religion is a preadaptation?
(crossposted from ekzept )
So, Dr. Myers, how many gin ‘n’ tonics are necessary for you to secretly admit that evolution is bunk?
What’s a girl gotta do to goad someone into calling her a pig-*****?
Jennifer — You’re a pig-*****?
(I goad easily!)
:-):-):-):-):-)
“Jesus loves you even if you are a pig-####### ############. ”
The only thing I get from this is that the author here isn’t that Jesus character.
lo:
“Both scenarios are everything but unlikely, but i personally and clearly favor that ultimately we “came from space” as we now know that life arose 4 billion years ago pretty much at the time where the occurance of life became environmentally possible.”
Panspermia is both not parsimonious and avoids the question of abiogenesis. I’ll bet against it.