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Remember the creationist trying to raise money by selling off his mastodon skull? Now we know why he is trying to get money fast. He got into a nasty, mud-slinging lawsuit with a fellow Christian creationist over ownership of another fossil. The wonderful news: if he doesn’t get enough cash from the sale of the skull, he may have to close his museum.
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Man, you people sure jumped hard on that poor Canadian who thought the title of Darwin’s book was sufficient to damn it. Now he has replied with another post in which he demonstrates his stupidity. He really should stop. He has put up a long list of “ironic” claims that show he also doesn’t know what irony is — here’s part.
3)Irony is being accused of not reading the atheist bible (and even being told I have “no excuse”) when I’m actually a couple of days into this.
4)Even greater irony is that I can probably guess on one hand, probably even less, how many of these accusers have read my Bible — and mine’s been completed for almost 2000 years!
5)Even greater irony is that I might or might not need my other hand to count how many of the above-mentioned have read their own bible…
How clueless can you get? There is no atheist bible, and the Origin certainly wouldn’t be it if there were; his bogus criticism was specifically of the title of the book, and reading the NAS booklet on evolution is irrelevant to that point. He’s got a lot to learn, too, if he thinks atheists haven’t read “his” Bible, since many of us came to atheism precisely because we were unimpressed with the content of that book. Somebody else will have to break the sad news to the poor fellow that the Bible wasn’t completed at the time of Jesus, but is a pastiche put together many centuries later…and that there were multiple versions of the Bible before they settled on the particular chapters now in the canonical version.
I’m sure a fair number of us here have read the Origin, and it is a darned good book, but it is not required reading anymore, and it is greatly out of date.
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Answers in Genesis is starting a fake science journal. Now you can actually read the first issue, which contains a grand total of two articles. One claims that granite can form very, very quickly, therefore the earth could be young (as if that is the only reason we can see that the earth is far older than 6000 years old). The second tries to puzzle out where the bacteria fit into the six-day creation account — it’s quite an exercise in absurdist reasoning, since bacteria weren’t even imagined in biblical times.
Not recommended, unless you’re a masochist.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
He says, “I’m actually a couple of days into this,” meaning the NAS book on evolution and creation. A couple of days, huh? He must be two or three pages deep into it by now! (And did he mean literal 24-hour days?)
By the way, I did go look at the AiG “research” journal. Yikes! I am more tempted than ever to submit an article for publication. Throw in a few random math equations and they’ll be salivating!
Hey PZ, apparently Aaron Unruh doesn’t like your facial hair. Wow, there isn’t a stronger argument against evolution than that, what a genius. We must bow to his powers of reason.
He posted a page due to a comment left by “Bob”. Bob seemed to be the default. I even posted under it, although I did add to it, and now I’m wondering how many other people did. That “Bob” sure is prolific!
I’ve re-read Origin within the past couple of years. I first read it back in high school–a Jesuit high school, not exactly bible-light– a few years before I ever heard of creationism.
What cracks me up is how many of the common creationist ‘faults’ spring directly from Darwin’s own self-critical section on “Problems with the Theory”
Who do these morons thing they are arguing with?
“Hey PZ, apparently Aaron Unruh doesn’t like your facial hair. Wow, there isn’t a stronger argument against evolution than that, what a genius.”
That guy ought to look around the creationist camp. The goofiest, most unattractive facial hair I’ve seen, I’ve seen at creationist seminars.
*coughcoughkenhamcough*
OK, so he can’t read the comments to his retarded posts, either. Now that is rather ironic, considering his later comments.
Oh yes, I’ve read the Bible, and studied out in detail some of the claims made for it. There’s something odd about how quick these liars are to accuse us of being as stupid and ignorant as they are, for many of us have the worldview that we have today precisely because we insisted on studying out the various alternatives available to us in the depth and learning that escapes morons such as Matthew. Hell, I’ve had several college courses on the Bible, both in secular and religious institutions.
Sure, I’ve also read Origins, though I took my time in getting to it (since it’s neither required reading, nor is it as complete as evolutionary books can be today). More importantly, I read better (later, thus better informed) papers and books prior to reading Origins. And you know what, Matthew? I was never dumb enough to believe that Darwin was writing about human “races” in his title.
Of course, why would we expect better of someone who thinks that comparing today’s science to Hitler’s regime is something worthy of consideration. Anyone with a modicum of sense would know that such screeching strain to defame all of their opponents is likely nothing but futile lies told by incompetent idiots.
But he plays the game that all such stupid people do, tell a bunch of lies, then when such libels are called the lying and dishonest gonorrhea-like discharge that it is, triumphantly proclaim that such sound response only proves their point. It’s all that Expelled, the DI, and Matthew have, and it’s as pathetic as his lies about how many of us have read the horror (at least moral horror, when urged upon us as the way we should order our lives) that the Bible is, or Origins.
I would stress that it is not incumbent upon any of us to have read Origins, however, rather the lying piece of garbage who misrepresented it has that obligation. And it is apparent that he has not.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Great, another Canadian who doesn’t know the meaning of “irony” (I’m looking at you too, Alannis Morisette). Yeah, there are certainly creation heads and IDeologues in Canada – Denyse Buy My Book, Elizabeth “I am not a Plagiarist” Nickson, and that twit who writes for the Ottawa paper (can’t remember his name) come to mind. They all display the typical arrogance of trying to present themselves as smarter than all of the deluded “Darwinists”. In doing so, they expose themselves as just plain stupid.
This may be ironic.
Or it may not.
This guy:
http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2007/08/warren_on_atheism.php
Only now have I been able to get through to the linked blog piece, to read and quote the above.
It’s obvious, and has been pointed out repeatedly, that many forums exist to “deal [with]” (the guy can’t write properly. Get over your shock), and indeed, many of us have responded with evidence and sound argumentation on Expelled‘s blog. I only quit responding there when the lying and quote-mining javascript (I’m guessing one of those responsible for that film, for the following reason) was allowed to spew his lies, and my response was not allowed.
The irony is that Matthew is too insipid and unintelligent to do anything but repeat his lies and to put out more of them to support his first egregious set of dishonest statements.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
It is quite ironic that he refers to the Bible as something that has been around for 2000 years. Hector Avalos demonstrates that we have more fixity on the origins of the legends of King Arthur than we do on the origins of the books that people call “The Bible.”
I wonder which translation he reads? Is it the New Revised Standard Version, the New and Improved Revised Standard Version, the Improved and New Revised With Recently Unearthed Scrolls and Aramaic Re-Translations From the Greek Version, the New and Improved North American Bible, the Original Legos Bible, the Revised Annotated Legos Bible, the Gutenberg Bible modified for German Culture? Is it the Jerusalem Bible?
Which Bible are we supposed to trust more than the “Atheist Bible?” Is it he one modified to exclude sexist language? Probably not. Is it the one that includes the Gospel of St. Jude? Is it the one with the coded message that Jesus had a baby?
With On the Origins of the Species we know who wrote it, we can go back to original copies for reference, we can compare the different editions and we can read it for comprehension without needing the interpretation of an authority. And it doesn’t tell us we are sinners in the hands of an angry God. It tells us we are animals, which is just how I like it. Lusty, thinking, breathing animals and transitional ones at that.
After a couple years of reading the forums at Internet Infidel, one thing that amazes me is not how many atheists have read the Bible (and many other “holy” books). That is as you said, common, and for mnay ex-fundies there was the thing that got them out of the religion, even though many of those folks started reading and studying it precisely to help their fundamentalism by learning more.
What amazes me is that many fundies there admit to not having read the Bible, or not all of it. One guy, faced with questions about the death and resurrection of Jesus, said he hadn’t read that part. These are people who also claim the Bible is inerrant and a necessary guide to morality and escaping hell at the end of life. You know, if I thought that, I’d have RTFM.
A dumb man tried to write a screed
He knew how to write, but not how to read
It’s a mastadon skull in the wrong backyard
Of a theist who’s never even heard of Kierkegaard
And isn’t it ironic… don’t you think
(Cuttlefish and Roger have nothing to worry about from me)
The money quote from the Proceedings of the Microbe Forum, June 2007 article in AIG’s journal:
It doesn’t get much better than that.
Love the Bobs.
He didn’t address one single argument. He just slapped up a load of nonsense, then he said “Hey! Let’s debate!” Then, when people started posting valid arguments, he descended into an odd world of childish name-calling and petty nonsense.
Still… I’m amazed that he didn’t even try to debate a damn thing. He’s not only intellectually dishonest, he’s a coward who simply ran away to protect his delusions.
These are people who also claim the Bible is inerrant and a necessary guide to morality and escaping hell at the end of life. You know, if I thought that, I’d have RTFM.
Yeah but that only works if it’s written like a manual. The words are there, and they are supposed to be inerrant, and they are supposed to be a necessary guide to morality and escaping hell, but it don’t make any freakin sense.
It’s a lot easier having the preacher tell them which parts to read and what those parts mean. Who the heck is going to read Revelation, for example, and make any sense out of it unless the preacher man explains what it means? Lol.
I read parts, but, honestly, it was as dull as the Internal Revenue Code. I just remember pigeons. And that I’m so glad language has evolved over time. :shudder:
Someone want to post some comments on the geology article? Other than the extra heat from accelerated radioactive decay, it looks respectable. Are there obvious reasons why granite could not cool so quickly? Would the convection written of disrupt growth of meters-long crystals in pegmatites?
Man, I keep piling on… He’s such a whining lightweight.
I had a look at Aig journal and feeling sick now.
Sad to see – unless it is a parody.
Do you think the authors are really that -how to say without offending…- dumb ? Or just trying to make more money out of gullible people ?
When it comes to reading the Bible, I recommend The Bible With Sources Revealed.” It only covers the Torah, but it’s absurdly fascinating. Most of the contradictions go away once you break the text into its original parts.
I will admit: I had to skim a lot of Leviticus and Numbers. They were written by P, who was a horrible writer and obsessed with banal rites of the priesthood.
Forget about atheists tearing the microbe article to shreds, another evangelical could do the same thing just by countering this:
“Upon further reflection, I concluded that it
is much more likely that God created the microbes as
“biological systems” on multiple days of creation (table
2). It is less likely that a single day in creation would
explain the vast diversity of microbes (i.e., viruses,
bacteria, fungi, algae, protozoans, etc.)–although He
certainly could have.”
..with something like this:
“Well I think he DID do it in one day”
The authors entire argument is based on her ideas about god and her feelings, although she acknowledges that god can pretty much do whatever he damn well pleases in the end. Another equally deluded evangelical could counter her argument and have an equally “valid” paper for publishing just by arguing that god made microbes on one day. Never mind the ridiculousness of both arguments, its not even a decently argued paper from a creationist viewpoint. It reads like a high school essay, not a supposedly scientific paper.
I’m the Bob they’re responding to, Mena. Most of the ones with just plain “Bob” anyway. Thing is, I used to be a fundamentalist, so I’ve heard all their tired arguments before. Come on over and join the fray, ya’ll. I’m currently fending off three or four of them at once. Not that it’s that difficult.
All I’d ask for is some intellectual honesty on their part.
Of course, intellectual honesty drew me out of Christianity, but what can I say?
P.S. the new thread is an argument over whether the Bible is fiction or non-fiction, so as you can imagine, this is a *lot* of fun!
The authors are both dumb/stupid/ignorant, AND they are trying to bilk money out of even dumber/stupider/ignoranter people.
I’m another former Christian who’s read both On the Origin of Species and the Bible (yes, the whole thing — you can do it in a year if you read three chapters a day and five on Sunday).
I’m now a PhD student in developmental biology, so no points for guessing which book I found more stimulating and persuasive.
“one thing that amazes me is not how many atheists have read the Bible”
:)
“Nothing will turn you into an Atheist faster than reading the Bible” – Penn Jillette
“”Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.” – Isaac Asimov
hmm, i wonder if PZ has picked this up from the huffpo yet:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/11/20/will-smith-scientology-i_n_73469.html
What I found so strange about the comments on Matthew’s posts, was the lack of people defending him or creationism.
Not so strange that he would interpret the engagement of his ideas as being hate speech.
Hmm. So given that we do have hate speech laws here in Canada, how long will it be before someone tries to use them to protect the Religious from what they don’t want to hear? Like explaining why religion doesn’t belong in science classes.
Former fundie here as well. One thing for sure, the god of the Bible is a complete asshole.
i went to seminary for two years. i didn’t come to atheism until after a long, tortuous self-exploration, and a lot of mental trauma. the people i admired told me to fall down on my knees and pray. i respected them, and i earnestly prayed. can you imagine a kid, barely into his teens, begging some invisible myth for help? didn’t work, needless to say.
so hearing idiots like this writer saying i didn’t read the bible…fuck that guy. the worst thing about guys like that is when they die, it’ll just be blackness…nothing left over to see what a horrible crock of shit they’ve ladled all over the place their whole lives.
Gosh, I’ve read:
– the bible (nonsensical ravings)
– the koran (insane dreck)
– the baghvad-gita (actually put it down part way through..)
– a bunch of buddhist stuff “the teachings of the buddah” (convinced me the buddhists are just as fucktarded as every other religion)
– dianetics (eeeek!)
– bits of the book of mormon (put. it. down. teh studip might catch!)
When some religiotard tells me that his preferred book of ravings is “beautiful poetry” I can state with authority that it’s mostly badly written drivellings. I’ve read Shakespeare, Bassho, and Burns; it’s sad that all the divinely inspired holy books were inspired by an all-powerful supreme being who could create a Shakespeare but couldn’t hire him as a ghost-writer.
I’ve also read a lot of Betrand Russell, Nietszche, Hitchens, Dawkins, Feynman, Martin Gardiner – and, well, at least those gentlemen can string a bunch of coherent thoughts together without sounding like frontal lobe epileptics.
It’s cool to see there are so many former fundies who are Pharyngula fans. Let me tell you honestly: when I first started this journey, it felt awfully lonely out there (living in Greenville, SC!). I even thought maybe I was going crazy when I first really started to doubt and set myself adrift – another reason so few take the journey, I’m betting. But interestingly enough, when I started reading folks like Bertrand Russell, it was a comfort to know that not only was I not going crazy, but there were many people out there who believed just as I came to believe. And also interesting: I feel much more secure – much more comfort in my non-theistic beliefs than I ever did with the muddled beliefs I used to hold to.
Garth, MAJeff, Mollie, and others who weathered the brain storms and fears of ostracism from friends and loved ones: a tip of the hat to you. You’re my kinda people.
Robert S. stribs.blogspot.com
Fortunately the last time a political party in Canada aligned itself with the Religious Right, they got spanked. Unfortunately what is left of the Reform Party is now part of the Conservative Party, which is the current minority government. They wouldn’t even have that, if there hadn’t been a corruption scandal in the previous Liberal government.
Mostly, the Religious Right is keeping a low profile in Canadian politics these days. Based on the flood of your election coverage we have here, the US isn’t in the same situation.
Not irony it is funny. I recently finished Ian Kershaw’s two volume biography about Adolph Hitler, “Hubris” and “Nemesis”. In the almost two thousand pages of the combined books, I do not recall one mention of Darwin’s influence on Hitler’s thoughts. I guess Mr. Kershaw did not do enough research on the subject.
(Please note, no name calling. But there are a few that fits.)
I love the opening line of the AiG paper on microbes:
Umm, understatement.
Or maybe they’re referring to attention from the religious community.
Yikes, they can’t even spell or use a word processing program…witness “exosekeleton” on http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/arj/v1/n1/proceedings-microbe-forum .
Following the first publication of a sham article in this “journal”, I do hope the creos try to exact revenge in kind.
Actually, just the other day, I ran across the “Atheist’s Bible” at Barnes and Noble:
http://www.amazon.com/Atheists-Bible-Illustrious-Collection-Irreverent/dp/0061349151/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200292840&sr=8-1
Ironically, he might find a passage that supports this idea.
Marcus Ranum,
I’d have thought a pro-science poster on this blog would know better than to use the word epileptic as a term of abuse.
For the record – I have epilepsy, an IQ in the high 140’s (whatever that means) and when I put my mind to it I write pretty well, too.
Or are you just exchanging one package of mythological ignorance for another?
I do like the way he apparently thinks (see his point 8) that Hitler is the go-to authority on understanding 19th century English.
Okayyyyy…
If AiG is starting a fake science journal, clearly all the answers, er, aren’t in Genesis.
ridiculous… I didn’t know people like this exist… I guess that points to my own naivety. Either way, hopefully we will evolve past all of this nonsense. What is interesting to me is reading about and finding all of the parallels in the Epic of Gilgamesh that predates the bible by thousands of years. Even the virgin birth motif found in Egyptian culture. This guy needs to take a basic comparative religion course, maybe we can take up a collection and mail it to him at his P.O. Box?
A new fake science journal? That is excellent news for science faculty working toward tenure and looking to increase their number of publications without actually doing any work. If their universities won’t count it as valuable, that will just be more evidence of persecution.
“God made His creation fully mature, and complex forms fully formed. This would insure continuity and stability for the times to come.”
‘Insure’ continuity? I can see the claims dept in God’s own Insurance Company. “What’s that, you say, your bacteria died? Sorry, we don’t cover Acts of God”…
You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried. Er, maybe I’m wrong, Maybe you can make it up after all, the day before the ‘Annual conference’….
The AiG has an “Instructions to Authors” document which is meant to guide the submission of learned papers to the “Answers Research Journal.”
On page 9 of the “instructions” appaers the following:
“Remark:
The editor-in-chief will not be afraid to reject a paper if it does not properly satisfy the above criteria or it conflicts with the best interests of AiG as judged by its biblical stand and goals outlined in its statement of faith.”
‘Nuff said.
Add one more to the ex-fundie brigade. I’m a “PK” – a.k.a. preacher’s kid. And I once was headed for seminary myself. But I couldn’t resolve all of the contradictions, so it all just fell apart. And I can empathize with all of the tales of mental anguish the process of leaving religion behind can cause (and did, in my case).
But the majority of my extended family are still fundies. Just this past Christmas I had to return a box of religious propaganda to my mother, who had sent it as gifts for my family.
That totally sucked. It’s one thing to call out miscellaneous cretins on the Internet on their religious BS. It’s a different matter when you have to do it with your mom (By the way, I’m almost 40 and have been “out” for around 20 years.)
And, seriously, we should start an ex-fundie brigade.
Chris
Bob- there are TONS of us. I think we’re the most incomprehensible thing to fundamentalists, because the default settings for atheists, in their minds, are supposed to be “never heard about God” or “mad at God”. There is simply no understanding of the possibility “I used to be just like you, but then I started thinking.” I’m still young enough an atheist and deep enough into family fundies that IRL I’m mostly closeted, but I’m slowly coming out of it.
Now if I had a brigade behind me, though…
Not exactly formerly fundie, but close enough. (I say “not exactly” because that would imply actual belief as a child, which I’m not convinced I had. I knew how to repeat the prayers and liturgy and pretend to listen to sermons.) And out to everyone but the family (for Very Good and Unselfish Reasons, which will cease to exist with my mother). Also, I have some of those creationist engineers in the family who seem to have missed the “what is a theory?” lectures in all their science classes. And they’re Lutherans, so they’re not all banal like PZ’s experience.
Irony is being accused of not reading the atheist bible
Considering there is no such thing as an atheist Bible any atheist can say the same thing. Is this a joke?
read my Bible — and mine’s been completed for almost 2000 years!
Considering the way this guy talk about it seriously doubt if he’s read it too.
“Bob”? The SubGenii are taking over! O_O
j a higginbotham @16
I only read the abstract (too much real work to download and fisk the paper in toto), so let me just make a couple of comments.
Short answers: If the granite were to cool that quickly, it’d be a rhyolite, and the meteoric water convection he speculates on to rapidly cool the plutons mostly likely runs into appalling difficulties with heat transfer.
Slightly longer answer: Melt crystallization is a function of both the cooling rate and the nucleation density; a detailed quantitative analysis of Snelling’s hypothesis will certainly run into the same fudging of fundamental physical principles they use to come up with ‘accelerated’ nuclear decay rates.
It’d be fun to see Chris over at Highly Allochthonous take it apart. I’m more of a mineralogist by trade – I just do petrology on nights and weekends…
Actually, the main reason why most granite couldn’t cool that quickly has to do with thermodynamics. Yosemite might be cool at the surface after 6000 years, but it would be blazing underneath, a great source of geothermal energy (think of the Geysers geothermal development). The simple fact is that rocks cannot cool as fast as the YECs require, except by magic.
Then again, thermodynamics is only allowed to prove evolution wrong, not creationism, so it’s all okay.
But then the god who designed using only a mind operating by genetic algorithms which differ imperceptibly from “Darwinism” could also cool all the granites (and run out the differing radiometric clocks so that they match) in 6000 years. Don’t worry, magic can do anything, and only “materialist” science operates under any constraints.
Religion can only be proven true, while science is primarily open to being shown to be false, see. That’s why religion is better. And if we can see the problems with such a stance, YECs and most IDists cannot (I suspect that some IDists are lying, if to themselves as much as possible along with to us, and probably a smaller percentage of YECs as well).
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
“LuLu wrote:
You seem to have forgotten this one:
10) Irony is thinking that Matthew understands what irony means.
No one disputes that you’re entitled to your own opinion – you’re just not entitled to your own facts.”
Evisceration. That line sounds too good to be original, but it may well be.
Yet another former Christian here, incidentally. Left a mild form of Christianity, and I’m a lurker more than a poster, but one more is one more.
Does anyone know if there are figures out there of the proportion of former-theist atheists vs. lifelong atheists?
Oooh, that came out badly. Do over:
(I suspect that some IDists are lying, though to themselves to try to shake their doubts, as well as lying to us. A smaller percentage of YECs do the same, I am guessing.)
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
First post. I have been lurking PZ’s site for a couple of years now, almost on a daily basis.
I just wanted PZ to know that even though I’m not even close to as educated as most people here, I’m drawn to his and commenters posts like a magnet. What made me decide to post? I though you all should know (and maybe you already do) there are many of us former christians watching and learning from you. You all amaze me with your knowledge on so many topics and your well though out comments.
I probably won’t post again, but know we’re here, in the background watching…and learning.
Sandy,
Thanks for the comment–now stop lurking :)
Seriously, one of the things I’ve paid attention to since starting to blog again (I quit my first blog over four years ago) was how many people might read by how few say anything. It’s weird to remember how public a conversation this is, and that, especially at a place like Pharyngula, there are a hell of a lot more readers than commenters (this is also part of my own interest in the formation of publics, but that’s a topic for a different day and a different blog).
This is just me the sociologist thinking aloud a bit, but the textually-mediated relationships developed here, those of participant, audience, and public….well I’m going to stop now; this is writing possibly for one section of my dissertation.
I was a devout Irish Catholic, which can be defined as a belief that life is to be suffered through, not enjoyed. I thought that I could help worship God by reading the Bible. I made it as far as Leviticus, that book of the two or three hundred commandments God forgot to give Moses the first time. I go to Hell if I cut my hair? Or if I eat a grape that’s fallen to the ground?! That’s the strictest enforcement of the “five-second rule” I’ve ever heard. That was when I realized that it was a bunch of bullshit, full of crazy stuff and so many contradictions that it was literally impossible to believe in it. It contradicts itself on THE FIRST PAGE, with two different versions of the creation story only a paragraph apart.
I realized then that there was no God judging me every second of my life. And I’m a better and happier person for it.
WRT the creation (or not) of microorganisms, wouldn’t the larger question found in Genesis be how Noah managed to get a gendered pair of each “sort” into the ark? The bible is clear on the instructions: “…and of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark…they shall be male and female.”
Just askin’
Kylie (4):
That guy ought to look around the creationist camp. The goofiest, most unattractive facial hair I’ve seen, I’ve seen at creationist seminars.
Is that limited to the men? ;^)
Well – we geologists finally get a chance to weigh in on this very lively blog. The granite article is a priceless example of quote mining but done in a very effective manner which will discourage most of us from taking the time to go to the VERY MANY references to see in what context the primary authors were working. Never-the-less, this article fails at the starting block as a scientific research endeavor because it fails cite or to suggest ANY experiment to test its predictions.
There are MANY, MANY technical inconsistencies in this little effort which do not deserve a good fisking because the overly simplisitic, quote-mined and biased summary of magmatic processes is a futile exercise from the outset because the ENTIRE conclusion is based on the unsubstantiated premise that there is/was/has been an accelerated nuclear decay.
To list but a few problems, the paper belies a pre-Plate Tectonic misconception of the relationship between crustal fracturing and magma intrusion, ignores the stress-strain constraints on brittle planar discontinuity orientations in the middle and upper crust and simultaneously glosses over volume accommodation, fails to address the significant length of time over which the multiple plutons of the Sierra Nevada intruded in several major pulses of the course of tens of millions of years, ignores other (tectonic) mechanisms for the generation of heat to form partial melts, including crustal thickening and subduction, which was ongoing during the episodic emplacement of the sierra batholith, as was crustal accretion and obduction.
Well, we can continue to have fun, but as I look out my office window at the snowy day, I am reminded that there are things in this world worth enjoying and not enough time to waste too much of it on a pedestrian piece of rubbish such as this, or on the poltroon who is responsible for it.
Tom