The stupid, it burns


Oh, no … I mentioned the existence of godtube the other day, and now people are farming it for incredibly stupid videos that they send to me. It’s rich soil for stupid over there, and they’ve got a bumper crop — you would not believe how awful some of their arguments are.

I hesitate to mention this one because I know it’s going to trigger yet more bad videos in my in-box, but it is so bad, so crazy, that I have to share it. This one claims that Food Patterns of our Body Proof for Intelligent Design, and, well, you have to see it. It starts with the claim that a sliced carrot looks like a human eye, and carrots are good for your eyes, and just goes downhill from there — tomatoes are red and have chambers, just like the heart, walnuts look like brains, kidney beans look like kidneys, etc.

I think the creator must be a virgin. He also claims that citrus fruits look just like human mammary glands.

Comments

  1. Stuart Ritchie says

    No! I refuse to believe it! Someone’s tried to Sokal the site with this video… surely?!

    Has this guy ever heard of ‘domesticated plants’?!

  2. maureen says

    If got wanted us all to eat tomatoes to benefit our hearts why didn’t she/it arrange for us to evolve in the Americas where the tomatoes were?

  3. allkom says

    They got one thing right: I bet an autopsy to the author of this video would show show his brain to be EXACTLY like a nut.
    As for the oranges, LOL, this guy must have some serious Freudian issues.

  4. LARA says

    And by these analogies we should also be able to infer that the three leaves of poison ivy represent the trinity, marijuana increases your manual dexterity by virtue of it’s palmate shape and Wonder bread gives you the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound. I love modern magical thinking. What’s next? Wal-mart is actually an interdimensional teleportation device that links you to every other Wal-mart in the country if you arrange the products on the shelves in the analogous order?

  5. Escuerd says

    So it appears that creation scientists have discovered sympathetic magic.

    For God’s sake we mustn’t let them use it to get their hands on our precious cargo.

  6. Escuerd says

    “Woman who eat 1 avocado a week, have balanced hormones, shed unwanted weight and prevent cervical cancers”

    What were they saying about “the Chinese” at the beginning of the video? I hope this wasn’t just a buildup to one of those terrible “Confucius say” jokes.

  7. Ygern says

    I see the pattern-seeking mammals are at it again.

    I think I spot the problem our God Tuber has with meeting women. Telling them their breast look like knobnly ole oranges is not the way to go.
    You eyes are like carrots isn’t likely to have the desired effect either.

  8. Sili says

    1) This sounds a lot more like new-age nutribollocks than oldfangled godbollocks.

    2) 23% sodium in celery?!! And bones?! By what metric?

    3) I couldn’t help but notice the distinct lack of mammary glands for convenient comparison.

  9. says

    Oh no, they’ve caught everyone in the crushing grip of reason!

    Excuse me, I think I need to go shout at a wall for a while…

  10. Aquaria says

    Do we dare mention that huevos, the Spanish word for eggs, is also a Hispanic slang term for testicles?

  11. says

    It’s strange that there’s no mention of the banana. How do they expect me to take this seriously if there’s no fucking banana involved?

  12. Cappy says

    And meat looks like muscle tissue and guess what, protein is good for your muscles.

  13. says

    This means, of course, that all fruit and veggies need to be separated by gender. No more oranges for you, boys! Girls– keep your mouth off the cucumbers! J-Lo, put that pumpkin down!

  14. BaldySlaphead says

    That’s fantastic! What a magnificent load of old bollocks.

    This has to be a Poe’s Law job, shirley?

    To be a little fair though, I think they perhaps meant the citrus fruit looked like the milk ducts, which they do. A bit. If you squint. And are a bit mental.

  15. s1mplex says

    The kidney bean is shaped exactly like a human kidney

    Whoa! I also just realized that an orange is orange.

    Trippy… Um, I mean, Jeebus rules!

  16. radek says

    WOW, I can not belief my carrots… I mean eyes.

    I would have never believed that someone could make something so stupid if I hadnt acually seen it. Well on the other hand it was very educational, when I need to show someone what the inside of a woman’s breast looks like all I need to do is cut an orange in half.

  17. Andrew says

    I liked the onions look like “body” cells part.

    Me: Which cells are those exactly? What is their function?

    Fool: Bodying, of course.

    Me: Of course… (Pats the fool’s head)

  18. fusilier says

    peau d’orange = magnificent mammaries??

    Don’t let Orac see that, he’ll stroke out.

    fusilier, who almost did
    James 2:24

  19. Pete-O says

    I noticed comments on godtube don’t post immediately, do they verify and approve every post?
    I said on my post citrus never reminded me of mammaries, casaba melons, yes citrus no.
    Would that be considered offensive?

  20. says

    Damn! That was beyond excellent! Seldom have I so enjoyed the pure essence of nonsense. And … I’m not kidding here, folks … I can see in my mind’s eye the solemn head-nodding and pursed lips of the true believers who see this video and murmur, “Oh, so true! So true! That’s brilliant!”

    Of course, that part is just sad.

  21. says

    #17 stole my major complaint. Citrus=boobs? Forgive me, but: Pics nao!

    These people the bar set disturbingly low where proof is concerned. I bet I could convince them that the sum of any two integers is 10. “Think about it guys. 1+9=10. 2+8=10. 3+7=10. Even -15+25=10 It just doesn’t stop!”

  22. says

    Once again I am reminded why the founding fathers included an electoral college. People are just too fucking stupid to directly choose their leaders (for independent verification see the last two presidential elections). Sadly, the electoral college is now run by sycophants and cronies so it doesn’t much help us.

  23. deerjackal says

    The “sweet potatoes” he uses in the video are actually yams (common mixup), which can be toxic. Actual sweet potatoes are rounder and less pancreas-like. God, you tricky dick.

  24. says

    So if they look like citrus fruits, how come boobs feel like bags of sand? That’s what they feel like, right? Bags of sand? Right?

  25. Carlie says

    smadin beat me to the link! That was the first thing I thought of, too.

    Well, I’ve been having some liver trouble lately, so I think I’ll go eat a bunch of Hepatica that I’ve noticed is in bloom now. That will work, right?

  26. SJB says

    Blackadder’s man-servant, Baldrick, had a turnip shaped like a thingy.

  27. BaldySlaphead says

    At #37 – he7 Carlie, all you have to do is just disolve the Hepatica into some water, then dilute that solution until there’s no Hepatica in there at all and *then* take it – that will definitely work; Jeebus and homeopathy.

  28. craig says

    Personally I find the argument that creationists’ brains are the size of walnuts oddly compelling.

  29. says

    I don’t know anything much about the health benefits of foods, but I looked up an article or two on kidney beans. Not only did none mention them helping to maintain kidney function, one mentioned that they contain a moderately high level of purines, which lead to kidney stones. So if this is true, EPIC FAIL!

    But then you can’t trust all you read on the internet, does anyone know anything much on the subject?

  30. says

    Baldyslaphead@#40: So that’s how they invented ID: Dissolve Cretinism– sorry, Creationism– into pseudotreknobabble, then dilute until there’s no trace of Jebusons.

    Quick, more dilution!

  31. Hypatia's Girl says

    Maybe I’m not picking up the right message, eat avocados if you want twins (like Remus and Romulus?) and onions make you cry so you know that you just wasted three minutes watching one of the stupidist arguments from analogy?

    wait, damn, I think I’m missing it.
    Oranges look like cellulite and that’s the curse of Eve?

  32. MAJeff, OM says

    That’s what they feel like, right? Bags of sand? Right?

    Sushi rice in balloons (baggies have corners that can poke) makes pretty good boobs if you’re dressing up for a night on the town :)

  33. Bob L says

    “It starts with the claim that a sliced carrot looks like a human eye, and carrots are good for your eyes,”

    They just described sympathetic magic. They really want to bring back alchemy.

  34. Luis says

    I came here for the Doctrine of Signatures and I was not disappointed. Well done, Internet!

  35. The Puzzled Ibex says

    “The pupil, iris, and radiating lines look just like the human eye”

    A human eye looks just like a human eye! Proof of God!

    Oh. My. Squid.

  36. The Puzzled Ibex says

    “the cervix and womb of the female”

    Isn’t that a little redundant? Is “of the female” a necessary clarification for God Tube users?

  37. april says

    If nothing else, this started my day with a good laugh. Not at the video – at the comments that accompanied it. Well, maybe a little at the video.

  38. Nick Gotts says

    Re #34 Once again I am reminded why the founding fathers included an electoral college. People are just too fucking stupid to directly choose their leaders (for independent verification see the last two presidential elections). – Lorax

    No, they included it so the rich could fix elections. Worth pointing out that if Presidential elections went by the popular vote, GWB would never have become president?

  39. says

    omg, my crap is the color of the wooden cross! I am now convinced! Sorry FSM, Jesus is my boy now. He has the evidence.

  40. Carnife says

    did anyone else notice that for every other body part, the movie notes how the aforementioned food is supposed to help the body… but for the grapefruit it simply noted a resemblance and left it at that? clearly, someone was distracted by something…

  41. Nick Gotts says

    I looked up an article or two on kidney beans. Not only did none mention them helping to maintain kidney function, one mentioned that they contain a moderately high level of purines, which lead to kidney stones. – Gobaskov

    Well, precisely! They’re shaped like kidneys to warn you they can cause damage to your kidneys!

  42. craig says

    If sliced carrots look like eyes, then slicing your eyeballs will make them work better.

    I think slicing the carrots is cheating.
    I can carve a potato into the shape of a dick, should I post a video to Godtube about that miracle?

  43. craig says

    Citrus fruit does kinda look like some human mammaries, they just left out the sock. Small oranges in socks.

  44. Mango says

    I need to get me down to the Piggly Wiggly grocery for some fruits and veggies. Maybe I’ll throw in a kielbasa, too.

  45. says

    Well, oranges are nice and all, and if she’s got a nice attitude and is smart, I’m sure I could be quite happy.

    Unfortunately, I’m more of a grapefruit man myself.

  46. says

    ROFLMAO

    As some one with a nutrition background I found the movie funny. A good way to start the day. Where did they get their science information from?

    It is almost worth keeping to use as a class quiz. A “What is wrong with the nutrition here?” quiz.

    Unfortunately, people will believe.

  47. Duncan says

    Imagine the fun these people could have with ginseng root.

    But I wanna know how durian matches with human anatomy.

  48. ennui says

    I’ve often fretted needlessly
    over which whole foods to eat
    Should I indulge in eggplant?
    do kumquats better meat?

    But now I know the simple truth
    is writ large in the shape
    of every fruit and vegetable –
    god’s plan leaves me agape!

    If ever my heart ails me,
    as oft the case has been,
    I promptly eat tomatoes
    whose form means lycopene

    And carrots for the eyeballs
    and oranges for the chest,
    and perhaps a little Enya
    to comfortably digest (gag)

    Bananas are important, too
    they fit right in your hand
    and masturbation’s part of god’s
    celestial whole food plan

    But cherries, ah those cherries
    truly from heaven are sent –
    When picked, they look exactly like
    a creationist argument

  49. says

    So, once these new laws are passed which allow teachers and students to use “alternate” theories in science, will this be used to provide answers to tests?

    If not, then why? It is an alternate “theory” right?

  50. says

    @ #22

    Don’t you think they’d be more concerned about girls eating peaches and boys eating cucumbers?

    As always, though, XKCD is ahead of the game.

  51. says

    OK still at crappy sites on the net so don’t trust any of this without verification.

    Can’t find much linking celery to bones. Celery also contains 100 mg of sodium per cup, and a cup of celery weighs over 1/2 a gram, so the 23% figure is bollocks.

    The sweet potatoes and pancreas link also seems to be fairly week, but I may have missed some things. There is a study of sweet potatoes causing pancreatic enlargement, but I don’t know if that is a good or a bad thing, also it may be to do with impurities not the sweet potato itself.

    Avocado claims equally thin apart from one mention of it helping cancer in general.

    I would contest the citrus fruit looks like female mammary glands, but I have only ever seen the outside, could be very citrus like in there for all I know!

    Again do onions really look like body cells? I can’t find to much on their benefit for body cells. Also I thought onions made you cry because they were producing sulphuric acid in them, that is good? Cheers God!

    Also as noted before by others, the carrots – eyesight link is also crap.

    Well I think I spent way to long researching this video’s claims, but what do you expect me to do when lectures end and “revision starts”.

  52. Tulse says

    I couldn’t help but notice the distinct lack of mammary glands for convenient comparison.

    Not only that, but it was the only food mentioned that did not provide an explicit health benefit for the organ compared. I thought the whole point of the piece (and the general Doctrine of Signatures) was that outward appearance suggests use — how are oranges good for breasts?

    And like some others have suggested, it was always my impression that sympathetic magic and the Doctrine of Signatures were decidedly pagan notions.

  53. Grimalkin says

    This is old news. “Doctors” have been using the “god made it look like what it cures” method for prescribing remedies since the Dark Ages (and probably longer, but that’s as far as my interests go). It was common practise to give poisonous mushrooms out to people with headaches because the tops of mushrooms look like heads – therefore, they cure headaches. The patients who survived the poisoning didn’t worry about their headaches so much (CURE) and those who died obviously had demons or something and the doctor just wasn’t able to get to them in time (would have been cured, but didn’t PRAY hard enough!).

    Am I the only one who finds the resurgence of Medieval medical practises incredibly frightening? Does someone need to remind the nutty brand of Christians that people didn’t live that long in the Middle Ages? And the time that they did live, they were riddled with leprosy, boils, skin rashes, and all sorts of other nasty diseases?

  54. AndyD says

    Ouch. I just sliced my eyeball and it looks nothing like a carrot!

    Avocados, from: http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/avocado.html
    “Mexican types ripen in 6 – 8 months from bloom while Guatemalan types usually take 12 – 18 months.”

    So, if you eat avocados, you may give birth prematurely or… well, you better hope you give birth prematurely!

    If you eat potatoes you will crap a lot.

    The quote at the end initially gives the impression the whole text was quoted from David Bjerklie.

    And if the Chinese were the ones to work all this out, why would we adopt Creationism? Surely we’d go with Taoism or Buddhism or something, wouldn’t we?

    What really caught my attention though, was that science shows how carrots are good for the eyes. Armed with that bit of scientific education, I’m off to do some killing.

  55. Grimalkin says

    Oh, and as for the carrot-eyesight link, that’s 100% true. When I was a kid, my mom gave me an argument that I have never been able to refute. She said “we know carrots are good for your eyes because rabbits eat carrots. You’ve never seen a rabbit with glasses, have you?”

    There you go. Proof positive.

  56. bunnycatch3r says

    “I can’t believe my carrots– I mean eyes”
    FTW – I lol’d

  57. negentropyeater says

    The website responsible for this illuminating video, http://www.blowthetrumpet.org is worth visiting.

    It is a super concentrate of everything which scares the shit out of me with America’s descent into the Evangelical “End of Times” Paranoia.

    This kind of website shows to me, seen from Europe, that some people in America are really going completely bezerk.
    And this might be a problem in the future for the whole world.

  58. Duncan says

    That video also reminds me of the blatant falshoods written on the chalkboards in ‘Strangers With Candy’.

    I would love to see a parody video of this thing where someone makes up shit so completely absurd that these people will be forced to believe it using their god-logic.

  59. says

    It’s not even NEW stupidity: the idea’s been around for some 1500 years now. The idea that everything in the world had been “stamped” by God with some clue to its use by humans has been around since early Christianity. If a plant had leaves shaped like, say, hearts, that was a sign that it would be good for heart complaints.

    Note, too, that this ancient idea is actually BETTER than ID in that it leads to testable hypotheses. They just happen to be wrong.

    What WILL the fundies discover next? The four bodily humours?

  60. raven says

    PZ Myers…you are SELF-DELUDED BABBLING IDIOT….

    for dawkins & randi and PZ “myers” and the rest of the so-called “critical thinkers”…etc..

    For anyone who wants to know. This is what schizophrenia looks like.

    So Dave, what is your conspiracy theory and what groups are secretly after you?

  61. says

    PZ–

    Could you just go ahead and Dungeonize that “david mabus” idiot? He’s been spamming the same crap all across the skeptical interwebs, and is obviously not interested in any kind of relevant discussion.

  62. Duncan says

    Hi David Mabus! We’re so glad you came to this site! It’s about time someone pointed out how ‘science’ gets it wrong, EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

    I’d like to hear more about how you completely pwned that dooshbag Randi and made him run away from his bogus challenge. Please tell us more!!!

  63. says

    @#20 Dan —

    How do they expect me to take this seriously if there’s no fucking banana involved?

    Personally, *I* don’t understand how they expect me to take this seriously if there’s no banana fucking involved.

    Come on guys…surely you realize the other use God intended for the banana?

  64. says

    I would love to see a parody video of this thing where someone makes up shit so completely absurd that these people will be forced to believe it using their god-logic.

    Hasn’t that already happened, over and over? Starting with the bible?

  65. says

    @#81 Duncan —

    I would love to see a parody video of this thing where someone makes up shit so completely absurd that these people will be forced to believe it using their god-logic.

    Not exactly the same thing, but I want to try to publish a paper in a creation “science” journal. Something along the lines of, “The Pentacost Hypothesis: Internalization of the Holy Spirit through Laminin-Mediated Endocytosis” With lots of fake data, and some sections with just “data not shown.”

  66. Lee Drake says

    All of these fruits are grown in different parts of the world, and before the modern age were not accessible to other cultures. Tomatoes and oranges, for example, would not have been available in Israel 2000 years ago, causing massive heart and breast failure for centuries.

    So does this actually constitute divine punishment?

  67. Sean says

    Is it me or does thier diagram of the heart have an issue with its septum? I guess this would explain the messed up blood fow.

  68. Grimalkin says

    Etha Williams – I wonder what Ray Comfort would say about that. He seems to *really* enjoy his bananas (“ooooh, they fit so niiicely in my haaand, mmm”).

    God certainly does work in mysterious ways!

  69. Colugo says

    I’m reminded of New Guinea tribesmen who believe that the white sap of certain plants will replenish their semen. They have a number of strange beliefs regarding semen acquisition and transfer.

    Traditional Chinese Medicine attributes potency-enhancing properties to rhino horn and ginseng root based on the same ‘logic.’ Cultural anthropologists have cataloged many such examples of the pre-scientific principle of similarities.

    I once saw a TV diet guru telling viewers that since cheese was soft it will make your body soft, so you should instead eat firm fruits and vegetables.

  70. Duncan says

    “massive heart and breast failure”

    Besides cancer, or course, what constitutes ‘breast failure’? It seems that those are one of the few things that god got right!

    (Oh, and where would Solanum mammosum fit into that video?)

  71. Lumin says

    Hehehe… “david mabus” reminded me of the timecube. Poor little troll, crawl back to the ignorance infested sites whence you came.

  72. Duncan says

    Ok, I apologize for goading Mabus on. All in favor of having PZ shitcan that idiot?

  73. SteveM says

    you little BABBLING FUCKERS ***KNOW ABSOLUTELY NOTHING****

    Wow, I’m convinced, the rhetoric is impeccable, you sir win the internets.

  74. says

    This is why Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V should require a license.

    Skeptic Friends Network (www.skepticfriends.org) booted this troll a while ago when he/she/it posted the same drivel.

  75. Duncan says

    So how does one report spam here? I can see that this can get out of hand pretty quickly.

  76. Michael Butler says

    I would have to call this a case of cherry-picking ;-)

    Let’s not ignore:

    Bittersweet nightshade, whose ripe berries look like giant red blood cells, contain solanine which causes fatigue, paralysis, convulsions and diarrhea.

    The castor oil plant, whose leaves have five lobes, just like the human hand has five fingers(!) is rich ricin, a poison 6,000 times stronger than cyanide.

    Baneberry (Doll’s Eye) has berries that look just like eyes. It contains protoanemonin causing headache, vomiting, dizziness, and stomach cramps.

  77. David Marjanović, OM says

    Celery is green.

    Bones are not.

    Unless you’re a glass frog or a gar.

    (Eh… wait. Celery? Green? What part of the celery plant do you Americans eat?)

    Also I thought onions made you cry because they were producing sulphuric acid in them

    No, very different sulfur compounds.

  78. Me says

    david mabus:

    Ahh… so you are going to hijack this thread… I am so afraid now. Come on, show me your tremendous power. Idiot.

  79. rpenner says

    Um, ok, I watched the video. Where were the photo comparisons with breasts and body cells? Why didn’t they tell us about the health benefits of bananas or pointy, tall mushrooms, since the Enzyte people seem to think those are the health tips people want to hear about ALL THE TIME.

    I thought the Banana-ID link was solid proof — I mean it fits in the hand so very well, or so Cameron tells me.

  80. says

    what fruit looks like the vermiform appendix?

    Or do you have to eat worms to prevent peritonitis?

    Lee: broadly speaking, yes. Everything was present in the Garden, but after the fall it was scattered to make things harder for Adam

    as if ploughing a field with bare hands naked wasn’t bad enough

  81. craig says

    One thing about the spammer – he is a good example of what creationists’ tactics are.

    Maybe he shouldn’t be banned outright, but instead be limited to one post per thread. A constant reminder of the idiocy and hypocrisy and hate behind the fervently religious.

  82. cicely says

    Hey, this is great news! Now, if someone could just point me in the direction of the kneewort…..

    Still, I see they may be a bit confused. “Avocado” derives, so I read, from Nahuatl ahuacatl, meaning testicle. Wombs….testicles….hmm…… Seems to me that they’ve missed the ballpark more or less completely.

    Applause for ennui @69. Especially *wink* the part about bananas.

    And David Mabus, you aren’t being particularly clever. Even I can copy and paste, and add little half-witty bits to text. Dude, give it a rest.

  83. says

    Also, yeah, David Mabus isn’t even an interesting kook. He’s just c&ping the same crap…

    and who adopts a pseudonym based on their hero’s word for the antichrist?

  84. RamblinDude says

    MAJeff: “Finally, an appropriate use for Enya.”

    Hey, I like Enya! This is an egregious misappropriation of her music!

    (Oh Enya, please tell me you don’t know about this video.)

    *buries face in hands*

  85. Duncan says

    Whoops – comment lost in the tags.

    I just sent email to the seed webmaster and PZ about you-know-who. I suggest others do the same to elevate the response.

    Again, how does one officially report spam here? I’m just not seeing any links…

  86. dawnfirelight says

    Actually, citrus fruits DO look somewhat like mammary glands, but only in cross section. Mammary glands are composed of lobules which do look a bit like the sections of the fruit. I don’t see any resemblance in the uncut fruit. I’m still not sure what those yummy breast-like fruits are meant to do for MY breasts, though.

  87. Tulse says

    Hey, I like Enya! This is an egregious misappropriation of her music!

    She should talk to Yoko.

  88. Benjamin Franklin says

    (*)(*) = oranges?

    As I have long suspected, these people are nuts.

  89. says

    Hey, that one at #128 looks like a threat. Given that this goof is over in Canadaland, can we wrangle that into “terroistic threats across national borders” or some such

  90. Andrew says

    Hey, “David Mabus,” you do realize that it will take PZ approximately four keystrokes to ban you and delete all your “hijacking” comments, no matter how often you repeat them, right?

    My theory is that the “David Mabus” is a bot that was intelligently designed by Creationists who were sick of being called insane morons here on Pharyngula. [snidelywhiplash] “Insanity? I’ll show *them* insanity!” [/snidelywhiplash]

  91. kmarissa says

    wÒÓ†, I’m sorry, but that link didn’t look anything like an orange to me. You obviously aren’t understanding the nuance of the theory here.

  92. Duncan says

    Please continue to send spam reports.

    (So much for “Comments are moderated for spam” in the posting area.)

  93. sphex says

    I can see I’m going to have to type fast if I hope to get my comment in before d mabus posts 17 more ALL CAPS and A**TERISK comments…

    @ 29, smadin

    Him, Tropicana and Orangina (fair warning: that last link may break your brain.)

    That Orangina commercial: wow. just, wow.

    But I must say, those are some pretty sexy octopuses. whew!

  94. negentropyeater says

    The troll’s schizophrenic attack =
    The *MODEL* of mental health
    according to David Mabus

  95. Carlie says

    *Gets out popcorn, waits for PZ to get a break from grading to ban david marbus*

  96. kmarissa says

    I can see I’m going to have to type fast if I hope to get my comment in before d mabus posts 17 more ALL CAPS and A**TERISK comments…

    I have to say, I do appreciate when the crazies go to such lengths to make their posts so easily identifiable. ALL CAPS and A**TERISK = immediate scroll past. Much nicer than the crazies with just enough sanity to hide the craziness until you’ve wasted time actually reading a few lines.

  97. says

    @ #138

    Randi’s got more info on the guy in this week’s SWIFT over at the JREF. He’s real. Crazy, apparently, but real.

  98. Dutch Delight says

    Recycling ancient supersition is a classic pseudoscience indicator if you ask me. I’m aware there are silly arguments on all sides of a debate but i’d be pretty annoyed when my side consistently produces the most insane and pretentious ones.

  99. Bob L says

    I can see a surge in cucumbers in the diet of Christian men after this video.

  100. Benjamin Franklin says

    I nominate that ‘pus from the Orangina spot for Friday Cephalopod.

  101. says

    From the Wiki article on carrots: “Lack of Vitamin A can cause poor vision, including night vision, and vision can be restored by adding Vitamin A back into the diet. The urban legend that says eating large amounts of carrots will allow one to see in the dark developed from stories of British gunners in World War II who were able to shoot down German planes in the darkness of night. The legend arose during the Battle of Britain when the RAF circulated a story about their pilots’ carrot consumption as an attempt to cover up the discovery and effective use of radar technologies in engaging enemy planes.[2][3] It reinforced existing German folklore and helped to encourage Britons – looking to improve their night vision during the blackouts – to grow and eat the vegetable.”

    Wow, the creationist was incorrect in his arguments, who’d have guessed?

  102. Duncan says

    [sticks head outside, listening to the distinct lack of CAPS and ast*r*sks]

    Hear that? I think it’s the sweet sound of someone getting… expelled!

  103. mr_p says

    I only watched up to the sliced carrot part. Right before that the frame said “the Chinese figured this out 5000 years ago.” Gods chosen people didnt figure this out… the Chinese did. It predates xtians by over 3000 years.

    Also to quote Shrek “Ogres are like onions” so onions cant be like body cells unless ogres are like body cells. I guess the creationists are made up of a hundred billion tiny ogres.

  104. MAJeff, OM says

    Apparently, Mabus is about as sane as Pat Robertson:

    The strange one is a Dennis Markuze, of no particular talent except that he’s a used-computer salesman in Montreal – or used to be, since he seems to have a lot of time on his hands currently. As a prophet, he’s also a big bust, having predicted – 11 years ago! – an imminent nuclear war in Korea. Gee, I don’t remember that news item at all, and I’m sure I’d have noticed…

    I wonder what’s coming that we should be so afraid of. A hurricane destroying Disney World? The collapse of the Montreal computer market?

  105. says

    Yep, another example of “Big Science” PZ expelling alternate viewpoints.

    Someone notify Stein stat!

  106. Sb Webmaster says

    Hi folks — I’ve taken some steps to try to prevent additional comments from david mabus… I’m going to leave the existing comments in place for now and let PZ decide what to do with them.

  107. says

    It looks like they’ve “pulled a Stein” and stolen someone else’s video:

    Notice the lack of “proof for ID” at the beginning and the different URL at the end. Not to jump to conclusions, but one must have stolen from the other…

  108. says

    Are you sure this isn’t a parody of some sort? Surely people can’t be this stupid and still be able to breath and walk at the same time.

  109. negentropyeater says

    David is apparently Dennis from Quebec, a used computer salesman currently unemployed …

    Why are you so angry Dennis ?

  110. Peter says

    Mabus –
    just tell us what happened to you to make you like this: we may be able to give you some ideas about how to get help.

    Peter

  111. Athea says

    #77 Religion is a delusion and all religious people are SELF-DELUDED BABBLING IDIOTS. They might as well believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, that is no more ridiculous than believing in God.

  112. says

    David @112,

    Eh… wait. Celery? Green? What part of the celery plant do you Americans eat?

    Staudensellerie meint er. At least that’s what it’s called here in Piefkeland. Doubtless you Austrians call it something like “Grüner Riesenspatz” (you’ll find it right next to the Paradieser and Marillen at the market stall…)

    (For American readers: the German term for the plant with the crunchy green stalks that you put in your breakfast Bloody Marys translates as something like “shrub celery”. If you simply ask for “celery”, you get something with much smaller stalks on top, and you don’t use them. You use the big fat round white root (or tuber or whatever; I’m no botanist). It can be made into a salad or cooked in soups or stews. SFAIK they are the same species of plant, just variant cultivars or whatever the technical term is.)

    BTW, would somebody kindly switch off that Mabus thing? It’s getting loud in here.

  113. Athea says

    All disregard # 77 I entered the wrong # it should be 82.

    #82 Religion is a delusion and all religious people are SELF-DELUDED BABBLING IDIOTS. They might as well believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, that is no more ridiculous than believing in God.

  114. Escuerd says

    I’d seen this “David Mabus” elsewhere using the name “Dennis” (evidently his given name). He’s been quite busy spamming everyone and everything. I think he shares an affliction with Gene Ray, the wisest human.

  115. Hematite says

    Etha Williams (#86):

    Come on guys…surely you realize the other use God intended for the banana?

    You can eat them too? Marvellous! Truly, God is great.

  116. says

    PZ: “I think the creator must be a virgin. He also claims that citrus fruits look just like human mammary glands.”

    Or, perhaps he’s surrounded by women with bad silicone jobs…

  117. Alex says

    “…a used computer salesman currently unemployed …”

    Wait. Is that a “used computer-salesman”, or “used-computer salesman”. Please help me with this. My mind is reeling. I didn’t know either such beastie existed!

  118. Duncan says

    @Athea: You might wish to read past threads to see that the discussions are way past that. Religion = self-delusion is pretty much a given here.

  119. says

    I’m really surprised no one as put together a video about how parasites are the strongest proof of intelligent design. Bot flies! From what I’ve read, every mammalian species has its very own, including humans. There are pictures available on the Web.

    My favorite has always been those wasps that lay their eggs in spiders. The wasp paralyzes the spider with a sting just so, carries it back to a prepared nest, then lays an egg. The egg hatches. The larvae eats the spider from inside in such a way that it delays the inevitable death of the hapless spider.

    Surely, such a thing could not have evolved by random trial and error.

    There’s no need to indulge in moral grandstanding about how cruel such a designer must be to create and nurture such parasites.

    It seems to me that Intelligent Design presents the choice of either an intelligent but insanely cruel Designer, or a benevolent but incompetent Designer.

  120. Sastra says

    Tulse #73 wrote:

    And like some others have suggested, it was always my impression that sympathetic magic and the Doctrine of Signatures were decidedly pagan notions.

    I don’t think there’s any great divide between Christianity and paganism when you get down to the level of understanding how the brain works to make sense of the world — and how these intuitive human tendencies have lead to religion. Supernatural and spiritual beliefs are all connected by the common attribute of magical thinking. It’s also in the paranormal and pseudoscience. The divisions are rather arbitrary, so it’s not surprising when they seem to blend into each other.

    Dana Hunter in #6 pinpointed this as the Doctrine of Signatures — good catch. When I watched the video I immediately thought “whoa, Sympathetic Magic.” And a damn fine specimen, too. Usually, I come across this in New Age woo and Naturopathy. This sort of diet advice is alive and well in your very neighborhood, wherever you see the warning sign announcing “Holistic Wellness Nutrition Healing.” (What, you don’t have one?)

    Any good theory of religion — explaining what it is and why it’s so common — is going to have to be generic enough to capture the commonalities of ALL the religions: modern, traditional, orthodox, primitive, individualistic, etc. Some form of magical thinking is I think one of the rock-bottom foundations beneath the whole package. Human beings really ARE at the center of everything, with God nothing more than a symbol for ourselves. The cosmos cares. It understands good and evil. Life and meaning are the focus and purpose of the universe.

    So, if you’re born when there is a red planet in the sky, you will be an angry person. Red = anger. The connections are not physical, but connections of meaning. Cause and effect work on a “higher” level.

    I read somewhere that Max Weber called this approach to nature the Enchanted Garden approach. The world is supposed to be a magical place in which God cares about human beings and has therefore coded nature with secrets and signs of His power and purpose. Or, substitute “Spirit” for God and you get the same cozy sort of thing.

    Nature is on your side. You just have to know how to look, and trust. And open your eyes. Carrots help with that, because they look just like eyes!

  121. Ian says

    So do creationist thought processes look like rhubarb? How do they explain why you can roast beef but you can’t pea soup?

  122. says

    Ian at 160,

    How do they explain why you can roast beef but you can’t pea soup?

    Easy. With pea soup, the little chunks of ham keep getting stuck in the urethra.

  123. says

    It appeals to part of me to think of creationists as made of fruit and vegetables.

    Specifically, it appeals to the part of me that thinks they should be bred and raised for food.

  124. Slaughter says

    Anyone ever cut open a fig and see what it looks like? Come on, ladies, you know you like them!

    Oh, and “Rich soil for stupid” — someone start a blog by that name!

  125. JJR says

    ” He also claims that citrus fruits look just like human mammary glands”

    Not true, some women’s breasts more closely resemble bananas.

  126. ellazimm says

    I didn’t know that cdesign proponentistists believed in homeopathy.

    Interesting.

  127. BlueIndependent says

    Coming into this late, but man alive that is stupid garbage. I wonder how exactly they know whether the presently non-existent unevidenced super being actually intended to design foods that looked like body parts. Me guesses they’ll find some utterly random Bible verse that seems to vaguely suggest that certain foods were made to resemble body parts so we knew what to eat.

    But wait a minute…apples are red like hearts, and they caused first sin. Oh darn, there goes that theory…

  128. says

    I just want to apologize to everyone for helping antagonize the crazy troll. I generally try not to feed them, but something about it today just riled me up.

    It was wrong to taunt the crazy man, and I’m sorry.

  129. Naked Bunny with a Whip says

    a sliced carrot looks like a human eye

    In the world of Little Orphan Annie maybe.

  130. Ericb says

    So is this the Intelligent Designer subtly telling us He wants us to be cannibals?

  131. Martin Hutton says

    Slaughter @#163:
    Anyone ever cut open a fig and see what it looks like?

    Ever see Russell’s “Women in Love” in which there appears an explicitly sensuous fig eating scene?

  132. ennui says

    Son 7:7 This thy stature is like to a palme tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes.
    Son 7:8 I said, I will goe vp to the palme tree, I will take hold of the boughes thereof: now also thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine, and the smell of thy nose, like apples.

    Son 8:8 We haue a litle sister, and shee hath no breasts: what shall we doe for our sister, in the day when she shall bee spoken for? (KJV-1611)

    Grapefruit!

  133. themadlolscientist says

    @ RamblinDude: I kinda like Enya too. And I think she should sue the bastards who made this piece of dreck.

    Whooooooooooeeeeeeeee! I must have missed some major troll action this morning! OTOH, I supposed I didn’t miss much………..

  134. Tulse says

    So is this the Intelligent Designer subtly telling us He wants us to be cannibals?

    Indeed! For what looks more like a human heart than a human heart? Or a human brain more than a human brain?

    Perhaps zombies are just doing what the Lord implicitly commanded.

  135. says

    Those folks are theological descendants of Herbert W. Armstrong, who preached a number of … erm … interesting notions, including the claim that

    the British, American and many European peoples were in fact descended from the so-called Lost Tribes of Israel, …

    Once one has swallowed some of that Kool Aid, believing that strained analogies between vegetables and body parts are indicants of divine design is a snap.

  136. says

    Telling them their breast look like knobly ole oranges is not the way to go.

    Andy Spitzer: “You know how when you grab a woman’s breast… it feels like… a….. bag of sand.”

  137. Sastra says

    Wasn’t there a passage in the Bible about sheep becoming spotted because they were near a speckled stick or something?

    Oh, here, Genesis 30:

    Jacob, however, took fresh-cut branches from poplar, almond and plane trees and made white stripes on them by peeling the bark and exposing the white inner wood of the branches. 38 Then he placed the peeled branches in all the watering troughs, so that they would be directly in front of the flocks when they came to drink. When the flocks were in heat and came to drink, 39 they mated in front of the branches. And they bore young that were streaked or speckled or spotted.

    If sheep have sex while standing near branches with stripes, then the resultant little baby lambs will have stripes on them. Uh huh.

    I’m going to guess that, when this was written, this was simply folk wisdom, a common belief of the time which nobody had ever bothered to test or perhaps even question. And I’m also going to guess that most fundamentalists today are patiently explaining it as an example of a miracle — and not an example of the Bible getting things wrong.

  138. Levi says

    So I have the fact that I’m a vegetarian and never eat sausage to blame for my…well, never mind.

  139. Hap says

    #161:Ow! Ow! OWWWW!

    That’s going to make for some interesting ER visits…

  140. kmarissa says

    And I’m also going to guess that most fundamentalists today are patiently explaining it as an example of a miracle — and not an example of the Bible getting things wrong.

    Hm… Wasn’t there a thread, long ago, on the old Pharyngula, where a fundie was claiming that the passage was actually a joke? That Jacob was playing a joke by pretending that the stick had caused the spotted lambs?

    Rule 143 of fundie logic: A Biblical passage is always literally true, except when it’s an allegory. Or an elaborate joke with no punch line.

  141. negentropyeater says

    From http://www.blowthetrumpet.org

    Question: Why did you decide to engage in this work?

    Answer: Although many organizations declare lofty reasons for their endeavor, ours may seem the most unbelievable. The truth be known, we did not decide to engage in this work. God Almighty made that decision for us. We do not make this claim lightly. It is not hyperbole when we declare that we are ambassadors of a real kingdom. Furthermore, we are totally confident that God has commissioned this work to forcefully take an end time WARNING to this world. There are some who claim that they are already preaching an end time warning, however, for the most part their message is soft and has the appearance of an infomercial. Ours most definitely will not. To this end we will take an Ezekiel warning to the leaders of this land as well as the leaders of God’s Church. What they do with it is in God’s hands

    Yes, right, totally confident God has commissioned this work…
    If that is not a delusion, then I wonder what is ?

  142. Duncan says

    #169 (or thereabouts): “Man, when you delete spammers, all the post numbers change and none of the references match up…”

    What would be better would be a way for the moderators to hide the offending comments, so curious newcomers could reveal the posts if desired yet they’d be out of everyone else’s way. Some sites do that, and the post numbers remain intact in the process.

  143. Duncan says

    #185: “Mankind was created by a gardener.”

    Was his name ‘Chance’, by any chance?

    (I guess you had to be there.)

  144. Inky says

    … are cucumbers good for your peewee?

    Figs must be good for your testicles.

    Oh! Kiwifruit makes your balls hairy!

    But spinach doesn’t look like anything in your body that I can think of. It must not be good for you. Pineapples, neither.

    I can do this shit, too!

  145. Sastra says

    There are some who claim that they are already preaching an end time warning, however, for the most part their message is soft and has the appearance of an infomercial. Ours most definitely will not.

    Well, that means Enya probably won’t be soundtrack for their next video.

  146. MPG says

    The incongruous placement of the “GodTube” overlay graphic happily coincided with the caption about celery, so at first reading I thought it said “Celery is just like bongs”. That might go some way towards explaining what was going through the head (and bloodstream) of the creator of this video…

  147. Adam says

    Imagine There was a higher power (not god but some Alien overload)
    He/She came down to Earth and Took 10 biologists and 10 ID/Creationists
    Into they ship And Said Guess what, one side is right about Life on earth.
    If you tell us the right answer your free to go
    But if you give us the wrong answer you will be our slaves
    We know what answer the biologist would say
    But what answer would the ID/Creationists give
    Would They have Faith? and say the wrong answer
    or would they admit they were just Lying for Jesus.

  148. says

    @ 163:

    “Rich Soil for Stupid” would also be a pretty good punk/metal band name, especially considering I’ve seen a metal song titled “Desert of Sad”.

  149. monoglot says

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

    What I can’t believe is that they missed the perfect opportunity to segue into the Creationist Classic film starring Kirk Cameron. I think there is compelling evidence about how five digits fit just perfectly around a banana, ergo…..

  150. John Bode says

    I can’t watch the video at work, so I googled for “Doctrine of Signatures”, and found this guy; is that the person who made the video? If so … woof.

    From his blog:

    Articles of Health are the writings of Robert O. Young D.Sc., Ph.D., based upon his theory that the human organism is alkaline by design and acidic by function. He suggests that there is only one sickness and one disease which is caused by an over acidification of the blood and then tissues due to an inverted way of living, eating and thinking. There is no way to have health and acidity — health and alkalinity is the way!

    Serious? Parody? Serious parody? How does one tell these days?

  151. says

    Coming in a little late on this one but…

    HOLY TURD ON A BISKET!!

    I’m calling Poe’s Law on this video. This can not possibly be for real. Someone has to be pulling a fast one on GodTube. (Hmmm… not a bad idea…)
    I honestly can not stand the shame to be in the same species as anyone who would watch that video and mistake it for an intelligent argument.

    Also, no fair removing the Mabus stuff! I didn’t get a chance to laugh at read it.

  152. says

    I used to comment on GodTube when it first came out, and tried to (respectfully) talk some sense into people there, but it was totally fruitless (pardon the pun). Mostly, any rational comments were simply deleted, and eventually my account was banned after I commented on their “virtual prayer wall.”

    Speaking of virtual prayer wall, I’m sure that the prayers are still very entertaining.

  153. says

    #191 Adam –
    Would being a slave to the alien overlords be better or worse then sharing a planet with the Creo-fundies? That would greatly influence my answer.

  154. says

    OMFG (I like the expletive!) I’m gonna cut my wrists. I just realized the primitive lifeform who authored that video VOTES FOR PRESIDENT.

  155. Kseniya says

    Man, when you delete spammers, all the post numbers change and none of the references match up…

    Yeah … LOL … no kidding. My head is still spinning from trying connect the dots without having prior knowledge of the dolts.

    Sastra nails it again, as usual. As a special bonus, her comment suggested something that may allow us to reduce this to a simple mathematical expression:

  156. perceptionOfReality + lotsOfLSD = allThisNonesense

    Slightly off-topic, my favorite bit of sympathetic magic in fiction comes from The Compleat Enchanter. Our hero, psychologist Harold Shea, who is trapped in the world of Norse mythology, has been thrown into a prison inside a cave. His jailkeeper is a goblin whose nose is freakishly long, even for a goblin. This long nose is causing the goblin some romantic difficulty [no jokes, please] so Harold gets an idea: He promises to magically shrink the goblin’s nose in exchange for his freedom. Harold knows no magic, of course, so he conspires with his cellmates ahead of time to pretend to be amazed at the remarkable, and favorable, change in the gob-schnoz. When the time comes, Harold gathers a few items, including a candle to represent the nose. He the proceeds to apply heat to the candle, which starts to melt down… to a chorus of oohing and ahhing.

    I was pretty young when I read that – it may have been the first time I really got the concept of sympathetic magic… Now if I only hadn’t eaten so many, errr… well, never mind that.

  157. Julie Stahlhut says

    (For American readers: the German term for the plant with the crunchy green stalks that you put in your breakfast Bloody Marys translates as something like “shrub celery”. If you simply ask for “celery”, you get something with much smaller stalks on top, and you don’t use them. You use the big fat round white root (or tuber or whatever; I’m no botanist). It can be made into a salad or cooked in soups or stews. SFAIK they are the same species of plant, just variant cultivars or whatever the technical term is.)

    It’s probably what we’d call celeriac, or celery root:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celeriac

    I kind of like the stuff, but it’s a pain to prepare.

  158. Kseniya says

  159. “Mankind was created by a gardener.”
  160. Was his name ‘Chance’, by any chance? (I guess you had to be there.)
  161. LOL! This comment is brilliant! Mankind was created by Chance… the creationist’s favorite canard, and worst nightmare.

    Great movie. “This is a very small room!”

  162. Jon says

    Celery IS JUST LIKE BONES.

    That will be the name of some Christian speedmetal band. Bet on it.

  163. says

    #183 quoted from blowthetrumpet.org:

    Although many organizations declare lofty reasons for their endeavor, ours may seem the most unbelievable. The truth be known, we did not decide to engage in this work. God Almighty made that decision for us.

    They may actually be right about one thing: that may be the most unbelievable “reason” I’ve ever heard.

    Also, I love how they do the traditional Xian thing and say “the truth be known”… Any statement that you have to start with “the truth be known” or “this is the truth” or “truly I tell you” should automatically seem a bit suspicious…apply this to the NT and….

  164. dale says

    My Grandfather had a great appreciation for plants that grow wild here in PA. One day when I was about 10 years old, we were walking in the woods and he spotted a, I think it was a type of Violet, which he told me looked exactly like a woman’s vagina.

    Armed with that information I….oh never mind.

  165. negentropyeater says

    Actually, what the people behind this video really want us to do is to revert to the “levitical food regulations”. It’s pretty simple, really (from Kapitano) :

    If an animal ‘cheweth the cud’ – i.e. is a ruminant – and has cloven hooves, then you’re allowed to eat it (Lev 11:13).

    Camels are ruminants, but have uncloven feet, so they’re forbidden (Lev 11:13). The same goes for pigs (Lev 11:17), so ham is out, and anyone who’s eaten bacon is going to hell. Hares and rabbits (Lev 11:15-16) chew the cud but don’t have hooves, cloven or otherwise, so they’re forbidden.

    I suspect the devil is not a ruminant, so even though he has hooves, you probably can’t eat him.

    No matter how hungry you get, you must not eat cats or dogs. Or in fact anything with paws (Lev 11:27).

    As for seafood, there’s a simple test. If it’s got fins and/or scales, you can eat it. If it doesn’t you can’t (Lev 11:9-12, Deu 14:9-10). Clams, oysters, crabs, lobsters, and shrimp are abominations. So are prawns, probably. And sushi should be just fine.

    If you like eating birds, there’s a wide choice. Eagles, ossifrages and ospreys (Lev 11:13), vultures and kites (Lev 11:14), ravens (11:15), owls, hawks and cookoos (11:16), cormorants, swans, pelicans, storks, herons, lapwings and bats (Lev 11:17-19) – all these are permitted.

    Bats aren’t actually birds, but god doesn’t know that, only being their creator.

    Weasels, mice, tortoises, ferrets, chameleons, moles and all lizards are forbidden. So are snails, even if you’re french (Lev 11:30). Fruit from trees less than three years old is ‘uncircumcised’ (Lev 19:23). Black pudding is extremely bad, as is anything containing blood (Lev 19:26).

    If you’re hungry for ‘flying creeping things’, you can eat insects that have four feet, provided their legs are above their feet (Lev 11:21). Should you find an insect that keeps it’s legs underneath it’s feet, don’t eat it.

    You can eat all the locusts, beetles and grasshoppers you like (Lev 11:22). However, all other four legged insects are out of bounds. As it happens there’s no such thing as a four legged insect, so the issue is unlikely to arise.

    And now for the healthy bit. When cooking meat, cut off all the fat and give it to god (Lev 3:16, Lev 7:23-25).

    If all this should become too much for you, don’t worry, because elsewhere in the bible it says you can eat whatever you want (Gen 9:3, Mk 7:18-20, Acts 10:9-13, Rom 14:2, 1 Tim 4:1-3).

    All very complicated and illogical for my French culinary taste but at least should make someone happy : can’t eat squid.

  166. dale says

    I cannot believe I was able to remember this but the flower I alluded to at #209 was an Orchid, called a Lady Slipper. The resemblance is uncanny.

  167. deang says

    Yeah, this is just a misinformed rehash of the old Doctrine of Signatures. Speaking of which, the poison ivy outside my window has tendrils that look a lot like curly hair, so God must be trying to tell us that if we eat it, our hair will curl. I’ll go find a fundamentalist Christian to try it.

    Also, the word avocado comes from the Nahuatl/Aztec word, ahuacatl (pronounced ah-WAH-kotl), which means testicle, a bodypart it does resemble slightly. Why no mention of its surely vast power to improve male potency, then? And why for millenia did God only permit people in Mesoamerica to know about it?

  168. Bryn says

    I prefer Nicholas Culpepper’s take on carrots:

    “Galen Commended garden Carrots highly to break the wind, yet experience teacheth they breed it first, and we may thank nature for expelling it. The seeds expel wind indeed and so mend what the root marreth.”

    I think the maker of the video needs many, many more carrots.

  169. Bryn says

    @211…Ummmmm, you think a lady slipper orchid looks like a vagina? Really? Physiological variation being what it is, I suppose it’s possible, but….really?

  170. Eric Paulsen says

    [snark]Hmmmm. Well asparagus DOES look like a green lumpy penis and it DOES make my pee stink… coincidence?[/snark]

    Plus EVERYONE knows that tomatoes are red, and red is the color of fire, and fire is a tool of the devil!

  171. Slaughter says

    Martin @ 171
    Ever see Russell’s “Women in Love” in which there appears an explicitly sensuous fig eating scene?

    No, but I know which DVD I’m renting this weekend!

  172. Dustin says

    If your heart has its chambers set up the way they are in any variety of beefsteak tomato, I suggest you get yourself on the transplant list right away.

  173. Josh says

    Well, at least the music was good. Otherwise, it’s wall-to-wall crap.

  174. natural cynic says

    Saw this around lunchtime. Decided to have slices of tomato on my sandwich. Sliced it open and found only three chambers. Sigh, had to give it to my iguana.

  175. says

    Well, this kind of logic keeps in line with the cannibalism and vampirism that Christianity promotes (bread is body, wine is blood – eat and drink me).

  176. Chris (in Columbus) says

    What is it like being this dumb? I mean…wow. Pathetically stupid.

    And why did they have to bring Enya into it?!?

  177. Matt says

    I think that movie was great. It showed how life REALLY is by design. Intelligent Design has the power to explain everything that petty science cannot. If you doubt this is possible, how is it there are PYGMIES + DWARFS??

    If you want a video that really explains it all, check out this!

  178. says

    As an experiment to see how close attention the GodTube admins pay to videos posted, I created an account and placed my response to the Blasphemy Challenge there. It lasted 6 weeks with a few dozens hits. I then started making some blunt comments on some of the crazy videos there. Most of the comments did not make it past their censors. But something must have twigged: they pulled my video 2 days ago. Buggers.

    At least for now, I still have my 28 second Unforgivable Sin of Blasphemy on youtube.

  179. Jim Thomerson says

    There was a 70’s skinflick, “The Immoral Mr. Teas” about a sexually frustrated dentist. In one scene he is in the produce departement of a grocery store and a well endowed woman walks by. Cut to a shot of Mr. Teas watching her and bouncing a grapefruit in each hand.

  180. kmarissa says

    Orange? Grapefruit? Aren’t Melons better?

    No. See, there aren’t any fruits or vegetables shaped like healthy spines to counteract the effect.

  181. Art says

    People forget that long ago people didn’t know much of anything about how things worked. Science, and the scientific method, were yet to be developed.

    Equipped with nothing but curiosity, the natural tendency of a brain to not similarities, and a need to survive people developed a sort of proto-science.

    Today we would term the study ‘magic and primitive religion’. It might just as well be termed: how the human mind organizes things when given next to nothing to work with.

    Not having anything else to work with you not certain similarities of color, shape and order of appearance. The idea being things are connected in some way. A walnut, shaped roughly like the human brain, might be assumed to interact with the human brain some way. In this case there is a nutritional connection of fats and fatty acids.

    You have to understand that this is pre-science science. This was science before people went farther. Knowing this history and human tendency is useful because it both reveals the early history of science and thought and, possibly more useful, how the human brain works when faced with a paucity of facts, well found theory and the tool necessary to create them.

    I don’t fall for the pseudo-science and woo. I don’t think it represents any objective version of external reality. But I do like studying ‘magic and primitive religion’ because it represents a fair representation of how the internal, subjective, reality and how brain works when deprived of external facts and reference points.

  182. says

    The funniest part is this:

    I think the creator must be a virgin. He also claims that citrus fruits look just like human mammary glands.

    As if having sex with a woman implies anything like an MRI inspection of her mammary glands. I’m sure PZ wasn’t too serious, but that was pretty funny.

  183. says

    That is so awesome! I’m going to steal many of these ideas for my haunted house in October.

    “Now feel this.”
    “It’s a carrot.”
    “No! It’s an eye. AN EYE! Bwaa-ha-ha-ha!”

  184. JJ says

    I had to comment on the avocado portion (not that any other was any less ridiculous), but the time in which it takes an Avocado to ripen from bloom depends greatly on many of factors. Especially because an avocado WILL NEVER RIPEN ON THE TREE. An avocado will stay on a tree for years, growing roots within the skin and remaining a hard fruit. Once picked the fruit ripens in about 10 days. BUT thats completely Dependant on the TYPE, Haas, which is the most common, was actually created by a botanist in Pasadena around 1920. Other types (such as Mexicali) ripen at different speeds and at different times of the year, Haas, is a domesticated man-made fruit.

  185. jj says

    Corrections:
    The most common type of Avocado is spelled Hass (not haas) and was created by Rudolph Hass in 1926. All Hass Avocados (the ones with the bumpy skin) are direct descendants of this tree, which was cut down in 2002 due to root rot.(Thats an old tree). The fruit makes up 80% of the US avocado market.

  186. Sioux Laris says

    It may be this is a budding Christian “Hannibal Lector” we have here.
    The “logic” involved is perhaps even more powerful than that which drives this video.

    1. We eat these fruits and veg, which are healthy – necessary – because they are analagous to human organs, etc.
    2. Wouldn’t it be a better idea to eat actual human parts directly?

    Wait to see the next horrifying episode!

  187. Lisa J says

    haha, ‘celery is just like bones’… what a dumbass.

    Well you know he had me convinced until he got to the citrus fruit looks just like female mammary glands part. Interesting that he didn’t show a pair of human mammaries at this point for comparison. What’s up with that?! I mean, he even super-imposed a human fetus in an avocado… I knew something was up when he let himself slip there.

  188. MJ says

    So avocados and citrus fruits were designed to be eaten only by women?

    If correct, the author has just revolutionised an area of medical science. It appears that scurvy can be attributed to the gods again.

  189. Jere says

    Why didn’t they mention cucumbers? Or even mushrooms? Surely they resemble a body organ too.

  190. OctoberMermaid says

    YOU GUYS! THIS IS SERIOUS! I NEED HELP!

    Earlier today I ate a banana. I hadn’t seen this video yet, so I didn’t know… I didn’t know what I was… Oh, God is gonna be so pissed.

  191. melior says

    This explains why zombies are so intelligent.
    Brains look just like brains, after all.

  192. AndyD says

    Wow guys, talk about falling in head first!!??

    In scanning through this thread I somehow managed to miss David’s comment(s) but I’ve seen a whole lot of replies/responses to him. Why? If his one or two idiot comments didn’t litter the thread with irrelevancies, the replies sure did.

    And now I’ve added to it. Damn!

    In response to earlier posters, if someone can start to build a list of ridiculous matches between foods and body parts, I might have a go at making a mocumentary. No promises though. But a list would be nice, even for a blog post. We may need to avoid the poisonous stuff like solanums in case some fool takes it seriously.

    We don’t need to stick, religiously, to “whole foods”. Manufactured foods could be fun. The idea would be to start gently and become more and more ridiculous.

    I’ll start with:
    Tomatoes, sliced vertically, look like a pair of ears, or lungs.
    Potatoes look like crap.
    Apples (silhouette) look like fingernails (seriously, check it out)
    Sausages look like the intestines.

    If anyone can be bothered slicing stuff up in various directions and posting pics somewhere, that would be good too.

  193. says

    One of my students in anatomy class brought a printed version of this in to share with me. I didn’t quite know what to say, especially since she’s training to be a nutritionist. What on earth would make her think I would find such a load of crap interesting? It reminds me of kindergarten!

  194. says

    My favorite part was “The Chinese figured this out 5,000 years ago”.

    Yes. Obviously pre-science science is the best science. The older a theory is, the better. Unless it’s by a certain Mr. Charles Darwin. Then it is outdated.

    Also, the kidney bean looks exactly like the human kidney…I don’t even know what to say in the face of that logic…

  195. Ryan Cunningham says

    And once again the pineapple fucks everything up for the creationists…

  196. alinarabia says

    Kidney beans are good for the kidneys??? Having spent a few weeks in intensive care as a kid with severe organ failure after consuming as few as half a dozen raw ones, I’m not sure I’ll go along with that one! Also, oranges are breasts? Apples surely, .

  197. David Marjanović, OM says

    I kind of like the stuff, but it’s a pain to prepare.

    Nonsense. You just cut it into rather big chunks and throw them into the soup, together with the carrots.

    BTW, it’s not “Piefkeland”. It’s Piefkonesien, expressing the not-so-subtle wish that Germany should be as far away as Indonesia.

    Saw this around lunchtime. Decided to have slices of tomato on my sandwich. Sliced it open and found only three chambers. Sigh, had to give it to my iguana.

    LOL!

    YOU GUYS! THIS IS SERIOUS! I NEED HELP!

    Earlier today I ate a banana. I hadn’t seen this video yet, so I didn’t know… I didn’t know what I was… Oh, God is gonna be so pissed.

    You, on the other hand, will suddenly find pissing a whole lot easier. Or more convenient at least. Enjoy it while it lasts…

    In scanning through this thread I somehow managed to miss David’s comment(s) but I’ve seen a whole lot of replies/responses to him. Why? If his one or two idiot comments didn’t litter the thread with irrelevancies, the replies sure did.

    Thou shalt not scan a comment thread, for that is an abomination. Thou shalt actually read it before commenting.

    The good man posted the same literally schizophrenic screed over and over again and managed to get himself banned not just from here but from ScienceBlogs as a whole.

  198. says

    David M. @248,

    It’s Piefkonesien, expressing the not-so-subtle wish that Germany should be as far away as Indonesia

    Heh? But wouldn’t that make Germany much closer to Austria? Just to its northwest, in fact. Why, we could come across and poach your kangaroos and still be home in time for dinner.

  199. says

    Mrs. Tilton, I know *you’re* joking, but in all seriousness, the Austrians I know living in the US make damn sure to write “Austria, EUROPE” when addressing snail mail back home.

    Apparently some of those Americans who notoriously can’t locate anything on a world map, including differentiating between “Austria” and “Australia”, grow up and go on to careers in the US Post Office.

  200. Gibb's Free Energy says

    You know what I totally agree with this video, carrots and tomatoes were intelligently designed…. by MAN! Heck carrots didn’t even become orange, and high in beta carotene, until the Dutch started breeding them orange as a political statement. This is in recorded history.
    http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/history.html

  201. not completely useless says

    Not sure how “Piefke” got into this thread, but there seem to be a misunderstanding or two about the word.

    “Piefke” refers to northern Germany, and is used as a pejorative by Austrians (and southern Germans, I believe). An Austrian would likely refer to the north German area as “die Piefkei”, thereby denigrating both northern Germans and Turks at once (from “Tuerkei”). And the north German dialect would be called “Piefkenesisch”, implying it’s hard to understand.

    Back to the main thread … I find the video absolutely stunning in its stupidity.

  202. says

    n.c.u. @252,

    “Piefke” refers to northern Germany, and is used as a pejorative by Austrians…

    I’ll defer to David Marjanović, who is Austrian, as to the correct usage of Piefke in that distant yet sun-kissed land. My distinct impression, though, is that the word, while certainly norddeutsch angehaucht linguistically speaking (possibly reflecting resentments going all the way back to the Prussian-dominated kleindeutsche Lösung), is simply the general Austrian pejorative for any German.

    …(and southern Germans, I believe)

    A so a Schmarrn, ge. I would be astonished to encounter a southern German who used the word at all. The general pejorative for north Germans is Fischkopf. In most of Germany, this refers to the denizens of the North Sea and Baltic coasts; but the further south you go, the greater the number of Germans who get lumped in, and there are people in my extended family who half suspect that the citizenry here in Frankfurt (in the sort-of-slightly-southerly-middle of the country) have gills.

    Bavarians (the German tribe who are closest to the Austrians in language and culture, though definitely not in affection) have their own disparaging label for north Germans: Preusse, or Prussian. (Actually, Preusse is a word from a language no Bavarian can speak: in their own tongue the term is Saubreiss.) Prussia, from the Bavarian perspective, begins at the north bank of the Main.

    Thal @250,

    differentiating between “Austria” and “Australia”

    I think the confusion is caused by the Australian national bird being the K.u.K.aburra.

  203. Rick Schauer says

    Yeah, and all the vegies and fruit in that video were genetically modified by an atheist SCIENTIST!

  204. Ernest Payne says

    If a little learning is a dangerous thing then this kind of idiocy is proof that no learning is truly dangerous. How desperate can these idiots get.

  205. says

    #1, you can’t Sokal these people. There is absolutely nothing so dumb they won’t surpass it. Check out Landover Baptist Church and Christians for Old Testament Morality. Then look at the e-mails from believers who take them seriously. Then note the occasional letters from non-believers who also take them seriously, just to show that fundies have no monopoly on dumbth.

    More sadly, check out Wittenburg Door, a generally liberal and literate site that lampoons religious nonsense from a religious perspective. A recent blogger wrote about Expelled and, well, you have to read the thread to believe it. See if you can spot my post. Hint: somebody wrote back talking about all the assumptions scientists make in “Lead-239” dating.

    The medieval Doctrine of Signatures reminded me of Aristotle’s Physics. The reason ancient science failed is that people began by assuming they knew how things worked and reasoning from there. Aristotle began by making wholly unfounded assumptions about motion, then led physics down a blind alley it took centuries to get out of. I can understand people with no knowledge of science thinking that plants of a certain shape or color might affect organs of the same shape or color, but the next step is to see if they actually have that effect. And that’s a step hardly anybody took until the Renaissance. The one virtue of alchemists trying to turn lead into gold is they had an objective test for their theories (making gold) and therefore had to admit that some things didn’t work. For some reason people resolutely resisted testing assumptions. Pretty much the whole history of science amounts to demolishing naive intuition and replacing it with trained intuition.

  206. Edo says

    And Durian looks like AIDS virus. So homeopaths should use it to make new medicine to cure Aids.

  207. Selaris says

    @225 Ive never heard of the devil being referred to as “Old Nick.” As to Saint Nicholas…Wasnt he a saint of some village that helped the poor children? Way to edit to fit your point, fundies…

    This video hurts. One would think that if the Xtian god does exist, he would be laughing at this pathetic attempt at brain washing as well.

  208. PeanutButterTheory says

    I’m allergic to avacados. Does that mean I’m the child of Satan?
    It’s common knowledge that the banana disproves the theory of evolution. What fruit or vegetable disproves the theory of gravity?

  209. says

    Oh, my.
    I think I found the common origin of the text in the video and the content of the spam email mentioned on the atheist board: You are what you eat.
    Oddly enough, I couldn’t find anything remotely corresponding this text on the TIME site …
    Search results

    I would very much like to know what the Time’s science writer thinks about this use of his name by a diet marketing firm. If you find a way to contact this David Bjerklie…

  210. DingoDave says

    The texture of a walnut shell reminds me of a hairless scrotum.

    Does this mean that if I eat lots of walnuts, my balls will go into overdrive?
    Wow, I could become a superstud!