I am really surprised at all the people who are saying the original letter had to have been an intentional joke. Haven’t you looked at Ray Comfort/Kirk Cameron/Kent Hovind on YouTube? They say essentially the same things! For another example, I was sent this link (scroll down to where it says “What Are The Scientists Saying?”) to a 50 page document full of nonsense, garbled science and creationism, and random invalid arguments against evolution, all just as silly as this.
Some simply don’t understand Poe’s Law. It states that parodies of fundamentalism will be indistinguishable from the real thing. This letter is indistinguishable by any measure from any of the routine creationist lunacy you can find just about anywhere you look.
I am not a scientist, but *facepalm*!!!
Yet another demonstration of why ignorant faith is no substitution for critical thinking.
It should read “every rational human in the world has just facepalmed.” Why should scientists have all the fun?
This is more than a facepalm; I think it’s all the way up to a headdesk.
I can’t think of a more damning example for the religious than having complete and total morons like this published as representative… glad they published it.
I can picture Kirk Cameron reading that and nodding his head in agreement.
What’s worst part?
That the letter got written.
That the letter got published.
That the letter will find many readers who will agree.
All of the above?
That’s a picture of a Poe, right?
Right?
The best argument that evolution should be taught in public school is that the deniers don’t even understand what they’re arguing against.
Ahahahaha
Please tell me that letter is just a joke.
No one can really be that ridiculous, right?
Right?
I have proof that prayer does not work and should not be mentioned in public schools.
First proof is that last year I planted some plants in my garden. Now, the package on the seeds said tomato, but I prayed to my lord and saviour Jesus Christ that they would become watermelons. I had faith in the lord that he would answer my prayers, but to my dismay they were just tomatoes.
Where are the watermatoes?
You doubt it? We’re talking about people who think evolution says dogs should give birth to cats. Watermelons from tomatoes? That doesn’t even scratch the surface of the crazy….
I had faith in the lord that he would answer my prayers, but to my dismay they were just tomatoes.
Which *PROVES* that god exists, but hates watermelons. I think it’s in Leviticus next to the cotton/polyester abomination.
Meh, I counter this with the observation that this year, until I set up an appropriate selection pressure (2ft high chickenwire fence) all my early crop of lettuce turned into rabbits. Kinda.
I see a new tie in PZ’s future… goodbye crocoduck, hello tomatermelon.
#11 FTW ;-)
#7:
The last one. Publishing it I don’t have a problem with — I have an impression that newspapers observe a “crank” quota for their letters page, and this screed would fall under that. It’s either humour, or Affirmative Action for the mentally deranged ;-).
We’re talking about people who think evolution says dogs should give birth to cats. Watermelons from tomatoes? That doesn’t even scratch the surface of the crazy….
I want to doubt it. I don’t want to believe I live so close to people who think like that.
Maybe you didn’t “faith” hard enough? Science: UR not doing it rite.
Is it bad that my morbid curiosity has me really wanting to see the rest of his “proofs”, just for the lulz?
Yeah, well, I watched an amoeba turn into an elephant, which shows that, oh damn, evolution isn’t the cause of life’s variations.
OK, maybe it was the drugs — or I possibly made it up.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Come on, this is obviously satire. The guy is being sarcastic.
I didn’t think PZ could be that dense.
I bet a dollar that his second “proof” is that he saw a tornado in a junkyard and it didn’t make a 747.
Come on, this is obviously satire. The guy is being sarcastic.
I didn’t think PZ could be that dense.
You underestimate the level of crazy rampant in America.
It seems 50/50 on whether it’s genuine or just for the lulz.
Damn PZ I was having a great day up until I saw this. I have met people before who have said things just as stupid as the person who wrote that. That’s what I get for going to a Catholic school in Indiana with a home schooled teacher! I swear she told me one time that she couldn’t believe that people came from monkeys… I had to explain the basics of evolution to her in five minutes. Everyone here saying this is fake, it may be fake but there are people who are that stupid. They tend to fall on the home schooled side of the stick!
It’s indistinguishable from the arguments of actual creationists. Whether this particular person really meant what he wrote is beside the point.
If it is a Poe, which it could be, believe me, this sort of thing is said in churches across America.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
This letter is pretty much par for the course in most discussions with creationists — I’ve had lots of people make equivalent claims to my face, quite confident that they had disproven evolution.
Usually it is dogs giving birth to cats or vice versa. I have to applaud this guy for at least recognizing the existence of plants.
Indeed. Very clearly a joke. The person who wrote the letter clearly had a sharper sense of humour than the person who posted it as an example of religious thinking.
#22
That’s possible, but I doubt it. People try to use very similar arguments all the time.
First, you plant a red tomato
Then you just sit back and wait, oh,
Just a month or two, while evolution does its nasty deed.
When it ripens, there’s no tellin’,
Cos it might be watermelon,
If it weren’t for Jesus Christ, defending each and every seed.
You could go for evolution’s
Oversimplified solutions
Or take solace, knowing Christ was in your garden all along
From the first one, back in Eden
(Where there was no need for weedin’)
To the modern agribusinesses that keep our nation strong
Every farmer with a tractor
Knows that Jesus is the factor
More than pesticides or herbicides, of this we can be sure:
Should the urge to garden seize us
We should put our faith in Jesus:
If there’s one thing that He taught us all, it’s how to spread manure.
http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2010/05/jesus-in-garden.html
More like a family 2×4, I’d bet.
Creationism must be true; otherwise, how do you explain CHERRY + DWARF tomatoes?
I do not comment much about Cuttlefish’s work because poetry really does not speak much to me. (I know, it is my failing.) But, damn, even I sometimes have to stand in awe of his singular talent.
God exists and he is Cuttlefish.
Nah, this has to be a Poe, it’s too thick and snarky. He knew they would evolve into watermelons? That doesn’t even make sense. Why would someone who doesn’t accept evolution know it would happen to his plants?
Here’s an apparent non-Poe who shows the clipping, quotes it verbatim, then writes:
http://www.christianforums.com/t7377145-37/
Scan the other posts there. Brinny apparently does approve, whether Tester’s a Poe or not.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Well, I guess Pokemon is old enough by now, that the first wave of victims may have school-aged kids by now.
@ 16
melotoms..sounds better, don’t you think
Hey now, I, as a fan of Pokemon, am smart enough to understand that its fiction and not scientific in any form.
/Poke-appologetics
Yay, Cuttlefish!
“I had FAITH in the EVOLUTION THEORY…”
Thus – evidence that FAITH (in tomato to watermelon miracle) fails. God, are you stupid.
You keep using that word… I do not think it means what you think it means.
I don’t know for sure whether this was a joke or not, (frankly neither do you) but only a naive person who hasn’t spent much time around the likes of Ray Comfort and Ken Ham would make such an assertion. What’s written here is hardly atypical.
It’s another reason I’d like to see the rest of the letter… it would probably offer some clarity to the writer’s actual intent.
So it takes a German guy turning into a giant cockroach to prove evolution.
What’s worst part?
That the letter got written.
That the letter got published.
That the letter will find many readers who will agree.
All of the above?
You forgot these…..
That these people are allowed to vote.
That these people reproduce.
Found a posting of this in 2006 by “dumb white guy” who includes “hail xenu” as his sig line…
Wait a second. If he plants a tomato and it turns into a watermelon, does he have to get stoned to death for planting two crops in one field?
It’s like the Crockoduck!
That’s all I have to say.
“You forgot these…..
That these people are allowed to vote.
That these people reproduce.”
And more…
That these people want and do carry guns
That these people would readily use them
That these people home school this crap
That these people number in millions
You’ve obviously never heard of the Crocoduck
This is what we get for leaving the most important part of the scientific method out of science education – the part where one noodles around in the world, notices stuff, and tries to come up with an explanation for why that stuff might be. (Unless the guy has noticed that tomatoes sometimes turn into watermelons?) Also he missed the day when the teacher talked about how one can’t actually prove a negative.
Stupidity is only weakly correlated with homeschooling – I run into loads of people for whom this idiotic passage would evoke nods of appreciation and who went to fairly decent public schools. I even work with a nature educator who has a degree in wildlife biology from a good state affiliated university with a respected biology department and has stated repeatedly that there’s no ancestral relationship between pandas and penguins. [facepalm]
The thing that correlates most strongly with this sort of stupidity is [drumroll here] regular church attendance. Quelle shocke.
*fist shake
damn you blockquote and no text formatting toolbar Chrome
damn you
It’s okay Rev. BigDumbChimp,
The troll is back, so you get redeem yourself by reposting that blockquote fail.
His problem is that he had faith the size of a tomato seed.
Everyone knows it’s supposed to be faith the size of a mustard seed.
If he’d used the right kind of seeds, it would have worked!
#52
Argumentum ad The Roches?
“God exists and he is Cuttlefish.”
Now there’s a god I can believe in.
Thanks for that…I never thought to look for one.
It is a sad and ominous world where this sort of nonsense cannot be definably declared a fake!
That those ‘facts’ get used by religiotards ad-infinitum probably every Sunday, should really be regarded as a failure of society, education and humanity.
It matters not that it could be a fake, what does matter is some repugnant fools actually believe this brand of ignorant effluent in the first place.
And as a consequence one can only point accusatory fingers at the Priests…Chaplains…Ministers…Pastors…and Reverends of every cult that must hear this crap every day and say and do nothing to inject rationalisation into their flocks.
These pillocks of society are supposed to be educated, well they were traditionally,they loved to boast about it at one time, but it seems that any dumbwad jeebus drooler can don a cassock and pretend divine holiness these days.
This stuff would not proliferate without tacit approval from the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Simple like so!
The fact must be that a high percentage of ‘jeebus is my sunbeam’ holier then thou crows must believe the same crap as their charges spout and that just sends shudders of dismay down the spine…but no real surprise.
Poe’s Law states that “it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won’t mistake for the real thing.” But it turns out that there are far more reverse-Poes in the world (simply because there are far more Fundamentalists than people trying to parody them), which we can define as, “it is impossible to make a legitimate Fundamentalist claim that SOMEONE won’t mistake for parody.” This is another good example.
This must be a joke, because people can’t really be this stupid, can they?
Yeah, they can.
Obviously you forgot to water them with holy water.
In most supermarkets. They ship easily. Just like modern strawberries.
I too have heard nearly identical arguments from creationists. And it’s not just that they’re really that stupid – it’s that the sources of their “information” are that stupid too. It takes a synthesis of stupidity to produce something like this. Here you have an idiot, mouthing an idiotic interpretation of something he/she heard from another idiot. This is what happens when the only thing you know about actual biology or evolutionary theory comes not from a timid half-lesson in high school, but from the rantings of some backwoods preacher. If you get your science from a sermon, you’re always going to look like a fool – except to the many, many other fools who got their view of science the same way.
Tomacco!
I keep planting cucumbers in hopes that they will evolve into polish sausage. And every time I open a jar of peanut butter I check to see if it is alive yet.
Damned evolution, doesn’t ever work when you want it to.
Well don’t start now because there isn’t one.
Only shortcuts AFAIK
Well, I must admit I had some difficulties in accepting it. They all miraculously (!) vanished the day a devout Catholic told me, very confidently, that if Earth’s resources get too scarce to sustain the ever growing population, God will certainly take care of that by making another Earth.
Now, about that guy planting tomatoes and expecting watermelons. Maybe he should try planting the seeds and come back in a million years to harvest some all-new-and-improved never-seen-before fruits. Or just stay around and fiddle his fingers all this time… or, better yet: sleep, since finger fiddling might be too much of an intellectual challenge.
This “argument” actually stems mainly from a bits in early Genesis that fundamentalists dearly love, parts like this:
See, the herb yield seed after its kind. That’s what God commanded, so evolution can never occur. And to drive it home, Mr. Preacherman says to his often rural audience, you don’t plant corn and get potatoes. You don’t plant wheat and get oats (‘cept those
damndarn wild oats). And when you plant tomatoes, you don’t get watermelons.And, by God, that’s true. And it’s really quite enough for most people disposed to believe that evolution is just a bunch of nonsense anyway, and worst of all, contrary to God’s decree that the herb yields seed after its kind. We see that God’s word is true every time we plant something, don’t we?
I know about these sorts of sermons from experience while growing up, btw. That’s why Tester never sounded anything out of the ordinary to me — he’s just writing what a lot of preachers say in their little homilies. The name “Tester” somehow sounds fake, though — I’ve never run across it previously, IIRC, although I’m sure that would be true of many names.
To suppose that those claims are “obviously fake,” however, underestimates the stupidity against which we fight. The fact that organisms reproduce “after their kind,” a simple empirical fact mentioned in Genesis, is taken as proof of the Bible by at least tens of millions of Americans.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Sorry this is OT, but it might make good grist for the next cycle of Pharyngulic comments:
Irony, yes?
I was unable to reach the original article, but here’s the basic story:
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2010/05/15/20100515phoenix-catholic-nun-abortion.html
Been there. Done that.
@MultiTool, #70
There are already more than 120 comments to PZ’s blog entry on the issue, titled Catholic Hospitals Favor Death.
It’s a rare name, but not unheard-of – indeed, Jon Tester is a United States Senator from Montana.
He obviously bought the wrong packet of seeds.
My bad. I was actually referring to Firefox, and of course you know there is one for that.
re 22:
It’s not nearly as bad as on Slashdot…
re 27:
from the full text reposted by Glen:
This paragraph is what convinces me that the letter is not a “Poe”, but that the first two paragraphs are a sarcastic misrepresentation of evolution by a creationist. This paragraph is exactly what even non-creationists who don’t understand evolution will present; the argument from credulity. “I don’t know know how it works but it ain’t random“. They latch onto the “random” part and ignore all the rest of the theory. They also latch onto the colloquial definition of “theory” as “guess” to cast doubt on it.
I agree, mainly because he leaves us messages.
re 78:
Now that’s weird, the paragraph I quoted had “… know know how…” and then I also wrote “… know know how…” and I did not cut and paste from that paragraph. and didn’t notice either doubling until after posting it.
As a regular church attender, I can attest to the sheer silliness of many creationism classes. I’m quite well aware that I believe there’s a unicorn in a garden and/or a teacup orbiting the other side of the planet. I’m at peace with that because the life that belief’s cause me to live is a good one, but I know that my refusal to embrace utter silliness like these proofs keeps me out of the Evangelical Cool Kids Club.
So, just to be clear, you wouldn’t be living a good life if you gave up that belief but did everything else you currently do? You need to believe in something you recognize to be unsupportable because it somehow forces you to act in a way you wouldn’t otherwise, even though you know it is unsupportable? Why not just live a good life minus that belief?
I’m in a quandry. I’ve been trying to get my toaster to evolve into a dvd player. I really don’t like toast, but my dvds still keep melting. What am I doing wrong, you so-called Smarty-pants Scientists?
Tulse:
I don’t really have a reasonable explanation for it. Honestly, I wish I did, but I don’t.
I’m fairly sure that I could give up that belief and still be moral. I tried it once and failed, but that was back in my teens. I tried and failed a LOT of stuff then that I’m better at now, and it’s certainly possible to have a consistent, compassionate morality that doesn’t involve any amount of spiritual beliefs.
There’s two possibilities: either I’m right and there is a God and I’m doing a good thing by believing in Him. We can get into the niggly bits of exactly what kind of God that is if you like, but that’s kind of dull.
The other possibility is that I’m wrong and I’m indulging in an adaptive trait that impels some humans to have spiritual beliefs. So long as I do so without forcing others to be the same – and to the greatest extent that I can, that’s what I do, to the point of handing out fliers in support of gay marriage – I don’t see this as any more harmful than indulging any other vestigial trait.
That is to say, there is no reliable measure of
complexcreationist specified information.There are many like you who I can’t entirely fault for their behavior, but c’mon! You are a confused humanist, and you’re only helping the ubiquity of the christian religion by identifying as one of them.
Sounds more like wishful thinking.
It’s so hard to choose but #31 may well be my all-time favorite from Cuttlefish. It’s almost worth being surrounded by godbotting wackaloonery just for the opportunity to read those lines.
There are many more possibilities than that. I know you’re not proselytizing and I appreciate, but I want to address this bit of clouded thinking here. You’re kinda hitting on Pascal’s Wager with that comment. That flawed gambit is no reason to cling to superstition.
#86
Or we’re all just members of secret underground humanist sleeper cells.
Could I get a communion cracker to evolve into a nice crisp potato chip ?
Not bloody likely.
Oh, I know! I’ll launch a tornado at a junkyard and sell off the resulting 747 ! I’ll be a billionaire! My fortune’s Made!
Sure, knock yourself out. Folks like you pretty harmless as far as these things go, and if every religious believer acted like you, I doubt there would be a “New Atheist movement”. But it still seems pretty silly to me to say that you’re only moral because you act on beliefs you know to be unsupportable, if not outright false.
What most “good church goers” [those are not “scare quote”] like meandra fail to recognize is that even though they learned morality and ethics through their church, that there is nothing “magical” or “divine” about those rules. They were derived by people over the course of time as we learned what beaviors work best and producing a (relatively) stable society. I don’t think there is anything especially mysterious about rules that tell us how to behave towards one another. Maybe at one time there was some value in putting a powerful supernatural “enforcer” behind the rules to get everybody to accept them as a natural stepping stone from chaos to civility but I think it is time to leave that aspect behind. That it is possible to evaluate the rules of morality objectively and judge them on their own merits and their impact on society without invoking the “because God said so” card.
#93
Absolutely, unfortunately certain unscrupulous retarded wackaloons prefer to pretend to arbitrate for the powerful supernatural “enforcer” because their social status is enhanced if they are regarded as the go between.
They like the power and the ego trip it produces.
They have no intention of losing that….they are addicted.
And governments regard religion as a handy tool to manipulate public opinion.
Most politicians do regard it so and power is their drug.
FUCK!! I was wondering why I didn’t grow tomatoes when I planted my watermelon seeds. This guy has my seeds!! Does anyone have the name and address where I can respond to this complaint? I want to get my tomatoes if he still has them.
@yahoo #83
Unfortunately due to incorrect Feng Shui, your DVDs are attempting to evolve into bread, and your toaster is fighting back.
I wonder if the guy tried to be objective by nailing somebody to a tree to see if they came back to life?
Or, you’re wrong and indulging in a trait that used to be adaptive, but is not anymore, and has become harmful.
Or, you’re wrong and indulging in a trait that was never adaptive, but has hijacked itself onto other truly adaptive traits and has parasitized society every since.
Or, you’re wrong and indulging in a trait that is neutral, and wasting your time.
Or, you’re right and there is a God, but you’re doing the wrong thing in believing in Him, because it’s the wrong God, and She’s not pleased.
Or, you’re right and there is a God, but you’re doing the wrong thing in believing in Him, because He doesn’t want you to believe in Him – he purposely set up the universe to hide his existence because blind human belief causes him PAIN.
Or, you’re right and there is a God, but you’re doing the wrong thing in believing in Him, because He doesn’t want blind belief. He wants humans to discover Him as a natural entity using the scientific method so that we may one day know him without need to resort to faith.
Or, you’re right and there is a God, but you’re doing the wrong thing in believing in Him, because He’s not the only. There are many Gods, they are busy fighting a savage war, and your God is losing….
Or, you’re right and there is a God, but you’re doing the wrong thing in believing in Him, because He is a right jerkass bastard who is made stronger by belief, and most certainly should not be, for the sake of all that is good and fair in creation.
There are a lot more than just two possibilities.
I would have planted tomato seeds expecting cows to grow. It’s funny how religiotards expect miracles all the time and fail to understand the most basic things.
Once again, the bible is right – you reap what you sow. Unless of course you sow sows, in which case you get a smelly patch of dirt and whatever plants happened to deposit their seeds there via the wind or birds shitting. Or kids spitting seeds … or civets crapping …
I don’t believe in evolution. I put a chicken egg into an incubator and when it hatched, there was a wee chicken instead of a wee penguin! Evolution is clearly wrong. How does it feel, PZ? How does it feel to know you’ve devoted your life to a lie?
Anyone who doesn’t think this par for course should re-watch the Peanut Butter: The Atheists Nightmare video. That typological thinking is inherent to the problem. No gradual shift over time within populations, just a cat giving birth to a dog (that dog being blind of course so how can it find a female dog? Checkmate, evolutionists!)
Good show, amphiox. Same notion crossed my mind when I read that, but I didn’t have the time.
They never think of Homer’s Wager, do they?
William Shatner, I Can’t Get Behind That, “Why can’t all these gods just get along?”
After reading all these responses, my head hurts. I now need to go eat some ice cream. But to the topic. The writer was only slightly tongue in cheek I think. He/she is obviously a bible thumper trying to make a stupid point. He/she is making fun of the very idea of evolution. Just a jerk.
I’m very sorry to have to inform you of this.
There is no lower bound to human stupidity.
The phrase “no one could possibly be that stupid” is, sadly, always false.
classic
Apparently there was an Anthony Tester in knoxville when the letter was written.
Meandra #84
“either I’m right and there is a God and I’m doing a good thing by believing in Him.”
I don’t see why there being a God and doing a good thing by believing in Him have any logical connection at all, so you are missing lots of alternatives.
I see #98 also made (more long windedly) the same point.