Remember that video by Joshua Feuerstein in which he claimed to destroy evolution in 3 minutes? It went viral. The BBC interviewed him, and got Aron Ra’s perspective. Feuerstein himself is bragging about the power of Social Media.
But they don’t ask why that video got so many views. I saw it because so many other atheists were linking to it…and laughing. It was this beautiful distillation of rank, raving creationist idiocy — a supremely confident ignoramus gushing over creationism’s dumbest hits as if they haven’t been smacked down a thousand times before.
Feuerstein got his moment of fame because he was that week’s stupid cat video, or comedic compilation of crotch punches, or amazingly clueless thing said by a Republican.
I saw it because a Christian acquaintance from high school shared it from an account called “Jesus Christ is KING.” That account posted two of Feuerstein’s videos; the second was “Destroying Pro-Abortion arguments in 2 MINUTES!” There were three total posts about Feuerstein (the third just encouraged liking his page) with likes numbering 91,475; 21,360; and 3,328 respectively. In terms of shares: 945,778; 53,421; and 2 (the “go like Josh” post wasn’t nearly as popular).
I don’t know how many of any of those are believers vs. atheists, but the six visible comments on this page are all positive. It’s possible that this went viral because of atheists mocking, but it’s at least equally possible that average Christians like hearing familiar arguments restated in a combative fashion.
Granted it’s a bit dated, but could we counter with “Leave Darwin Alone!”
Oh man, I watched that idiots anti-abortion video. The stupid is strong in this one.
Brief recap, he starts by arguing that since we consider death to be when he life ends, shouldn’t we consider life starting when the heart start. Except modern medicine doesn’t really consider the cessation of a heartbeat to be the start of death. Else they wouldn’t bother with CPR.
Plus the fetus’ heartbeat doesn’t start till about week 5. I looked that up on the net, and its clear the Josh hasn’t bothered to. I admit I could be wrong on that, which is more than I think Josh ever could.
He then claims that pro-choice are bad people, because they’re already born. Hence they don’t have to worry about being aborted. Which kinda ignores the fact that if we were aborted as fetuses we’d be in no position to care about said fact, much less complain.
Then he pulls out what looks to be a quail egg, and pretends that it’s an bald eagle egg. He then rambles on about the various fines, and prison terms for destroying said eagle egg. He then argues that it’s totally unfair that you can go to prison for killing an eagle, but not for killing a widdle baby.
Of course he completely ignores the fact that the bald eagle is an endangered species, and humans are not. There are plenty of other species whom we kill for food, and no one cares, because they are not tettering on the edge of extinction.
The argument also ignores a woman’s capacity to have control over her body.
Then in a massive fuck you to greenies everywhere he turns, and cracks said “bald eagle egg” over a frying pan. Which kind of makes him look like an entitled fuckwit who can’t be bothered to understand the nuances of his own actions much less those of his opponenets.
There are no stupid cat videos. It’s a logical unpossibility.
Inconceivable!
As a believer I used to think the hypocricy of placing animals over humans was a really good argument. Then I realised that there is no hypocricy here: a member of an endagered species really is more valuable than even say a couple dozen of us humans.
I mean come on, some people even risk their lives to save these animals!
The corrolary to that is that all cat videos are stupid, for given values of “stupid”.
But then I can disprove that even without redifining words: surely this “stupid cat” video is stupid, especially if pretending not to be stupid.
My favourite kind of stupid video are the compilations of Russian car crashes.
Not so much different than Mr. Feuerstein’s videos, I now realise.
Aside from the argument about endangered species, no one who has ever destroyed an eagle egg has done so with the consent of the mother. If an eagle decides now is not a good time for chicks, she will abandon the nest and face no fines or prison terms.
I watched a Dick Dynasty video to see what the fuss was about. Still laughing.
I, too, had a chuckle at the attempt of Cool Youth Pastor Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst Circa 1998™ to school “Mr Atheist” – well, I did until his combination of pompous, affected, hip-hop cadence and preschool-level fucking-up-of-science-knowingness made me want to slap my screen shut (an interval of, I kid you not, three seconds). Thankfully, several ‘tubers have posted rebuttal vids with his idiocy interspersed with their own responses, which made listening to him tolerable.
Of course, while watching Hip Pastor Fred Flintstone being exposed as the smugnorant fuck he is has been great sport for me and my ilk, back in the many-fisted circle-jerk that is internet creationism he’ll no doubt be rewarded with likes and clicks and shares (oh my!). Hopefully though, the viral-ness of this vid means that far more people than just Genesisists and skeptics have seen and will see it; I can’t imagine a great deal of intelligent, moderate Christians being anything less than embarrassed by this fundie sack of gas.
Birds also rather tend to leave their young where they fall if they drop out of a nest or fail to fly. Humans shouldn’t do that, but the anti-choice crowd seems to have much less trouble with childhood neglect, abuse, and various forms of murder than medically removing a fetus.
*squeeeeee squee squee squee*
I watched that fauerstein video, and about thiry seconds in, I wondered “Where have I heard this all before?” And then I remembered when I first wandered into the Ediacaran Enclaves of talk.origins and alt.talk.creationism in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s and just saw these chickenshits mocked unmercifully, and Dude was following the same playbook that had gotten them mocked.
“There is nothing new under the Sun.”
Yeah, I thought that eagle egg argument was a new one. But I saw something in passing that traces it back to the 40s. I could be wrong on that, but given Mr. Feurerstein’s previous efforts, I doubt it.
He also has a rather delightful video wherein he explains that Jesus was buried in a borrowed tomb because Jews are cheap. Moron.
ORLY? Never heard the *chuckle* of calling a murder,”a retroactive abortion”? Without the chuckles, but SRSLY, We DO worry about being “aborted”. And this, Josh, doesn’t read the newspaper, nor watch the news? Even the most pro-choicer will abort the life of a grown person, when pushed. We don’t claim pro-choice is perfect everything, always. Just that pro-life is mostly wrong. So, less-wrong is still better than more-wrong, is it not? Wake up, Josh.
“There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” –said by people who don’t rely on publicity to pay the bills.
@twas brillig (stevem) #16:
No, we don’t. Not one of us worries about being aborted, because every single one of us already was.
We tend to equate “abortion” with “death of an embryo/fetus,” but they are not the same thing. Abortion is simply the termination of a pregnancy. For a sizable number of abortions, the abortions we typically talk about with the word “abortion,” terminating the pregnancy is a cause that results in the death of an embryo or fetus, because we typically reserve the word “abortion” for nonviable pregnancies.
When a fetus is viable, the term we typically use for an abortion is “delivery,” a method that often results in a living newborn.
Presumably none of us commenting here is doing so from the womb (amniotic fluid can’t be good for keyboards or tablets). Consequently, we’ve all already been aborted. We were just late-term abortions resulting from women who consented to allow us to reside in them for forty weeks or so.
The thing about murdering a person is it’s not about terminating biological function, it’s about terminating a person with the capacity for desire and suffering. The former is just the means to achieve the latter. With a fetus, personhood is very much in question, compounded with forcing an unwilling person to care for it.
My fundy cousin-in-law posted the video. I tried to speak sense to them. I went into a long spiel about how we know what we know, how interconnected life is with the universe itself and how we can show the age of the earth using precise repeatable experiments and observations, tie those to the layers of rock and infer the age of the fossils found within, then use taxonomy and what we know about phyla to place them in the continuum of life.
Their response, paraphrased: “It is still just a matter of faith.”
I’m sure some of you have experienced the same, but it’s just so infuriating and facepalm-y. Almost table-flipping levels of infuriating.
Tom Foss:
Are you secretly me? Because this exact same thing happened to me today.
@20 throwaway, never proofreads, every post a gamble
Oh? So your faith trumps facts? Good to know. That’s one faith I’ll make sure to stay away from.
I wonder, is there something in the DSM about this? (Either option should be illuminating. But that’s one book I haven’t read.)