Somebody calling themselves “True Free Thinker” is irate that anyone would teach kids about evolution. As you might guess from the moniker, this person is actually anti-atheist and anti-science; what you might not immediately realize is that he’s a terrible thinker, terrible writer, and even worse video editor. He’s assembled a very strange video which is like a slow, bad ad for the book, Grandmother Fish.
Almost all of it is simply the kickstarter video for the book, broken up with occasional bits of text commentary and weirdly, clips of me from that Ray Comfort video. He really does just keep in the videos of parents reading the book to their kids — apparently, he doesn’t feel the need to provide commentary, we’re just supposed to be horrified at the spectacle of people explaining to children that they are descended from fish.
I am quite proud to be a member of the ancient and distinguished fish clade, so his ponderous, unimaginative efforts to pretend it’s something terrible don’t bother me at all — and his attempts to argue that evolution is unsupported by evidence in his article are just ludicrous.
But I do appreciate the fact that he’s reminded me to order a copy for my local library. Creationists, you can keep on crying.
A true free thinker. *snicker* From the Wiki article on freethought:
and this:
They don’t have dogma that needs to be challenged, the other guy does. Except where is your evidence that your ideas aren’t dogma?
Fish Pride!!
We are not fish, we are monkeys. /snark
Why does it seem that anyone claiming “true” and “truth” for themselves have little regard for it?
On the other hand, the illustrations look lovely.
Let your inner fish flag fly!
Full PDF here: http://grandmotherfish.com/grandmotherfish.pdf
Definitely worth to buy a paper copy.
So, should we all chip in and get this “True Free Thinker” a copy of Neil Shubin’s “Your Inner Fish”?
We could point this confused person at Neil Shubin’s tv series Your Inner Fish which we Brits are currently enjoying.
(BBC iPlayer for those with access)
It appears that Your Inner Fish is still on the PBS web site.
It’s only indoctrination when we do it. When they get a four year old to recite “I believe in God the father, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only son our Lord, who was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried…etc.” That’s what? Education?
They had me reciting this nonsense before I knew what “I believe” even means. Still stuck in my brain some sixty plus years later. And they’ll tell me I’m angry at god. No, Christians. I’m angry at you.
But i go back way further than fish. I’m happy to count the primordial slime as my ancestor.
So my grand-dad was a monkey, and his grand-dad was a fish?
What a complicated, ancient family tree!
I can trace my mother’s side to amphioxus, if you wish,
Though they won’t admit they’re relatives of me.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/cuttlefish/2011/02/12/wait-im-the-black-sheep/
I see they included snippets of that “interview” where they ambushed PZ and snipped it into little bits to make him sound incoherent.
Q:”Do you have any examples of specieization?”
A: “Stickleback Fish”.
Q:”uhhhh…any that formed to kinds (of species)?”
A:”Yes, Stickleback. They are many species”
overlay:”Whaaaaa????????”
—
the first half seemed like a pretty good sales pitch for the book; until all the text with wild assertions started getting overlayed.
And the bizarre rant of that elder ranting against education as being something the colonials would burn the advocates of as witches. As he ranted I thought to myself, “yeah, the colonials were absolutely correct in every viewpoint they held. sarcasm”.
Whenever I tell people I come from an ancient race of aquatic beings, they look at me funny. They obviously can’t handle the truth.
We fish, we happy fish, we band of lobefins;
For he to-day that walks this earth with me
Shall be a lobefin; be he ne’er so tall,
This day shall fishlike his condition;
And rayfin-fish in waters now-a-swim
Shall think themselves accurs’d they are not here,
And hold their fishhoods cheap whiles any stands
And walks with us upon this good green earth.
Menyambal @14
Once more to the beach, dear friends.
I bought “Wo bitte geht’s zu Gott? fragte das kleine Ferkel” for the same reason.
Any childrens book that makes religious people foam at the mouth and go completely nuts is a book worth buying.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b05yxzxc/your-inner-fish-an-evolution-story-1-your-inner-fish
Let’s wait for what the Real True Free Thinker has to say about this, then how the Legit Real True Free Thinker replies, then what reaction comes from the Genuine Legit Real True Free Thinker…