Remember when Ray Comfort went on and on about how the banana was clearly designed by a god, when the commercial banana is actually the product of human agricultural engineering? Now we’ve got another, similar example: Kent Hovind accusing people of being stupid for believing broccoli could have evolved.
You may know that Brassica was selected for a number of common agricultural products, but I guess Kent Hovind didn’t.
A better god would’ve made broccoli taste like chocolate ice cream.
A better god would’ve made chocolate ice cream taste like chocolate.
Mmmm, steamed broccoli. Mushroom sauce optional.
One has to wonder why he picked broccoli when there is a pretty solid written history of its breeding and cultivation.
I guess it wasn’t in the Bible so it’s not real.
Isn’t broccoli a fine example of intelligent design? The intelligence involved being, or course, ours.
Isn’t he like just a mediaeval friar, thick as pigshit and spouting bad homilies for the pence of the ignorant? Where’s the American Piers the Plowman to demand honesty? When Adam delved and Eve span, where then was the Republican?
The really scary thing about Hovind is that he has an audience who would be watching his nonsense and nodding wisely, smiling approvingly, and applauding vigorously when he damns those “evolutionists”.
What about cheese sauce?
Did that evolve, too?
Brassica, I love eating pretty much every cultivated form. Alas, I’m not permitted that very often, due to my thyroid.
One wonders how many more varieties we’ll have in another 2000 years! Likely, enough to fill an encyclopedia.
Cheese? MUSHROOMS!? Up squawks the mildly deranged penguin. She explains cheeses, MUSHROOMS!, penguins, and vins are four of the fundamentals of the Universe, like were earth, air, fire, and uisce beatha used to be thought to be (and perhaps still are so “thought” by astoundingly confused broccoliman). Everything else, she(the mildly deranged penguin) says, developed from those. Or is it develops into those four? She’s confused herself now, and goes to have a lie-down. With penalty of cheese, MUSHROOMS!, and vins…
When I was a little kid, my parents got a big kick out of a picture I drew. It was of a farm where carrots were growing. Except I had them upside down. To my young brain, carrot greens seemed rootlike, and carrots themselves seemed stemlike, so that’s how I drew them.
Somehow this video reminded me of that episode. In my case, at least, I learned from my mistake. I very much doubt that Hovind will do the same. So I guess that makes him, oh, mentally about five years old.
Brocolli is perfectly made to fit the human hand!
er…
Brocolli has an easy grip skin that…
uh…
It doesn’t spurt in your face when you try to eat it?
maybe you saw pictures of Boojum trees as a kid?
https://scontent-lhr3-1.cdninstagram.com/vp/5d986605e74182cdec9f7213f65b2a58/5BB5F5FE/t51.2885-15/e35/34687225_184645749043892_2310513030233849856_n.jpg?se=8&ig_cache_key=MTgwNjI0NjcxMzkyOTg3NjM0Nw%3D%3D.2
Dumfort apparently thinks humans are also “intelligently designed,” so this isn’t a useful differentiator either :p
I’v always liked broccoli, steamed until tender with salt and butter. Then I started to parchment cook it in olive oil with carrots and a nice salmon steak glazed with teriyaki.YUM,
Ugh. Could he have chosen a worse example? Broccoli is absolute proof that there cannot be a god. No benevolent god would have allowed such a disgusting food to exist no matter who made it. I will accept that it may be evidence of a Creator Satan.
I think I understand now. To someone who understands natural history, all living things plainly originated from common descent and modification. If you were asked to explain evolution, just about anything could be an example, but you would probably pick something that is a particularly good illustration of some of the common principles.
To a creationist, all living things plainly would be impossible to evolve. Plainly! But there are no principles, it’s all just whatever the creator felt like doing at the moment, beyond some vague notion that nature was put there for people to exploit. So for your illustration, there’s no possible reason to look any further than whatever plant or animal you happen to be snacking on at the moment.
Sure, it’s stupid, but you can’t really say it would be less stupid for them to pick ants or platypuses or baobab trees. They’re all exactly the same to them, random sculptures of divine clay; at least with bananas and broccoli, you can figure out what purpose they might serve.
I saw this this morning and all I can say is Hovind has reached epic level reality blindness. He’s denying actual documented history. It’s like saying “I don’t know how cars came to be, so… GOD did it.”
Quite a few years ago, Wesley Elsberry posted a short piece on Panda’s Thumb (I think – can’t find it now) refuting the creationist canard that no given organism has the genetic potential to give rise to a different species, what with “fixed types” and all. Among his examples – … aw, you guessed it already.
Later (2012), when he lived at FtB, Hank Fox waxed eloquent on the epistemology and metaphysics of broccoli – and, of course, made more sense than Hovind even before getting to the part about looking stuff up.
All joking aside. What exactly was Hovinds argument? Ray Comforts argument was at least clear. Bananas fit the hand, are easy to peel, have soft seeds, high nutrients, etc. i.e. a “too good to be true” food. What exactly is Hovind arguing about brocolli that defies evolutionist explanation? Or it just his belief the evolution can’t explain anything coming “from nothing”? Or does he have the exact opposite idea that if something doesn’t have any particular reason for existing (what purpose is brocolli’s … tuftiness?) then it can’t have evolved? Or does he not see evoloutionary pressure on plants?
Any way….
I used to assume creationist simply denied/didn’t believe in evolution. But I assumed they had some concept of what it claimed. But with claiming amethyst and atoms evolving and the supposed puzzle of brocolli evolving (what puzzle exactly?) I guess they don’t know what it is they are opposing.
woozy @ # 20 – Hovind just thinks broccoli is too very complicated:
[Transcript of Hovind’s livestream webcast from Hemant Mehta.]
Broccoli was a man, baby. A James Bond man, a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang man. To ascribe divine powers to him is the worst sort of heresy.
jacksprocket
“When Adam delved and Eve span, where then was the Republican?”
The snake of course!
I checked, and there seems to be fairly extensive literature on the evolution of Brassica. But what Hovind wants is the entire evolutionary history of broccoli stretching back to the origin of life that documents every single genetic change the lineage has ever undergone before he’ll consider it plausible. Of course, no other field of science requires that level of detail. And Hovind thinks that a suitable alternate explanation is that broccoli was just poofed into existence out of thin air by an all-powerful wizard. Apparently he also doesn’t think he needs to explain how said poofing takes place.