Next time a creationist tries to tell you, Oh, no, we’re not anti-science, we love science!
, remind them of this:
They have to redefine science to mean, only what the Bible says
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Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
They’re not “anti-science,” they’re “pro-safe-science.” They want science to be 100% safe all the time and never make them worry about anything. Is that too much to ask?
Just like racists aren’t really “anti-Black,” they’re “pro-safe-Blacks.” Is it too much to expect those people to look, talk and act safe for those justifiably-worried white people? /s
The Bible doesn’t exactly give us a vivid picture we can use to make measurements.
Cue that little jingle Paulogia always plays…
“Because the bible tells me so”
They throw out about the vast majority of science.
Science discovers new and interesting information every day.
The creationists throw out that new and interesting information…every day.
I didn’t exist, but the atoms I’m made of were in the Earth…. Why’s god asking? Wasn’t he there? Is he becoming forgetful in his old age?
Continuing on with that passage from Job….
Descartes, I suppose. That’s one answer at any rate. I didn’t realize there would be a math history portion of the test. Is there a part of the text which was supposed to help with this? Numbers, perhaps?
Eratosthenes was the first known to have calculated the circumference of the Earth, if that’s what you’re getting at, but he didn’t need a really big string or whatever. What’s with all these bullshit leading questions?
It’s the Earth, dumbass. It doesn’t have footings or cornerstones.
Is god being serious about this flat earther crap? Is he just a fucking grifter? What’s the deal?
Ham is an idiot. The only way to go back in time is to play my boyhood games of “fort night” using “nothing but a couch, a bedsheet, a broom and a T-shirt.”
Or to be more topical, you could play “telescope night” with nothing but a cardboard paper towel tube pointed at the night sky.
Alternatively, you could follow Ken Ham’s lead on science, education, and governance. That’ll send you back in time real quick.
Nvm, I guess there is more that one way to go back in time, but my first claim holds.
Raging Bee@1 “Safe science” needs continual adjustments. The fact that the telescope made it to the so-called L2 point without crashing into the firmament puts the entire Biblical cosmology in peril. But… oh well… we just don’t care about that anymore. Go figure.
Nah, there are ways….
Dumb Idiot Ham making s*** up like always.
A few years back I got into a flame war on a flerf channel because I was drawing parallels between flat Earth and Young Earth and biblical literalists. Some guy actually said something like, “you don’t need to involve religion. Just laugh at the flat Earth”. Show me a single flerf who is also an Atheist. They don’t exist. Flat Earth, Young Earth and Theistic Literalism are all inherently linked. Doesn’t matter the religion. The first modern flerf I ever saw on TV was a Muslim. This was pre-YouTube. The flerfs really took off with YouTube for some reason, but they do come in all flavors except, as far as I know, Atheist.
I simply remind such people, the ED, trauma center and ICU also aren’t in the Bible either.
“There is no harmony between religion and science. When science was a child, religion sought to strangle it in the cradle. Now that science has attained its youth, and superstition is in its dotage, the trembling, palsied wreck says to the athlete: “Let us be friends.” It reminds me of the bargain the cock wished to make with the horse: “Let us agree not to step on each other’s feet.”
Robert Green Ingersoll
“Show me a single flerf who is also an Atheist. ”
When I was in high school there were a whole class of flat-earthers, hollow earthers, who were outright KOOKS (and one person who was just very very stupid) who somehow thought if we did flat earth we could overcome relativity and design ufo time machines. Religious foundamentalism wasn’t as politically mainstream then so some kooks weren’t all religion driven. I think conservatism being wed the fundamental evangelism (which allows for deliciously irresistible armagedon fetishes) has made it predominant in the intervening decades.
@13, but were any of them Atheist? They sound like if they were non-denominational, they would be ripe candidates for Scientology.
Science and religion …(deep sigh). This brings me to a comparison.
I have tried to read enough about islam the last two years to “understand” it.
I obviously do not want to demonise the individual muslims, but the religion itself – the “perfectly preserved” koran and the hadith (that reveal the prophet as a vicious nasty creep ) and the repeated claims about a flat earth with the domes of the heavens above – and a bajillion other nonsensical claims- makes the whole thing a perfect dumpster fire.
It is as if the OT had been connected to an afterburner.
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I assume things like hinduism or shintoism are similar shit storms, but their priesthoods rarely send out death squads abroad.
Many have remarked on the similarities between evangelical and islamist hardliners and I agree there are general similarities, even if the scriptures are very different.
The superstitions are separated by 1400 years of independent development. If Ken Ham says “nephilim” the muslims will raise you “giants” and “Pharao built the Tower of Babylon”. Christians have hell and heaven. Muslims have 72 (robot?) virgins looking after every man in heaven, while they all look down at hell, enjoying the sight of the torture.
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At this point I ought to write a succinct summary of similarities between the two belief systems but there is too much opaque thinking.
Let’s just say neither wants to co-exist with critical thought.
@ 10
The two flat-earther documentaries I’ve been exposed to (i.e. Flat Earth Clues and Level) have both claimed that the “lie” that this planet is an oblate spheroid was concocted by atheists/Satanists/interdimensional-demon-lizard-Jews to convince people that gawd didn’t exist and we were “purposeless monkey men.”
I like the creation story of prechristian Europe better than the patchwork of fragments that is preserved in Jewish scripture.
It has giants too, and the primordial nothing is poetically described. It tells of ancient days before the sun, moon , and stars knew their proper courses through the heavens. No cool seas, or land, and grass grew nowhere.
It’s not an inaccurate description.
@17 Tethys
Have you ever read the Silmarillion? That sounds like the first couple chapters. Tolkien definitely borrowed from the old testament and things previous.
Aaah…”Flat Earth Clues”.
Two of my favv episodes of God Awful Movies were dedicated to the fourteen arguments.
Almost on a par with ” Day When Sun Rises In The West; Film (sic!) That Shook the World”
Religion denies science constantly. Many of them depend on a theory of “afterlife” – for which there is not only no evidence, there isn’t even a coherent theory of “life after death”. But, to be a believer you pretty much have to accept this absurdity. I find it worse than being a creationist – it’s just dumb. Next, it depends on a theory of “souls” – for which there is not only no evidence, there’s no theory. How are souls connected to bodies? What are souls made of? How do souls stick to a body as it whirls through space? The idea of souls is so important to religions that … they pretty much completely don’t address them scientifically. Why not? And of course there is also the problem of actually knowing anything about god or god’s will. Or attributes of god. How do believers know god is good? Some mortal told them that. God has been remarkably quiet about its desires for quite a while, we’re supposed to believe some stuff written down by iron age priests. Let’s accept that unquestioningly, like good scientists don’t do.
The whole enterprise is anti-science.
@Ray
That’s a translation and paraphrase of the first few verses of Voluspa. Tolkien was absolutely familiar with it, and the hints of the pagan worldview that are referenced in some of the other stories that were written down in the Edda’s.
I have a few quibbles with this Bugge translation, but the whole thing is available online. (He adds rather flowery phrasing, and it doesn’t actually say anything about bread in that line of verse 2, where she tells of the ancient ‘giants’ in the place she was “fostered”.)
Nine peoples I knew, nine withies. Mighty roots faring ‘neath the molde.
They also believed that humans were carved from different kinds of trees by the gods, and there is a lot of language that displays a great deal of reverence for trees and forests.
https://www.voluspa.org/voluspa1-5.htm
Hard to believe Ken Ham is as stupid and ignorant as he seems, and then he open his mouth again…
@21 Tethys
Very interesting. I shall have to explore this.
I don’t believe Ham himself is an idiot. He’s made an extremely lucrative career swindling other, actual idiots.
How appropriate. Today NASA released the first image from the new telescope. I’m not sure this is the “deepest” image of the universe…there have been some Hubble shots that are very deep.
I always thought it was hilarious that he looked like a macaque especially when he was younger. An Ignorant man who resembles a monkey denies evolution!
Dennis K@24
He may not be stupid, but he’s ignorant. Like PT Barnum, he knows how to spot a sucker, but that doesn’t mean he knows any science. I doubt he even cares.
@birgerjohansson The nice thing about animist religions such as Shinto, as I understand it, is that it is perfectly normal for people in other communities to worship other gods than your own community does. After all, they live near different gods (mountains, rivers, old trees, etc). “Of course those people don’t worship OUR volcano. They live too far away to benefit from his rich farmland or worry about being killed if he’s angry.” sort of thing.
Though strangely enough the sectarian violence in Japan from Buddhism, of all things, got pretty savage.
Also: the more we learn about brains the more obvious that self-awareness is a phenomenon of brain activity – and that argues against the existence of “souls”. Without accepting that massive leap of anti-science, religion’s foundations fall apart. There is no need to have a theory of afterlife because there are no souls.
Asking a religious person about the relationship between souls and consciousness and brain activity can be quite entertaining. “E.g: does a person who suffers a stroke 4 years before they die show up in the afterlife fully repaired? How and why?” Mark Twain also explored the problem of “does your immortal soul wind up in the afterlife without its pants for eternity, if it died like Elvis?”
Ken Ham was a high school science teacher before he got into the creationist grift.
He might also have a BS from Queensland Institute of Technology.
1 for 2.
I’m sure he doesn’t care about the truth, reality, or anything but his bank account.
The fact that brain stores memories makes an afterlife incoherent. How will you recognize your dead relatives once your brain decays?
More to the point, if you were retarded, brain-damaged or neurodivergent in life, would you still be the same after your soul has left your non-typical brain and nervous system?
Complementing Marcus@#29, Sean M. Carroll shows the impossibilty of a soul from a physicist’s point of view, in his article “Physics and the Immortality of the Soul.”
Re: raven @ #30…
Somehow a BS degree is just right for Ham.
(In Engineering circles, we all know what BS stands for. MS is “More of the Same” and PhD is “Piled Higher and Deeper.”
Re: Marcus Ranum @ #28…
As I’ve been saying about my late wife (she was RC), if she was right, I’ll tear the afterlife apart getting to her. If I’m right, all that is left are her writings and the memories of the living.
The Norse got it right…
Men die, kinsmen die.
Someday you too will die.
One thing lives forever,
World fame.
consciousness razer #5:
Yahweh’s sarcasm was deflection. He was caught red-handed at grotesque abuse of a loyal man, on a bet. Ugh! DARVO in action. I am amazed that a text so anti-theist got into the Tanakh. And in the Tanakh, from that book on, he doesn’t say a word.
Strewth@28
It’s like Otto says, the fundamental tenet of Buddhism is “every man for himself”. :)
Have now read that tweet several times. It is impossible to imagine someone having a low enough IQ to say that. How could you possibly say that we are not looking back into the past with these telescopes? I mean, this is not some kind of argument about radiometric dating or geloogy or ID where you could be so ignorant that you think these are actually matters for “debate”, this is a straight link between speed of light and distance. Measurable entities.
Does anyone here think that hams and co would look at anything scientifically? They certainly don’t cast a skeptical look at their own bullshit, so why would they take science seriously at all?
It is obvious that the god responsible for the creation of the universe is not the same entity that later offered the ten commandments to moses.
It is another entity again that ordered the sacking of Soddom and Gomorrah and then another who is responsible for the genocide against the Canaanites, etc. (I have undoubtedly got some timelines wrong but my point doesn’t rely on a high degree of accuracy, and I am not a biblical scholar, preferring to scratch my own eyes out than ever read that nonsense again).
The old creation myth at the beginning of genesis sets the stage for numerous usurpers (kings and priests) to assume the role of god. Many pharoahs were considered gods, so perhaps the god of exodus was a tyranical Egyptian aristocrat?
Later usurpation was undertaken by priests and kings, so much so that by the time jesus ascended to heaven to stand at the right hand of god it actually meant something as simple as “he climbed up the steps to the alter and acted as the junior priest assisting at the right hand of the high priest in offering communion to the congregation”.
Or jesus usurped the role of high priest himself when he ‘fed the mass[es]’ by offering communion through levites (loaves) and essenes (fishes) at a time when only those born into the tribe of levi (loaves) were permitted to be jewish priests and give communion?
Perhaps jesus was not a levite so was not permitted to act as a priest which is why he was put in his place as the “king of the jews” when he was crucified (it is a very strange insult to aim at a simple carpenter, or fisherman, or fish-man or whatever the fuck he was – so perhaps he was the semi-legitimate son of the heir to the david throne in exile, an heir whose title was ‘the holy ghost’ because he was in exile?).
Maybe mary was voluntarily impregnated by this ‘holy ghost’ only before they were actually married, meaning that as an unwed woman she was legally a virgin?
Then the stories of jesus were deliberately worded in such a way as to dupe the superstitious into giving up their money.
That is my amateur skeptic take on it anyway, for what little it is worth in this here universe of planet-sized minds you all allow me to participate in.
Creationists and fundagelicals obviously don’t like science at all because they love the grift. Science will destroy the donation plate that they covet so dearly.
‘Miracles for money’ is the name of the game.
@ 5. consciousness razor :
But, there’s only a single “Morning star” even in their own mythologu far as I’m aware and that’s theone modern science -helleven ancient Greek science told us was the planet Venus also called the Evening star and and which science tells us now is arguably the most hostile planet in our solar system. Also it doesn’t really sing at all..
@3. Ray Ceeya :
I like the song by the John Butler trio used here in this classic youtube series of bible verses never read in Church FWIW.
@20. Marcus Ranum :
In fairness, they’re not all iron age priests. Many of them (Ron Hubbard, Rev Moon, Herbert W. Armstrong, Ken Ham himself..) , are quite modern at least in terms of date of birth and invention/ reinterpretation of Christianist mythology.. Hell, we’re probly watching the evolution of the Trump / Quanon cult into a religion as we watch..
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Incidentally it always pains me that Ham is not only an (ex?)Aussie but also the namesake of a much better, more scientific astronaut of the Space Shuttle era. See : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Ham
Birger Johansson@15
Hindu’s don’t seem interested in exporting their violent adherents mainly because they have plenty of Muslims to kill in India. However, the civil war in Sri Lanka was a conflict between Buddhist fundamentalists (Sinhalese) and Hindu (Tamil) guerillas. Much of the violence in Burma/Myanmar is being driven by Buddhist monks. And of course, what was the Pacific front in WW II but a Shinto-Imperialist surge. I no of no human being who was made a better person by religion.
Job seems like a weird place to go to justify an argument. The whole thing reads like a prehistoric version of internet trolling, naming and shaming. It’s one big long argument in overly pretentious wording. God doesn’t come out of it looking particularly good, either. He starts with getting into a dick measuring contest with Satan, who he later admits “incited” him into ruining Job without cause. Not sure if it’s a translation error but it reads like the god of the bible was fooled into doing it. Then after all the tedious arguing and bragging about how great god is, god himself brags for a tedious long while. Presumably so we forget he was fooled into causing the whole thing in the first place.
Basically the whole thing is the book of “I had a meaningless god argument, god screwed up and got into a dick measuring contest, then I won the argument.” Really not sure Ken Ham wanted that sort of backdrop for his meaningless god argument.
It’s not about “what the Bible say”, it is about what parts of the Bible they wish to cite, and what parts they ignore.
For instance, the Bible has Cain going off to the Land of Nod, indicating that there were other people besides the two that it tells us God created. I assume those people evolved.
lanir@42
While Ham might be able to put the quote in context, I doubt he cares. Creationists quote mine and cherry pick everything. The Bible is the source they cut their teeth on.
This quote is also a favorite of creationists, though it is a nonsensical argument. I would ask constitutional originalists “Where were you when the Framers wrote the constitution?” How do you know they weren’t laughing their founding asses off? How do you know it’s not a forgery? How do you know they existed at all?
Like, if you weren’t there man, how can you really know? You can’t. Even if you weren’t there you might have been stoned, or so stoned you don’t even remember you were stoned. So really nothing is knowable, not even that thing Descartes said if there really ever was a Descartes. Wait, who’s Descartes? I am so confused.
PaulBC@44
No different than asking The Lost Cause believers, “Where were you when the Negro slaves happily and willfully served and took care of their White masters? How did you know the Civil War started over petty issues? Where you there?”
The ‘Were you there?’ line of debate is just tedious. Like the falling tree, events occur all the time without any human involvement.
My ass of a brain won’t stop noticing a tiny and trivial error, so I’ve translated the Old Norse to English below.
I think it makes perfect sense without the typical step of flipping the word order so the subject is fronted. It’s a great example of the inflectional verb endings that denote singular deyr and plural deyja.
Deyr fé
deyja frændr
deyr sjalfr it sama.
ek veit einn
at aldrei deyr:
dómr um dauðan hvern
Dies cattle
Dies kin
Dies self the same
I know one (thing)
that never dies;
The reputation of the one who’s died.
~Havamal 77
I wonder if Mr Ham is aware of his reputation?
It is just so bizarre when evangelicals claim to be Xtian, yet spend their lives lying and grifting for Jesus.
They’re not anti-science, they have alternative science!
“Muslims have 72 (robot?) virgins”
Grapes, actually: https://www.amazon.com/What-Modern-Martyr-Should-Know-ebook/dp/B00903HTIE
“I’m not sure this is the “deepest” image of the universe…there have been some Hubble shots that are very deep.”
Sigh. Look up the word “more” in the dictionary.
https://petapixel.com/2022/07/11/comparing-hubble-to-james-webb-the-difference-in-detail-is-astounding/
“It is just so bizarre when evangelicals claim to be Xtian, yet spend their lives lying and grifting for Jesus.”
It’s not bizarre at all … this is what a rational person should expect, same as how people wrapping themselves in the American flag and proclaiming themselves to be patriots are the furthest thing from the Enlightenment principles espoused by the Founders.
See “A Face in the Crowd” (a remarkable dramatic performance by Andy Griffith, of all people) and “Dead Zone”, among many other fictional explorations of this idea.
Jim Balter@48
Costco really is paradise! I haven’t counted, but three pounds of seedless is still a great deal.
robro@25
When you put it that way, it sounds pornographic.
“I would ask constitutional originalists “Where were you when the Framers wrote the constitution?” How do you know they weren’t laughing their founding asses off? How do you know it’s not a forgery? How do you know they existed at all?”
This is absurdly off base … it wrongly assumes good faith. The originalists have read the Federalist Papers and the transcripts of the First Congressional Congress … they know that they are lying their asses off about original intent. As Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent to West Virginia v. EPA:
“Some years ago, I remarked that “[w]e’re all textualists now.” . . . It seems I was wrong. The current Court is textualist only when being so suits it. When that method would frustrate broader goals, special canons like the “major questions doctrine” magically appear as get out-of-text-free cards. Today, one of those broader goals makes itself clear: Prevent agencies from doing important work, even though that is what Congress directed. That anti-administrative-state stance shows up in the majority opinion, and it suffuses the concurrence.”
And from https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3512&context=mlr
“The Fourteenth Amendment is the Mr. Cellophane of originalist writing. Judges, scholars, and
ordinary citizens writing or speaking in the originalist tradition consistently ignore the original
understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment even when that understanding should, on originalist
principles, control the outcome of a case.”
The bottom line is that “originalism” was invented as a way to pretend that the Constitutional consequences of the Civil War never happened.
“Like, if you weren’t there man, how can you really know? You can’t. ”
Of course you can … virtually all of our knowledge is inferred. Failure to grasp this is at the heart of many theist arguments against science, but they aren’t the only ones.
Jim Balter@52
You’re right. Poor example. It was just the first thing that popped into my head.
In any case “You weren’t there.” is a lame argument. And invites the obvious retort “You’re right. I wasn’t there. Why should I take your word for it?” Yes, it’s G-d and all, but the claims grow increasingly absurd:
Does God have to do this at every high tide? It sounds like a tedious job.
The Cyropaedia is a biography of Cyrus the Great written by Xenophon. Thomas Jefferson had two copies, one of which was featured in the touring museum exhibit of the Cyrus cylinder.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-21747567.amp