Another example of why I despise Christianity

It leads stupid people like Ray Comfort to say things like this:

The Queen of rock ‘n’ roll passed into eternity today. All the money that Tina Turner possessed, all her fame, all her awards, and accolades now mean nothing. The only thing that matters, is “Were her sins forgiven?”

OK, I forgive her sins. Done.

Maybe better questions to ask when someone dies are: “Did they make the world a better place? Did they create beauty? Did they inspire? Did they speak truth to the world?”

Tina Turner gets a yes to each question. Ray Comfort gets a slow, sad shake of the head.

Haw haw haw

Ken Ham was asked if Muslims are going to hell. His answer:

Well, it doesn’t matter if one is a Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Catholic, Mennonite, Muslim, Methodist, Hindu, Sikh, Orthodox Jew, or any other denomination or religious group—if a person has not repented of sin and received the free gift of salvation offered through the Lord Jesus Christ (being “born again”), they will be separated from God for eternity in a place the Bible calls hell. And sadly, the majority of people will go there as Jesus warned, ‘Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many’ (Matthew 7:13).

Shorter Ken Ham: yes.

Please show me how to calculate a “wokeness” index

The loons are just making up numbers now.

Australia is going to “dramatically” increase in its wokeness in the next year, says The University of Austin Founding Fellow Peter Boghossian.

“If Stalin’s Soviet Union was a ten, and Portland Oregon is an eight, Australia is hovering around a three,” he told Sky News host Peta Credlin.

“However, I predicted that number will go up rather dramatically in the next year.”

He only gives Australia a three because the “toxic ideology” hasn’t had time to “metastasize” and “worm its way through the system.”

I’m not clear on how he used “reason to wake the woke,” as he claims, and I have no idea what weird diverticulum of his monstrously bloated colon he pulled those numbers out of. Where I come from, yanking out random numbers and pretending they’re authoritative is frowned upon. Or laughed at. Either response is appropriate here.

The Christian rot is everywhere

Hey, isn’t that Achilles from the movie Troy? I had no idea he was Christian.

I am not at all surprised by the revelation that evangelical Christians think they’re waging a holy war against trans people. Now we have even more evidence, in the email lobbyists write to politicians, with both incessantly claiming that God is on their side.

“Under His wings,” one lobbyist wrote in an email. “The Devil never sleeps,” another person sent in an email chain about the distinction between gender and sex. “I pray for the 2nd coming more and more.”

These missives are part of a trove of leaked emails between South Dakota GOP Rep. Fred Deutsch, anti-trans lobbyists, and other state lawmakers about anti-trans policies that are filled with language so deeply religious that, at times, the communications read like scripts from The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s the language, one expert told VICE News, of Christian nationalists who believe they’re engaging in a holy war.

The way these people talk to each other…it’s all Bible references and piety, while they’re advocating to increase the suffering of children. For someone like me, who is rather firmly anti-religious, it’s repulsive.

The repeated notes about “blessings” and “prayers,” as well as sign-offs like “God bless you” and “Under His wings,” proliferate throughout the emails, which frequently reference explicit religious motivations for targeting trans people.

“Know that many have prayed and are praying for you this day. Do not back down, nor should you be afraid. Know that the Lord is with you. The children of South Dakota belong to him. He is jealous over them. Let his jealousies be spoken forth in the House of Representatives of South Dakota today so that his children would be made safe. Know you are HIS representative today. Do not be afraid. Stand firm in what is right,” wrote Vernadette Broyles, a lawyer and president of the Georgia-based Children and Parental Rights Campaign, which mobilizes against “gender ideology,” in 2020.

They can’t muster a good argument or a rational defense for their behavior, so they resort to claiming Biblical authority. It’s lazy and stupid and done for an evil purpose, and damn the evidence. For the Bible tells me so (which it doesn’t, actually — most of this stuff is interpolation and reading their biases into the text) is all they’ve got.

Emails from 2020 show right-wing lobbyists and politicians rejoicing after Idaho passed two anti-trans bills. One of the bills, which is still being fought by the ACLU, bans trans women and girls from girls’ sports, and is rooted in the myth that trans women have a leg up in sports, though evidence has consistently stated the opposite. “Dear Friends,” wrote Young, the Idaho representative, “I cannot thank you enough for your help and support! It is official—Governor Little signed both H500 and H509 today! Many tears and prayers of gratitude! The fight goes on!” Young sent the email to nearly 30 people, some of whom have also lobbied against abortion, including Deutsch.

It’s the same story with the abortion holy war. It’s all based on emotional biases and ignorance, bolstered by a misreading of their holy book. I bet if we had a trove of email from anti-abortion lobbyists and politicians, it would be full of the same sickening god-talk.

It’s also driven by paranoia and a persecution complex. They actually believe that trans people are an overwhelming powerful force bent on destroying a tiny band of Christian martyrs, so they need to eradicate them first.

“Stopping the existence of transgender people and the acceptance of trans people in the public sphere is to them some sort of religious imperative,” Lecaque told VICE News.“It’s particularly fascinating that this group that has all this money, control in state legislatures, control of the house, they had a presidency, is acting like somehow they are David in the struggle.”

None of this is particularly surprising, and none of it is new. Today’s Christian nationalists believe that America is an inherently holy, Christian land, and that it’s their duty to restore God’s kingdom in order for Jesus to return. Part of this means that they think the country’s laws, policies and cultural institutions should reflect evangelical Christian values, VICE News previously reported. As a result, contentious cultural and political issues, like drag queen story hours and “critical race theory” are perceived as Satanic. Indeed, the Devil came up in the leaked emails.

“I completely agree that it is Christian Nationalism, although I tend to refer to it as religious extremism,” Shupe said in an email to VICE News. “Christian Nationalists are a danger to the LGBTQ population, and society in general: a genuine threat to people’s lives and safety. They feign compassion while doing everything possible to strip us of our civil rights and ability to safely exist and participate in society.”

Yes! Christianity is the poison in America’s veins. It’s everywhere. It is the Goliath that you find imbedded in every city, every small town, and every little farm across the country.

It’s not the only cause for the prejudice, though. I have to wonder about the atheists who are happily siding with religious extremists to condemn the trans ‘agenda’.

The irony of a creationist moaning about others denying science…

The Republican legislature in Kentucky assembled a set of those inhumane, ignorant anti-trans laws, and handed it to the Democratic governor…who vetoed it. Good work, Governor Andy Beshear!

Kentucky’s Democratic governor issued an election-year veto Friday of a sweeping Republican bill aimed at regulating the lives of transgender youths that includes banning access to gender-affirming health care and restricting the bathrooms they can use.

The bill also bans discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools and allows teachers to refuse to refer to transgender students by the pronouns they use. It easily passed the GOP-dominated legislature with veto-proof margins, and lawmakers will reconvene next week for the final two days of this year’s session, when they could vote to override the veto.

Gov. Andy Beshear said in a written veto message that the bill allows “too much government interference in personal healthcare issues and rips away the freedom of parents to make medical decisions for their children.”

In his one-page message, he warned that the bill’s repercussions would include an increase in youth suicides. The governor said, “My faith teaches me that all children are children of God and Senate Bill 150 will endanger the children of Kentucky.”

Wait a minute…Kentucky? Who do I know who lives in Kentucky?

Right. You can guess how he responded.

Another politician showing blatant disregard for young people, for science, for parents and for God’s Word by Vetoing legislation he claims would harm children, but the opposite is true.

Children and young people do not have the maturity to make life altering decisions (that are destructive regardless) advocated by the LGBTQ movement. So sad many will destroy their lives because politicians deny the obvious, there’s only two genders of humans, male and female. Science confirms it as males have a pair of XY chromosomes and females a pair of XX. And of course, God’s word makes it clear:

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).

Does anyone else feel stirrings of rage when a know-nothing, superstitious dogmatist like Ken Ham decides to declare what science has determined, and gets it all wrong, while relying on his authority as a preacher to persuade people to accept his views? No? Just me?

I’m not as irritated when he tries to explain what his version of the Bible says, since I don’t give a good goddamn about the book or his interpretation of it. Although I am confused by his Bible quote.

So God created male and female in his image…how does that work, exactly? Do both men and women look like god? If we’re going to get all literal on this, as Ham prefers to do, does that imply that god is a bipedal primate with ambiguous genitalia, or is he some kind of shape-shifter? Does his god have XX chromosomes, or XY, or some other combination? I don’t really care what the answer is, since I think it’s all bullshit, but you know, Ham claims that God’s word makes it clear, and it’s anything but.

Ham goes on to complain about bathrooms, of course.

What a travesty that this Governor would allow males to use women’s restrooms (and vice versa). By allowing young people to use the bathrooms of their choice is certainly a denial of the sin nature of man and what can happen because of that. Governor Beshear refers to his “faith,”—he needs to refer to the clear teaching of the Word of God on gender! The Governor does not own children, they belong to parents and ultimately to God. And they certainly don’t belong to teachers.

It’s been a long time since I read the Bible, but I have to ask: is there a commandment about men’s and women’s restrooms in there? Personally, I think people should be allowed to use the restroom of their choice, because what they’re going to do in there is to privately relieve themselves, and that’s about it. OK, maybe wash their hands, touch up their makeup, that sort of thing. They are not dens of sin.

Also, the idea that parents “own” kids is offensive. Parents have a responsibility for their children, which is not the same as possession, and society can step in when they fail in, or violate those responsibilities.

Actually, contrary to what Gov Beshear claims, what the Kentucky legislature passed have passed are the strongest bills in the nation protecting kids, parents and teachers! Notice how the media always like to portray such legislation as “anti-trans” instead of “pro-children, pro-family, pro-parents” etc. Media like to use words they think will cause people to believe those passing such legislation are full of hate–which is not the truth at all. Yet, I often see hate from people directed at Christians/conservatives because they won’t comply with the LGBT worldview.

Trans kids exist and should have rights. The primary consequence of those bills is to deny trans kids their autonomy (I know, Ham doesn’t believe children should have that) and cause active harm. They also deny parents their right to fulfill their responsibilities and provide appropriate care to their children.

I will concede that the people behind that legislation might not be full of hate. They’re full of stupidity and selfishness, instead.

Sneaky AiG

Part of the money-making strategy at Answers in Genesis is to constantly promote how popular they are in a never ending cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy. One of the recent lies has been that they bring in so many tourists that hotel chains are building new places near the Ark Park to meet the booming demand.

It is true that the country contains many yokels who like to vacation in a boring wooden box that reassures them that their interpretation of the Bible is true, but it’s not exactly a growth industry. They’ve had to constantly misrepresent their popularity to get support from state and local government, and wouldn’t you know it, hotels aren’t springing up all around the place. Ken Ham has been bragging about one new hotel in the neighborhood, but surprise surprise, it isn’t in response to demand — AiG is spending its own money to have it built. Gotta spend money to make money, you know. If that involves building a whole Potemkin village to make themselves look popular, that’s what they’ll do.

Ken Ham is being quiet that Answers in Genesis (AIG) owns part, or perhaps all, of the new Hampton Inn that just opened adjacent to the Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Kentucky. Moreover, he is trying to make it look as if the supposed “success” of the Ark Park has brought the new hotel to the region. Information below shows that AIG shares a high-level employee with the new hotel, and the LLC that owns the hotel shares a Post Office box with AIG.

AiG is perfectly within its rights to use its own money to build a hotel to serve its little “attraction,” but it does bring into question the purpose of all those tax subsidies it has received, and I also wonder why they are so desperate to hide their role.

Fabulous new housing development going up in Wiliamstown, Kentucky!

Extremism leads to more extremism

Answers in Genesis isn’t just that annoying collection of stupid people and con artists anymore — they’re embracing hate and bigotry as fervently as they have ignorance, and it’s getting worse. Dan makes an interesting discovery while trying to track down the source of some recent hateful articles on the AiG website.

What’s curious is that AiG is trying to hide the source — there are these articles that are currently anonymous, but the Wayback Machine reveals that they were initially posted under the byline “Harry F. Sanders, III”. Why is AiG actively trying to conceal the authorship? And further, “Harry F. Sanders, III” is itself a pseudonym for someone named “Emory Moynagh” (probably also a pseudonym) who had a YouTube channel (now deleted) called “In His Image”, where he was an extremist antisemitic conspiracy theorists. And now AiG is trying to launder his history while giving him a bigger platform to peddle that extremism. Also interesting: AiG is taking a very hard line on their version of creationism, letting all those other creationist organizations know they are heretics and blasphemers. Ken Ham’s ego is totally in charge, I imagine he considers himself a modern-day patriarch who must chastise all those who deviate from his dogma.

This is a common problem in authoritarian worldviews, you know. We’re witnessing a predictable acceleration as AiG fully embraces its cult nature. It’s only going to get more feverish and vicious.

If you’d rather not listen to a 14 minute video, here’s the conclusion:

Ken Ham is going all-in on the culture war
And he’s decided to go all-in against other YECs
He’s enlisted Harry F. Sanders, III/Emory Moynagh as the primary author of this series
Harry/Emory has a history of articulating extreme positions, including borderline incitements of violence, antisemitism, and conspiracies
This is dangerous and irresponsible, especially considering Ham and AiG’s recent aggression towards the LGBT+ community and the trend of right-wing violence

A distinction without any meaning

Biologists have managed to reprogram stem cells taken from a male mouse into female oocytes, then fertilized them with sperm from another male mouse, and produced healthy offspring — that is, they’ve made mice with two fathers. This is an expected, incremental advance in stem cell research, and not surprising at all.

The creationists at Answers in Genesis are made somewhat uncomfortable about this, since it violates their fantasies about the rigidity of sex determination, and recruited their tame in-house crank with a Ph.D., Nathaniel Jeanson to write a rationalization for them. It’s pathetic. He correctly summarizes the basics of the procedure, but then his brain falls out.

He decides that what he just described didn’t happen.

But can two adult males (mice, in this case) have their cells reprogrammed to produce eggs? Don’t males normally produce sperm, not eggs? How can offspring be produced from “two dads”?

In short, they can’t.

But that’s what the experiment did: they reprogrammed cells from adult males to produce eggs. His little essay described exactly what they did, which was that. How does he suddenly backtrack on everything?

For two males to reproduce, you have to first convert the cells from one of the males into female cells. And no, I’m not talking science fiction. This is what the researchers actually did.

They first reprogrammed cells from both male mice back to an embryonic state. At this stage of the process, the cells were all still male—possessing both an X chromosome and a Y chromosome. Then they waited for cells from one of the males to lose their male genetic material—the Y chromosome.4 At this stage, these genetically deficient cells now possessed only a single X chromosome, no Y chromosome.

These genetically deficient cells were poor candidates for producing eggs. To produce eggs, you need cells that have two X chromosomes. Consequently, as a next step, the researchers chemically induced these genetically deficient cells to return to a “normal” genetic state. They chemically forced them to have two chromosomes again—to realize an XX (rather than XY) chromosome state.

Effectively, they deleted the genetic instructions for “male” from one line of reprogrammed male cells, turning them genetically into female cells. Voilà, now they could produce eggs.

Yes? They took cells from a male mouse and turned them into female cells that could differentiate into eggs. They produced offspring from two dads. In short, they can.

It’s only been done in mice, and it’s a long, long way to being repeatable in humans, but this is exactly the procedure two gay men could use to have children together. Jeanson wants to argue, though, that the male mice did not have children — instead, he produced a “daughter,” a single cell, that then produced offspring.

By the way, if this strikes you as impossible, consider the fact that adult males regularly produce females. Dads have sons and daughters. Normally, these females (daughters) are produced with the help of a woman. In this study of two “dad” mice, the female “offspring” were produced in the culture dish—in a process that, in some respects, resembles the process of cloning.

So, no, two “dads” did not sire offspring together. Instead, using new genetic tools and tricks, researchers bypassed the normal process of reproduction to turn male cells into female cells and then joined the resulting sperm and egg.

Thus, even these researchers could not circumvent the biological realities for gender that God hardwired into creation from the beginning. They just went about the process of reproduction in a more perverse way.

By this goofy reasoning, no adult is a parent — we only produce spermatogonia/oogonia, single celled precursors to gametes, that are the actual parents, and mommies can be nothing but a transient single-celled stage on the way to making a zygote. Those “hardwired” “biological realities” seem to be entirely circumventable, although only with considerable technical finagling. Or, if you prefer, we could argue that his god has incorporated some remarkable flexibility in how sex develops.

I mean, seriously, two daddy mice did have offspring together. That’s the simple blunt reality of this result.

Get used to it.

Ken Ham really doesn’t get science

One of the more damning testimonies from Ken Ham occurred in his debate with Bill Nye, in which he declared that no evidence could ever change his mind (so why bother debating him, I would ask?). Now AiG has turned that sentiment into a poster-sized meme that only shows that they’re not scientists.

Ken Ham:
Evolutionists have to changing their ideas as more evidence (contradictory evidence) keeps coming.

Isn’t that the whole point of science? You keep gathering empirical evidence and adjust your interpretations as you go, in order to keep your hypotheses and theories in alignment with the real world. It’s how science hones itself and gets better and more accurate.

Poor creationists. They have to close their eyes and ignore all the evidence that contradicts their perspective.

(via Dan Phelps, because the AiG web site makes me nauseous.)