First round of ill-informed objections to the first synthetic bacterium

I’ve been following the reaction to the synthesis of a new life form by the Venter lab with some interest and amusement. There have been a couple of common directions taken, and they’re generally all wrong. This is not to say that there couldn’t be valid concerns, but that the loudest complaining voices right now are the most ignorant.

Hysteria and fear-mongering

Pearl-clutching and fretting over the consequences is fairly common, with a representative example from The Daily Mail (Stridently stupid ‘journalistic’ outlet).

But there are fears that the research, detailed in the journal Science, could be abused to create the ultimate biological weapon, or that one mistake in a lab could lead to millions being wiped out by a plague, in scenes reminiscent of the Will Smith film I Am Legend.

The article refers to that awful movie a couple of times. It’s a little baffling; were they getting kickbacks from the movie producers or something?

The complaint is misplaced. What they’ve accomplished is to synthesize a copy of an existing organism, with a few non-adaptive markers added. It’s no threat at all. We do have the potential to now modify that genome more extensively; the interesting scientific work will be to pare away genes and reduce it to a truly minimalist version, just to see how much is really essential, and the useful industrial work will be to engineer organisms with additional genes that produce proteins useful for us, but not necessarily for the mycoplasma. That’s going to compromise the competitiveness of the organism in the natural environment. I’m not worried.

Maybe someday when organisms can be built in some psychopath’s garage, then we should worry. But for now, this is an experiment that takes a lot of teamwork and money and experience to pull off.

Playing GOD!

That same Daily Mail article goes on and on about that cliche.

Pat Mooney, of the ETC group, a technology watchdog with a special interest in synthetic biology, said: ‘This is a Pandora’s box moment – like the splitting of the atom or the cloning of Dolly the sheep, we will all have to deal with the fall-out from this alarming experiment.’

Dr David King, of the Human Genetics Alert watchdog, said: ‘What is really dangerous is these scientists’ ambitions for total and unrestrained control over nature, which many people describe as ‘playing God’.

‘Scientists’ understanding of biology falls far short of their technical capabilities. We have learned to our cost the risks that gap brings, for the environment, animal welfare and human health.’

Professor Julian Savulescu, an Oxford University ethicist, said: ‘Venter is creaking open the most profound door in humanity’s history, potentially peeking into its destiny.

‘He is not merely copying life artificially or modifying it by genetic engineering. He is going towards the role of God: Creating artificial life that could never have existed.’

The Catholic church, perhaps unsurprisingly since they’ve been burned in the past by the conflict between science and religion, is taking a very cautious stance on the issues. They clearly don’t quite know what to make of it, but are prepared to offer their services if any ethical concerns arise.

Vatican and Italian church officials were mostly cautious in their first reaction to the announcement from the United States that researchers had produced a living cell containing manmade DNA. They warned scientists of the ethical responsibility of scientific progress and said that the manner in which the innovation is applied in the future will be crucial.

Since it will be a long, long time before we can synthesize lubricious altar boys, however, I don’t think there will be much call for Catholic advice on the ethics of synthetic biology. Just say no to irrelevant old perverts offering science advice. Besides, the church is also full of conservative fusspots who will spout tired stereotypes.

Another official with the Italian bishops’ conference, Bishop Domenico Mogavero, expressed concern that scientists might be tempted to play God.

“Pretending to be God and parroting his power of creation is an enormous risk that can plunge men into a barbarity,” Mogavero told newspaper La Stampa in an interview. Scientists “should never forget that there is only one creator: God.”

“In the wrong hands, today’s development can lead tomorrow to a devastating leap in the dark,” said Mogavero, who heads the conference’s legal affairs department.

There is no god. The only creators are chance and selection, and now Craig Venter.

The “playing God” noise is going to get even more tiresome, I’m sure. It’s nonsense. If what they’ve done is playing God, then god is biochemistry and molecular biology and the natural processes of physics. We’ve all been playing god every time we cook, or paint, or knit, or write, or create. It’s not a violation of the natural order, and it’s simply doing what humans always do. Apparently, being human is the same thing as being god.

Total confusion

I’m extremely disappointed by the reaction of Andrew Brown, sometimes smart guy, all too often weird apologist for religion. I have no idea what he’s trying to say, but he does try even harder than any atheist I know to tie this work to atheism. “Craig Venter’s production of an entirely artificial bacterium marks another triumph of the only major scientific programme driven from the beginning by explicit atheism”, he says, and “Atheists of the Dawkins type will take it as practical proof that there is no need to hypothesise God at all: we can make life without any miracles, and there’s no need to imagine a creator”. Say what? Venter’s program was driven by scientific curiousity, not atheism; but if Brown wants to equate science with atheism, that’s fine by me. We’ve also known all along that there is no need to hypothesize an intelligent creator, and this is only one more piece of evidence. It isn’t proof. We don’t deal with proof in science.

And then there’s this baffling statement.

But at this moment of complete victory for materialism something odd has happened: the chemical and material world turns out to be entirely shaped by something called “information”.

“Life is basically the result of an information process – a software process” says Venter, and “Starting with the information in a computer, we put it into a recipient cell, and convert it into a news species”. But though this information clearly exists in some sense, it’s impossible to say what kind of thing it is, because it isn’t a thing at all. Whatever this may be, it isn’t material, and it isn’t bound by physical laws. Information turns out to be as elusive and as omnipresent as God once was.

I don’t think so. We have tools to measure information, we can generate information, we can study information…we can’t measure, generate, or study gods. There’s nothing supernatural about information. Information is part of that chemical and material world, and we godless materialists aren’t at all distressed by its existence.

Denial

When you look at what the creationists are saying, it’s simple: they’re scrambling to find excuses to reject the significance of the experiment. Expect to see variations of these same arguments repeated endless by every creationist you ever talk to!

There’s the “it isn’t really a synthetic organism” of Billy Dembski (Intelligent Design wackaloon and fundamentalist Christian), which is what you’d expect of someone who doesn’t understand biology.

The rhetoric is interesting. What they’ve done is stuck a synthetic genome inside a nonsynthetic cell. Nonetheless, they’ve slipped into talking of a “synthetic bacterial cell.” Indeed, one headline reads “The First Self-Replicating Synthetic Bacterial Cell.” This is hype.

If something is going to be called “synthetic,” shouldn’t the whole of it be synthesized and not merely a minuscule portion of it? Also, does such a cell knowably signal design and, if so, why wouldn’t cells untouched by Synthetic Genomics do the same, i.e., implicate design?

The synthesized genome was inserted into an existing bacterial cell, with it’s extant suite of proteins and other molecules, this is entirely true. Venter and colleagues relied on the transcriptional enzymes and ribosomes and so forth already present in the cell to kick-start the activities of the DNA. However, this was only to bootstrap the genome into functionality; within 30 generations of this novel line, Venter estimates, every one of those proteins and every molecule of the cell will have been replaced with the products of the artificial genome.

So, if after a period of time, you’ve got a cell whose DNA was produced by a machine, and whose membranes, enzymes, structural proteins, and metabolic by-products were all produced by that machine-generated DNA or the protein products of that DNA, what makes it a non-synthetic cell?

The response from Answers in Genesis (Young Earth creationist clowns) is a variant of that objection. It’s the “it isn’t anything new” excuse.

Regardless of some hyped press reports, this research (brilliantly executed as it was) has nothing to do with evolution in the molecules-to-man sense. Dr. Georgia Purdom, a molecular geneticist on our Answers in Genesis (AiG) staff, notes that there has merely been an alteration within a kind (at the family, genus, or species level). Even the researchers have acknowledged that this first synthetic cell is more a re-creation of existing life — changing one simple type of bacterium into another. While Venter claimed, “We have passed through a critical psychological barrier. It has changed my own thinking, both scientifically and philosophically, about life, and how it works,” he was also quite clear that [his team] “didn’t create life from scratch.”

I can’t believe they actually weaseled in that nonsense about “kinds” again, as if their fantasyland boundaries are actually relevant.

No, it’s not something brand new, it’s a conservative starting point from which to start generating novelties. This is an argument that will not be able to survive for long, since as work proceeds and genes are removed and new genes added to the artificial genome, the results will not be something that can be called simply another mycoplasm any more. Well, rational people will realize that this is a dead argument, but the kind of people who still insist that there are no transitional fossils will continue to parrot it, looking dumber and dumber year by year.

The argument that this says nothing about evolution is wrong. The bacterium synthesized is not a version of the very first life form to exist, so it’s saying nothing about earlier forms (but that may change as we work towards reducing the synthetic bacterium to a bare-bones suite of genes), but it does say that bacteria are products of chemistry. If you honestly want to learn where the first cells come from, this work says you’d better look to biochemistry, not theology, or the pullitoutofmybuttology of AiG.

It defines a point in the middle of the evolutionary process, and says we arrived there by chemistry. Subsequent evolution, we already know, was by processes we understand (evolution!) but also denied by AiG.

Here’s another argument from Reasons to Believe (Old Earth Creationist goofballs): the “it’s too complicated to have evolved” chestnut that they’ve been chewing on for decades.

For example, Venter’s team must identify the minimal gene set required for life’s existence to re-engineer an artificial life-form from the top down. As they continue to hone in on life’s essential genes and biochemical systems, what’s most striking is the remarkable complexity of life even in its minimal form. And this basic complexity is the first clue that life requires a Creator.

This isn’t life in its most minimal form. It’s a copy of a modern prokaryotic bacterium. As I said above, this is representative of a midpoint in evolution, not its beginning. The complaint does not apply.

Furthermore, complexity does not imply design. Natural processes are quite good at generating complexity, even better than design, so pointing out that something is complex does not distinguish between the two hypotheses. If I had one magic wish and could wake up these idiots to one thing, it’s the simple fact that complexity and design are not equivalent states.

Finally, the one argument we’re probably going to hear the most from creationists in the coming years is the “the synthetic bacterium was built by design, therefore all life was designed”. (Notice that Dembski makes the same illogical claim in his quote above.)

Given the effort that went into the synthesis of the total M. genitalium genome, it’s hard to envision how unintelligent, undirected processes could have generated life from a prebiotic soup. Though not their intention, Venter’s team unwittingly provided empirical evidence that life’s components, and consequently, life itself must stem from the work of an Intelligent Designer.

Let’s play a game. I just grabbed a deck of cards and dealt myself this hand:

J♥ K♠ 2♦ 6♥ 6♠

Now you grab a deck of cards and replicate my hand precisely. You had to go through the deck, card by card, search for those 5 specific cards, and then order them and lay them out in front of you, didn’t you? I just dealt out the five top cards in a shuffled deck.

Which of us had to put the most effort into getting their five cards? Does this imply that in every game of poker, the dealer has to go through the deck and hand-pick which card is given to each person? The huge amount of effort that Venter’s team put into this project does not imply that a focused team built the first mycoplasma genome by the same processes; it says that making a copy by our current technology requires that much effort. The “it was hard to make” excuse simply doesn’t apply.

This does not imply that the original successful bacterium was generated by chance, as trivially as dealing a random array of nucleotides from a deck, however. Venter and his team cheated: they copied a known winner, a genome that had been honed by a few billion years of evolution into a successful organism. They sought out a winning hand like this one and copied it.

A♥ A♠ K♦ K♥ K♠

Again, you could give yourself that hand in a couple of different ways. You could go through the deck by design and pick out those cards. Or you could deal out hands repeatedly, throwing out any that don’t match the target — that would work, too, given that you’ve got billions of years to play the game. Or you could do it as evolution does, just play poker with your buddies and know that there are lots of different ways to generate winning and losing hands, and the process will result in a winner emerging with every deal.

All of the denialist arguments are basically errors based on their misunderstanding of Venter’s experiment and evolution in general. Be prepared, they will be recycled heavily.

Five million schoolkids get screwed in Texas

The evil bastards have gone and done it. The right-wing dbags on the Texas board of education have approved their decrepit curriculum — you know, the one that has decided that Thomas Jefferson was persona non grata, while Joe McCarthy is a true American hero. It’s a tragedy for the nation, because, as we always point out, Texas clout is going to warp schoolbooks all around the country, but the worst thing is that there are 5 million kids in Texas who are now going to get a substandard education. OK, an even more substandard education.

There’s not much we can do at this point, except keep up the pressure, keep making noise about this disgrace, keep working in your states to fund education and make it better. You can also support the Texas Freedom Network, which has been trying to fight the extremists.

And if you just want to vent, the Wall Street Journal has a poll. Let’s destroy it.

Do you support the Texas Board of Education’s plan for social studies curriculum changes that portray America as a nation rooted in Biblical values?

Yes 64.9%
No 35.1%

Ken Ham snubbed again

Poor Ken. He so wants to be respectable.

He’s complaining now that the Creation “Museum” tried to get in on some marketing deal with an outfit called Groupon, that advertises discount coupons or something, and he got turned down. They thought his “museum” was too controversial. So Ken Ham must whine.

Some of the businesses they feature for our area are attractions such as laser tag, spas, lawn care, etc. However, in other markets (such as Atlanta) they have featured the local natural history museum–which of course is totally evolutionary and teaches children that man is an evolved animal–but I guess that is not controversial!

That is correct. Evolution is not controversial at all in the real world. It is only controversial in the wacky fantasy land of fundamentalist superstition.

Apparently, because the Creation Museum is a Christian facility with a walk through the Bible, that is “controversial!”

No, I only wish the Bible and Christianity were regarded as controversial, but they aren’t — they’re pretty much widely accepted here in Idiot America. The problem with the Creation “Museum” is that it is brain-dead soul-sucking stupid, and while Americans love wallowing in piety, they hate being associated with obvious inanity.

If you squint real hard it almost looks like an experiment, at least

i-2807cbbd2e743be114b2b5d87476e986-evolution_disproved.jpeg

I am really surprised at all the people who are saying the original letter had to have been an intentional joke. Haven’t you looked at Ray Comfort/Kirk Cameron/Kent Hovind on YouTube? They say essentially the same things! For another example, I was sent this link (scroll down to where it says “What Are The Scientists Saying?”) to a 50 page document full of nonsense, garbled science and creationism, and random invalid arguments against evolution, all just as silly as this.

Some simply don’t understand Poe’s Law. It states that parodies of fundamentalism will be indistinguishable from the real thing. This letter is indistinguishable by any measure from any of the routine creationist lunacy you can find just about anywhere you look.

Good news from California

Texas has been using their excessive and unwarranted influence on textbook content to insert right-wing propaganda and lies into the entire nation’s school books. I am pleased to see that California has taken the first steps to reduce Texas wingnuts’ influence. A California lawmaker has introduced Senate Bill 1451, a law that calls out Texas for its biased agenda, and mandates the formation of review panels to screen new textbooks for violation of the apolitical and non-discriminatory requirements of public school textbooks. Here’s the relevant text:

(f) Section 60044 of the Education Code prohibits instructional
material to be used in schools that contains any matter reflecting
adversely upon persons because of their race, color, creed, national
origin, ancestry, sex, handicap, or occupation, as well as any
sectarian or denominational doctrine or propaganda contrary to law.

(g) On March 12, 2010, the Texas Board of Education, which
consists of 15 elected members statewide, voted to adopt revisions to
their social studies curriculum for the 2010-11 school year
(formally referred to as revisions to Texas Administrative Code,
Title 19, Chapter 113, Subchapters A-C, and Texas Administrative
Code, Title 19, Chapter 118, Subchapter A).

(h) Although not yet formally adopted, it is widely presumed that
the proposed changes to Texas’ social studies curriculum will have a
national impact on textbook content since Texas is the second largest
purchaser of textbooks in the United States, second only to
California.

(i) As proposed, the revisions are a sharp departure from widely
accepted historical teachings that are driven by an inappropriate
ideological desire to influence academic content standards for
children in public schools.

(j) The proposed changes in Texas, if adopted and subsequently
reflected in textbooks nationwide, pose a serious threat to Sections
51204.5, 60040, 60041, 60043, and 60044 of the Education Code as well
as a threat to the apolitical nature of public school governance and
academic content standards in California.

SEC. 2. Section 60020.8 is added to the Education Code, to read:
60020.8. Upon the next adoption of the History-Social Science
Curriculum Framework, the state board shall ensure the framework is
consistent with provisions governing instructional materials,
including, but not limited to, Sections 51204.5, 60040, 60041,
60042, 60043, 60044, 60048, 60200.5, and 60200.6.

SEC. 3. Section 60050 of the Education Code is amended to read:
60050. (a) The state board shall adopt regulations to govern the
social content reviews conducted at the request of a publisher or
manufacturer of instructional materials outside the primary and
followup instructional material adoption processes. A social content
review is intended to determine compliance with Sections
51204.5, 60040, 60041, 60042, 60043, 60044, 60048, 60200.5, and
60200.6, and the guidelines for social content adopted by the state
board.

It’s not a huge step, and I imagine publishers will be scrambling to produce books that fit Texan demands without being blatantly right-wing…which probably means they’ll be watered down into even more tepid pap. But at least it’s going in the right direction in putting up an intellectual barrier around the Texas aberration, marking it as a scholastic pariah state.

Alabama suffers some more

The other day, I posted about the smear campaign in Alabama against Bradley Byrne, which tried to impugn the man by saying, “Byrne supported teaching evolution…said the Bible was only partially true”. Byrne won a speck of sympathy from me, despite the fact that he’s a Republican, for at least standing up for the evidence.

That sympathy is gone now. Byrne has come back with a rebuttal.

• I believe the Bible is the Word of God and that every single word of it is true. From the earliest parts of this campaign, a paraphrased and incomplete parsing of my words have been knowingly used to insinuate that I believe something different than that. My faith is at the center of my life and my belief in Jesus Christ as my personal savior and Lord guides my every action.

• As a Christian and as a public servant, I have never wavered in my belief that this world and everything in it is a masterpiece created by the hands of God. As a member of the Alabama Board of Education, the record clearly shows that I fought to ensure the teaching of creationism in our school text books. Those who attack me have distorted, twisted and misrepresented my comments and are spewing utter lies to the people of this state.

Well, screw you, too, you rednecked ignorant yokel. It’s a real shame that the people of Alabama are being served by fools and pandering morons. Now the Alabamans know who to vote against, I just hope there’s somebody sensible left in the field to vote for.

Creationists on race

I almost agree with some pieces of what these guys at onehumanrace.com say. Except for the fact that they are insane.

What is the only answer to racism?

Before we can solve the problem of racism, we must first ask the question: “Where did the different ‘races’ come from?” Explore this site for the answer, plus fascinating scientific research demonstrating that there really are no “white” or “black” people.

Take it piece by piece. There is no one answer to racism, so the opening question is misleading; but otherwise, the next assertion that it would be useful to know about the origins of human races sounds reasonable to me. But wait: there are no people who can be distinguished by skin color, by ethnicity and history? Weird. I’m going to have to follow a few of their links to see what the heck they are talking about.

Before you leave the front page of the site, though, look at the fine print at the very bottom of the page. Uh-oh.

Sponsored by Answers in Genesis, in association with GospelCom.Net and Master Books.

You now know what to expect. This is going to be race and racism as explained by the residents of a clown college.

So, how do we answer this essential preliminary question about where races come from? If we need to know the answer before we can solve the problem of racism, this had better be a very good explanation.

According to the Bible, all humans on Earth today are descended from Noah and his wife, his three sons and their wives, and before that from Adam and Eve (Genesis 1-11). But today we have many different groups, often called “races,” with what seem to be greatly differing features. The most obvious of these is skin color. Many see this as a reason to doubt the Bible’s record of history. They believe that the various groups could have arisen only by evolving separately over tens of thousands of years. However, as we shall see, this does not follow from the biological evidence.

The Bible tells us how the population that descended from Noah’s family had one language and by living in one place were disobeying God’s command to “fill the earth” (Genesis 9:1, 11:4). God confused their language, causing a break-up of the population into smaller groups which scattered over the Earth (Genesis 11:8-9). Modern genetics show how, following such a break-up of a population, variations in skin color, for example, can develop in only a few generations. There is good evidence that the various people groups we have today have not been separated for huge periods of time.

Nope. We’ve got very good evidence that the human species is over 100,000 years old. We can measure the frequency of variations between human subpopulations, we know quite a bit about the rate of accumulation of new variation, and we can calculate how long one group has been diverging from another. We can also look at the pattern and distribution of human genetic variation, and work out historical migrations. This is my family tree:

i-9897d9b90311be17c7a9406d91fcf72f-M343.jpg

I carry a set of mutant markers that put me in the M343 group, along with a lot of other Europeans. M343 is a relatively new marker, but I also have some mutations that put me in the M173 group; I also share genetics with the M45 goup; they in turn share markers with the M9 group; and working backwards through many shared alleles, I can trace my parentage right back to East African groups, between 100 and 200 thousand years ago.

Ken Ham is simply lying. Genetics can show how a small number of novelties can arise in a short time…but the evidence shows that human populations have accumulated a large number of variations, and any competent scientist will tell you that there is no way all human variation could have arisen in 4000 years from a starting stock of eight people. Throughout the site, the Hamites constantly make this kind of dishonest argument: they show that a couple of alleles could assort in a couple of generations, and then leap to the assertion that time is irrelevant, and the sum total of all variation could have arisen very quickly, and further, that all human variations were carried by those 8 people on Noah’s big boat.

It’s strange stuff to read. The creationists have been compelled to accept a surprising amount of evolutionary theory — this bit is hilarious because it shows that they understand the basic principle of Darwinian evolution, and are actually teaching it to their kids. They just shy away from the inevitable and unavoidable conclusion of their reasoning.

Thus, we conclude that the dispersion at Babel broke up a large interbreeding group into small, interbreeding groups. This ensured that the resultant groups would have different mixes of genes for various physical features. By itself, this dispersion would ensure, in a short time, that there would be certain fixed differences in some of these groups, commonly called “races.” In addition, the selection pressure of the environment would modify the existing combinations of genes so that the physical characteristics of each group would tend to suit their environment.

That’s just plain old basic evolutionary theory right there, and in fact, it’s a kind of hyper-Darwinism…except for one significant difference that they spill in the next paragraph: no novel variations are allowed. Every gene now present in our population stepped off the Ark with Noah’s family.

There has been no simple-to-complex evolution of any genes, for the genes were present already. The dominant features of the various people groups result from different combinations of previously existing created genes, plus some minor degenerative changes, resulting from mutation (accidental changes which can be inherited). The originally created (genetic) information has been either reshuffled or has degenerated, but has not been added to.

This is simply false. For example, the published count of alleles of ABO glycosyltransferase, the gene associated with the ABO blood types, is up to 29 so far. The three sons of Noah and their three wives only had a total of 12 copies of chromosome 9, where the gene is located, and even assuming maximum heterozygosity and no shared alleles between any of them, that still leaves 17 alleles that had to have arisen later. We know that Ken Ham is wrong both logically and empirically, and we also completely lack a magic mechanism that would simultaneously guarantee the purity of the original alleles inherited from the tiny Noachian population while simultaneously maximizing subsequent diversity to reach modern levels.

Reading that site, it’s clear that they’ve just battened upon a few elementary genetic facts, and then abused them inappropriately to pretend that science supports them. Whenever they write “Modern genetics supports…” and then state some bizarre Biblical claim, they are lying.

And then, of course, they end it all with an ironic twist, saying that the reason racism is a problem is that false claims are made about the origins of races, and then listing several cases of scientific racism. They conveniently leave out the fact that there were also Biblical justifications for slavery and racism, and that most scientists (and many Christians!) today deplore those distortions. We do not correct them by adding another layer of lies on top, though, as Answers in Genesis has done.

Grow up, Alabama

Bradley Byrne is apparently the front runner in the Republican race for nomination in the Alabama gubernatorial campaign. His opponents have put up this ad against him.

What horrible things has Byrne done, the mere statement of which is sufficient to horrify Alabamans? “Byrne supported teaching evolution….said the Bible was only partially true”. It’s so open and so much taken for granted that stating truths are violations of conservative principles…it’s just crazy.

Poke fun at some creationists while I’m occupied.

Hey, it’s been awfully quiet around here — it’s been one of those lost weekends for me. Sorry about that, I’ve been up to my eyeballs in busy-ness, and it doesn’t look like it’ll get much better today. So I guess I’ll steal something from the May/June edition of Skeptical Inquirer, by permission of managing editor Ben Radford.

14 (+ 1) Reasons Why Creationists Are More Intelligently Designed Than Evolutionists
Paul DesOrmeaux

  1. “Creationism” comes before “evolution” in the dictionary.

  2. Radiometric dating has determined that Kirk Cameron is between 6,000 – 10,000 years old.

  3. The banana has obviously been perfectly designed by a designer for eating and for using in other creative, non-edible ways.

  4. Where the hell are those transitional species, like flying squirrels, for example?

  5. If we evolved from monkeys, why don’t we look more like the Planet of the Apes chimps?

  6. Ben Stein offers a perfect example of irreducible complexity “wherein the removal of any one of the parts [such as dying brain cells] causes the system to effectively cease functioning.”

  7. Especially when filled with animal crackers, my Noah’s Ark cookie jar is an exact replica of the real deal as depicted in my illustrated Bible.

  8. Evolution violates the second, third, fourth, and any future laws of thermodynamics that science types can dream up.

  9. If the earth were actually billions of years old, all the water from the Genesis flood, which currently covers three-fourths of the Earth’s surface, would have disappeared down the drain by now.

  10. After supposedly “millions of years,” tetrapods haven’t evolved into pentapods.

  11. Evolution is only a theory, like the theory of the Scottish origin of rap music.

  12. There are well known, professionally published scientists who believe in God and who think dogs can telepathically communicate with humans.

  13. If you leave bread, peanut butter, and Fluff on a counter long enough, does it eventually evolve into a Fluffernutter sandwich? Not likely.

  14. Contrary to claims by Darwinists, Ann Coulter is not a transitional fossil.

  15. If creationism isn’t a valid alternative theory, then what are we going to do with all that crap in the Creation Museum?

    “Hello, My name is Herb Grossman”

    It’s hard to find something dumber than Kent Hovind, but here you go: the website of Herb Grossman, trashevolution. It’s what Hovind could have produced if he’d been an alcoholic gay man in denial. He has a rambling, mostly incoherent set of pages that he claims disprove evolution, but if you read just one, it should be his page on homosexuality. It doesn’t really exist, you know, although he has been feeling supernatural homosexual urges for years.

    No one has to be a homosexual, because—

    —Homosexuality is a Cruel Deception,

    and you should not worry about possibly being a homosexual, because there is no such thing–homosexuality is an evil supernatural trick! The key is to fight it, and the sooner the better. I still sometimes get supernatural “urges” towards perversions or homosexuality, but by immediately rejecting “it” (both physically and mentally), “it” goes away.

    What I write or say concerning belief in evolution being a major encouragement towards homosexuality is not meant to win some popularity contest. Some of you will laugh and think I am stupid for writing this, but the shoes I have walked in–the years of aggravation while fighting off the cause of homosexuality–have given me a certain amount of sympathy for the homosexual and a hatred for the way evolution is such a big factor in keeping many of them trapped in their unfortunate perversion. It would be a crime for me to know what I know and not do something, because I thoroughly believe that many people will benefit from knowing of the troubles I’ve been through and will be inspired to avoid or get out of the homosexual trap

    He never does get around to explaining how evolutionary biology contributes to homosexuality, and after reading about his miserable life with two angry divorces, 35 years of alcoholism and gambling addiction, I’m thinking he’s about the last person I’d want advising me on how to live a good life. Instead of actually addressing anything about evolution or homosexuality, though, what Mr Grossman does next is recite a litany of “supernatural” events that occurred to him and which prove there is a god. Here’s my favorite of his examples:

    I had several situations where I would be sitting and think of something good I could do, and a big foam-rubber-like hand would then pat me on a shoulder as if approving of my thoughts. Was an invisible person standing beside me? Some supernatural person was–and I was inclined to think “God,” but I now suspect it was really someone conditioning me towards accepting supernatural deceptions.

    Did I mention that he was a long-term alcoholic? Yes, I did. This is what most of his supernatural events are: imaginary incidents, bleary fantasies of seeing things that weren’t there. And then, finally, he ties this all back to his ideas about homosexuality (but not evolution):

    It wasn’t long before I fell into about three months of doing perverse, homosexual acts with invisible, supernatural people/beings* Strong thoughts and sensations would get things started, but I was not the cause–no pornography used. Somebody had control of me! (I did meet up with some visible demonic types, but those encounters, although weird, were not of a homosexual nature).

    *I have never acted in any perverted/homosexual manner with any man or boy, nor felt any attraction/sensation towards the same. However, I am not claiming total innocence on my part, as I must admit to some perverse actions (sometimes with use of pornography) in my past that I am ashamed of (I wish I knew then what I know now). Looking back, I suspect those past actions likely made me an attractive target to the supernatural “persons’ that drive the homosexual deception system. To be fair, though, I realize there are many social forces and situations that might condition a person to accept the homosexual deception. and I do not doubt that some people have fallen into the homosexuality trap without having prior perverse activities:

    What a sad, repressed, confused little man. He never felt any attraction towards other men…he just fantasized about homosexual acts with invisible people. And has so little ability to distinguish the imaginary from the actual that he thinks those dreaming encounters were real, but at the same time not real enough to count as gay impulses.

    The other sad thing about his series of articles is that he’s addressing them to “Mr. or Miss Teenager of America.” He’s trying to reach out to youth and convince them that he has all the answers, but I can guess what young people will think: “Ewww. Creepy old loser.”