How ignorant can a creationist be?

This is so stupid it hurts. Check out the Missing Universe Creation Museum: it’s got all the usual creationist jabber. No transitional fossils, all mutations are harmful, and my favorite, prominently quoted, “If you don’t believe God created all living things, male and female, in 6 days…How many millions of years was it between the first male and the first female?” How about no time at all, they coevolved? And you must take their evolution test — it will definitely make you laugh.

After you’ve browsed the site for a bit, they also have a poll. They want to know how effective they are at convincing you. Maybe you should tell them.

We would like to know if this web site is helping to change minds.
Please let us know your beliefs before and after visiting the Missing Universe Museum.

Evolution, and now only Evolution
46.1%

Evolution, and now only Creation
6.15%

Evolution, and now Both
3.07%

Creation, and now only Creation
29.2%

Creation, and now only Evolution
9.23%

Creation, and now Both
0%

Both, and now only Creation
0%

Both, and now only Evolution
1.53%

Both, and now Both
4.61%

Robert Hinde has the courage of his convictions

I just got this note from Richard Dawkins, who is attending the Cambridge Darwin Festival.

Robert Hinde is the elder statesman of the science of Ethology and one one of the most respected figures in British biology. I just met him at the big Cambridge Darwin Festival. Robert had agreed to speak in one of the sessions on ‘Religion and Science’ but withdrew on learning that it was sponsored by the Templeton Foundation. He is now even more respected among British biologists.

We need more of this kind of action, and we need to publicize it more.

One other curious phenomenon: I searched the website for the festival for mention of the Templeton Foundation sponsorship. It’s not there! It is, apparently, noted in very small type on the printed program. Isn’t that odd that a big bucks foundation would be so shy about having their involvement advertised? Maybe it’s because it’s getting around that associating with the Templeton is a mark of shame, and the Templeton itself has noticed that people tend to turn away when their name is mentioned. Or maybe they’re just noble and self-effacing. Right.

I get email

All right, commenters, you aren’t doing your job. I get enough creationist nonsense in my private email, you are the ones who are supposed to smash the creationist lackwits who are babbling in the comments here. Now one of them, this fellow Grant, is apparently unsatisfied with the drubbing you were supposed to give him, and is now trying to pester me personally by email.

I’m also going to rebuke you Australians — he’s one of yours, running some kind of web design studio, where he claims 14 years of experience in “Science”. Come on, take this personally and rip into him.

You believe the world is older than 6000 years. I believe it is not. Do you want to call me a dingbat also? Or can you possibly raise your intelligence level a little higher to discuss things more maturely. (I actually believe we need some laws to protect the earth, unlike the senator)

If you know science, and I’m hoping you do, you will know that science CANNOT prove what happened at the beginning of the earth (whenever it was). All both sides can do is look at the evidence and analyse it to see if it fits their theory. So far, I can’t see how it disproves my belief in 6000 years, so my belief stays. You can insult my intelligence if you like (you probably do), but it doesn’t change the facts about what science can and can’t prove.

It would be nice if both sides could have sensible meaningful discussions over their beliefs and interpretations, but, unfortunately, many on the evolution/billions of years side aren’t interested in proper debate, only in insulting those opposing them – which suggests something about their intelligence, perhaps? One person once suggested that people who believe in an age of 6000 were worse than Islamic terrorists! That is absolutely ridiculous. When was the last time a young-earther killed 3000 people in a day?

I am not a scientist, but many scientists disagree on this (and indeed many other matters), and they are well-recognised, well-respected scientists. I have read much about this (from both sides), I have been presented one side of the argument by media and society, but I have decided that 6000 years actually makes sense to me based on the evidence.

Please refrain from the unintelligent, insulting, degrading name calling jus tbecause you disagree.

Yeah, he’s a dingbat, to put it mildly. The age of the earth is not a matter of personal belief, where you can just say “I have my facts and you have yours, and we draw different conclusions from them” — we actually have a huge body of mutually overlapping and supporting lines of evidence from physics, geology, astronomy, chemistry, and biology that all converge on the same answer: the earth is billions of years old. The only way Grant can claim that it makes sense to believe the earth is only 6000 years old is for him to completely ignore (or, more likely, be completely ignorant of) the evidence.

So how about turning this thread into a summary of the evidence for the age of the earth? Go to it, people, tear him apart with the science. Let’s see him respond here to the facts, and his lack of knowledge thereof.

Oh, and don’t insult him for just disagreeing. You’ll have to insult him for being a frakkin’ arrogant ignoramus.

Every religion has its insane elements

Orthodox Jews are rioting in Jerusalem. The reason: because the city allows a parking lot to remain open on Saturday, which means people are able to drive on their holy day, which they consider sacred. Anne Barker was there to record the event as a journalist, and she switched on her recorder to document it all — when the protesters turned on her.

I found myself herded against a brick wall as they kept on spitting – on my face, my hair, my clothes, my arms.

It was like rain, coming at me from all directions – hitting my recorder, my bag, my shoes, even my glasses.

Big gobs of spit landed on me like heavy raindrops. I could even smell it as it fell on my face.

Somewhere behind me – I didn’t see him – a man on a stairway either kicked me in the head or knocked something heavy against me.

I wasn’t even sure why the mob was angry with me. Was it because I was a journalist? Or a woman? Because I wasn’t Jewish in an Orthodox area? Was I not dressed conservatively enough?

In fact, I was later told, it was because using a tape-recorder is itself a desecration of the Shabbat even though I’m not Jewish and don’t observe the Sabbath.

This is something too many religious people fail to understand — you can practice your religion, other people can practice their religion, but you don’t get to tell other people that they must practice your religion. If your crazy superstition says you aren’t allowed to push a button on a certain day of the week, then don’t. If your old myths claim that your god turns into a cracker when the right ritual is carried out, go ahead and believe that. If your dogma dictates that you should visit a certain magic rock before you die, then go ahead, make your pilgrimage.

But excuse us, everyone who doesn’t have these wacky ideas has a perfect right to push the button, disrespect your cracker, or stay home and skip the crowds…and we also have the right to point and laugh at you. And if you are so intolerant, so irrational, and so vicious as to try and impose your foolishness on others, especially in such disgusting ways, then we have an obligation to use civic law and the power of the state to protect those others’ liberties.

Unfortunately, some states become so entangled in the religious absurdities of a segment of their society that they lose the ability to protect every citizen’s rights. That’s happening in Israel, and it’s happening to a lesser degree here in the US.

Michael Jackson news

I know! He’s dead! But that’s one corpse that you know isn’t going to rest easily.

First, the ghouls are out in force. “psychic” ghoul James Van Praagh says he’s been having conversations with Jackson’s ghost; ghoul enabler Oprah Winfrey has quickly snatched him up to appear on her show and make the entire country disgusted.

Sylvia Browne, quick to gnaw the scraps off the bones, now claims that she has been chatting with the dead guy. Coming in second means she gets the consolation prize of appearing on the Montel Williams show.

There is now a video circulating about that claims to have captured Jackson’s ghost walking through a hallway in Neverland. Oh, the ignominy of it all: lively, talented, enthusiastic black kid, reduced to creepy, wispy white man, and now at the end, seen as nothing more than a compression artifact.

Finally, after the flesh has been stripped from his bones, something has to be done with those untidy scraps of discarded mortality, lest they interfere with subsequent myths about his faked death and new life frolicking about with Elvis. There will be a memorial service. A huge, overblown, expensive memorial service to the tune of $2.5 million. Would you believe there is a poll about who should pay for it?

Should California Taxpayers Pay For Michael Jackson’s Memorial?

Yes, absolutely, 100%. 46.73%

They should pay for some of it, and the Jacksons should also help pay. 22.43%

No, this is not their responsibility. 30.84%

They can’t be serious. A dead wealthy popular entertainer with an extremely checkered reputation should not be receiving a state-sponsored funeral.

(via Tommy Holland’s Vision)

Brother Sam Singleton, the Atheist Evangelist, on “Patriarchs and Penises”

On 11 July in St Paul, the Irreverend Singleton will be presenting a two-act play titled “On Patriarchs and Penises”, which promises to be delightfully rude and will almost certainly give the accommodationists the vapors.

Park describes the scene: “The stage is black and bare except for a pulpit, a small altar bench, three rickety folding chairs, and a coat tree, all starkly white. Brother Sam, in his signature frock coat, blue vest and matching spectacles, conducts the crowd through a hilarious and hair-raising tour of his childhood among ‘the tongues-speaking, snake-handling, frothing-at-the-mouth holy rollers,’ and subsequent ‘reversion to the atheistic state into which we all are born,’ before ending Act I with a mercilessly satiric deconstruction of the role of God in American life.”

She notes that the second act has Brother Sam teaching a “biblically accurate but somewhat irreverent “Bible class” in which Brother Sam satirically details the symbolic use of penises throughout the Scriptures. “Nobody ever told me that what ties the whole book together, its narrative thread, is penises,’ he says.

I think I’m going to have to try and make it to this one.

(via The Sunny Skeptic)

Poor business plan

I don’t think I’d trust this Latvian money-lender to stay in business for long — he’s giving small loans and asking for your soul as the only collateral. He doesn’t employ collection agents, using only fear and superstition to get people to pay him back, which might work for a little while…but only until the atheists show up. Sure, I’ll take a loan for $500, and hey, I think I’ll just default and let you keep the collateral. If you only want to trust me for $1.98, that’s fine, I’ll take it and you can have my soul for as long as you want.

There’s also a poll with the story: Would you use your soul as collateral for a loan?. Unfortunately, you’ll have to until tomorrow to get the results.