avram | Entries tagged with creationism

We hereby propose that a new debate be held, including members of the scientific community to argue that evolution should be taught as is, members of SEAO or the Intelligent Design Network, Inc. to argue that life shows evidence of an intelligent, omnipotent creator, and member of our organization to argue that although life was designed by an all-powerful creator, he is in reality pretty dumb and not very good at it. [...]

There have been 23 elephant-like animals in history, and yet only two survive today (and we add, they're not doing very well). Clearly, this is the mark of an all-powerful creator who is stuck on the same stupid idea and can't figure out why the hell they keep dying off. Hmm, perhaps it's because giant, big-eared mammals with huge, prehensile noses are ridiculous? I mean, WTF? A giant, powerful, grasping… nose? It looks like something a preschooler would make up. [...]

And who the hell though giraffes were a good idea? Bloody unlikely looking, if you ask me. And those tyrannosaurus, with the tiny little arms? Why even leave the arms in, except to flail about Corky looking for a snack. Speaking on this subject, did you know whales have hip bones? That's like if a human engineer put an outboard boat motor on a city bus. I think it's clear God never went to college, and I'm thinking it's sketchy he even has his GED. They guys in middle school shop class made more function and professional looking projects that half of God's motley menagerie.

Current Music: "PIssing in the Wind", Badly Drawn Boy

Via The Poor Man, I see that Tech Central Station — Instapundit’s favorite right-wing propaganda mill — is now running essays preaching creationism (in its latest pseudo-scientific flavor, “intelligent design”). Not that scientific illiteracy is anything new for TCS; they once ran an article claiming that temperature does not measure a physical quantity!

The creationist article, by Mustafa Akyol, is a generally unremarkable piece of bullshit, hitting most of the usual ID lying points. False claim that ID is not motivated by religious belief — check. Appeal to “specified complexity” (ID shorthand for picking some existing biological feature and arguing that evolution must have had the goal of producing that feature) — check. Wait, here’s something new!:

Non-design is "old ground," too. It dates back to Ancient Greece. As theologian Benjamin Wiker unveils in his book, Moral Darwinism, the first theory of an un-designed and evolving world was developed by Epicurus, the founder hedonism. And his point of reference was not scientific evidence; he simply wanted to get rid of the idea of the divine, which he found disturbing. Epicurus' ideas about nature were later developed by Lucretius and much later by the modern forerunners of Darwin.

Cute! Here’s what’s going on in that paragraph: Epicurus’s philosophy, generally called Epicureanism, claimed that a good life could be had by seeking modest and temperate pleasures — knowledge, freedom from fear, friendship — rather than following the dictates of gods. While the philosophical term “hedonism” is sometimes applied to this philosophy, the common use of the word implies a decadent lifestyle devoted to seeking crude pleasures and indulging gluttony, sloth, and lust.

By misrepresenting Epicurus’s ideas this way, Akyol implies (without actually saying outright) that evolution is part of a secularist plot to undermine belief in God so as to allow sinners to sin without guilt. (This plugs into something I’ve heard right-wing Christians say, that secularists really do believe in God, but we deny it so that we don’t have to live by God’s rules.) It’s a pretty elegant bank shot, economical and concise.

Current Music: "Hold On", Sarah McLachlan

Intelligent Grappling is a rival for the atheistic mutual attraction theory of gravity that the secular humanists have been teaching our children. (Via Anyway)

My favorite creationism parody is still Godless Linguistics:

Third, there is NO evidence that transitional languages ever existed. What use is half a language? A noun without verbs conveys no meaning! Sure, there is middle and old- English. But these are ENGLISH! A complete nontransitional language. We do not deny that micro-linguistics can happen, but this process can create only DIALECTS. There is NO EVIDENCE that a series of random micro-linguistic events can create a WHOLE NEW LANGUAGE. I'll believe in Macro-linguistics when I see a video tape of a child growing up in an Eskimo village suddenly become fluent in Armenian! It takes A LOT MORE FAITH to believe in atheistic linguisticism than the truth of Babelism.

Current Music: "Give You Nothing", Bad Religion

John Ashcroft on Saddam Hussein and WMDs:

“Weapons of mass destruction including evil chemistry and evil biology are all matters of great concern, not only to the United States but also to the world community. They were the subject of U.N. resolutions.”

So does this mean Ashcroft will be pushing for invasions of states where the schools teach evolution?

And does my mad scientist friend

negativeq have to worry?

Current Music: "Ms Jackson", Vines

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