Creepy Religious Sites

No, not web-sites. These are physical places owned/maintained/built by religions, and they are bloody creepy. I found this on Weirdworm.com, so if you want to see all the pictures you'll have to go to their article, but I'll post a few here.

This is from a Cathedral in Italy. The skulls are all of Christians who were beheaded when they refused to covert to Islam when the Ottoman troops invaded. The religion of peace hmmm......

Skulls and bones? Chandeliers? This is the kind of thing I'd expect from shamans in hunter-gatherer tribes (well, perhaps not as detailed) but this fine example of creepiness comes from a Christian chapel in the Czech Republic.

This is the mummified corpse of Saint Zita which, along with many other similar mummified saints can be found on display all over Italy. Saint Zita herself is on display in Lucca, Italy.

It's not just Mormons..

I must make it clear that it is not just Mormons who use this kind of reasoning (if you can even call it that) to claim that something is true. It's nothing more than an appeal to emotion, which anyone with at least half a brain can plainly see is fallacious. What I, or anyone else thinks or feels has absolutely no bearing on what is true or false. For example, if Dennis Markuze believed very strongly that anyone who writes an Atheist blog is inspired by the devil and will burn in hell, doesn't make it so. If hell and the devil don't actually exist, Atheist bloggers can not be inspired by the devil and will not burn in hell no matter how strongly Dennis believes.
Similarly, if Ken Ham has a very strong emotional response when he reads Genesis, it doesn't have any bearing on whether Genesis is true or not. This applies to every single belief on earth. No matter what ANYONE believes, emotion and belief do not qualify as criteria for the veracity of anything.

The Mormon Testimony

This is something that has puzzled me for a number of years now, so I decided to make a post explaining why I think it is absurd and idiotic. The specific part that is almost always included in a Mormon testimony is something similar to this "I know, by the power of the Holy Ghost, that the Book of Mormon is true, that Joseph Smith is a prophet of the Lord," If you ask a Mormon HOW they know it is true they will tell you that they prayed and asked god to tell them if it was true. That's it. The reality of the situation doesn't seem to matter to them, all they seem to care about is that they muttered a few words in their head, and had a feeling or felt an emotion which they think confirms that Mormonism is true. This is a type of idiocy that you only see within things like religion and alternative medicine.

Unfortunately for these people, no link has ever been made between 'feelings' and the truth of any given statement. I could pray to a bottle of milk that I would win the lottery and get a warm fuzzy feeling when I say it, but that wouldn't make it true. My analogy isn't perfect of course, because there is a small possibility that I could win the lottery, but my praying to the bottle of milk would have had nothing to do with it. If you go onto google, and search (with the speech marks) "I know the book of Mormon is true" and you will see exactly what I'm talking about. Most of the websites that come back on the search say things like "I know The Book of Mormon is true. I have read it, I have prayed about it, and I have received a personal witness through the Holy Ghost, that it is true."

The problem becomes even greater when we actually examine the book of Mormon. It has been demonstrated to be false about a lot of things. The book of Mormon is a fabrication straight from the mind of their prophet Joseph Smith and no amount of praying believers will ever change this fact. There were no Israeli people in the Americas during the first century C.E. and the native American people are not descended from them. 'Reformed Egyptian' is not a real language as claimed by the book of Mormon, and the imaginary Jewish-native-Americans did not use it. I could go on and on but I think I have made my point. Historical inquiry does not corroborate with the book of Mormon, and thus we can dismiss the book of Mormon as a work of fiction written by Joseph Smith the con man.

I'm Confused Now...

I just received some more comments from Dennis saying things like "atheism is going to cost you your life..."
and "you DIE, fucker..." but the source of these comments isn't Montreal, Canada like his previous comments were. These comments originated from the U.S.A. I'm not sure which state though, and my statcounter didn't provide me with that information.
Here is the approximate location of the source of the comments. (look for the red dot on the North American continent)

Compared to his previous location which was here.

The new IP address he posted from was 172.168.10.230, which is an IP address registered to the ISP America Online. The screen resolution, browser version and operating system were identical to his previous posts, and the Blogger account used was the same (DM) so I'm fairly certain that they were both posted from the same computer.

L. Ron Hubbard on Atheists

Since I've been posting about creationists a lot, here is something that is rather different. I thought I would go to the website of the Church of Scientology, since it is advertised on my blog fairly frequently and see what they say about themselves. On the third page I went to on their website called "Does Scientology have a concept of God?" I found the following statement quoted from Scientology's founder L. Ron Hubbard.

“No culture in the history of the world, save the thoroughly depraved and expiring ones, has failed to affirm the existence of a Supreme Being. It is an empirical observation that men without a strong and lasting faith in a Supreme Being are less capable, less ethical and less valuable to themselves and society....A man without an abiding faith is, by observation alone, more of a thing than a man.”

I find this kind of statement to be rather offensive as you can imagine. So here is an extremely short list of of some people who most certainly are capable, ethical and valuable members of society.


Patrick Blackett: Nobel Prize winning experimental physicist.
Noam Chomsky: American Philosopher and father of modern linguistics.
Francis Crick: Nobel Prize winning biologist, co-discoverer of DNA structure.
Richard Feynman: Early contributor to the development of quantum mechanics.
Sigmund Freud: Founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology.
Democritus: Pre-Socratic philosopher who proposed one of the earliest atomic theories.
Sir Julian Huxley: Founding member of the World Wildlife Fund.
Ernst Mayr: Renowned taxonomist and evolutionary Biologist.
Peter Singer: Australian philosopher and humanist known for his works on Utilitarianism, strong advocate of animal liberation.
Richard Strauss: Famous German composer of the theme for 2001: A Space Odyssey.

There are many more lists availiable on the internet that are much more comprehensive than this snippet. Here is one such example. Wikipedia even has extensive lists of notable nontheists here. All I wanted to demonstrate was that Religious people are simply lying outright when they claim such things as L. Ron Hubbard did in the quote above.

Interesting results from the Statcounter

I put a statcounter module onto my blog so I could find Dennis' current IP address, and I've been really interested by some of the other functions that it has. I can now see how many people are reading my blog and where the views are coming from.
Here is a snapshot of my Recent Visitor Map.

Dennis Markuze

Current IP Address: 72.12.103.179

Host name: cable-12-103-179.b2b2c.ca

ISP: Cidc Internal Use

Country: Canada

Region: Quebec

City: Montreal

I have a feeling this is an internet cafe or a public access wireless connection. I can't seem to find any information on "Cidc Internal Use"

Google Search Recommendations

I was informed by one of my readers (Ryan) that if you type 'unden' into google, that my blog title is the first thing that shows up. So here it is.

If you had any doubt about DM

After seeing his website you should have none left.

He is quite possibly the most horrible spammy person I've ever had the displeasure of coming into (some form of) contact with. I sincerely hope that for the next 50-80 years (something like that) that I have on earth I never have to meet a person like this deluded sycophant.

Here is the link to his website.

His name is Dennis Markuze, he is a former computer salesman from Montreal, Canada. He sometimes goes by the alias Dave Mabus. He has had his internet privileges revoked by ISP's in the past for sending death threats and spamming. My post previous to this one is evidence that he is still up to the same. If anyone has some way or some suggestions in how I obtain his current IP address or ISP so I can contact them to inform them of his dangerous behaviour please tell me. If that fails, contacting the Canadian government health-service and inform them of this highly erratic and potentially dangerous person. He needs to be institutionalised.

I found my Crazy

Easy Targets

Lately I've only really been doing posts about creationists, so I decided that I'll tackle something else in the near future. I'm tossing up between taking on a whole 'nother kind of crazy, like Scientology or perhaps the very liberal side of Christianity, which would be much more of a challenge.

The reason I decided to stop bashing on creationists for a while, is because they're an extremely easy target. It's like playing paintball with Jabba the Hutt. You can literally pick any page on a young earth creationist website and destroy everything they say with 5 minutes of google searching, sometimes even less. They're wrong about geology, astronomy, biology, biochemistry, taxonomy.... I mean seriously, name a branch of science, and the YEC's are almost definitely wrong about that subject.

Great Quote from Marcus Aurelius

"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but...will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.” 

—Marcus Aurelius

EDIT: This quote is a fabrication, please refer to my recent post on the issue HERE

More Creationist Tripe from AiG

On the page for the "12 arguments" that I went through in my previous post, there was a link on the side to a 40 minute video lecture. Here's the link to the video if anyone else wants to torture their ears, eyes and brain.

I was just watching to see/hear the latest creationist material. Gotta be up to date with what the enemies of reason are doing!

After watching 13 minutes of it, I had to stop. I simply couldn't gloss over this lie they were preaching. The first 13 minutes was by no means lacking in fallacies and lies, but this one trumped any previous ones. I'll try typing out the quote for you.

"Well a mutation is basically a copying mistake, it's a 'typo' in your DNA, so one of those little genes has been switched. Suppose you have a dog with genes for four normal legs, which all dogs should have, but there's a mutation a copying mistake and so that gene doesn't get copied properly and so you end up with a dog with short stubby little legs because his legs didn't quite form properly because he's missing a little bit of information, and that's key to understand. Mutations are really a loss of information."

I've bolded the egregious liar's blatantly incorrect statements.

To begin with, there are many different types of mutation, "gene switching" is not one of them. After about 20 seconds on the wikipedia page for mutation I found all I needed to know about different types of mutations, which is obviously much more time than the AiG con artist spent looking.
Small scale mutations (dealing with small genes and individual nucleotides): Point mutations, insertions, deletions.
Large scale mutations (usually dealing with chromosomes): Gene duplication, deletions, gene-fusion, chromosomal translocation, interstitial deletions, chromosomal inversions and allele-loss.
If I had actually studied genetics at an academic level I would have probably been able to mention those off the top of my head, but after a brief excursion to.... ummm nearly anywhere on the Internet.... I now know a lot more about mutations than AiG do. Only a small number of these types of mutations actually constitute a loss of information. All of the rest would most certainly be classified as a gain in information, whether or not the mutation has any effect at all is not relevant. According to the working definition used by the AiG lecturer, this would constitute an increase in information.

On top of that there have been several instances where 'information' increases have been observed through mutation. Most notably the Richard Lenski experiments which I have mentioned in the past. Now this information isn't exactly a secret, so I have no qualms in calling anyone peddling creationist propaganda a lying bastard. These vermin prey on the ignorant and the impressionable and to what end? Surely they must have some kind of sociopathic mental disorder to engage in such vile deceit. A google search would turn up hundreds, if not thousands of pages on the internet where accurate information is obtainable. For example TalkOrigins has an excellent refutation of the idea that Mutations don't cause an increase in information.

That's enough of that video. I can't bear to watch any more. This post was only about a short 30 second segment of a 40 minute video.

AiG's "12 Arguments Evolutionists Should Avoid"

I was looking for something to write about and I found this on the front page of the AiG website.
12 Arguments Evolutionists Should Avoid

1. Evolution is a fact.

Yes, it is. Why evolutionists should avoid using this as an argument against creationist nonsense is beyond me. They link to an article (on their site) that spends more time talking about the big bang than it does about evolution. The article also uses a dozen or so arguments against evolution that have been thoroughly debunked, so I won't bother doing it again.

2. Only the uneducated reject evolution.

I wouldn't use this as an argument at all ever. I would substitute uneducated for 'scientifically ignorant' and then use it. Many creationists have outstanding academic credentials, and some creationists working for AiG and the discovery institute even have degrees in biology. Most of them obtained their degrees to gain some kind of credibility to back up their creationist idiocy. Jonathan Wells explicitly stated once that he only got his Ph.D.  in molecular and cell biology so he could debunk evolution. This kind of self-deception is rampant within creationists. What baffles me about these people is that they would have had to pretend to accept evolution for several years while they were studying.

3. Overwhelming evidence in all fields of science supports evolution.

As with the first reason, AiG don't seem to realise that it IS the case. Every single piece of evidence ever uncovered supports evolution. They seem to think that because most scientists thought the world was created centuries ago (before Darwin) makes their position more viable. Science changes, new facts are revealed, facts have shown that the earth is over 4 billion years old and that life evolved. Learn to deal with it.

4. Doubting evolution is like doubting gravity.

They are misrepresenting the argument completely. This is generally used as a counter argument to when the creationists say "evolution is only a theory", which is replied to with "gravity is also only a theory".

5. Doubting evolution is like believing the earth is flat.

In a sense it is. Overwhelming, irreconcilable evidence suggests to us that the earth is an oblate spheroid. Similarly, overwhelming irreconcilable evidence suggests to us that life evolved from a single common ancestor. They misrepresent the argument here again, trying to defend their position by saying that the bible says the earth is round (the bible doesn't say it is spherical, merely round). Sure the bible does say that, but the bible also says that the earth is held up by pillars, and mentions the four corners of the earth. Either way, they misrepresented the argument, and it still stands up to scrutiny.

6. It is here so it must have evolved.

I don't know anyone who would use that argument when debating creationists. It is true that these days, scientists simply assume by default that a given organism evolved, and when looking at its ancestry they try to find out how it evolved, but this is only because evolution is a fact. We know evolution happens, we have observed speciation, and we have irreconcilable evidence that all life evolved.

7. Natural selection is evolution.

No it isn't and no scientist will ever say that it is. Natural selection is the driving force behind biological evolution, the two terms are not interchangeable. This seems to be them trying to use 'natural selection' to refer to what they generally call 'micro-evolution' which it also isn't. They refer to different things. AiG fail once again.

8. Common design means common ancestry.

They try to say that Homology doesn't equate to common ancestry, and that it is only an assumption made by scientists. They are (no surprise) wrong. It is not only an assumption. Complementary evidence also helps us understand which animals have common ancestors. Some features evolved several times in different branches of the tree of life, and although they may be almost homologous, they do not share a recent common ancestor. In most cases though, they do.

9. Sedimentary layers show millions of years of geological activity.

Yes, they do. But sedimentary layers are not the only piece of evidence that is used to date the earth, in fact, sedimentary layers aren't even used to date the earth at all. It is the rock from lava flows within sedimentary layers that are used to date the earth. They seem to think that one giant catastrophic global flood can account for all the sedimentary layers we see. This simply isn't the case, and the video I linked a few weeks ago is part of a series that completely debunks creationist geology. The video series is made by a retired geologist too.

10. Mutations drive evolution

The creationist idea of mutations is ghastly. They seem to think that every single mutation is harmful. I'm not going to go into detail on what is wrong with their view here, as it is covered in great detail on TalkOrigins.

11. The Scopes trial.

How is this even an argument against creationism? It's more of an argument against Theocracy, and against religion within government. Idiots.

12. Science vs. Religion.

I also fail to see how this is any kind of argument. For centuries religion has held back the progress of science and through people like the morons at AiG, it is continuing to attempt to do so. Religion is directly responsible for the the Dark Ages, and with creationists running the world, we would sink into another Dark Age, where all scientific progress would be halted for another 1000 years.

As For the Content of the Video.... Part 2

Next in the video they mention Einstein's Theory of general relativity, and the origin of the Big Bang theory. Explaining briefly at a high-school science level the Doppler effect and Edwin Hubble's discovery of the universal red-shift. They commit several fallacies and attempt to ridicule the non-theistic view of the Big Bang as it was back when it was first conceived. A lot of what they say is not wrong, just simplified, but every now and then they add in something about god, or a quote from someone mentioning something like "If you're religious, it's like looking at god". None of these quotes really holds any weight as an argument for a theistically caused big bang though. It's just an appeal to emotion and an appeal to authority.

After finishing explaining a several decade-old version of the big bang theory, they replay the opening sequence of the Strauss piece again, and some text comes up. The text is a version of the Kalam Cosmological argument, which goes something like this.

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause
2. The universe began to exist.
3. The universe has a cause.

 This argument is most famously used by the professional debater/apologist William Lane Craig. The argument falls flat on its face with the first premise, and then is squashed by the steamroller of reason at the second premise.
The first premise has never been established to be true in any sense, and in fact with the current state of quantum physics, it appears that quantum particles jump in and out of existence all the time with no apparent cause. Needless to say, 'beginning to exist' is something that has never been observed, and in fact violates the first law of thermodynamics.
The second premise is stated as a fact by creationists, but does not reflect the reality of current scientific views regarding the big bang. There is nothing within big bang theory to suggest that the universe began to exist, or that at some point it didn't exist. Regardless, we currently have no way of examining anything that happened 'before' the big bang.

As For the Content of the Video.... Part 1

There really wasn't anything substantial. Most of the video is spent talking about the big bang. Much of what was said reflected rather old views of the theory, because the more modern you get with big bang theory, the less it can be used to support pseudo-scientific creationist ideas.
They don't really stay on one subject for very long, possibly because they really don't know what they're talking about, and jump randomly from one subject to another, at one point they are making a case that atheism is religious, and that scientists are foolish for sticking to what they call 'materialism' which should really have been called Methodological Naturalism instead, there is a subtle but important difference. Many prominent scientists are also theists, but through methodological naturalism their faith in the supernatural doesn't affect how they do science. This is probably something that creationists might never understand, as they have this warped idea that the bible is a science book, a view not shared by scientists or theologians.

Some of the things they said particularly annoy me, as you can probably understand why with this quote.

"A key doctrine of the atheist faith entails that if the universe is eternal then it does not need a cause"

Nope, wrong. All atheism is, and all it ever will be is the non-belief in god(s).  Straight after this they go straight into thermodynamics quoting the second law as creationists tend to do. If you ever meet a creationist and have a discussion with them where they bring up the second law of thermodynamics, ask them what the other laws are. As a reference, here they are.

Zeroth Law

This law is about separate systems coming into contact with each other and exchanging heat until there is an equilibrium between the two systems.

Wikipedia says: If two thermodynamic systems are each in thermal equilibrium with a third, then they are in thermal equilibrium with each other.

First Law

Wikipedia says:

Energy can be neither created nor destroyed. It can only change forms.

In any process in an isolated system, the total energy remains the same.

For a thermodynamic cycle the net heat supplied to the system equals the net work done by the system.

From Einsteins famous formula, E=MC² we know that matter and energy are related, and one can be converted into another, so the First Law could easily be written as "Matter can neither be created nor destroyed". These are simplistically known as the ' law of  the conservation of energy' and 'law of the conservation of matter'.

Second Law.

This is the one creationists like to use as some kind of proof that the universe was created by god. They simplify the law grotesquely in order to pander to the minds of the scientifically illiterate. Here is a wikipedia summary of the law.

Consider two isolated systems in separate but nearby regions of space, each in thermodynamic equilibrium in itself (but not in equilibrium with each other). Then let some event break the isolation that separates the two systems, so that they become able to exchange matter or energy. Wait till the exchanging systems reach mutual thermodynamic equilibrium. Then the sum of the entropies of the initial two isolated systems is less than or equal to the entropy of the final exchanging systems. In the process of reaching a new thermodynamic equilibrium, entropy has increased (or at least has not decreased). Both matter and energy exchanges can contribute to the entropy increase.

Third Law

As temperature approaches absolute zero, the entropy of a system approaches a constant minimum.

I think that will do for now, there is 8 more minutes of the video to go through, but that will do for now.

Creationists and Strauss

I was sent a link about a week ago now to a creationist video entitled "Creation is a Scientific Fact". I am led to believe that this is just the first in a series of videos, but my point is not to de-construct their reasoning of why they believe Creation is a Scientific fact, but I would like to simply point out something which I found rather ironic and amusing.


In the opening screen of the video they play the words "In the beginning, God made the heavens and the earth.. etc. etc. etc." along with some images of stars exploding and such. To dramatise their opening credits they used a famous segment of a piece of music by Richard Strauss called 'Also sprach Zarathustra' (English: Thus Spoke Zarathustra). For those not familiar with the piece, or with Strauss' work in general, you would almost certainly recognise it as the music from the opening scene of the Stanley Kubrick film '2001: A Space Odyssey'. A film that champions the advancement of science, acknowledging the evolution of human beings. If that wasn't irony enough, Strauss' piece was directly inspired by Nietzsche's novel by the same name. Nietzsche's novel is written in the style of some Biblical texts, but presents ideas which are explicitly opposed to the Christian belief system, god and idea of morality.


Who knows, perhaps they planned to use the music because of its familiarity within the realm of science, but I thought it was noteworthy to point out that they are using a piece of music made famous by a film that promoted a worldview that is diametrically opposed to their position, that was written by a composer who was inspired by perhaps the foremost anti-Christian philosopher in history. Even if they intended it to be this way, it sure looks like a failure to me.

Here's a link to the creationist video.


For those who don't want to watch the creationist video, but just want to hear the epic introduction to Also sprach Zarathustra here is the famous performance of it that was used in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I Just Don't Understand..

.. how the minds of creationists work. In fact, even though I used to be one myself, I can't understand how the mind of a fundie works. For example, they take something like the Bible, which they hold to be true regardless of evidence, derive some obscure date for the creation of the world based of incomplete genealogies which are utterly ridiculous and implausible, and base their entire belief system around that. Every piece of evidence that comes in is example through the coloured-glasses of YECism.

I was looking to see what our favourite people over at AiG had to say about human history before 4000 B.C.E. but they never really mentioned that specifically, but I did find their article on the Creation Date of 4004 B.C.E. I'm trying really hard to try and see this issue from their perspective but I'm really struggling to refrain from simply calling them brain-dead, and comparing their intelligence levels to that of pond-scum. Ok.... Back on track....

They don't seem to give any justification for accepting the age of the earth as 4004 B.C.E. at all. They describe how Bishop Ussher arrived at the date, but not a single piece of corroborative evidence. The entire idea rests upon the supposition that the biblical genealogies are true and accurate, and that the genesis creation account is a literal history of the earth. Both of these notions are shown to be false from all aspects of inquiry, real biblical scholars accept that the bible is not a history book, and science has shown us that every single piece of the creation story is wrong.

Ok I've lost track of where I'm going with this because my brain is being destroyed trying to think in creationist shoes.

A Gold Mine of Idiocy

From the same super-fundie website, on this page.

Recently, a thought captivated my mind that proves that the theory of evolution is a big hoax.

A thought? In your mind? I DON'T BELIEVE YOU.

The thought is simple and yet profound ... why is there no recorded history before approximately 4,000 B.C.?  The answer is obvious ... there was no history!

 I think the answer is just as simple, but you didn't really bother to look any deeper than your moronic answers that 'proves' to you that your delusion is real. The real answer is that there is evidence of human history before 4000 B.C.E. in fact human civilisation dates back to the end of the last ice age around 12,000 years ago. The Agricultural revolution started around this time too, which is 6,000 years before your supposed creation event. The Sumerians were around at least 1,300 years before your god created the universe.

I think it's clear that super-fundies like these idiots really don't care for the truth, and just prefer to make shit up. They are ignorant beyond belief, and flaunt their ignorance like streakers who don't know they're naked.

All-in-one Fundy Websites

There seems to be a trend among fundies to make websites that have nearly their entire website all on one page. They tend to have really spastic formatting with big bold letters right next to really small phrases, in odd colours, with pictures everywhere on a monotonous background. It is virtually impossible to take a look at the entire page without getting some kind of eye-injury.

This is a perfect example of these sites. http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/

Nearly every kind of Christian paranoid-delusion imaginable is all on this one page.

• 9/11 Conspiracies
• Bible Translation Conspiracies
• Communism fear-mongering
• Muslim Fear-mongering
• Atheist bashing
• Rock music paranoia
• Abortion propaganda
• Lots of rhetoric about Satan
• General propaganda
• Catholic bashing
• Delusional fantasies about the anti-christ
• Demonizing Charles Darwin
• Evolution bashing
• Creationist propaganda
• More conspiracy theories
• Noah's ark myths
• Hellfire and Brimstone
• Gay Bashing
• Propaganda relating to drugs and alcohol

The list of insanity could go on for a while longer but I think you get the point. These people are fucking crazy.  I might continue to do posts about these kinds of people, not in any kind of serious critique, because they certainly don't deserve anything like that. I'll just find the most insane statements from them, post them on here and just laugh.

Answers in Genesis Fail

I'm seriously beginning to wonder if Young Earth Creationists are actually mentally impaired. I can not think of any other explanation for why they could be so unbelievably imbecilic. On this page here, designed to explain the existence of dinosaurs to children, they write the following statements.

"Dinosaurs were created about 6,000 years ago on Day 6 with the other land animals AND with people..."

 "...The sauropods were the largest dinosaurs ever discovered. They weighed up to 100 tons (91 m. tons), were up to 138 ft. (42 m) tall..."

"...Dinosaurs were on Noah’s Ark. God sent at least two of each air-breathing, land-dwelling animal..."

The mental ability to recognise when two things are incompatible must be completely absent in the minds of these cretins. Sauropods were simply massive, to suggest that many of them would have been on the ark along with the other several billion species of animals to ever exist is so retarded that I'm getting a headache trying to imagine what goes through their heads.

I have heard some creationists try and dodge the bullet of massive dinosaurs by saying they took the eggs of these dinosaurs, or that they took young dinosaurs not fully grown ones. The problem with the eggs is that it completely ignores the narrative text that they pulled their inane belief from in the first place. Young sauropods were no doubt also rather large, in fact the eggs of the largest sauropods possibly weighed up to a tonne themselves.

Excellent Video Refutation of Creationist Geology

Here's Part 2

Friday Fundies

 I thought I'd get back on track with my regular updates and do a Friday Fundies. I dissected an entire article by fundies last week so I thought I didn't need to do one (but I did think about it). Anyway, heres another quote from FSTDT that shows a very obvious disconnect between the original post and the religion-ravaged brain of the fundie.

Quote# 72804

In response to:
"I don't get it. Why do many many on this board diss Earth Day? I helped volunteers plant nearly six thousand oak trees last Saturday at the Forest Preserve by my house. "

"But does planting trees help bring people to Christ? It's like going to third-world countries to feed the hungry. It doesn't do a starving man any good to keep him alive for another day if he's doomed to hell anyway. It doesn't do anyone any good to plant trees for people if they haven't heard about Jesus. The future of this earth is destruction....You don't "Bring people to Christ" with inanimate objects. He is knowable, but unless that tree becomes paper, and eventually a Bible, it will have no value in expressing how to know The Creator who made the tree."

Source

Christianity is

Archaeologists Discover a Gladiator Graveyard

This is quite an interesting article I found on discovery, so I thought I would share it. Archaeologists have uncovered a graveyard for what they believe to be Roman Gladiators. Their reasons for believing them to be Gladiators are that many of the skeletons were decapitated, the head was buried alongside the body, not where it should be, some of them have bite marks and lacerations and they were all buried respectfully in individual graves. They uncovered a total of 80 skeletons that have been dated to somewhere in the first century C.E.

Anyway, here's the link.

Source

Personal Religious Experiences

Religious people, Christians in particular often use these as some kind of 'proof' that their religion is true. They vary from using a vague description of how they found it to be true in their life, whatever that means, to describing an intense hallucinogenic experience where god actually talks to them. The latter belong in the same category as people who sincerely believe they have been abducted by aliens. These experience are wholly unverifiable and don't deserve any inherent credibility. The former carries as much water as a sieve, as it is equivalent to saying "This is true because I want it to be true."

It should be noted to Christians that personal experiences can not be used as evidence for the veracity of any religious claim for several reasons.
1) Your religion is not the only religion making claims similar to this, you will find that every single religion in the history of the world had adherents that claimed the same things that you do. Why should I believe that your experience is genuine and that theirs is not?
2) I have no way of determining whether or not you are sane or delusional, or whether your experience was reality or hallucination.
3) Even if I could verify your experience as authentic, I have no way of conclusively linking your experience to your specific religion.
4) Similar to 3, other aspects of your religion do not check out with reality, so am I supposed to believe you based on something only you experienced?

So Stupid I Almost Couldn't Believe it.

Just when I thought humanity couldn't offer anything more idiotic than Reptilian conspiracy theorists and Flat Earthers, I was linked to an article by Creation Ministries International titled "Atheism: A religion"

The opening sentence is where the first failure is detected. They are asserting something that is demonstrably false. This is what they wrote.

"Atheism is the belief that there is no god. According to the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

“Atheism is the position that affirms the non-existence of God. It proposes positive belief rather than mere suspension of disbelief.”"

 You would be hard pressed to find someone who actually holds this position. This is generally termed Strong Atheism, in constrast to Weak Atheism, also known as Agnostic Atheism. I've done a post about this before so I won't go too much into detail there. I also can not find any information about the author of this passage from this 'Encyclopedia' his name is Craig Edward.

In the first few paragraphs of their article it's quite easy to see that they are hell-bent on labelling atheism as a religion. They discuss a bit about the troubles with defining religions, and I skim read that part as it wasn't very interesting and was only providing a bit of background to their stupidity. They then have several sub-headings which are the supposed definitive characteristics of a religion with which they try to use to label atheism a religion. They are: narrative, experiential, social, ethical, doctrinal, ritual and material.

Narrative

"Evolution is an explanation of where everything came from"

Really. Are you fucking kidding me? They are using evolution as an example of  'narrative' in atheism? To start off with, evolution has nothing to do with atheism. Sure, most people who are atheists also accept evolution, because it is a scientific fact. Yes, FACT. Evolution happened, and still happens, we have observed evolution happening, and have evidence that it has happened in the past, MOUNTAINS OF FUCKING EVIDENCE. Then, their use of the term evolution is even more retarded. Evolution is not an explanation of where everything came from. Evolution is not related to the big bang. Evolution is not related to abiogenesis, Evolution does not account for the formation of stars, galaxies or anything else except the diversification of life. This feels like something straight from a Kent Hovind video, the convicted fraudster-creationist.

Experiential

This part really has nothing to do with the rest of the article it seems. They go off on some tangent about the meaning of life, and quote from The Humanist Manifesto as if it's the Bible of atheism or something. They fail to mention in this part, possibly intentionally (the devious little bastards) that most, if not all credible atheists with any kind of influence object to darwinism as a social construct, so any attempt to misconstrue acceptance of evolution as scientific fact as some kind of twisted narcissistic fantasy is merely shit-slinging on their part.

"On the other hand, Atheism requires “faith” (using their own definition) that the laws of chemistry, physics and biology were once violated and life arose from non-life via chemical evolution."

This occurrence is not called chemical evolution, and if these ignorant bible bashers had ever read a science book they would know this. It's called Abiogenesis, and I suggest anyone trying to argue against it to learn a little bit about it before trying to dismiss it as easily as these people would like to. This is literally the only time the origin of life is mentioned in their article. Abiogenesis does not violate a single scientific law.

Social

In this part they are simply trying to say that Evolution is a religion, and they quote Michael Ruse as their final proof that evolution is a religion. What they don't understand is that there is a difference between functioning as a replacement for a set of beliefs and actually being a religion. The people that Ruse is describing in their quote of him are certainly a minority among evolutionary biologists,  and Ruse does not regard evolution as a scientific fact or the study of it as a religion, as is demonstrated in this quote from Michael Ruse.

"Today's professional evolutionism is no more a secular religion than is industrial chemistry."

Doctrinal

They really don't have a leg to stand on here, so they're desperately grasping at straws  nothing. They mention the Humanist manifesto again as if that is some kind of proof that atheism is a religion. CMI think that because a group of people got together and wrote a document outlining why humans should be good to each other that atheism is a religion? If you're having trouble seeing the connection between the two then don't worry, I can't see any connection either. I'm ruling this out as a blatant non-sequitur. In fact most of what they've said so far has basically been irrelevant to what they're trying to prove.

Ethical

This is where they get outright nasty. They dropped the H bomb on us. They blame evolution for what Hitler did. They basically are saying that evolutionists cannot be moral without taking their morals from other religions. I really don't have the patience to try and write out a serious response to these allegations, because they're so fallacious and childish, that I'm just going to resort to using two words as a rebuttal.
Fuck you.

Ritual

Since there are no rituals at all in atheism, they just make shit up. Claiming that because some atheists celebrate birthdays, secular holidays, the 150th anniversary of a seminal scientific work, that makes atheism a religion. Sorry CMI, that doesn't fly. You fail.

Material

Just as I have, as they went down their list of definitive characteristics of religions trying to prove that atheism was one, they ran out of things to say.  Their last point on the material aspect of atheism is wild speculation mixed with some more shit-slinging. Their article carries about the same intellectual weight as a monkey in a cage throwing its feces around. The article never deserved a response to begin with, and I almost feel ashamed that I even attempted to reply to it.

Conclusion

This article by CMI has shown me what I already knew to be true, that creationists are not interested in any kind of real discussion. They are completely disingenuous, devious, deceitful, deranged, delusion, dangerous quacks. It has gotten to the point that I am unable to laugh at their ignorance anymore, but rather stare in horror and immediately cover my face with my palm.