CMI furious that Christians are against YECism

I have probably mentioned before but I'm on the CMI (Creation Ministries International) mailing list, for shits and giggles. Through this I discovered today that they're really mad because "Homeschooling parents demand evolutionary textbooks". Good on them. I'm not so optimistic that this indicates in any way a strong trend away from creationism, as CMI seem to think it is, but at least it's a start.

I'm not going to link to the article, because CMI never link to anything they disagree with. Fuck them.

We Are Not So Smart

We Homo sapiens often like to champion ourselves as the most intelligent species. In fact by all known metrics of intelligence, we are. However as whole, our species doesn't act intelligent. Take Creationism for example. It is a sad indictment of the intelligence of our species when educated people who in other aspects of life are 'smart', yet still manage to accept something so vapid, so devoid of truth of which all evidence points to the contrary as true. This phenomena itself is clearly evidence of evolution. No intelligent creator would craft a brain that so easily deludes itself into believing things as stupid as creationism.

This doesn't mean I think all creationists are stupid though, they simply have a faulty brain. We all do. I once was a creationist because I was led to believe it as a child by adults who didn't know any better. When I learned more about it I rejected it, but for a number of years, I looked at the evidence and rejected it, opting instead for a position of faith. Some people may never end up giving up cretinous beliefs and it is sad to realise this. Humanity is not as smart as we delude ourselves to believe. Sometimes, some people are smart at some things, but in general, we are not so smart.

Why I Rarely Post About Creationism

For the few regular readers that I have, you may or may not have noticed that lately I very rarely post about creationism. The main reason for this is because the debate is well and truly over and it has been for a long, long time. Creationists (I include ID as a sub-category of creationism) should know this, and I'd wager that most professional creationists do realise it. People like Answers in Genesis, Creation Ministries International, Creation Science Evangelism, The Discovery Institute, Institute for Creation Research and any others you can think of are actively putting out information that they must know is false. They are after all the deceitful demagogues that I mentioned in my 'Two Types of Creationist' post back in 2010.

If on the odd chance they are really just willfully ignorant and delusional, what can we do about that? We can't go around locking them up or sending them into looney bins can we? The scientific battle is over, but the social war will never end. I hate to be so pessimistic, but I fear that as long as humanity is rife with shit-heads like the aforementioned creationist groups whose main goal is to undermine science with a religious agenda we will never stamp out the pestilence that is creationism.

We will never get rid of magical thinking, faulty reasoning and conspiratorial tendencies. These mis-firings of our thinking faculties are hard wired into humanity.

This is not to say that we do nothing, I still make efforts in my personal life to combat creationism. A few of the Christians that I know (that number dwindles by the year too) are still creationists. I don't try and force them to accept evolution, but I do try and convey to them how serious the evidence for evolution really is, within the context of an amicable conversation. I have a few books and online resources that I try to pass along to them, but they're rarely, if ever interested. There seems to be comfort in delusion. They're more content thinking wrong-headed beliefs are true than actually learning something new.

If there is some 'miracle' cure for the plague of creationism, I'd love to know about it but until then, I think I'll just carry on as I have been, pessimistic about the intellectual honesty of humankind, and continuing to learn new things myself every day.

Why the Christian God Would be Stupid if He Existed - Part 1

I decided to start a new post series. I hope you enjoy it.

Creation

There are many aspects of 'creation' that make me think if the Christian God did exist, he would have to be classified as an idiot. The first of these being evidence. If he had created everything, he left no evidence of his activity. Painters generally sign their paintings and manufacturers generally put their logo on their products but for some reason Yahweh felt no need to leave behind any trace. This puts us homo sapiens in a strange predicament, we live in a universe that appears to us as if there is no god, everything we observe happens as a result of unguided natural processes so if the Christian God existed and created everything he would be an idiot based on this alone.

The second aspect of 'creation' that would qualify any prospective creator as incompetent are the many examples of un-intelligent design, I'll list just a few here to demonstrate my point. We breathe through the same orifice we eat with. Our lower backs are poorly constructed for walking upright resulting in widespread back problems. The birth canal is not large enough for fully developed human babies to be born prematurely compared to other mammals, leaving the mother and the baby vulnerable. Many more examples can be found but 3 should suffice for my purposes.

Related to the other two facets is evolution. Evolution is quite possibly the most inefficient way in which a god could create life. Inefficiency isn't one of the attributes you hear Christians worshiping Yahweh for so I assume that was a mistake, which would make him stupid.

If the Christian God did in fact create everything as creationism describes he shot himself in the foot by making all the evidence point towards evolution, which would make him stupid, unless he really wanted to deceive humanity, which would make him malicious. So there you have it, by looking at 'creation' I conclude that if the Christian god existed, he would be stupid or malicious.

Part 2

More Evidence That Creationists Are Lying Sacks of Shit

Since I'm subscribed to CMI's newsletter I regularly get infuriating items in my inbox. This particular example from today is no exception. Some time ago, Creation Ministries International started a "Question Evolution" campaign to encourage Christians to reject science. They produced a small document with 15 questions for evolutionists to answer. Understandably, the questions were stupid, unbelievably so.

Here are the first 3

1. How did life with specifications for hundreds of proteins originate just by chemistry without intelligent design?
2. How did the DNA code originate? 
3. How could copying errors (mutations) create 3 billion letters of DNA instructions to change a microbe into a microbiologist? 

 Yes, the bolded code was part of the original. The questions demonstrate a complete ignorance of biological processes. Anyway, the 15 questions are not the focus of this post, their responses to so-called objections are what I really want to talk about.

In their newsletter, they claimed that "atheists have attempted to answer the points we raised ... But the answers fall short as we show in our rebuttal."

Here are the so-called-objections to their 15 questions.

Question 1:
Answer 1: Abiogenesis is not relevant to the discussion of evolution—it is a separate topic (this has been a very common claim).
Answer 2: Life/non-life isn’t a dichotomy. Rather, there are many examples of ‘proto-life’ such as viruses, prions, etc.
Answer 3: Some experiments show that the early earth’s atmosphere was optimal for life.

Really? No one pointed out to them that their question is a complete strawman? No scientist that works on abiogenesis would EVER say that the first 'life' was complex, and there is no way that it would have required hundreds of proteins. This just shows that CMI are not interested in honest science, but prefer to peddle blatant lies to their all too willing flock of sheep who gobble that bullshit up like it was chocolate mousse.

Question 2:
Answer 1: This is not an evolution question, because evolution starts with an already-reproducing organism.
Answer 2: Originally, life used RNA instead of DNA to encode information.
Answer 3: It is disingenuous to argue from the current DNA code, because the original code would have been much simpler.
Answer 4: The question of how the modern code emerged from these early predecessors is evolution itself. Random deviations in the nucleic acid structure would change the by-product produced, if the by-product was more efficient at replicating, it would overwhelm less efficient codes. This gradual change in the complexity of the underlying code is useful in explaining many aspects of biological theory. Such as why RNA is used as an intermediate between DNA and protein synthesis.
Answer 5: The words ‘code’ and ‘language’ are only metaphors when applied to the DNA code, and they have no reality outside our own mental constructs. In reality, the whole thing is dependent on chemical properties.
Answer 6: It is easy to create amino acids and the building blocks for RNA by running an electrical charge through mineral-rich water.

At least some of these touch on the key issue. Unsurprisingly they didn't really respond to any of them in any capacity with things like "Secular scientists refer to the nucleobases of DNA as ‘letters’, so it’s hardly original to us." This just ignores the metaphor criticism altogether. To answer 3 they say "This is most disingenuous. So many evolutionists have appealed to the common DNA code to “prove” common ancestry." This to me shows an intentional misunderstanding of the response, either that or they are absolutely brain-dead (which is a very real possibility!).

Question 3:
Answer 1: If only eight mutations per year were passed on for three billion years, that gives 3 gigabytes of information.
Answer 2: Computer models have shown how mutations can lead to large-scale change.
Answer 3: Using words such as ‘accidental’ and ‘mistakes’ is misleading and misses the point entirely.

As with the first question, the objections are relevant, but 2/3 miss the fundamental problem. CMI, and their fans do not understand what a mutation is, and they perpetuate the myth that all mutations are harmful and only remove information. They aren't interested in understanding what mutations really are and what they really do, just like they aren't interested in doing any actual science. All they are interested in doing is lying for Jesus. If they seriously wanted to try and answer objections to their idiotic questions, they would have responded to something like RationalWiki's article. Their actions speak louder than words, they find a handful of criticisms that while valid, don't cut to the heart of the issue. These issues are complex scientific issues and to understand an objection to the flawed misunderstandings that creationists have takes time. Creationists, the dishonest, disingenuous, ignorant lying sacks of shit that they are, simply do not want to put the effort in to learn real, honest science.

Here's a link to RationalWiki's article again, because it's good.

Evolution is Cumulative

Say it with me: "Cumulative Evolution."

One of the most common objections you see around against evolution is the idea that “this couldn’t have evolved by chance!” It has been rebutted so often and in so many different mediums (journals, books, blogs, videos, etc.) that one would think that it need not be restated. However this flagrant misunderstanding is repeated on a daily basis by Creatards and IDiots. I didn’t realise that it was such a difficult concept to grasp!

Cumulative evolution doesn’t just apply to irreducible complexity style misunderstanding, but also to the borderline brain-dead objection you get from only the most uneducated imbeciles: “things only reproduce after their own kind”. Of course an offspring is related to its parents, no one is saying otherwise. In fact if an offspring was an entirely different species (ignoring hybrids) to its parents, evolution would be falsified! However, an offspring is not identical to either of its parents, and frequently contains genetic mutations — which are often silent (no change in phenotype) — that were not present in either of the parents. Mutation along with recombination, and selection pressures, or simply genetic drift leads to diversified populations over many generations. The absolute failure to grasp the implications of these mechanisms —possibly due to wilful ignorance or dishonesty — results in these idiotic objections being taken as something with credibility.

Analogies are often given to try and explain this basic principle of accumulation of mutations and my favourite one has always been the construction of a building. Obviously a building of any kind is too complex to just arrive in one single step in its final form. This is not how buildings are made though; they are built by a step by step process, one piece at a time. This is comparable to the evolution of a species; it does not differentiate itself from its ancestor species in a single step evolutionary event. The change is slow and cumulative, one or a small number of mutation(s) per generation. Evolution is not monkeys giving birth to humans. Evolution is not cats appearing randomly out of nowhere. Evolution is cumulative change. Period. Creationists would be doing themselves a favour if they decided to understand the subject that they claim to not believe in.

Oh the Stupidity, it HURTS!

While browsing random videos on YouTube, I came across what is perhaps the most retarded creationist video I've ever seen. I found myself staring at the video wide-eyed, frequently shouting "WHAT!?!?!?!" at the screen. The sheer insanity of it made me think that it was a Poe video, but upon investigation it seems legitimate. The video comes from a channel named ppsimmons. The content of the video requires no rebuttal, as anyone with a brain can easily see how utterly absurd the video is.

The video takes some clips from a documentary about evolution, and has written commentary over it. They attempt to criticise the documentary for using incorrect grammar, when in fact there was no mistake made. They criticise the visual representation of the same animal gradually evolving as if that's what evolution actually is. Basically, they're absolute fucking morons, here is the video.

Beating the Ignorance Out of Them

So, in today’s lecture the professor did an excellent job of clearly explaining why evolution is factual, and explained what constitutes the theory of evolution and how it relates to the facts. He also explained how sub-hypotheses can be developed and tested within the framework of evolutionary theory. So if that lecture doesn’t get through to those ignoramuses I don’t know what will.

In fact there were several points in the lecture that I felt like cheering and clapping loudly, but out of respect for the learning of the other several hundred people in the theatre I opted out. One such moment was when he referred to Intelligent Design as a pseudo-science, and gave reasons why it was. It was also noteworthy that he made clear that he wasn’t attacking religion, as that would probably have made many of the creationists turn off even more than they probably already were.

One thing I was a little sad to hear, although it is almost certainly a necessary ‘evil’ in this context, was advocating the idea that Science and Religion are 'non-overlapping magisteria', or that they occupy different spheres of knowledge. I would never expect the opposite to be said within a biology class, because it is really off-topic, but rather I am sad that it needed to be said at all. That people disregard scientific evidence and theory in favour of magical creation in the first place is depressing enough, but that such an asinine statement must be made in order for them to even consider the possibility that science may be right is outright dismal.

Ignorance in a Biology Class

As I mentioned a few months ago, I’m actually studying biology at the University of Auckland this year, and today I heard some baffling statements made by people sitting behind me before one of my lectures today that made me cringe.
It was the first lecture on the topic of evolution, and I assume this prompted the group of people behind me to start discussing it. Before the lecture started there was a picture of the stereotypical deity figure and a cell. The first thing I heard from this discussion that made me eavesdrop was hearing one of them say something like “I don’t even consider creation because I’m an atheist”. Over the course of the next 5 minutes before the lecture started I heard some horrendous things like “It’s still just a theory”, and “Until science proves evolution I can’t fully believe in it”. I am hoping that these individuals just went to bad schools, or didn’t study biology at all prior to this course (or science at all), because those are some pretty ignorant statements. If neither of those are true then I am ashamed of our education curriculum.

To address the first statement, that evolution is only a theory, is quite simple. No, it is not ‘only a theory’. There are facts, and the theory explains those facts. There are also sub-theories and working hypotheses. There are also many areas which require much more research to be done. Even the language of ‘only a theory’ annoys me, because it implies that a theory is nothing to be proud of, which is about as far from reality as you can get. The theory of evolution (in fact any scientific theory) is a wealth of facts combined with descriptions of mechanisms and explanations of those facts all woven together into a cohesive unit. Evolution is perhaps simultaneously the simplest and most intricate theory in all of science.
Thankfully, in this introductory lecture, the professor began to explain this concept, and said he would elaborate more on the duality of the fact/theory of evolution in tomorrow’s lecture, so hopefully he’ll set those kids straight. He also gave some excellent quotes from the likes of Darwin and Dobzhansky,

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

-Charles Darwin

“Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution”

-Theodosius Dobzhansky

As for the second statement, I can only attribute that to ignorance of both the evidence for evolution and the definition of proof. Many of you will be aware of the enormous mountain of evidence for evolution, from palaeontology, through to genetics that has accumulated over the last century and a half since Darwin published his theory. If you are not aware of the full extent of the evidence, here is a link to the TalkOrigins archive.

Regarding the issue of proof... Proof is only truly found in deductive arguments, which science does not make. Science is involved only with inductive reasoning. Science establishes ‘facts’ and creates theories to explain facts. Inductive reasoning is far more useful than deductive reasoning. We can leave proofs to mathematicians and philosophers. That is mostly a semantic issue, as they were most likely using the word proof in the colloquial sense, and in that case, they are also wrong. Evolution is an extremely well established theory, in fact as I just mentioned, the evidence for it is astounding. On top of that evidence, not a single piece has been found that contradicts the theory. You’d think that in 150+ years if the theory wasn’t true to a large extent that some evidence would have been uncovered to falsify it. With that in mind, if someone does not accept evolution, they are either ignorant or a fool (or an ignorant fool), there is no way around it.

I never studied biology in High-school outside of my 5th form general science class, so I do not have much idea about the biology curriculum. Although I distinctly remember that class did not cover the topic of evolution in the biology section, and I remember at the end of the year after the curriculum had been covered and we had a free period, when the teacher asked what we wanted to talk about, I (remember I was an evolution-denier at the time!) asked the teacher to talk about evolution. She refused because it wasn’t part of the curriculum. Who knows, perhaps if she had obliged, and presented the case for it well, I may have been set straight 4 years earlier.

Mutations increase Genetic Information.

I really can’t understand the minds of creationists when they say things like “mutations only remove information” when it is clear they have no idea what mutations really are. There are several basic types of mutation, only one of which could really be said to 'remove' information (deletions), but even then, if the deletion causes a frame-shift then it has the potential to make a completely different protein (generally harmful, but a small chance for a beneficial mutation). The other mutation types either add, rearrange or replace DNA.

Not only does their claim parade their ignorance of how mutations actually manifest, they seem to ignore or overlook the fact that beneficial mutations, that allow organisms to perform functions that they previously could not do have been observed. Every time a bacteria develops a resistance to a particular drug, it is because its DNA mutated. It was not resistant to this drug before. This is something new. It is a new function, or an extension of a function the organism already possessed. Either way you look at it, it is an increase in functionality and 'information'.

Not only have we observed bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics, we have observed other beneficial mutations in bacteria, such as in Richard Lenski's long-term evolution experiment, and in the case of Nylonase (an example of a beneficial frame-shift mutation). In both of these cases, the bacteria developed the ability to digest a new substance and use it for fuel that it previously was unable to digest. This is not a loss of information, it is an increase.

Not only do they deny this solid evidence, they have to invent bullshit about there being limits to the variation that can arise from mutation. There is no biochemical mechanism preventing an organism from accumulating mutations to the point that would be considered another species. In fact we have even observed speciation. The only thing we haven’t observed is a change from a major group of animals to another, and we can demonstrate quite clearly that this happened in the past. Through genetic analysis of similar species (and even distantly related species) we can determine approximately how long ago the common ancestor was between them, through the amount of genetic material they have in common.

The Case for a Creator - Indoctrination Edition

It has recently come to my attention that everyone's favourite lying apologist Lee Strobel has gone into the business of indoctrinating children. He has rewritten his two most popular books for children to read (This happened in 2006, I just never heard about it).

The Case for a Creator: Indoctrination Edition

I had the displeasure of skimming through a copy of 'The Case for a Creator: For Kids' and to be honest, there isn't much to say about it. It is so stripped back that there is barely any content. Each chapter that was originally 30-50+ pages in the original has been reduced to 5-10 of large font with double spacing. While much of the convoluted reasoning has been gone, and he no longer spends two pages talking up his "source" of the information, the main point of the propaganda is still there. "The big bang doesn't sound very scientific", (not exact quotes by the way), and "Michael Behe, a respected biochemist" are the sorts of things he says. The book is filled with half-truths and lies.

The part of the book that I have the biggest beef with is the chapter on intelligent design. I'm absolutely sick of this creationist nonsense. Evolution passed the litmus test of credibility a long time ago, and is an established scientific fact. The sooner they stop lying and making shit up the better, and for crying out loud, stop lying to children who don't know any better. Indoctrination is what you resort to when you know you won't win any other way.

For a thorough debunking of the original version of 'The Case for a Creator' visit caseagainstfaith.com or daylightatheism.org.

Friday Fundies: Evolution!

Since I haven't posted a Friday Fundies post in months (I used to post one nearly every single week!), I thought I'd reward you with two great quotes from the FSTDT (Fundies Say The Darndest Things) archives relating to evolution.

Quote# 4101

Evolution is theory, not science, and any theory that says nothing times nothing equals everything is flawed from the outset.

From RaptureReady

Quote# 71902

Don't be bothered by all the idiots defending evolution. They have their heads in the sand and don't realise they have been brain-washed - the scientific establishment has bullied Intelligent Design scientists into silence, however there are millions of scientists who firmly believe that God created life. People have a blind un-questioning faith in evolution, it is their god, and it takes more faith to believe in evolution than it does to believe in anything else!

From HeraldSun.com.au

It always astounds me how proud these people are of their ignorance. They parrot apologists as if they are authorities, and then claim that the people who actually have some understanding of the subject are brain-washed. I used to be in the same position as them, but the cognitive dissonance eventually got the better of me. I eventually felt the neccessity to actually understand evolution. What I discovered astounded me, I had actually been the credulous idiot. I was the one who was brain-washed. Once that realisation smacked me in the face it didn't take long for me to change my position on that matter, though letting go in belief in God took significantly longer.

What Separates Us from Chimps? As It Turns Out, Not Much

The Origin

I've decided to read Darwin's Origin of Species. I figured it is probably a good place to start considering that I'm going to be studying biology at university this year, and Darwin was perhaps the most significant turning point in the history of biology. So you'll probably see a lot more posts from me arguing from a scientific standpoint (not that I haven't been in the past).

I have an awful habit of reading one book, getting about halfway through and then starting to read another book. I've just finished 3 books that I'd previously read half of and am not currently in the middle of anything, lets hope I can break my habit this time around.

Not Getting Through to the Propaganda Mill

I just thought I'd have a quick look at the AiG website to find something to write about. One article jumped out at me, it was called "Are They Teaching the Truth in Biology Class?".

The large majority of the article was about how scientific progress is made, and old ideas are sometimes overthrown by new ones. I'm not going to address this part as it was fairly innocuous.

What I really wanted to see was their latest and greatest arguments against evolution. What surprised me when I read it, is that they really didn't have a single argument against it, they just kept saying things like "[Evolution] is getting harder to defend." and "this view is getting more difficult to defend in a logically coherent fashion." They didn't present a single piece of evidence, or even try to construct an argument, they simply tried to explain the mechanisms evolution works by and claim that science is going to prove it wrong. I specifically remember at the beginning of the article they wrote that "Science has become somewhat of an idol in our culture." yet here they are waving science as a magic wand trying to claim that it will prove evolution wrong.

AnswersinGenesis are an absolute joke, as with all creationists, there is an enormous wealth of evidence for evolution, and it's available at a single click of a button, seriously, click here. If creationists wish to remain pig-ignorant it's their onus, but whenever they say something stupid I'll continue to call them morons, or if they're not telling the truth I'll call them liars.

Anti-Evolution TV Documentary Review

Before watching the 'documentary' I wrote down a list of things that I expected they would say, and ticked them off as they were mentioned. I wrote down 14 preconceptions, and 13 of them were confirmed rather strongly, they included things like 'cyclical change' and 'limit to variation', 'mutations can not produce new information', 'rapid deposition', 'Darwin was racist' and so on.

The title screen had a voice over that was asking the question "does his (Darwin) science still make sense?" but beside that, the Creationist slant was mostly absent in the beginning. It wasn't too long into the film that they started saying that there is a debate over the age of the earth today, and the first hints of 'flood geology' started appearing, with references to drowning animals and rapid deposition of sediments to create fossils. There was a recurring theme  throughout that "as science progresses, intriguing new possibilities are emerging that run contrary to Darwin's understanding", they were constantly trying to undermine his achievements by saying that we shouldn't judge him by the standards of modern science.

They were obsessed to the point of fanaticism over the influence the geologist Charles Lyell had on Darwin, and attempted refutations of uniformitarianism probably account for at least 10% of the content. They were presenting Darwin as a dogmatic uniformitarianist, and that he was "convinced Lyell was right", while getting Young-Earth geologists to spout nonsensical propaganda about single floods carving out entire valleys with constant references to catastrophic geological events like earthquakes.

The first mention of creationism itself came probably about halfway through the film, when they were trying to discredit speciation. They said that natural selection was conceived of by a creationist, and had one of their lackeys say that "nature has been created to modify itself". They had more propaganda about Darwin himself, implying that he was indoctrinated into evolution by the work of his grandfather and into "deep time" and uniformitarianism by reading Lyell's books, often saying things like "he had preconceived ideas" and that "he was convinced" to give the impression that Darwin was stubborn and unwilling to accept evidence to the contrary. In fact they even specifically said that he had observed evidence that contradicted his theories, but as usual, this went completely uncited.

In the last segment they were really trying to hit home the creationist view, with a false emphasis on the 'debate' over evolution, having creationists say things like the human body has a "perfect design". They framed Darwin as having an agenda saying that he just wanted to remove the bible from science. They were emphasising the "bedrock of the truth of Genesis" and spent several minutes just attacking scientific naturalism, portraying it as dogmatic and unscientific, which is rather ironic, coming from religious creationists. They mentioned that "Darwin's book avoided ... the origin of life itself" and they never once mentioned a single piece of evidence for evolution, and never showed his work in a favourable light at all. They had creationists frequently making claims that there is no evidence for evolution, which made it apparent that this film was simply a propaganda piece. They ended with someone saying that "Darwins theory is not about science it is about god".

I give this film 0/10, they were trying to hide their creationist view at the start, and gradually introduced it over the course, and focussed much more on undermining Darwin's methodology and character than on presenting his work. This just goes to show that CMI and creationists in general are bunch of disingenuous liars.

Anti-Evolution TV Documentary

I was just looking through the TV listings for the week and saw something on the Christian TV channel 'Shine TV' called 'The Voyage That Shook the World', it's about Darwin's voyage on the HMS Beagle from (I assume) a cretinist perspective. I programmed it in to record on Thursday, so I'll sit there with a notebook and write down every lie and deception they make. I'll either make a blog post about it on Thursday or Friday.


UPDATE:

It turns out the 'Documentary' is sponsored by CMI. On the website for the film, their 'Digging Deeper' section gives a link to Creation.com. Also, CMI are showing the trailer for the film on their own website.

On top of that, 2/3 of all the reviews of the film on IMDB, are giving praise to the film and a 10-star-rating were submitted within a one-week period, the majority of them being submitted on the same day (26th August 2010) from either New Zealand or Australia. It is quite obvious that a Creationist or Church group made a concerted effort to sway the ratings of the film. Once I publish the review of the film on my blog, I encourage all of you to give your own review of it on IMDB, along with the 1-star rating it deserves for being a lying piece of creationist propaganda.

Comic: Evolution Debate

This comic encapsulates the dishonesty of creationists so well.

From UC Berkeley

The Origin of Life Made Easy

I just watched this video and had to post it here, it's an excellent, concise explanation of current scientific theory regarding the origin of life.

Does being a dick pay off?

After watching Phil Plait's speech from TAM, I've been thinking about the whole concept of being friendly to antagonists a whole lot more. I rewound my brain to remember whether people insulting my beliefs had anything to do with my deconversion. It may have had some small effect on my pride, but to be quite honest, there was probably only one single person who impacted my deconversion more than all the others combined. I don't even know his name, but we used to debate on Myspace group forums about religion, evolution, science and everything in between. Even though I said a lot of things which I would now regard as being rather moronic, he seemed to keep his cool amazingly, while I was the one going off the rails, not with insults but with incoherent ranting, and copy/pasting things I had seen on apologetics websites.

One time I sent him a private message to convince him to read an apologetics book, which I mentioned in my deconversion post over a year ago, 'I don't have enough faith to be an atheist'. He in turn recommended a book to me, 'The Age of Reason' by Thomas Paine. I highly doubt that he ever read the book I recommended to him, and I hope he doesn't, because when I re-examined the book years later it wasn't all I thought it had been.
Some 4 years after he recommended that I read Thomas Paine, I bought a copy of the book, read it and was completely intrigued the entire way though. I had never looked at the bible that way before. Even though Paine was fervently arguing for the Deistic position, by the time I had finished reading The Age of Reason, I was agnostic about whether god existed or not. At that point I no longer considered myself a Christian, but still had a desire to believe in god.


I'm certainly not advocating the complete elimination of offensive words, because a well-placed insult can add a great dramatic flair to a passionate argument, especially when it comes to things like Chiropractors manipulating the spines of infants and young children I can't help but throw wild insults, that shit makes me sick!