Friday Fundies - Ray Comfort

It has been a long time since I've done a Friday Fundies post, so I made my way over to Ray Comfort's Blog to find a juicy quote.

Here's one from a post he made about evolution.

"The tragedy for those that believe in evolution is that they automatically discount the Genesis account of creation, which holds up perfectly under the light of honest scientific scrutiny. It informs us that God is the initial Cause of all things. He created male and female and caused every animal to bring forth after its own kind.

The theory of evolution has no explanation for the initial Cause (it is a case of "evolution-did-it" with the help of invisible sky-daddy of Father Time), nor does it have an explanation for why 1.4 million different kinds of animals, birds, fish, and insects have male and female."

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It's really sad seeing things like this. He sincerely believes that Genesis stands up under scientific scrutiny. I almost feel sorry for him. The simple fact of the matter is that not a single aspect of the Genesis creation myth reflects anything that has been demonstrated to be true through scientific inquiry. Things are in the wrong order, plants are made before the sun is there to sustain them, light exists before stars are there to provide it. It's pointless going through the list of everything that is wrong with Genesis, because until people like Ray decide they are actually going to honestly investigate these things, they will not listen to anything anyone else has to say.

Evolutionary theory does not even attempt to explain the initial cause, that is in the realm of cosmology, or if he is talking about the origin of life (more like the origin of replicating polymers) then it is in the realm of chemistry. What baffles me even more than his astounding ignorance about what science actually is and says despite arguing against science for over 20 years, is that he thinks the existence of male and female organisms somehow presents a serious obstacle to evolution.

A cursory glance at the Wikipedia page for the evolution of sexual reproduction would give you more knowledge on the subject than Ray Comfort who frequently spouts his imbecilic criticisms of it.

It almost annoys me that people put the effort into trying to argue with fundies like Ray, not because it makes people think that he should be taken seriously, but because fundies haven't even taken the time to learn about their own religion seriously, do you really think that they would bother learning about something like evolution properly? It's a matter of intellectual honesty, Ray has none, and because of that he deserves nothing but ridicule.

How To Speak Christianese

I found this video quite entertaining, as it paints a fairly accurate picture of my experience as a Christian. I hope you find it as funny as I did.

A Wild Moron Appears!

On the weekend I encountered a wild creature that expressed a trait that could only be described as 'woeful ignorance'. This creature paraded around like a peacock, making sure that everyone saw his feathers, except in this case it was his delusional perception of his own intelligence. Sightings of this species usually involve several notable behaviours. First he will walk boldly into a group of other creatures which he falsely thinks are of the same species, puff his chest out and declare "Evolution is bullshit! The big bang is bullshit!".

When one of his hopeful targets decides to engage him in discourse, he will try his hardest to prevent them from exposing his mental ineptitude. It spouts arguments like "If evolution is true, why aren't there half-man-half-monkeys? See! Evolution is bullshit!" If his opponent tries to explain why he's wrong, beware, as this creature is incapable of understanding even the most elementary explanations of scientific principles.

If his opponent manages to get enough words in to confuse the creature, it will resort to primitive alpha-male-wannabe type ad hominems, such as: "Do you have a job?" and "Have you had sex?". I am writing this primarily as a warning to all who may engage a creature like this. Unfortunately I believe they may be integrated within the human species to such a degree that it may be difficult to identify them. Engaging them in debate is futile, their primitive brains no longer make new neural connections, they are incapable of learning anything outside of their limited paradigm. If you encounter one, try to avoid confrontation, as you will only leave gobsmacked and depressed that they may be the same species as you.

I propose a new species name for this creature. Homo moronis.

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.

Draw Mohammed Day and the Rapture

It just so happened that these two events coincided. Well, they were a day apart, and technically in this part of the world draw Mo day was yesterday, but I was busy last night. Here's my submission for it in video form.



Regarding the rapture, so far nothing has happened today as expected. It has been drawn to my attention that in the Family Radio cult's literature mentions Nineveh several times. So their escape plan for why the rapture didn't happen will probably be to say that due to their work promoting the rapture, Yahweh decided not to start the end times.

Peace.

Ghosts

The belief in ghosts appears to me as one of the most incorrigible displays of vapid ignorance around. Ghosts aren't an integral part of Christianity, yet so many pseudo-Christians seem to have a belief in them that is impervious to reason. When I was a theist, even as a child I scoffed at people who said they had seen ghosts. In fact I still scoff at them. When it comes down to it, they aren't part of very many established belief systems, but somehow, like an injector virus, ghost-belief attaches itself to another system, injects its self-replicating baloney, and the host shortly begins proselytising the gospel of ghost. The mental disease of ghost-belief is promulgated by modern pop-culture, by various ghost-hunting TV programs and morally reprehensible psychics.

Friday Fundies: Baffling Ignorance

I tried posting last night, but the Blogger.com homepage was down for maintenance.

Here's a quote I found from the fstdt.com archive. It demonstrates quite well the mindset of the fundamentalist or true believer, who thinks they are right, and doesn't know why. This flawed thinking is also demonstrated in many atheists too, I will freely admit. Those people, though they may be atheists, they are not rationalists or skeptics. My atheism is a result of my skepticism.
Anyway, here's the quote. Enjoy!

Quote# 4243

How is it plausible that languages are evolved??????? it's not possible - evolution does not exist, the Bible says so. Can you prove what you are saying??? I don't think so because you're saying 'i'm right and you're wrong'. Science does not prove me wrong infact the majority of scientists don't believe in evolution.

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Doomsday in Two Weeks

You may remember my post a while ago about the doomsday cult that believes that May 21st 2011 is Judgement day. It just so happens that date is only two weeks away now. Have you made any mocking celebration plans yet? If not here are my suggestions

1) On the Friday before Judgement Day, get drunk enough so that you'll have an atrocious hangover on the day that you're supposed to be judged.
2) Keep drinking and partying on Judgement Day to celebrate your sanity.
because
3) You can sleep in and recover on Sunday.

If anyone has any other suggestions for what to do on Judgement Day I'd love to hear them.

Creationists and Lactose Intolerance

I was jokingly referred to a CMI article about lactose intolerance by a friend so I obligingly went to have a look at it. What I saw there just blew my mind. I had to read many lines several times saying to myself “WHAAAAAAAAAT?????” They would jump from accusing 'evolutionists' of equivocating selection and evolution while simultaneously parading their own blatant ignorance of the topic. A notable example of this is their idiotic assertion that if lactose intolerance was the original state (a misguided term to begin with evolutionary speaking) then being able to drink milk disproves evolution. It’s just so mind-numbingly stupid that I cannot fathom how they can function as human beings.

On top of that inanity, they go on to proudly state that lactose intolerance lines up perfectly with biblical creationism and not evolution. They say that the ability to drink milk as an adult is a negative mutation and correlates with ‘the Fall’. I've dealt with the issue of the fall before with parasitic organisms, and I can’t help but face-palm when I hear that argument.

Where it gets really awful is where they quote someone saying that this forced a change in thinking as if that was a bad thing, and claim that evolution had to make an about face. This shows so clearly that they simply just do not know what the fuck they’re talking about and they certainly do not understand how science works. We change our minds about things all the time, because we make predictions all the time, and when the observations do not match up exactly with the prediction, we adjust the theory to accommodate this new fact. This is a strength of the scientific method, not a weakness. We develop falsifiable theories that make predictions, completely the opposite of what creationists do. They make unfalsifiable claims or false claims that have no predictive value, or make predictions that have already been falsified. When the evidence doesn’t align with their doctrine, instead of adjusting that, they have to twist and distort the evidence, as they have done with this issue.

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.

Doomsday Cults in 2011

I was walking between lectures the other day, and on the corner of Symonds and Alfred street, there was a man handing out fliers. I grabbed one, just in case there might have been some free food involved (I'm a poor student you see). My first impression of the piece of paper was "HOLY CRAP WALL OF TEXT". The title at the top is 'THE END OF THE WORLD IS ALMOST HERE! HOLY GOD WILL BRING JUDGMENT DAY ON MAY 21, 2011'. I laughed, and then put the paper in my bag to deal with later.

It is now later, and it is time to take a look at their claims. In the first paragraph, they claim that the Bible gives "correct and accurate information about [Judgment Day]". So right off the bat, I can tell that whoever set the Doomsday Date, didn't read the Bible very carefully.
What the New Testament has to say about when Judgment day comes:
Concerning that day and hour nobody knows, neither the angels of the heavens nor the Son, but only the Father (Matthew 24:36).
Concerning that day or the hour nobody knows, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, but the Father.
Keep looking, keep awake, for you do not know when the appointed time is (Mark 13:32-33).
for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.(1 Thessalonians 5:2-4)
Anyway, it shouldn't really be any surprise that delusional cultists don't even know their way around their own book, and this is evidenced well by the very next paragraph!

They claim that "in its original languages [The Bible] has never been changed, and every word in the original languages is from the mouth of God". Needless to say, this cult's leader Harold Camping does not know the original languages of the Bible, so I think I'll turn to someone who does for that information thank you.

“With the abundance of evidence, what can we say about the total number of variants known today? Scholars differ significantly in their estimates -- some say there are 200,000 variants known, some say 300,000, some say 400,000 or more! We do not know for sure because, despite impressive developments in computer technology, no one has yet been able to count them all. Perhaps, as I indicated earlier, it is best simply to leave the matter in comparative terms. There are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.”

-Bart Ehrman

So, five sentences into the content of this poorly constructed piece of propaganda (what kind of passer-by is going to read 2 pages of solid text?) I have learned that: A) They are wholly ignorant of what the Bible actually says
B) They are genuinely deceitful and are spreading outright lies about their holy book, that anyone with an inquisitive mind will go and fact-check.
So you parasitic, gullible propaganda distributers, you're not off to a very good start in convincing me that the world actually is going to end on May 21st.

Comic: Evolution Debate

This comic encapsulates the dishonesty of creationists so well.

From UC Berkeley

Friday Fundies

 This one is a quote from a thread debating the infamous creationist film 'Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed'. It's a perfect example of circular reasoning, using the bible to justify the bible, offering bible verses to 'prove' what he said, and then challenging his opponents to prove him wrong 'biblically'. It's possible to justify anything using the bible, which is to be expected since it is a compilation of many different works, by many, many authors. Fundies just don't seem to be able to grasp the mental concept that the bible isn't meant to be taken as literal truth. The truth of the matter is much more complex than their simpleton brains could possibly comprehend.

Quote# 44002

(In the Evolution Debate thread, Wayne keeps trying to prove to us "blind" people that humans are not animals "cuz the bible sez so!)

First,, the bible is the Word of God and the Word of God is Jesus Christ in the flesh....... AND it IS the beginning and the end of all matters. Want the verse that proves it or do you know it? Man is created from the dust of the ground. Show me how I'm wrong biblically.

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Friday Fundies: Baby Edition

Here's a video of a baby on stage at a church babbling some nonsense and a whole church is cheering and clapping and shouting stuff about Jesus. Someone has made the effort to put subtitles that resemble the 'words' that the child is saying. The crowd seem to really be getting into the child's 'sermon', shouting out things like "Preach on brother" and "Hallelujah", "Praise Jesus" etc. I sure hope they aren't being serious, because you'd have to completely delusional to get anything meaningful out of the 'sermon'. However I've heard adult Christians say things that make even less sense, when they start praying in 'tongues'. Anyway, it's damned funny. Enjoy.

Friday Fundies!

Here's a great one from a question on Yahoo Answers 2 years ago.

Quote# 36536

Atheists are completely illogical because they only know to use reasoning and logic.

That's not logical. Should use the bible instead.

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I don't think this requires an explanation, as it is quite obvious that the person who wrote this doesn't have a functional brain. I have suspicions that they may in fact be a Poe, but I wouldn't put it past a mentally deficient fundy to say something like this.

Here's another quote from the same Yahoo Answers thread

"Atheists do not read the Bible. They don't believe in God. Every atheist believes we evolved from apes...Darwin's theory. We came from Adam and Eve...not Adam and Steve."

Ask and you shall be given. Sounds like Santa

I was browsing through the Cectic archive and found this gem.

 

I find it rather comedic that some Christians will protest rather loudly when atheists compare their belief in god to a child's belief in Santa Claus, but the harsh reality is that there are a lot of similarities. I hadn't actually thought of this specific comparison before, so the next time I feel like making fun of someone's religion I'll pull this on them.

The 10 Atheist Recommendations

I stumbled upon this rather humorous rendition of the 10 commandments.

THE 10 ATHEIST RECOMMENDATIONS

1 – Do not have any God

2 – Do not worship a false idol

3 – Worship no God before knowledge of him

4 – Make no wrongful claim to mislead others

5 – Observe the 7^th day to recover from the 6^th night

6 – Honour your Father and Mother, unless they are neglectful or abusive, in which case you shall call Social Services.

7 – You shall not murder

8 – You shall not commit adultery – without adequate protection

9 – Don’t take shit

10 – Don’t hassle your neighbour. Unless he’s a dick.

I think number 5 should be changed to "Observe the 7th and 1st day to recover from the 6th and 7th nights". It is a little more wordy but I like to relax on the weekends!

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People are too Credulous

This issue relates directly to two things I've posted about recently, conspiracy theories, and my Christian Deception post. This fact is very obvious, and can be demonstrated simply by the existence of a website like Snopes. If people weren't so damned gullible then Snopes wouldn't exist. If you are unfamiliar with Snopes, they're basically in the business of debunking urban myths, particularly ones that get spread around the internet.

A reader called Jamie posted a comment asking me to do a post about this, here's what he said.

Can you do a post on why some Christians send those forwarded emails that that are obviously hoaxes or are blatant lies? Or maybe who makes them up? (Its modern day dishonesty) Some that I have seen include: claiming that the remains of the red sea chariots have been found thus proving the bible, giants have been found (you posted that one lol), Albert Einstein didn't believe in evolution - you get the picture :)

 This reminded me of a whole bunch of these kinds of religious rumours that propagate so freely on the internet. With a brief search on Snopes I found 3 common Christian chain-mail rumours that I had seen before.
Einstein humiliates atheist professor - False
Nasa Discovers Joshua's lost day - False
Airlines will not pair a Christian pilot and co-pilot in case they are taken by the Rapture - False

With regard to the chariot wheels from the exodus, that idea originated with Fundie "archaeologist" Ron Wyatt who claims to have found Noah's ark, the Biblical Ark of the Covenant, the location of Sodom And Gomorrah, the Tower of Babel, the true site of Mt. Sinai, the true site of the crucifixion of Jesus, and the original stones of the Ten Commandments (from truthorfiction.com). His ideas were never independently verified by any actual archaeologists, and many of the pictures of 'chariot parts' that he claimed were real turned out to be nothing more than coral formations.

What I think it all comes down to in the end is really just a willingness to believe fantastical stories, especially when they claim to confirm some aspect of a person's belief system as a fact. It most certainly isn't unique to Christians, or even to religion at all (though it is common within religious groups). You'll see similar behaviour relating to conspiracy theories, alternative medicine and even just general urban myths. People simply seem to have a strange attraction to believing the unbelievable. I can't think of any other explanation for it.

On the other hand you have the people who actually make this stuff up. I suspect many of the myths that float around the internet have very boring origins, for example some teenager thinks it'd be funny to go around claiming that Mountain Dew makes your testicles shrink, or something similar, and before long the story has make its way onto the internet and people are spreading it like gospel. Other myth origins are simply a result of a misunderstanding, as was the case with the claim that some hair-ties are made from used condoms, which was not quite true. The reality was that a chinese condom company was using condoms that didn't pass quality control to make hair-ties. When it comes to people like Ron Wyatt, Ken Ham, Kent Hovind, the Discovery Institute, all creationists, Fundamentalists in general, political propaganda and religion at large I am quite baffled at the lengths they go to in order to spread their lies. To call it anything else would be dishonest, they are clear-cut lies. Creationists are liars.

Friday Atheist Fundies

So far my Friday Fundies posts have only been from Christians, so in the interest of balance I'll do an atheist one. I definitely wouldn't call this person a fundamentalist atheist, but most certainly would call them arrogant/militant/angry/bigoted. The person I'm talking about is 'Human Ape' who commented on my post about Theistic Evolution. I removed his comments from the page, since he primarily came here to promote his blog, and is now censoring all dissenting comments on his own blog.

Here are some quotes from him.

"Most definitely Christianity is a mental illness, and unfortunately this disease is usually incurable. If a brainwashed child is still a Christian retard at age 21, he or she will always be a retard."

"By the way Christian morons, how does this heaven business work?

If I understand your cowardly belief correctly, your soul (whatever that is) magically flies up to the clouds (or who knows where) and then magically transforms itself into your disgusting dead body, except that now you're alive again, living in some magical place infested with other Christian idiots like yourselves. Jeebus must be waving his magic wand like crazy to make this bullshit work. And your magical selves live forever in this fantasy land, for trillions and trillions of years. Long after the entire universe goes extinct, you're still alive playing with your harp, bored out of your fucking mind."

From my experience trying to dialogue with him over the last day it is quite obvious that he's not interested in any kind of discussion about anything. He's not open to any new ideas and instead of taking criticism like an adult, he resorts to ad-hom attacks like this

"Wait a fucking minute. You call yourself an atheist and you think atheists have beliefs? You're worse than an atheist wimp. You're a fake atheist."

 Instead of listening to my reply to that, he just censored my comments and called me a wimp again. Bravo 'Human Ape'... You just proved that you're exactly what you claim everyone else is. He's so afraid of opposing views that he censors them and then insults them.

Not only is his insult vocabulary incredibly small (so it gets very tedious very fast) but his blog is an eye-sore. It's nearly as bad as jesus-is-savior.

So, if you are mildly interested in seeing the obnoxious rants of a self professed asshole atheist, be my guest. Here's a link to his blog.

Catholicism = Ancestor Worship

I was sent a link to a video on Fox about a woman claiming that prayer cured her cancer. Here's the thing though, she wasn't praying to god. She was praying to a French priest who died nearly 200 years ago. It seems pretty obvious to me that there was no miracle involved here at all. She recovered from a tumor, great news for her. She prayed to a dead priest to heal her? WTF! Nowhere in the bible are believers instructed to pray to dead humans. Catholicism is stupid.

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