Tag: science

Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – more low hanging creationist fruit

Fruit. See what I did there?  😀

Unsurprisingly, Ray Comfort, the fellow who thinks oranges are evidence for his version of the Christian god, is now trying to glom onto actual science again and insisting paleontology shows his myths are true.

And of course he’s trying to make money from repacking the same old creationist lies. Ray wants to claim this: “Why did the dinosaur disappear? Contemporary scientists have their theories:

  • Was it a massive asteroid?
  • Was it violent volcanic activity?
  • Did the dinosaurs kill each other?
  • Was it simply a matter of survival of the fittest?”

Hmm, just who are these “contemporary scientists” who think the dinos killed each other to the point of extinction or that it was “simply a matter of survival of the fittest”? That would be none. We do have evidence that it was likely a massive asteroid with some activity from massive volcanic areas known as traps.

Ray’s new video “Why did the dinosaurs disappear?” has a lovely trailer with a lot of rather ignorant people having no clue about dinosaurs and then Ray’s minions insisting that there has to be a designer.

That’s it. They tout a new discovery in Wyoming that supposedly agrees with their version of the bible.

Let’s take a look at that discovery.

First, it’s not new. Wyoming is a treasure trove of fossils thanks to where it is on the continent. It has one formation, the Morrison Formation, that has a lot of fossils in it. It’s made up of various beds of different sedimentary rock from conglomerates (big grain size) to siltstones (very small grain size) and limestones (chemical deposition and shells of critters). This indicates that there were different environments that deposited each layer. These layers were deposited within the Jurassic.

What Ray et al try to do is claim that there was their magic flood, and this was the reason dinos died. What they are too willfully ignorant to note is that there were dinos in other times too, the Triassic and Cretaceous. They weren’t the same ones as in the Jurassic.

There’s also the problem that massive floods don’t make layers like the Morrison Formation. Potholer54 does a great experiment to show this, an experiment that any child, or willfully ignorant theist, can do.

But heck, if you are going to invoke magic for one thing, why not insist that magic makes layers too?

What’s actually going on is that there is a thing called Mission Jurassic, where a lot of money and a lot of paleontologists will concentrate on a part of the formation thanks to the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis. Here’s a good article on it: https://buckrail.com/jurassic-dig-uncovering-hundreds-of-dinosaurs-in-wyoming/

It’s not surprising Ray et al want to try to spread their lies by hanging onto the coattails of science. Creations keep claiming “real soon now” that they’ll have evidence for their god being the one who created dinos and everything else. It’s rather like how they insist that their bible describes dinosaurs and that their god killed those same beasts, lots of false claims.

It’s rather quaint to see Ray try to claim that the behemoth described in Job (you know, where this god works with Satan to murder a family) is really a large herbivorous dinosaur. Let’s look at what the bible says and how Ray ignores what it actually says to invent his lies.

“Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eats grass as an ox. Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly. He moves his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together. His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron. He is the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can make his sword to approach unto him. Surely the mountains bring him forth food, where all the beasts of the field play. He lies under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, and fens. The shady trees cover him with their shadow; the willows of the brook compass him about. Behold, he drinks up a river, and hastens not: he trusts that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth. He takes it with his eyes: his nose pierces through snares” (Job 40:15-24).

The italics are Ray’s claims verbatim.

This was the largest of all creatures He made. It was plant-eating (herbivorous).

Alas Ray is too lazy to know about blue whales, eh? Dinos didn’t eat like oxen as far as the evidence shows.

It had its strength in its hips.

Loins, Ray, not “hips”, this bible critter had strength in its penis. And what the heck is this supposed to actually mean? The dinos had a lot of strength everywhere in their bodies. Being that dinos are likely from eggs, no navels either.

Its tail was like a large tree (a cedar).

Ray has to directly ignore the bible here. The bible says “He moves his tail like a cedar” which indicates that somehow the tail moves like a tree. Not that the tail is the size of a cedar. We also have evidently a bible beast that has testicles with sinews that are wrapped together.

It had very strong bones.

Yep, so do humans and so do cows.  The bible says that the bones were bronze tubes, not “like” bronze.  Rhinos may have the strongest bones.

Its habitat was among the trees. Drank massive amounts of water. His nose pierced through snares. Then Scripture says, “…He that made him can make his sword approach to him.” In other words, God caused this, the largest of all the creatures He had made, to become extinct.”

Again, Ray has to lie about what his bible actually says. This beast supposedly drinks a river, the Jordan. Now that is a rather pitiful river, not wider than a creek here in the eastern US, but drinking a river is not just drinking “massive amounts of water”. Again, whales.

We can also see that the NRSV version of the bible doesn’t agree with Ray’s version. It’s so cute to see this god bragging like any child in a playground ““Look at Behemoth, which I made just as I made you; it eats grass like an ox.16 Its strength is in its loins, and its power in the muscles of its belly.17 It makes its tail stiff like a cedar; the sinews of its thighs are knit together.
18 Its bones are tubes of bronze, its limbs like bars of iron.19 “It is the first of the great acts of God— only its Maker can approach it with the sword.20 For the mountains yield food for it  where all the wild animals play.21 Under the lotus plants it lies, in the covert of the reeds and in the marsh.22 The lotus trees cover it for shade,  the willows of the wadi surround it.
23 Even if the river is turbulent, it is not frightened;   it is confident though Jordan rushes against its mouth.24 Can one take it with hooks  or pierce its nose with a snare?”

Sounds rather like a hippo or rhino.   Alas, Ray and conservative Christianity fail again.

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Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – Christian leaders show that they certainly don’t trust their god

Ray Comfort, well-known creationist and ark failure, is sick.  He has a kidney issue.  His followers sent out the following plea: “Please pray for Ray. He has been battling excruciating kidney stone pain for well over a week (see the video he made a week ago). He has been to the hospital five times over the last few days (and witnessed to many along the way). He is having an unplanned surgery today. We’d be grateful for your prayers for a successful surgery, perfect health, pain entirely eliminated, and of course, many to come to Christ. Romans 8:28.” That last verse is part of the verses that Calvinists cite when claiming predestination is true “28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.” Trust me, kidney problems are not fun, and a god that requires someone to suffer from them is just a ass.  Of course, Ray’s minions don’t like the rest of that claim in Romans since it shows that their claims of free will are false, if one believes the nonsense of the bible.

So, he’s in a hospital getting surgery.  No church elders with oil and prayer, no magical healing from any baptized believer in Jesus Christ as savior,  no miracles at all, just good old human hard work and knowledge.

This is no surprise from these hypocrites and liars.  The Pope doesn’t go to Lourdes for healing, he goes to the hospital.  And Ray is just as believing as the Pope e.g. not at all.  He knows better than to trust prayer or his god’s “will” for him. Ah, but they constantly tell their believers that prayers will be answered, just like the bible claims, that this god will take care of its worshippers like the birds of the air and lilies of the field.  Well, I guess that’s why you see dead birds constantly since this god is incompetent and/or imaginary.

Of course many Christians will claim that their god “gave” medicine to humans.  Which means that this sad little god evidently had a real hate on for those who dared be born before he deigned to “give” antibiotics, anesthesia, chemotherapy, gamma knives, dialysis, insulin, psychiatric drugs, etc to humans.

How many millions did this god intentionally kill by screwing around like that?  The Christian answer is “we can’t understand god…until we want to claim we can.”

Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – probability, evolution and theists

In a prior post, I went over how many Christians attack evolutionary theory without either knowing what it actually is, or willfully ignoring what it actually is.  I pointed out that many Christians, including the pastor who wrote these things, try to make false claims about its supposed randomness, which he, and they, think is such a great and wonderful attack on the theory that they benefit from every day.

The pastor posted two posts on his blog, in an evident hope to support his claims.   Let’s see how he does.

To begin with, he tries to excuse his claims by saying that the average person uses the terms accident or chance.  That may the case; it’s still wrong, and creationists use these terms intentionally to try to cast doubt on evolutionary theory.  The pastor just parrots what they say and these creationists certainly do their best to hide behind science when they want, witness the attempts by the Discovery Institute, Answers in Genesis, etc. when they try to claim how ever-so scientific they are, insisting that any second now, they’ll have actual evidence for their myths.  It’s been decades since they’ve made that claim and still no evidence.

There is no evidence that the universe came about by accident or chance.  Indeed, the evidence points to the laws physics being quite enough for it to come into being and they may be just as “eternal” as theists claim their gods are.

The pastor displays his ignorance about other religions when he repeats his failed claim that “people saw this world as being the by-product of the wars and love affairs of gods”.   Some religions do indeed see this as true, and quite a few make the same claim that the pastor does “Creation reveals God and leaves us without excuse.”   None of them can support this, and putting the words in bold doesn’t make it any truer and no better than the claim of an imam or a guru or a Wiccan priestess.   He also claims that the gods of other religions didn’t mean to make the universe and humans.  That is incorrect too and that ignorance would have been cured by a very quick internet search. For example, Ahura Mazda was an uncreated being that intentionally created humans as a good thing.   Jainism believes that the universe has always existed, no creator needed.  Egyptian myth has Ptah creating the universe with a “word” and speaking humans into existence or Neith wove everything in the universe intentionally on her loom.  When one cherry picks myths, one gets a wrong answer that all religions have what Christians often seem to be trying to make as a set of “primitive” beliefs.  In other religions, there are indeed purposeful creation of human beings.  The pastor’s claim that humans are only a “by product” in other religions is wrong.

It doesn’t seem that creationism and the pastor’s version are getting off to a good start.  His idea that humans *must* be created by a god intentionally doesn’t make his religion unique nor does it support the common Christian claim that humans have to be created to be worth something.  Per his religion, we must worship his god because his god created us to do so.  That no evidence can be shown to support this claim, there is no need of worship (and paying preachers) at all.

The pastor claims that there can’t be reason or purpose for his existence without his god.  I do feel sorry for people who feel like that since that makes them afraid, very afraid and very dangerous to people who dare to point out that they can be wrong.   When one’s entire self-worth is based on being right about a god that has no evidence for it, it can make for desperation.  I would posit that this desperation is why a lot of young men and women kill themselves (and others) for Islam.  They have nothing else that tells them that they are worth something.

Happily, humans can have many things that make life worth living, which gives a reason and a purpose: family, friends, pets, justice, art, etc.  The pastor, like so many ignorant Christians, wants to claim that having no god means nihilism.  They have to make that false claim since they have to be able to give a reason why someone must agree with them in order to get that external validation.  They must play on fear.

Things still aren’t looking good for this Christian version.  The pastor’s quotes from Dawkins are a little strange. They do show that evolution is not based on randomness as creationists would claim. They are all from Climbing Mount Improbable and the main gist of this book is that evolution isn’t improbable like theists may claim since it does things slowly, makes many mistakes, and doesn’t always work or get the best answer to a problem.   We can see that if we take one of the bits and look at it in context.

“We have arrived back at Mount Improbable, back to “smearing out” the luck: to taking what looks like an immense amount of luck – the luck needed to make an eye where previously no eye, say – and explaining it by splitting it up into lots of little pieces of luck, each one added cumulatively to what has gone before. WE have now seen how this actually works, by means of the accumulation of lot of little pieces of ancestral luck in the DNA that survives. Alongside the minority of genetically well-endowed individuals who survived, there were large numbers of less favored individuals who perished. Every generation has its Darwinian failures but every individual is descended only from previous generations’ successful minorities.”

The pastor claims that there are three problems.

  • That the defenders of evolution have not allowed for the use of everyday language to sum up a point or to describe the perception that arises out of their theory.
  • That a lot of people don’t really know how things like chance and probability work.
  • That whilst it would be reductionist to think of evolution purely in terms of random/blind chance, it would be similarly reductionist to ignore the element of chance present in evolutionary theory as well.

It is not that the “defenders of evolution” haven’t allowed for the use of everyday language, it is that we aren’t interested in the false claims of creationists being spread by their ignorance of the subject they attack.  It is true that many people don’t know how probability works and that includes creationist. I’ve found this website that does a good job at simply explaining probability. And yes, we know that the pastor is using “accident” and “random” as attacks against evolutionary theory since the creationist’s only argument is that the universe must be designed and must be intentional.   Creationists try to use the ignorance of others about chance and probability to make their false statements.  The last point is a strawman since no one has said that no chance at all is in involved.  The only ones who have tried to imply that evolution depends entirely on chance are the creationists since, again, they must draw a distinction between their divine design and everything else.  Varying probabilities are involved and one can see that from the quote from Dawkins above.

(as an aside, probabilities are something that a lot of folks don’t understand. The probability of life on earth is 1 (certain) since we are most definitely here.   We don’t know exactly how things started, and we may never know, but we know it happened. The evidence may be long gone since the surface of the earth is constantly being remade.

So, for abiogenesis we don’t know exactly how it started, but we know the laws of physics and chemistry so we can do the experiments to get ideas on how it may have worked. We may, at some point, succeed in making life, but even then we may not have come upon the exact way it happened on earth because there could be more than one way for abiogenesis to occur.

Now, we have plenty of evidence that evolution has occurred. We have evidence that there are physical laws and they don’t change randomly.   We have physicists that propose theories and we have the experiments and observations that these theories are accurate descriptions of how the universe behaves. This makes for a high probability that they are correct.

And then we have the claims about various gods, including the Christian one. We have no evidence that any gods exist. We have no evidence that they somehow influence the universe. We have no evidence that any god created the universe.   We do have evidence that prayers do not work as advertised. With these facts, there is no reason to assign a high probability to the claim that this god exists.)

It’s rather fun to watch creationists now try to walk back their false claims about evolution.  This has happened again and again since evolutionary theory was mentioned.  By dribs and drabs, creationists have accepted the pieces of evolutionary theory that they could not reject without looking completely idiotic.  Oh well, the bible was literal….. until it became metaphor.   There was no evolution….until some creationists decided that that there was “microevolution” but golly, no macroevolution.   And now we have Christians who say that the bible has nothing to do with describing the world as it is, but not it’s only a guide for morality and spirituality (which it fails at too).

Now, the pastor wants to claim that we are “really” talking about probability.  And indeed, we have been all along.  In this universe, we know that everything isn’t random and chaotic, which is exactly what evolutionary theory says and how the world works.  However, when a theist claims a miracle,  and that the events of the bible really did happen, then they are claiming that yes, “anything can happen”,  that people can fly against the laws of physics, that a whale can swallow a man, that the dead can be made alive again, the universe is random and chaotic.  However, they don’t live their lives this way.   They claim that they have a god that is the “unknown known” that makes miracles happen, but they have no evidence for the actor nor the miracles themselves; they inject the deus ex machina which they cannot show exists or that it is even probable.    Continue reading “Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – probability, evolution and theists” →

Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – claims, evidence and research when debating a literalist Christian

Here on WordPress, you can search for blog posts on a certain subject by using keywords. As a blogger, you can set keywords yourself (you can see them at the bottom of this post) and I also think that the system also finds them to be able to bring back search results. I have a search set up to bring up posts that reference atheists and atheism. Most of these are from atheists, but about a third of them are by theists, usually Christians. Of these, in my experience about 90% of them do their best to try to convert atheists and to disparage them, often repeating false claims, making baseless claims without evidence and making some very poor arguments. The internet is certainly full of such nonsense, from conspiracy theorists, holocaust deniers, xenophobic twits, etc.

Since I do not like to allow such things to remain unaddressed, and don’t have an infinite amount of time, I occasionally pick one and ask questions about their post. In some cases, there are no comments allowed, so I ask questions through mail form. Sometimes I get a response, sometimes I don’t.  One of the other respondents is here, where again Pascal’s Wager is being touted.

Those readers who have been with me awhile may want to find other things to read since some of this may be repetitive for them. The bit below isn’t as biting as my writings usually are since I was behaving.

I recently found a post on a Christian pastor’s website that can be distilled down to: Richard Dawkins should believe in my god because there he says that there is a probability that this god exists and any possibility should be taken. Most will recognize this as a variant as Pascal’s Wager. I asked him this question about his assertion: “If your argument is valid (that Dawkins should worship a god since he says that there is a small probability of one), why do you not believe in other gods and live your life as if they aren’t there?”

We started off having a pleasant discussion, with him complimenting the question but it quickly turned south when he declared that nothing would change his mind and that he was not going to participate anymore, that how dare I explain what a circular argument is to someone who has taken years to get a philosophy degree, accusations that I was attempting to humiliate him, that I didn’t respect his religion, and told me that he wished me good luck because, as an atheist, I’d need it. Unfortunately, this is how more than a few of these interactions go; rather than answers, I get threats.

I informed him that I was going to use my correspondence to him as a basis for a blog post and asked if he would allow me to post his side of the correspondence to make sure everyone could see his side. I wasn’t too surprised that he refused, despite no reason given. So, I will use what I wrote in reply to address the general arguments that have been offered by various Christians in the past here and on the . No need to let research and writing go to waste.

Argument 1: I believe in only one god and the others don’t exist. I know that this is true because their claims are contradictory. The claims of other religions are untrue because there is no evidence to support them. I know this as a certainty; there is no probability of another god. It’s illogical not to believe in my god because there is a low possibility of it existing.    

The problem with this claim is that it needs evidence to support the claim that the theist’s god exists and no others do. The bible is offered as evidence, but what most theists don’t acknowledge is that the bible is the claim, not the evidence. The bible makes the claim that the god exists and the events therein are true; it cannot be used as evidence for the very claims it makes.   Dawkins, in the discussion of his seven point scale, admits that there may be some low probability of a god when he scores himself at 6.9, but there is the same probability for the existence of fairies. We can’t be absolutely sure that *some* god doesn’t exist. In that the theist’s argument depends on this probability, their claim that they know a certainty about other gods doesn’t work. Continue reading “Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – claims, evidence and research when debating a literalist Christian” →

Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – more inept lies and intentional deceit from TrueChristians™ , Natural Disaster edition

(note to my readers: if you followed this blog for food and travel, you may want to skip this post.  It is my unvarnished views on politics and religion)

I believe in contesting the lies of bullies and cowards at every turn. Susan Stamper Brown is a conservative Christian opinion writer. In that, we can expect her to be as deceitful as possible in her writings and her attempts to have her very own “facts”. In her recent opinion piece “Global Warning Alarmist Need to Lose the Arrogance”, she has tried to claim that one shouldn’t assign blame to humanity for natural disasters and complains when comedians point out that the theists, who have repeatedly threatened anyone who didn’t do as they wanted, suffer from these disasters too.  She whines about how dare they make natural disasters “leftwing attack dogs”.   (she also is a coward on Facebook, inventing her own echo chamber, but she can be reached at writestamper@gmail.com as per the link above)

Now, how many times have we heard threats about natural disasters from TrueChristians™?

Many Christians have made these threats often, with a local example of how Pat Robertson claiming that Dover, PA would have “problems” after removing creationism from its schools: “God is tolerant and loving, but we can’t keep sticking our finger in his eye forever. If they have future problems in Dover, I recommend they call on Charles Darwin. Maybe he can help them.”  

Pat also claimed that the Haiti earthquake in 2010 was a result of this god of his getting rather late revenge on Haitians since they rebelled against slavery. Jerry Falwell is famous for claiming that the 9/11 attacks were the fault of people not obeying his god, and once called on it apologized for his false claims. Since he said similar things after this, his apology was not something to take seriously. Franklin Graham, son of the evangelist Billy Graham, claimed that Hurricane Katrina was punishment. The American Family Association claimed that Hurricane Isaac was punishment.

Of course, the best in irony is that Tony Perkins, leader of the Family Research Council, an anti-LGBT group, had his house flooded in a hurricane after claiming that natural disasters were punishment for non-Christians. He claimed that natural disasters were “God is trying to send us a message.” When he was agreeing with Jonathan Cahn who claimed that Hurricane Joaquin would hit Washington DC. Let’s see what exactly was said (transcript from http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/jonathan-cahn-hurricane-joaquin-may-hit-dc-as-punishment-for-gay-marriage/) Continue reading “Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – more inept lies and intentional deceit from TrueChristians™ , Natural Disaster edition” →

Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – No, many conservatives really are this ignorant

I haven’t had a Pennsylvania politician post for a while.  But oh this one deserves it in spades.  Scott Wagner, a Republican (what else?) state representative from the district to the south of me, has said the following about climate change:

I haven’t been in a science class in a long time, but the earth moves closer to the sun every year–you know the rotation of the earth. We’re moving closer to the sun.” [WITF-FM, Harrisburg, 3/28/17]

And not satisfied with this, he also said:

“We have more people…you know, humans have warm bodies. So, is heat coming off?”

No, despite the date, this isn’t an April Fool’s joke.

Keystone Progress is looking to send this pathetically ignorant man to school to learn the basics about reality.   Hmmm, I wonder if I still have college books for astronomy, meteorology, geology, etc. If so, someone’s getting a package!  Indeed this man is a great example of the Dunning-Kruger effect, as is that clown Trump.

This is why everyone who can should attend the March for Science, write your legislators, and always *always* counter the ignorance and outright lies of those who would try to ignore science in favor of their ignorant ideology.  No one has the right to take away the ability of people to make an informed decision.

This stupidity makes the kitty angry.