AN OPEN LETTER TO THE SOUTH
by The Bo$$
I’d like to do a Peter Fredson-style article on how I feel about the South…
I think the Southern States (Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, & Texas) need to realise a few things:
- ‘Most’ is not a synonym for ‘all’, as in ‘most people believe in God’ != ‘all people believe in God’
- Scientific theory != Cockamamie theory
- Just because you think something is the right thing to do does not give you the power to blow past authority and do it anyway, as with the Terry Schaivo case and the Iraq War
- Muslims != Terrorists
- The Bible is not meant to be taken as fact
Also, stop the whole forcing religious beliefs down everyone’s throats via Intelligent Design. ‘But I don’t need no edumacation; I get it from the Bible’, you say. That’s why you lost the civil war.
In conclusion, get with the 21st century. It’s nice here. You’ll be happier.
I fail to understand what you mean by “correctly test the past”. Are you trying to say that an event can’t be proven to have happened if it wasn’t witnessed?
On what do you base the assumption that the Bible is the ultimate source for answers? Fossils on Mt. Everest? You’ll have to at least give me your source for that bit of information. The existence of the coelacanth? Click here, please.
It would serve you well to visit the Talk.Origins page An Index to Creationist Claims. All of their rebuttals use reasoning and/or fact and are sourced where applicable, so you can find out where they got their information.
Ah, yes, I have already read that article. Here is what I have to say about it:
The article implies that the theory of evolution, or the “paradigm”, is complete and should not allow for change. That is not the case. The article also makes the assumption that the soft tissues directly challenge what evolution puts forth without allowing for the consideration of any other possible explanations for the phenomenon.
She has yet to have reason to criticize the “paradigm” when there hasn’t even been an explanation for the phenomenon. If there have been no mistakes made at any point and the only plausible explanation for the phenomenon undermines evolution completely, then we will have to criticize the “paradigm”. “Whatever remains, however improbable, must be true.”
It most likely will become an “‘accepted’ phenomenon that even ‘stretchy’ soft tissues must somehow be capable of surviving for millions of years”, but only so long as we can rule out any other possible explanations. Once again: “Whatever remains, however improbable, must be true.”
The article fails to provide any reasoning regarding how and why the appearance of the tissue must lead to the conclusion that the bones aren’t millions of years old. It never even explains why the preservation of these tissues despite the age of the bones is “inconceivable”; it simply nudges the reader towards the assumption that the tissue is too fresh. It also fails to provide evidence to support the proposition that the bones were fossilized thousands of years ago as opposed to millions, stating only the possibility that “Some dinosaur fossils could have formed in post-Flood local catastrophes.”
Cloud formation is a bit of a divergence from the topic at hand, so let’s get back on track, shall we? What evidence or reasoning is there that life “can’t happen by chance, it had to be designed inteligently (sic)”? Also, how is it that things have an intrinsic purpose, as you implied? If you invoke God, might I also ask you prove His existence? Please don’t use the argument “you can’t disprove His existence”; the burden of proof is on you, not me.
You’re right. The Earth isn’t millions of years old. It’s billions of years old. Please provide a link to the article from which you gleaned this information regarding the sun; it seems rather interesting.
First, note that this discussion about the numbers of Creationists in the ranks of scientists does nothing to prove or disprove either Creationism or evolution. Second, I’ve already presented evidence to support my claim, so it’s your turn. How is it that the existence of a few Creationists is enough to prove that Creationism is on the rise in the scientific community?
You call evolution a religion because it is one by your definition. I presented a dictionary definition of religion, but either you feel you know better or you glossed over it.
Please don’t come at me by parroting some statements off a false web site like Answers in Genesis. Answers is entirely subjective and doesn’t provide much in the way of actually promoting Creationism as an explanation for biological diversity, as opposed to attempts to debunk evolution. If you want to think that Talk.Origins is “false”, that’s your prerogative. Just don’t expect me to agree with you unless you can make a solid argument to back your assertion up. I wish you the best of luck in that endeavour; it should be sufficiently difficult to prove “false” a site that’s been listed in a Scientific American article as a good source of information on evolutionary theory.
I wonder if you can present some “real evidence” to support Creationism. I hope that you don’t feel as though the scientific community is biased against Creationism or Intelligent Design for any reason aside from the fact that there is nothing to support either of these ideas. See here for more information on mutation. Also, here is a page that talks about the Fall of Man. I also hope that you are open-minded and forward-thinking enough to accept a scientific theory that’s backed by mounds of evidence and reasoning, even if it’s in direct contradiction with your current beliefs. Oh, if you feel like making a complaint regarding the constant linking to Talk.Origins and little else, let me remind you that diversity != veracity necessarily; it’s logically fallacious to think otherwise.
Thank you for your time.
Betty
I enter for the sole purpose of saying that ID does not=Creationism. A belief in evolution may be compatible with a belief in ID. That said, exit stage left.
How so? I feel that ID and Creationism are essentially the same as both require the guidance of some higher power. ID supporters have tried to separate their belief from the Creationists’ by citing “irreducible complexity” or “specified complexity” and the fact that ID doesn’t require a supernatural entity to drive it.
I say ID is equatable to Creationism because the posited existence of an intelligent designer leads to two questions: whether the designer is a life form and how the designer originated. If the designer is a life form, then was it in turn designed or did it evolve? If it’s not a life form, how did it come to be?
A belief in evolution and a belief in ID are incompatible because ID is not based in naturalism, whereas evolution is.
Some sites of interest:
-a defense of ID as an entity separate from Creationism
-another article in the vein of the one above from CreationWiki
-a Talk.Origins page about the matter
-a page that makes a mention of Creationism and ID and how they’re one and the same
Betty
I have to agree with Consigliere that ID does not equal creationism. The two share in common the notion of a guiding intelligence, but differ in the mechanism.
ID evolution could be envisaged as God=hacker, (in the programmer sense) patiently refining universe beta 0.75 and finally releasing 1.0, and so on.
Of course there is the not insignificant problem of proving there is such a being, when natural selection explains evolution quite well.
Well. I suppose it’s possible that early forms of life were ‘seeded’ here by aliens, but then we have to wonder. . . [spinning madly like a dervish] round and round, how far down do the turtles go? Where they stop, nobody knows!
Personally, I don’t care if someone believes in literal six day creationism, or ID, or that the cosmos was squirted out of the ass of a huge praying mantis. Some of the ideas are completely laughable, and some are merely unsupported, but NONE of them have anything to do with evolution. They’re perfectly good stories though, and if they help somebody organize their life in a way that is socially productive, then YAY!
I only get twitchy when they start insisting that I -also- have to organize my life around the same principles.
Personally, I’m with The Tick. Earth exists because “it’s where I keep my stuff!”
The following is posted in an effort to comply with SEB Comment Guideline #6
Who the hell says the South lost the war? Look around man, they’re stompin’ our asses!
Yep, Betty, that’s it in a nutshell. Creation “science” and “Intelligent” Design differ only in where they place God, or the “Superior Being”, or the Planet X pod people; and at exactly what point they stick their fingers in their ears and sing “la la la, no monkey is my uncle”.
The Creationists don’t aspire to suckering marks who have progressed much further than the flat earthers: their world can be explained in words of one syllable, and their God takes over the complicated stuff somewhere between lightning bolts and mammal-like reptiles (depending upon flavor). This is still a big, in-your-face God, sort of like a janitor in a crumbling tenement who has to keep fixing stuff up 24/7 so it doesn’t collapse.
The IDers have massaged their theism to appeal to a hipper, more polysyllabic crowd. This has required squooshing their skyguy into the cracks, some of which are genuine enough gaps in scientific knowledge, others created by prestidigitation, from where it takes longer and pointier tools to dislodge him.
Both creationism and ID have the same basic tactic, however: “Can you explain that? Nope? That proves that God exists.”
A pisspoor defeatist attitude, if you ask me, not to mention being as unmotivated as proposing a Pencil-Eating Gremlin for every pencil we ever lose…
Dont even know where to begin on such a pile of pure shit being spewed by you IDiots & Creationist, BOTH are EXACTLY the same thing BTW, just rebadged to try and squeeze it in the back door of public schools to proselytize young malleable minds.
Not to many people are being fooled by this ploy.
IDiotism IS Creationism and neither one even remotely are a “Theory” of anything, nor a Hypothesis, they are both merely a very poor argument against the overwhelming evidence of Evolution, of which they both fail miserably.
and if you will please identify exactly what the “I” in IDiotism is referring to.
By “Intelligent” the proponents of this fallacy propose an intelligent being of some sort “Designed” everything with a purpose in “mind”
This alleged intelligence comes from none other than whatever alleged god one ignorantly believes in.
There will NEVER be any testable hypothesis of ANYKIND, EVER to test the existence of a supernatural entity that ONLY exist in the minds of delusional psychotics.
At this point, IDiotism is nothing more than a technical-sounding argument from ignorance. William Dembski, the leading IDiot advocate, defines an argument from ignorance as one that takes the form “Not X, therefore Y”. Yet even while denying, in rhetoric, that IDiotism is based upon such an argument, he has created and developed a rather obvious one, the Explanatory Filter (EF). The EF is precisely this form of argument – “If not regularity and if not chance, therefore intelligent design”. This is not a theory in a scientific sense, and there is no actual explanatory model in place for IDiotism. There is no model of how such design took place, by whom, or when. There is no actual positive research in favor of IDiotism and there NEVER will be, there is only sniping at evolutionary theory as an explanation so that they can repeat the argument from ignorance – if evolution doesn’t (yet) explain it, it must be IDiotism. Sorry, this isn’t a theory, or a hypothesis, nor is the road to either, it is merely a very poor creationist argument against the overwhelming evidence that supports Evolution.
Evolution is not an argument . Like all scientific theories, it is an explanation for a specific set of data. Evolution explains, successfully, the present biodiversity on earth, the geographical distribution of that diversity, the patterns of appearance in the paleontological record, the nested hierarchies at both the phenotype and genotype levels, and several other facts that are well established and readily observed & based on overwhelming evidence. IDiotism does NONE of this.
Allow me to present the core argument of Dembski’s Idiotism.
“God did it; now that we have our conclusion let’s jiggle the numbers until our argument appears to support that conclusion.
Betty:
This may be what some proponents of ID say ID is. As such, it would be proper to treat this form of ID as creationism. However, it is not the only form of ID. Every camp is usually diverse. ID is no different. There are many different hues.
Don’t color with one crayon, when there are sixty-four (64) in your box.
I would add to Consi’s and DOF’s comments by saying that creationism is stupid while ID just adds unnecessary components to its ontology. That said, I also think that some proponents of ID are still stupid. However, I will grant that not all are.
Nunyabiz,
You’re right about ID being a repackaged form of Creationism, because that’s exactly what they did: “You know, people aren’t buying this whole ‘6 Day’ thing, so let’s try and make it more believable”, and that’s where the difference lies. A belief in Creationism is just that, a belief (whether it’s true or not). ID is, as you said, an argument against (and concession to) evolution. The two look quite different from where I’m standing.
So, uh, if no-one was there – who wrote it down?
And before you tell me “God told somebody”, consider the alternative “Somebody made it up.” After all, you’re implicitly claiming the other hundreds of creation stories are myths; why not also the two in Genesis?
My favorite part is that it took exactly 6 days to create, but nobody was able to figure out just how long ago with that much certainty.
I guess I should be nice – most people got at least 6 fingers, but not 6000.
Nunyabiz: I was feeling rather irritable until I read your post. Thanks! Well, would an Atheist really be dishonest if s/he were interested in Theology? I ask this with the assumption that Theology is merely the study of religion and does not require belief in any of its variations.
Consigliere: Well, then, what are other these hues and what do they entail?
The evolutionists commenting: My god, we’ve totally torn Lionheart a new one. S/he’s probably decided to skip reading all our posts in order to preserve his/her worldview and sanity.
Betty
Fair enough, consi. But what we’re taking issue with here is your claim that
I suppose it depends on how you define “evolution”. The IDers define evolution, put bluntly but fairly, thusly: “every development for which every evolutionary step is apparent and cannot be denied, evolved; every development which our current state of knowledge cannot completely explain must have been designed.” If this is the kind of evolution you are talking about, then your claim stands.
But if you mean evolution in the scientific sense, one definition of which is: “a process that results in heritable changes in a population spread over many generations”, then ID is perforce perfenestrated: no deus ex machina is lowered on ropes every time the plot thickens. When the going gets tough, the Darwinists get going, and the IDers wuss out.
AHHHHH!!!!!! This is not even something on evolution
Did no one take Geology or Geography? A simple 101 lesson in college or even a lesson in High School would answer the question about fossils found in the Himalayan region.
Its plate Tectonics. What is now the Himalayan region use to be the ocean floor (tethys sea) until the Indian plate move towards the Asian plate pushing up what is in between and forming the mountains, with the main uplift being about the 10-70million years ago.
PopTarts- your explanation for fossils on Everest is intriguing, but it assumes what is to be proved: namely, an unbiblically old Earth and unnaturally slipslidy continents. Pretty farfetched if you ask me.
Before you come back with more such uncouth ideas, you might want to read what a real scientist says about it: Philip Gosse, in “Omphalos”, has an explanation which fits the facts and doesn’t require tedious study: fossils are there, because God created the Earth to look old. This might sound like Divine Deception, and indeed some heartless atheists have even laughed at it; but a moment’s thought will show that it was necessary for God to do. Otherwise, Eve would have been bald, and that wouldn’t have been becoming.
For those of you who don’t know where all the turtles came from:
With that in mind, I have another analogy for comparing Darwinists, IDers, and creationists:
Darwinists say there are no such turtles. IDers say there are only a few, hidden where we can’t see them. And creationists say, you got it, “it’s turtles all the way down”.
I saw someone express an interest in the idea that the sun is losing mass. I don’t know about any unexplained loss, but anyone with any backround in relativity can tell you that a loss of mass in any star is very predictable. It’s called fusion. All that light, heat, beta, gamma, and alpha radiation have to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the joining of two lighter particles to make a heavier one. It was known long ago that the sum of the mass of the two lighter particles was lighter than the mass of the heavier particle, the resultant ‘lost mass’ having been given off in different forms of energy. It goes back to that whole e^2=m^2c^4+p^2c^4, or e=mc^2, when the velocity is close to zero. If he knows of the sun losing more mass than it’s supposed to, let me know, cuz I’d be really interested in reading the mathematics of the evidence.
And for what it’s worth, I don’t see where an explosion of explitives is necessary. I’m a passionate atheist, but all that that cussing does is make the jesus freaks give a shake of their self-righteous heads, a knowing look to their children, and an almost inaudible *tsk*, as if to say, “see what you get when you don’t have jesus”. I’m not defending their point of view, but you’re not helping my cause any, either.
Thanks for the explanation; I know of fusion, but I might’ve confused density with mass. Or something. :/
Betty
It’s my blog and I’ll cuss if I want to because sometimes there’s just no other words that fit. They can tsk all they want. Not like I don’t do my own fair share of tsking at their idiotic antics.
mrunicycler-
Don’t hold your breath on any fundie coming by with math to back up their claim about the speed the sun is losing mass. They still think the 2nd law of thermodynamics proves that local reversal of entropy is impossible, so I don’t imagine their grasp of fusion is any better. Not surprising, really, given that God told them that pi=3 (I Kings 7:23-26).
And it’s my post and I’ll call you a moron if I feel like it. Face it lionheart, you have a condition called stupid. A lot of people suffer from it, but it’s clear that you enjoy it.
I would like to submit a possible end to the abortion problem by suggesting that the mother who is the “problem” and the one wanting an abortion should be euthanized and the child allowed to live in her place. Except in the case of rape or incest in which case we either allow them the choice of either life or death depending on the circumstances. It is absurd not to hold accountable and blame the person who has made the choice or “mistake” of contemplating murder after having sex knowing full well that sex makes babies, dogs, cats, trees, people etc.. Not to have the least respect for the life of any “being” whatever species even as despicable a creature as a baby human deserves the right to life liberty and the pursuit of their happiness.Let’s start killing the mother’s and see if the problem doesn’t go away. They eat far more food and take up space and if their not wanted maybe the baby will have more of a chance to make it. Maybe the father too, but really it isn’t his fault or body he has very little to do with any of the desire to murder the child he just forks out the blood money. If he motivates the woman then yes he would be guilty and we should kill them both. Let’s allow a decent new free spirit to come into the world and possibly make a change for the better. Who knows that child may be a brilliant mind. Even a “stupid evil bastard” knows that a mother that could kill her own child is a worthless malfunctioning sub- human and is a very dangerous person.
So much for “Love thy neighbour” and “Thou shalt not kill”.
It seems like Steve can’t see the Bible for the papyrus.
I have lived all over the country, and moved to Georgia a little over a year ago. I have to say that most of the people I have encountered are more willing to consider other viewpoints and opinions than people in Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee and Arizona.
Indiana is hard core fundamentalist right wing conservative land. And most of them view you as a snob if you get good grades and go to college. (I was born and raised there, I know this for a fact)
Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee and Arizona aren’t much different. Tennessee is more racist, sexist and closed minded than Georgia.
Arizona is so full of old, rich, white Republicans it’s not even funny. I bet most of them vote in both states they live in. (They winter in AZ) Missouri is as ass backwards and bible beating fundie as Indiana.
Indiana is full of right wing freaks who want to kill anyone who is or thinks differently from them. They have no idea that being like that is hateful and wrong. That’s how damn stupid they are!
Georgia is waaaaaay more open to “outsiders”. Mind you, I am talking about Atlanta, not Macon. I haven’t been down there, so I have no opinion as of yet.
There are right wing Republican assholes here, too. And they are the majority. But, there at least SOME thinking people here, which is more than I can say about most of the Midwest (Chicago being the exception to the rule).
I fucking loathe and despise Indiana because it is so full of the people you describe.
Inbred and braindead!
The part about Georgia being more open might be right. Elton John does live in Atlanta.
In my opinion, if your experience in the south is limited to living in a big city, you haven’t truly lived in the south. I grew up in the sticks and have lived in cities of varying in the south. In the cities, as they get larger, you get more diverisity of opinion than you do in the rural areas.
There are people born and raised here in the DFW metroplex that I would say are Texan only due to geographical technicality. You could transplant them into any large suburb and they’d fit in.
I don’t have experience in midwest cities, but I’d wager things are similar.
I totally agree. Like you sed A LOT of people in the South >>>LOVE< << to shove their religions down people’s throats. They need to shove it up theirs and let people pick their own religions.