Religion

It’s Straw Men All the Way Down

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Strawman Arguments? – Season 3 Episode 28

I’ve decided, whether this leads to unjustified promotion or not (they will get at LEAST 2 clicks from my blog if I link them!), I will include the reference at the top of each entry.

I will clarify that a Straw Man argument is the fallacy of misrepresenting the argument of the person with whom you disagree. Atheists throw this around when speaking about religious people, and religious people throw this around when speaking about atheists. In the linked video, though, I think they take the meta game up (down?) one more level; if you are going to dedicate an entire episode to straw man arguments, you should avoid making them. Or maybe I am the crazy one; maybe saying “Can you believe these jerks with their unfair straw man arguments? Well, here is us using straw man arguments against them!” is what normal people consider a prudent option.

I know I have made several straw man arguments; I do not do so intentionally. As I grow and mature, I realize that when approaching the same place from two totally differing directions, two people will not make the same assumptions. Don’t get hung up on assumptions; we minimize it, but as humans, we make them. As I continue to write, and to think, I make a strong personal effort towards seeing where the opposing party is coming from. This is not easy, and that is why so many people do not even try.

The episode itself like to take a popular artistic image with some added dialog. Jesus is knocking on the door of a (presumed) non-believer, with the following conversation superimposed:

Jesus knocks on the door.
Other: “What do you want?”
Jesus: “To save you!”
Other: “From what?”
Jesus: “From what I’ll do to you if you don’t let me save you.”

Obviously, this is making fun of the nearly universal doctrine that if you do not believe in our omnipresent, loving God, you will be sent to hell (by, one assumes, that same God). From the outside, it is easy for (almost) anyone to understand what the atheist/commoner sees here. You must believe in God, or you go to Hell. This is a core doctrine.

From a Christian standpoint, the issue is not nearly so simple. First, obviously, to them it is a sin (in fact breaching one of the cardinal Three Commandments) to deny God, or worship other gods. Many outside of the Christian faith are not aware of the first three commandments, mind, or don’t understand that these are held to a somewhat higher standard than the following seven. So by disrespecting God, you are deserving of judgment by God. It is a narrow cable you balance upon, though, for only God has the right to judge. As per Matthew 7:1-3, judge not lest ye be judged. You will be judged by the same criteria that you have judged others by.

Since we are judging by the first three commandments, I believe it is fair for me to hold you accountable, Eric Hovind, and you, Ken Ham, for your Ark Encounter, Genesis movie, and especially (I would like to emphasize this as much as I am able) the Creation Museum . The second commandment is as follows: You shall not create for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.

This is a very interesting cross-religion study, by the by. In Islam, this is a core doctrine; if you go to an Islamic School or Academy in the west, you will see the art and architecture is very abstract. This is an illustration of the fact that those in Islam take the ten commandments very, very seriously, whereas even the most wary Christian makes (admittedly minor) breaches of the commandments nearly daily. The Creation Museum, Ark Encounter, and The Genesis Movie are all dangerously popular, and to some garner more respect even than God, Himself. Mr Ham, and those like you, I would recommend caution, for your God is a jealous God. You may revere him above all else, but for more casual Christians… Have you led them astray?

Ah, sorry, I found myself distracted. Where was I? Right, Matthew 7:1-3. I believe, if I believed that God Himself handed down these words, He intended them to be a blacksmith of sorts, tempering the argument of both sides. The Christian fundamentalists who often (and explicitly, in the linked video) say that judging those who have done wrong is not only just but justified is tempered, and the atheists who target them, tempered the same.

It may seem like I am judging, and am thus opening myself to my own argument. I am, certainly, to a degree, though I will admit that I often find myself in serious violation of the ten commandments, and am not worried about it overmuch. In this case, though, I will leave myself open to some level of backlash to prove a point. The argument is, too often, not about substance, it is about throwing decontextualized quotations at each other, and hoping that somehow they will make a difference. I know what I am saying here probably won’t make a difference, but I would like to at least try to elevate the discourse. In the linked video, a meme-style image was used to attack Christian belief, and they responded in kind. To the playground-politics-minded among you, I will say that this adds up to a slap fight, but one in which the potential collateral damage is large. To the more worldly among my users, permit me a quote from a personal hero: “An eye for an eye will only leave the world blind.”

For the religious among my readers, please think about your own words, and how they follow the precepts of your personal deity, be he God, Jesus, or the pantheon of Hindu gods and goddesses. I won’t even be upset if the Christians among you ignore the Old Testament rules, and stick more closely to following the Golden Rule. It’s cool.

To the non-theist readers, please respect the other side as much as you would respect someone else who is on your side. We are all humans, we all love and live and seek the approval of our peers. You will no more win the theistic to your side with derisive arguments than they will win you to their side with the same.

PhD Scientists say…

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So I thought that “You weren’t there,” was the exclamation that most thoroughly defined the Creationist denial of science, but I have recently been proven wrong. “You weren’t there,” is kids’ stuff, the adult version is “PhD Scientists say…”

What do I mean by that? Well, “Here’s the research we are doing at Liberty University. They don’t know about E. Coli like we do at Liberty University. In fact, we are doing cutting edge research at Liberty University. People talk about E. Coli when they don’t know about E. Coli like we do at Liberty University. Did I mention Liberty University? I’m from Liberty University.” -Andrew Fabich, PhD, Microbioligist, Liberty University

Now, I hadn’t heard of Liberty University, but the name sounds vaguely Christian. Did I say vaguely? I meant “Liberty University is a Christian University in Virginia.” Well, Creationists giving other Creationists PhDs to prove non-Creationists wrong? I am shaking in my boots, how can we fight this wave of SCIENCE rolling over us?

Now, I do have to be fair here, they do know a lot about Biology. They do expect you to be able to defend Creationist science when they hand you that PhD, but (and this is them talking): “It is a pre-suppositional issue.” That’s right, Creationists are arguing that evolutionists (I do so hate to use that word…) have an answer in their head before they go to work; that answer being that evolution is true. And because they believe that evolution is true, they make the math fit the conclusion, therefore the science is all bad right from the start.

Does that sound familiar? It may, because that is an exact mirror image of what I wrote about Noah’s ark; science is easy when you know the answer going in. But they themselves paint it out to be a lie; in the same breath that they point out that evolution is a “pre-suppositional issue”, they also state that main stream biologists are always changing the rules. Why is that so significant? Because “The Rules” in this case is a synonym for “The Answer.” If the answer is constantly changing, we obviously don’t hold to “the answer”, now, do we?

Our answer is a changing target that moves based on evidence. One thing that defines modern science is that it is willing to admit that it is incorrect. When a Creationist Biologist says “Well, in this widely accepted 1993 paper, scientists got it horribly wrong”, the main stream answer is “That paper was flawed, and here are the 8 peer reviews that pointed out the flaws. Further, if that is not good enough, here are 67 studies posted since that time that come to a different conclusion. Also, here are 43 other papers that come at it from a different angle. And here are 7 independent places that collect evidence based on the metrics outlined, and here are the ways they agree.”

Actually, while I was thinking about this, I have FINALLY understood how any *thinking* modern Christian could possibly arrive at the conclusion that the Bible is without contradiction. They simply don’t know what a contradiction is! It is so simple! (The files are *in* the computer!) It should have occurred to me the minute I heard “Mainstream scientists have a presuppositional bias,” followed by “But the answer keeps changing!” Within one minute, you can hear a person holding a PhD contradict themselves twice without blinking. (And you can see it in action here: http://creationtoday.org/do-creation-scientists-have-the-answers-s03e05/  and in addition to that, you can watch a man say Liberty University 60 times in 50 seconds! What fun! And, before any of that, you can see two grown men say PhD Scientists repeatedly in casual conversation, without any clue what makes a PhD… Or a Scientist.)

The thing is, evolution is not a single process, and no one has ever said evolution could be described as “Right now I have a single celled organism, oh wait! IT IS NOW MULTICELLULAR WITH A SKELETON WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN?!” Richard Dawkins described it far better than I ever could, from the perspective of a biologist (people sometimes forget that Dawkins’ profession is biology, not Christian bashing), as I am not a biologist. In any case, I would recommend that Creationists take a look into what evolution actually *is* before they start saying it is a load of cow dung. Here’s the thing though… Evolution is not simple. Dawkins, one man, has written 11 books describing evolution, and even that is but a small fraction of what marks a concept “evolution”.

The part that hurts me the most is the willful academic dishonesty among so many Creation scientists. “That’s not evolution,” they will say “That is adaptation,” or “That is survival of the fittest.” I will chalk this one up to bariminologists, I think, as Creationists believe that one “kind” cannot become another “kind.” Mind, it is important to note that one “kind” is bird. “Oh, over 3,000 generations it lost its wings, its legs grew longer, it changed its beak size, and grew to ten times the size it used to be? That’s not evolution, it is still a bird, duh!”

The problem is this: Dr Andrew Fabich stated in the very video linked above that “I have been studying E. Coli for 10 years, and I have seen adaptation, but nothing that would count as evolution.” Ok, your E. Coli have adapted better to survive in their current environment… HOW IS THAT NOT EVOLUTION?! I just don’t understand what Creationists think evolution is, because after reading several books and watching hundreds of hours of Creationist videos, I am still not entirely certain. The other thing (and I have mentioned this before) is that this respectable PhD has effectively stated “I didn’t see evolution in 10 years, therefore there is no evolution. Q.E.D.” Even under your incredibly limited worldview, Dr Fabich, you have studied E. Coli for 0.17% of human history (6000 years), and a score of 0.17% on an exam is, last I checked, not a passing grade. You have studied it for 3.33x(10^-7)% (0.0000003%, give or take a zero, I did the math suuuper lazily) of the evolutionary history of life as understood by mainstream science. In fact, if you could prove mainstream science wrong, we could move the slider for the history of life — mainstream science may have pride, but they will admit they were wrong in the face of evidence.

I will leave you with one last quote about presuppositional evidence that shoots itself in the foot so hard it … I was going to say hurts, but that makes too much sense. Whatever.

Georgia Purdom, PhD, stated that “Like it says in Romans chapter 1, if they just looked at the evidence, everyone would believe in God.” Right, the Bible states “The evidence proves God,” therefore we don’t actually need to do any work, that statement (obviously) stands on its own and needs no verification.

So why this rant? And why is it important to point out “PhD scientists say…”?

Well, unless you check from whence their PhD comes from, you have no idea if they are actually qualified. You also have to check what kinds of papers they have published. Hell, some of them publish some very good, useful science; this is a case of the means outweighing the ends, because to them the ends are always the exact same — but sometimes, I can’t even argue with how they got there, I can only argue with their conclusions. Luckily for me, much smarter people than me are comfortable debating the conclusion with a rock-solid foundation of evidence; all of what I say is hearsay, and merely the opinion of someone who is worried about the state of scientific discourse.

In any case, watch out for “PhD scientists say…”

And also, “Liberty University is a University about Liberty and University-ness. Also, Liberty University.”

Justice, Fairness, and Equality for All

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This is going to be a very personal post. Usually, my blog post have something that initiates them; a particular quote or article, a conversation I’ve had with someone, or something I read in passing–but to the best of my memory, this is something that came to me independently. I am going to talk, specifically, about why I ended up leaving the Church, and why my relationship with God, if I can be said to have a relationship at all, is strained beyond the breaking point at best, and broken beyond repair at worst. People have asked if I know the root cause of my depression, I tell them no, but only because the root cause is so personal. Well, people seem to enjoy reading my insights, so it is time to bring it all to light.

The world is a place that is broken, ruled over by (as I have been told so many times) a loving God. I cannot believe that we are ruled over by a loving God, I just can’t.

A homeless woman, a prostitute, addicted to drugs and infected by AIDS gets pregnant. The prior sentence depicts a situation that is too common. For the purposes of widening the scope, you can even clear the AIDS infection, we’ll just stick to the drug addiction.

Her child is born, addicted to the same drugs as her mother, born to a mother who does not have the means to take care of the child, and the child lives a short life of incredible suffering. A year or two, maybe even more if she is found and cared for by someone in a better position, but even then the child suffers to long lasting effects of withdrawal. You can’t exactly pump a child full of methadone, can you? Or, let’s say the mother is not addicted to drugs, but has AIDS. There is nothing for the child, nothing yet, that will give her a life expectancy longer than 25 years. Part of the life this child will live is the suffering that comes due to the myriad cancers and infections suffered by late-term AIDS sufferers.

What did this child do to deserve this life? If you believe that God created the world according to His will, then you believe that he created the world allowing for a mother or a father to visit unfair, unjust, horrible lives upon their children — even if the mother or father in question are removed. Again, there is nothing you can do for a child infected with HIV.

When discussing this with my more religious peers, I have been informed that it is a function of “the sins of the father visited upon the son.” Now, depending on the part of the Bible you are drawing from, this may in fact be God’s will. In the book of Exodus, in various places, it says the iniquity of the father shall be visited upon the son, unto the third and fourth generation. In the book of Deuteronomy, however, it states that the son shall not be put to death for the sins of the father, nor the father for the son. Every man shall be put to death for his own sin. (As an interesting aside, tradition states that Deuteronomy and Exodus were written by the same hand [historians obviously disagree], so Christians who hold to Mosaic scholarship should find it odd that these two books written by the same hand set down rules that directly contradict each other.)

Let’s use another example, then. In Africa, among many people, it is a widely held belief that there is a cure for AIDS! Why does the whole world not know of this, not sing its praises to the heavens?! Well, that’s because the cure is obviously not a cure at all — the purported “cure” is to have sex with a virgin. Let the horror of that sink in for a minute, it’s ok, I’ll wait. Every time I think about this, I have to just stop, close my eyes, and take a steadying breath, because the horror of it cannot fully be comprehended; not by me, not by you. Virgins are kidnapped and violently raped, they are infected with AIDS, the male obviously not cured. And in the truly horrific times when this results in a pregnancy, there is a very high chance the child will end up with an infection as well. Two lives ruined, pointlessly, senselessly, all for the price of one.

If you believe God created the world, if He set down the rules and laws that govern every part of this world, then he allowed a disease like AIDS to pass from father to mother to child. The child, who is obviously free of sin, has had the iniquities of the father passed into him. Where is the justice? Where is the love? Does God not spare a thought for these children?

To clarify, my focus here is the children, for you cannot even through terrible logic say they are filled with sin. When a woman is raped, I have heard all of the worst justifications (and justifications is the only word I can think to describe them). Well, the woman has sinned, and is not under God’s protection. Or man is given ultimate free will, and that free will can be used to destroy the life of another. This is the Christian equivalent of “She deserved it,” and the thought of anyone thinking these things almost makes me fly into a black rage. But even if you do not justify it, even if you agree that it is a senseless crime, a pointless act of destruction, God has set nothing down to stop it.

“What about the 10 commandments?!” you shout, indignantly, hypothetical reader. Well, they certainly set down punishments for those that have committed these heinous crimes, I won’t deny it. I am going to give a quote that gets thrown around Internet forums often enough, in regards to punishing rapists: “You can’t un-rape her.”

The rapist, the father, could be killed, and sent to the deepest pit in Hell, the worst torture in the universe visited upon him, for all eternity — does that fix what has been done to the woman who has been raped? No, God has done NOTHING to ease her suffering, the suffering of her potential child.

Give me a moment to steady myself, and we’ll continue on to another topic. I will come back to the sins of the father, but I can’t keep writing about it at this very second, it hurts me too much to think about for too long.

Satan. Now here’s an interesting one. Satan exists, I am told by many Christian speakers, and he is fighting to steal souls from God. He tempts man into terrible deeds with false promises. Why does Satan exist? God is omnipotent, he could literally snap his fingers and Satan would be removed from existence. He could snap his fingers and Satan would NEVER HAVE EXISTED.

So why is this another sticking point for me? I had a conversation about this with a person who has studied religion much more deeply and formally than me, and I could not get a satisfactory answer — or rather, an answer that satisfied me. There was vague allusions to free will, but that doesn’t really answer the question, does it? In the Gospel of Luke, Satan requests permission (in some translation demands permission) to sift Simon, as a farmer sifts wheat from chaff. The permission is granted! God allows Satan to take a crack at Simon, for the purposes of testing him!

Ignoring the fact that making a bet with a being who literally knows the outcome before the bet is made shows a stunning lack of foresight on Satan’s part, I would like to think about this for a second. Our loving God sets upon Simon the second most evil being in existence (Well, Satan is the Prince of Evil, making God the King) on one of his closest subjects, just to see if he was up to par? Are those the actions of someone of endless love? Add to that the fact that anyone who falls for the schemes of Satan is sent to burn for all eternity in the Pit, and you have a situation that a loving parent would never subject a child to.

Allow me to draw a more human parallel. Your child has asked for a puppy, and like any prudent parent you ask yourself if the child really has the maturity to handle this level of responsibility. Nothing in your experience allows you to answer the question clearly, so you come up with a simple test; you put your child in a room with an untrained dog, alone, and close the door. You’ll come back in a few days, and see how the child is doing. If the child is doing well, he or she can have a puppy, because she has survived a test even more difficult than the owning of a puppy. If the dog kills the child, well, the child did not deserve a puppy.

The above illustration is absurd, but that is what God did to Simon. In fact, that is what God (presumably) does to all of humanity on a day-to-day basis. If Satan exists, and Satan tempts us, and the punishment for answering Satan’s call is eternity in the pit, that is what God has done to all of us. An eternally loving, an eternally just, holy God. A God that could, if he is truly omnipotent, snap his fingers and remove Satan from the world.

Ok, I have made my point with regards to Satan. I think I am ready to go back to the sins of the father.

Let’s go back to Genesis.

On the sixth day (we are going to go by the chronology of Genesis chapter 1, as opposed to the DIRECT CONTRADICTION of Genesis chapter 2, which states that animals were created after man) God created Man, and it was good. He created man in the Garden, with a single instruction, that they not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Ah, but here is Satan, coming to the fore, right in the beginning, tempting Eve into eating of the Tree. Then Adam, of course, eats of it as well, and God punishes both Adam and Eve by cutting them off from paradise, and their children from paradise, and their children’s children. But here’s the funny thing; God knows everything that is, everything that was, (and this part is important) and everything that will be. When God created Adam and Eve, one presumes he knew they would eat of the Tree, having been tempted by Satan.

God created them, man and woman, knowing that he would be condemning them to an unimaginable term in the Pit, to torture, to death. In fact, if one takes the word of the Gospels as Gospel, one is forced to understand that all humans from Adam onward to Jesus were similarly condemned. In fact, if you believe in Original Sin (primarily espoused by the Catholic faith), you believe that anyone not baptized into the Church is subjected to eternity in the Pit, because Adam and Eve ate the apple as per Satan’s tempting. That is, our God who loves us and loves all people, and is infinitely Just, created humans knowing we would eat of the tree, fail, and then condemned ALL OF HUMANKIND to an eternity in the pit, knowingly, before we were even a twinkle in our father’s eye. The only people spared his wrath are those that swear fealty to him in their hearts, and worship. That is not love, that is narcissism, that is ego, that is a thousand negative emotions, that is justice so cruel and so lacking, even the most conscience-barren of all humans could, if they cared to look, would think that this is horror beyond mortal horror. But God loves us, unconditionally? I do not see this love, I do not feel this love, I do not understand how this could possibly be considered a loving God.

“But,” you interject once more, hypothetical reader, “He sent his only begotten Son to redeem our sins.” Ah, friend, I am glad you brought that up, because that was (conveniently) my next point. First, our infinitely forgiving God could not forgive our sins with a word? With a thought? He had to subject his only son to horrible torture, to three days in the pits of Hell, before he could forgive our sins — and even with that, our unconditionally loving God did not forgive us all, for as is stated in Matthew chapter 7:21, “Not all who call on my name shall be saved.” God sent his only begotten son to redeem our sins, but even then, “Conditions apply.” (Worth noting that in his epistles, Peter states that “All who believe on Jesus shall be saved,” but there are still people out there who say the Bible is without contradiction. [Romans 10:13])

God could not even forgive without the death of his Son. He, who is omnipotent, did have have the POWER to forgive us without a blood sacrifice, for as it is said in the Old Testament (Hebrews 9:22), “Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.” These are the words of an unconditionally loving Father, are they? “Chucky made me mad yesterday, so I have to kill my firstborn son to keep myself from killing Chucky.” Turn that last sentence over in your head a few times.

What does that sound like? Someone who says “I have condemned you all to the Pit until I decide to sacrifice my own son to myself,” does not sound like a loving parent, does He? And that brings up another point; why did he wait so long to sacrifice his own son, our loving and omnipotent God? If you take the age of the Earth according to YEC, he condemned every human being (save for a select few who were raised bodily to Heaven) to hell for TWO THIRDS of all of history, before he was like “Hmm… I feel like I forgot to do something… SHIT! I was supposed to sacrifice my own son to myself like 3000 years ago! SHITSHITSHITSHIT! The humans are gonna be so pissed.” Then, 2000 years later, that same God gets the luxury to go “Phew, they didn’t even notice. In fact, they still think I am all loving, omnipotent, and watching over them. Heheheh… Suckers.”

If you take into account the age of Humankind according to science (the age varies, but it is certainly in the hundreds of thousands of years or more, depending on whether you are picky about Homo Sapien vs Homo Habilis, etc) then God waited for some 99.7% of human history before he decided to forgive our sins. Our omnipotent, all loving Father.

And here I am, being asked by some, demanded by other, to believe in this God? To believe in this God or I, too, will be condemned to the Pit. The God who loves me, but also knows in his heart that my soul shall be consigned to eternal torture? The God who is infinitely forgiving, unless he isn’t. The God who is infinitely loving, who will allow infinite torture?

What does that sound like… “I beat you because I love you!” Those are the words of a man who beats his wife regularly, but tells her “You made me do it!” We made God do it, readers. It was our fault all along that Adam and Eve ate that apple, and our fault all along that God has condemned us to eternal torture, our fault all along that Jesus had to be killed. God loves us unconditionally, but sins cannot go without punishment! To let sins go without punishment would require some crazy concept like… I don’t know… Unconditional forgiveness.

As it stands, the best we can hope for is coerced conditional forgiveness.

I am not so arrogant as to believe there could not be a God… But I am very comfortable saying, if there is a God, the Abrahamic religions have no idea what his personality is, because I find it fairly easy to think they’ve got it wrong.

I think anyone who has grown up their whole lives with HIV would find it easy to prove that they’ve got it wrong.

I think anyone who was born with a drug addiction, had they the capacity, would find it easy to prove that they’ve got it wrong.

And I think anyone who takes a minute to step back, ignore all of what other people have told them, and think for themselves could, with an open mind, see that they’ve got it wrong.

I don’t think God loves me. I don’t think God would even care enough to give me the time of day.

Please prove me wrong; like I said at the top, the idea that over one billion people believe that this is what “love” feels like is at the root of my depression.

Please prove me wrong so I can look at the world and be happy again.

Please prove me wrong so that when I wake up in the morning, I do not have to think about the fact that thousands of women are raped every day, doomed to being infected by HIV, because God created a disease that punishes the rapee as much as it punishes the rapist. Tell me why a disease exists that punishes the child more than it could possibly punish the parents, because the child will spend their whole life with it.

Tell me why, so I can stop having nightmares about it.

..

Please?

What’s the deal with Noah’s Ark? And Why Does the Word “Evolutionist” Exist?

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When reading fundamentalist Christian literature, or watching/listening to fundamentalist speakers, you often come across the word “Evolutionist.” Now, to clarify, they have often stated that evolution is a faith-based religion, and I don’t think I stand a chance of capturing even one percent of the body of evidence that stands against this statement in this medium. I am not here to restate all of the papers written by reputable scientists. I am here to appeal to your reasoning; think for yourself, if you will. If not, well, I had fun writing and researching this anyway. I will present some cases, mind, but I will try to keep from having to rely on “Things I have not seen first hand.” I know how many fundamentalist Christians do so love to state “You weren’t there.” To see this in (frightening) action, watch any video of Ken Ham speaking to Christian children. He trains them, like dogs, to reply “You weren’t there!” on command, and it feels a little… Cult-y. Like… Even more cult-y than the usual cult-y-ness that I have come to expect from Mr Ham.

Now, when defending the Old Testament account of Noah’s Flood, YECs rely on the math of “Created Kinds”. There are some varying estimation on how many “kinds” were taken. Creation Today (which I’ve referenced in the past), suggests there are 8000 “kinds”, therefore there are 16000 animals (we shall allow them to gloss over Genesis 7:2-3, where it commands 7 pairs of all clean animals be taken [even though that would include things such as cattle and sheep, which would, one suspects, bloat the number]). Apparently Creation Today got their math from Answers in Genesis (which is, admittedly, the definitive apologetics source of our time), so I’ll skip the AIG math. (It is worth reading their work, it is quite the fascinating piece of apologetics, to be sure [https://answersingenesis.org/noahs-ark/how-could-noah-fit-the-animals-on-the-ark-and-care-for-them/]) Another source, CARM (the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry), has a much larger number of “kinds”, though they balance the math by having a smaller average animal size (Sheep for AIG, cats for CARM). [http://carm.org/could-noahs-ark-hold-all-animals] They record 21,100 kinds, and DO account for Genesis 7:2-3, so while I hate to go against the word of the venerable AIG, these guys are at least *trying* to get the math correctly. Mind, they use 7 pairs of birds only, and completely ignore the “clean animals” math. In any case, there are 72,700 animals on the ark, averaging the size of a cat. I have not done the exact math on this, mind, but I feel like they are averaging in the insects for size, but ignoring them for ark content; their math breakdown shows that “Insects can be ignored due to their small size”.

So now we’ve got math! We’ve got the math according to … Ummm… Reputable(?) YEC sources. Let’s look at it a bit more deeply. First, why is there such a wide range in the value presented for “kinds”? Well, that one is simple enough; when you are making your own rules, you can call whatever you want a kind (or not a kind, as the case often is). So each Creationist source does their own “Created Kinds Mathematics”. This problem has gone by the wayside recently, somewhat, in that people are all just leaning on the math provided by Answers in Genesis (Google search: How many boxcars could the ark hold? [You might think that is arbitrary, but you will get thousands of claimants stating objectively that it could hold 569 boxcars]), so 8000 is migrating towards the generally accepted number, but even in today’s age, anyone who tries to do their own math ends up with an arbitrary number. Even though it is a number that is researched, in great depth, by Baraminologists. Oh, you’ve never heard of Baraminology? I would try to link to a respectable dictionary that contains the word, but it is largely unlisted. The definition supplied by http://yourdictionary.com (A wiki dictionary, which means its definitions are supplied not by scholars, but by end users) is as follows:

baraminology

Noun(uncountable)

  1. The classification of organisms based on the Biblical doctrine of Special Creation done mainly by Creationists; the study of the created kinds.

So they made up an entire branch of science to basically count the number of animals on Noah’s ark… And even then, can’t fully agree on the math. I’ll let you chew on that one for a while.

Now, to my second point regarding “kinds” mathematics is that it is considered accepted… Ugh… It hurts me to write this sentence, even as a description of someone else’s beliefs… Alright. Deep breath. Starting over. It is considered generally accepted fact that dinosaurs were on the ark by YECs (and, specifically, AIG). They have reasoned, though, that God sent baby dinosaurs, as (direct quote, copied and pasted) “Even the largest dinosaurs were relatively small when only a few years old.” And now it is my turn to “You weren’t there.” This example, though, does point out the truly fundamental flaw in all of this: They (in their heads) already have the answer they are looking for, they just need to show their work. Oh, fully grown animals wouldn’t have fit? Then we use babies. The math works now!

So I am going to levy their own refrain against them; where’s the evidence?

Through all of this, I have to read that, in only 4,000 years, 16000 animals of 8000 species have created the biodiversity and populations we see today. WITHOUT THE BENEFIT OF EVOLUTION. Every bird, reptile, amphibian, cow, cat, dog, moose, deer, every sheep, gopher, squirrel, (presumably) every insect, arachnid… They can all (somehow) trace their roots back to 8,000 species, and a population of 16,000. If you want to include humans in there, you have 8 humans who have birthed every race (Race, as a word, is racist, as Creation Today so lovingly informed me. Just so you know, we can’t call them races)… So, sorry for my racism. Every “people group” came from those 8, within the last 4,000 years. To add to that, they came to their current living space through migrations from Mount Ararat, again in the last 4,000 years. Effectively–and this is important–according to YECs, everything on the Earth is under 4,000 years old.

I am guessing they had some kind of seed saving mechanism, too, as I can’t figure how trees would survive the flood. In any case, I did a search for “Tree” or “Trees” in the Answers in Genesis article, and came back with nothing. Never mind the fact that tree ring counting allows us to trace trees back further than the age of the Earth (Read: 6,000 years), we can ignore that for now. They have expertly dodged the tree ring counting by stating “you weren’t there” and following it with “How are you to know that trees have ALWAYS grown one ring per year? What if, pre-flood, the seasons were much faster and they grew XX rings per year?!” They use the same logic for Antarctic ice layers, for which we can count into the tens of thousands of years easily. “Something, something, compacted freeze/thaw season.”

Again, we come up with “We know the answer, so we craft the data to fit.” Creation Today (I believe it was a scientist they were interviewing, though I cannot recall the exact episode) stated that, during the flood, radioactive decay was hyper-accelerated. I chose that wording, they would not have used such terminology — it would have confused too many people. Long story short, they say, all element-based dating methods (lead, carbon, uranium, etc) are effectively worthless because during the flood, the half-life of these elements was changed drastically by a factor of we have no idea so you can’t prove us wrong! Funny how that is.

What’s the point of all of this? Well, this is my stream of consciousness, I just wrote this down as it came to me. I have done some research, to be fair, so I have a solid starting point — but by reasoning through this and asking questions, I feel like any fair minded individual would come to the conclusion that forcing all of the math to fit an answer that has no apriori evidence is disingenuous, at best. The worst part is that the counter argument is “We totally did the science,” while supplying very little (to nothing) that would actually count as science at the best of times. If you read through the linked Answers in Genesis article, for example, you will see a host of fuzzy math or statements without proof. They state that they know the diet of the dinosaurs, and what they would eat on the Ark (Because… Because they were there? And we weren’t…?).

Now, we can move on to more claims they make as to the engineering of the ark. Again, from the AIG page linked, they reason that “Since Noah was over 500 years old, it would make sense that he would had the knowledge to build automatic feeding and water systems.” That claim in itself is so absurd on so many levels, I barely know where to start. Never mind the fact that we are now assuming he, of course, would have (clearly) come across advanced knowledge of engineering. He built the ark (in some 75 years, AIG reasons, which would have been easily possible since he was over 500. The blink of an eye!), therefore he knew all of the engineering required to work every system in it. A natural conclusion. Go and ask a modern shipwright if they could, given their knowledge, build an entire ship. You can give him 3 helpers (as Noah had three sons, and one assumes his sons’ wives did not do the heavy carpentry), but the workers are young and inexperienced. And you don’t get any tools, other than what you can manufacture yourself, that part is important (sort of. I think they’d fail even without this handicap, but the full picture is a better illustration). Check back in 10 years and see what they’ve come up with. It’s ok, I’ll wait. You can come back and read once you are done that experiment.

So why did I open this whole post by talking about Evolutionists? Well, that wraps around to how everything in the YEC worldview wraps so tightly around Noah’s Ark. God could have created a frajillion different species of animals before the flood, and only saved 8,000 kinds, so the “math” of evolution has to start after Noah’s Ark. That is why it is so easy for YECs to discount evolution; how could a “slow and gradual” process that only started 4,000 years ago create what we see today?

It all boils down to the fact that, no matter the evidence presented (YEC geologists… Now there’s an interesting bunch of people) regarding the age of the Earth, many will never recant on an Earth that is 6,000 years old and, for all practical calculations, only 4,000 years old.

You know what that means? Ignore everything you just read and stick with the advice that was given me years ago, “Don’t argue with a rock, you just look silly.”

And then, when we all stop fighting, YECs will TRUMPET TO THE HEAVENS that they won the debate, because the non-YECs stopped fighting.

“Well, Chad, why don’t you just ignore the YECs, then?” Oh, you play a dangerous game, reader. The deadliest game. Currently in the States, for example, YECs in government are pushing for Creation (sorry, sorry, sorry… Intelligent design, the… The “Science” of Creation) to be taught in schools across the nation. If we stop fighting, if we roll over and ignore them, they will grow. It’s sometimes been said that to ignore the vocal minority is to invite peace, but I have to look at it another way. To ignore the vocal minority is to invite the silent many to believe that is the company they must keep. The vocal minority and the silent majority then begin to overlap. As moss over a tree, it creeps until all you can see is moss. It is dangerous to just let that happen.

I may be arguing with a rock, but this battle is not about winning. I know I won’t win, and I know we won’t win, not in this generation. I believe the war will end in time, a war of information and education and thought, but it won’t be now. To me, I just feel like I need to remind the world that the battle is happening, because many of my close friends and family had no idea that Creation in the Classroom was a thing. The World is won or lost through information, so here I am. Information.

I Really Ought to Mention…

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I think 66% of the stuff on this blog is religious in nature, so I would be remiss if I did not mention one person who has had a huge influence on my religious leanings.

http://www.c-span.org/video/?319745-1%2Fdepth-reza-aslan

That is a very lengthy interview with Reza Azlan, a religious historian who has written books on Islam and on Christianity. He is incredibly well spoken, and is worth a watch (and definitely worth reading his books) if you are interested in Religious History. He also speaks about contemporary religion today, and his views are very eloquently stated. If all religious people were as full of understanding and spirituality as this man, there would be no war, and we’d all be friends forever.

On (More) People Slightly Crazier Than Me

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Young Earth Creationists (YEC from here on in) make me so sad for the state of humanity, but not even for the reasons you might be thinking.

I do a lot of research on a wide variety of topics, and often I will watch or listen to YEC videos or podcasts. I used to do it because they are funny to me (hahaha, these guys know less about science than a 7th grader! [that kind of thing]), but lately I can’t laugh at them any more. Their disingenuous attitude towards those that don’t share their view is dangerous.

Their vacuous arguments are cruel, and I would say they may even violate many tenets of the Bible (I am aware that the more literally you take the Bible, the more laws of the Bible you are breaking just because many are, as a technicality, impossible to follow since they contradict each other — but for the sake of fair play, I will say they are [as a general rule] following their own religious doctrine). They lie, or change evidence to fit their goals. They engage in ad hominem attacks on scientists. They ignore evidence that disagrees with them, and praise evidence that can be used for their side (even if they have to remove context, change the wording, lie about the source of the data, or just straight up bend it until the square evidence fits into the circular theory [SEE WHAT I DID THERE?! HAHAHA! Jokes!]).

I could forgive them for cherry picking evidence if they weren’t so cruel about it. One of my favorite YEC podcasts is Creation Today (www.creationtoday.org)
I enjoyed their videos until the Bill Nye vs Ken Ham debate. After that debate, they spent two full episodes discrediting, berating, and making fun of Bill Nye. If your message of love, peace, and acceptance has to come at the expense of someone, if you can’t say you can love Bill Nye, then how does your message work? “We love and accept EVERYONE! Except those that we don’t, whom we list here, as well as any sins we could dig up over the course of their entire life!”

I have no problem with Christianity, when it does not hurt those around it. Many people have found solace, solidarity, and happiness in the embrace of God. I would never want to take that from them. But as soon as you use your religion to actively exclude or harm another person or group of people, I think you have gone astray. I think Ken Ham, Eric Hovind, and his ilk have officially tripped the line from scientifically ignorant (not an insult; they just don’t know, and that is [for the most part] ok) to actively harmful.

I am not here to campaign against them. Or maybe I am. The hashtags I am going to use are kind of inflammatory, I won’t lie. But still.

I will leave you with this last bit of bad science that did actually make me laugh. Reading the body language of the lecturer, one notes that he doesn’t even seem comfortable with his own message — it does take a bit of intellectual dishonesty to get a PhD in a scientific field, then ignore all of the science in that field. Perhaps he has not gotten over his conscience just yet.

https://answersingenesis.org/media/video/science/ice-age-bible-explains/

‪#‎YEC‬ and ‪#‎CreationToday‬ ‪#‎AreKindOfAssholes‬
‪#‎ReadTheNewTestament‬
‪#‎ReadTheWholeOldTestament‬
Once you’ve read both, and decided that the Bible is perfect and consistent and without contradiction, get back to me. If you still believe that there are no faults in that book, go read it again. Please.

Answers in Genesis
Creation Today
Why do you have to denigrate others to argue your side?

Return to Sender (Please?)

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Often times, it is said by young earth creationists that you can tell a watch is made by a designer, it has a clear purpose. It tells time, with mechanisms made for the purpose. They apply this to humans, too. That we are designed, have a purpose, have mechanisms that are designed to keep us alive. Let’s compare a human to a watch, then.

The human appendix does not serve a valuable function (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermiform_appendix), yet it can explode, burst, or otherwise kill the human it exists in. This would be akin to a hand on the watch that serves no purpose, but occasionally jams the other hands on the watch.
The human eye is backwards in function, and has a blind spot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_eye). This would be akin to the watch band being put upside down so the face is against your skin. Not only that, but part of the face is opaque, so you can’t see what time it is if the hands are there. You can guess, and be close, just like the blind spot, but you won’t know until the hands aren’t there any more.

Now, you might say, God created us in his image. Let’s ignore the fact that this implies God is flawed, and move on. Why did he give us broken eyes? Installed backwards, upside down, with blind spots? You might think, we have the best eyes there can be… But you’d be wrong, and I can prove that.

The cephalopod eye (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_eye) has no blind spot. Why didn’t God give me an eye with no blind spot? That can see under water? In the dark? Why did he give the best eyes to squids?

I could go on for next to infinity, but I’ll stop here. So what would you do if you found a watch with a blind spot, upside down, with a hand that does nothing but get in the way of the other hands? You’d return that watch, because it is awful.

So where do I go to return my broken body? My terribly designed body? Why won’t the watch maker give me a refund, or a working watch? You suck, watch maker. You suck so much.

If there was no watch maker, there is no vendor to return to… And that is why I feel the watch maker is absent my life.

Have a great day, and sorry to have made your day a little worse.

I Wrote This While Deleriously Tired…

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So here’s a question I have… Why is it that so many ex-Christians that I know, personally, have such a deep knowledge of the Bible? Why do so many of them have a deeper knowledge of the Bible than so many of my currently Christian friends?
Most Christians I know can pull at the big picture of the Bible, but that isn’t entirely fair, is it? During my religious Searching (I’d say a capital ‘s’ is warranted there), I find so many quotes in major parts of the Bible that should change the big picture, but you would never see them in the “Children’s Bible.” That being said, why does it seem that so many people know only about as much about the Bible that one would find in the “Children’s Bible”?

I am not an Atheist, or a Christian, I am just a seeker. I want to find the Truth. Will I ever find it? No, I don’t believe anyone ever finds the Truth with a capital T. They can find what they believe to be the Truth, sure, I won’t deny that.

But that’s the point. Why do we argue, and fight, and kill, in the name of something that is truly, absolutely, unprovable? Why is it so hard for so many to follow the pillar of their own religion (The Golden Rule, for Christians). When Jesus came upon an adulteress, what was his response? Even if you aren’t Christian, you probably just thought about how he did not cast a stone. He did not condemn her. And yet today, in what is called the Bible Belt, homosexuality is being condemned, and people are being persecuted daily, and often in the name of religion.

Richard Dawkins related, in his book The God Delusion (definitely strongly atheist leaning, but I read from both sides), that the most terrible hate mail he receives is often from people professing to be strong Christians. He receives death threats in the name of God.

Does that sound Biblical? Sure, they may be a small minority, but from whence comes their vitriolic hatred? How do we find the root of this weed, and pluck it out?

People who read and understand the Bible, who stand on the principles of love and justice for all, I love you all. People who pick very short passages, often a single out of context verse, to justify your hatreds, I hate you. I am not going to say I am holier than thou, I am not going to say I follow the Bible to the letter. I am not fettered by the trappings of a single book. I will hate those who cause suffering to others, no matter their creed. Christian, Atheist, Muslim, Agnostic, Buddhist (if you hate people, you are probably doing it wrong), doesn’t matter.

And yet, if you love others, and try to remove suffering from the world instead of bringing it in, whether you are Christian, Muslim, Atheist, Agnostic, Buddhist, then I will return that kindness.

If you are cruel to me, if your hatred tries to touch my own personal soul? I may hate you, but I will respond only with kindness. All humans deserve that.

I think that’s the point I was trying to get across with this whole thing. Be nice to everyone. If you aren’t nice, I will still be nice back to you — but I don’t have to like it.

This was really rambling. I am rereading it and I realize that this post probably makes less sense than a Rube-Goldberg machine made purely of cooked pasta. I am sick, and my brain isn’t working. Don’t care. Gonna post.

Such Persuasive. So Convince. Wow.

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Good morning, friends! I have come to share with you the Good News of Harry Potter and the Hogwarts School of Prayer and Miracles (https://m.fanfiction.net/s/10644439/1/)

I know my word is probably not worth investigating this masterpiece, so please allow me to share with you some choice excerpts!

-It’s a good thing Hagrid had saved this child’s soul when he did. With two guardians who were no Christian raising him… If Hagrid had come five years later, Harry would have been a fornicating, drug-addled evolutionist!

-“Hello, little one. I am the Reverend Albus Dumbledore, and this is my wife, Minerva!”

-Truly, Minerva is a Proverbs 31 wife!

-“Huffepuffs believe in certain parts of the Bible, but not the parts against fornication, drinking, and socialism. We seem nice and tolerant as long as you agree with us!”

-“Luna thinks she can have a career even though she’s a woman, and women are stupid,” said Draco Malfoy.
“Women shouldn’t not have careers because they are stupid! Women should not have careers because their gifts serve them best in the home!” Harry shouted indignantly.

-Ravenclaws believe that women are inferior to men. Draco Malfoy is a Ravenclaw, and all Ravenclaws should become good, Bible reading Gryffindors!

-(Ed. Note: In this fic, Hermione is Dumbledore’s daughter) “My father says that dark times are coming,” Hermione spoke worriedly. “There is a man named Voldemort who wants to destroy everything we stand for! He is pushing an agenda in Congress which will stop us from practicing our faith freely!”
“It will be alright,” Harry reassured her manfully (Ed. note: Yes. Manfully.). “We will just need to pray really, really hard!”

-“You should become a Ravenclaw! We are the best!” said Malfoy.
“No, Ravenclaws are the most HATEFUL!” Harry said cleverly (Ed. note: SO CLEVER RIGHT NOW!)
WELL?! Is your soul not saved yet?!