Lesson 6: Truth

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This is the final major lesson in the “Beginnings” course for Young Earth Creationism. There is a sub-lesson called “Resources and fun facts”, and if it delivers I’ll probably write something about what can be classified as a “fun fact” to YECs.

Anyway, onto the questions!

Question One: Can science give us absolute truth? Why or why not?

Their Answer: Science is inductive and therefore cannot give us absolute truth. It can only make educated guesses based on the circumstantial evidence and clues, but it can never give absolute certainty. The Bible, however, provides the complete story, giving us the key to sorting out the clues.

My Answer: I will agree that science is inductive, and cannot provide an answer that could be called “absolute truth.” The problem is, while we will look at one thousand pieces of evidence, and eventually come up with an educated guess as to what will fit, you have accepted as “absolute truth” a book that a man told you was dictated by a voice he heard one day.

I cannot wrap my heard around how The Bible is accepted so fully by some people as to believe that every word in it is absolutely true, devoid of errors, and more believable than anything science can come up with. The thing is, many moderate Christians accept that the Bible was written by man and prone to error, but what is it that causes someone to accept it despite so much evidence to the contrary?

Question Two: How should the vastness of creation affect us?

Their Answer: It should show us how small we are, and how big and amazing God is, thus leading us to glorify and serve Him.

My Answer: It should show us how small we are, and how big and amazing the universe is, thus leading us to study it and understand more about our place in the cosmos.

Question Three: If God made this world, He is the Ruler and Judge of all the earth. What is the only way we can be reconciled to Him, after having been found guilty of breaking His law?

Their Answer: Repentance and trust in Christ are required for salvation. We have sinned against God and only after we turn from our sin and put our full faith in Christ for our salvation will we be born again.

My Answer: Maybe I can’t fully related to the question, but when my dogs do something that very much displeases me, I give them a short punishment. When they do something that pleases me, I give them a treat. The punishment or reward are temporary, and I’d like the think the reward or punishment fit the behaviour. Not only that, but when my dog dies, I do not judge all of the behaviours they showed during their life, and either punish or reward them eternally based on that.

Maybe I am too forgiving. Maybe the husband who beats his wife is closer in mind to how God handles judgement than I am. In any case, I am sure I won’t know until I die.

No matter which way the afterlife ends up swinging, though, I am sure I will be surprised.

That’s it for the questions. 

In the application section for this lesson, they say that if evolution is true, there is no purpose to life. I think I just had a revelation of my own; certainly it hadn’t occurred to me before, though now it seems so obvious. I believe strongly in evolution, and I do not know if there is or is not a God; by the logic presented, there should be no purpose to my life. As I’ve said before, my personal purpose is to bring more happiness into the world than I take out of it.

I found that purpose on my own.

Perhaps the problem so many YECs have is that they are unable to find their own purpose, and thus their own purpose HAS to be told to them. The reason that Christianity works so easily for them is that they are told explicitly what their purpose is; it is to glorify their God. I am sure that says something about their psychological profile, and I don’t even think it is negative (honestly, the world does need people content to follow; not everyone can be the boss; there’d be no one to be the boss of). That being said, the appeal was never there for me.

Ironically enough, they stress the importance of keeping the idea of God in perspective. And then clarify that proper perspective is to blow your perspective out of the water. The observable universe, all that is seen in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (my favorite photograph of all time), times 2,000,000, fits in the span of his hand (because a single verse in the Old Testament said so).

If, as they say so frequently, God created all things solely for His own glory, then why’d he make it so that the majority of the conscious beings living in it are ignorant of His existence? I am sure it would take all the effort of my passing gas for him to merely whisper in the ear of every person alive today, and all would convert as the spirit moved them. Of course, to allow us to exercise our own free will, we would still be able to reject what we heard… But we would all have heard it.

The Challenge asks me to share the information from this course with everyone I know, with my acquaintances, friends, and family. Oddly, I expect I have used this information in a way they did not intend… But I am just a bad person that way.

And no one was surprised.

The Personality of Gods

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The height of moral perfection, the leaders of our lives, omnipresent for as long as we have had language, gods (or God) have ruled over the lives of humans. Now that we are able to look back into our storied past at what we now call mythology, but what for hundreds or thousands of years was called religion, we have the ability to uniquely criticize our own roots. It is an odd exercise, and one which paints a very interesting picture of religions even today.

Greek mythology was recently summarized thus.

Zeus, created by man, written to be the god of the gods, could have been a paragon of virtue. Instead, he was pictured as a drunken, chauvinistic, lecherous mess of a being. From the infinite set of human traits, the highest of all beings in Greek mythology bore some of the worst that could be given him.

The funny thing is that this religion was considered so solid, it was picked up by the Romans. They had to integrate the names, of course, but even so, the god of gods, Jupiter, maintained his lecherous, hedonistic lifestyle.

He was a mythological celebrity, and the tales of his excesses would hardly be out of place in a modern day tabloid (Pictures of Zeus exiting a limo and flashing his junk? I’d imagine those would be so frequent that even tabloids would just pass them up).

I could mention Norse mythology, of course, as its gods were lovers of war and violence. Odin is an interesting case study, taking on so many personality traits that it is often said his personality is unknowable, as knowing his true personality, it was said further, is to know his true weakness. That out of the way, he is tied to madness, to battle, but also to knowledge, prophecy, mystery…. He was also the god of wandering, which would be a chief belief among such a nomadic people as the vikings.

There is something odd here, often overlooked, in that deities (while taking on some of the worst traits of humankind) often take on so many traits that their personalities are a mess that doesn’t make sense. I am far less knowledgeable in Egyptian mythology, but I know early mythology and late mythology are at odds with each other in strange ways. They simply merged gods together, and the same event was credited to many gods or goddesses independently (rather than cooperatively).

That is a very short summary of the oddness of gods in mythology, but let us pass through the veil into the modern world of religion, and see if we can find any odd personality quirks.

I’ll try to do this chronologically, but for those who have studied religious history, you will understand that this is difficult to do. That being said, my focus will be on the God of Abraham and His three sects; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

In the Beginning, as the book of Genesis famously begins, God created the heavens and the earth.

Among such things as are attributed to God is omniscience; he knows what was, what is, and what will be; ignoring the questions this raises as to the nature of free will, we can see something odd from the very beginning.

Not too long after the creation of Adam and Eve (which itself is more complicated than many Christians would have you believe), Eve ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil. Further, she convinced Adam to do the same. By this act of treason, this act of defiance, Sin and Death entered the world. Regardless of which of the three primary Abrahamic traditions you follow, you believe that this original sin has condemned (to varying degrees) all humans to the Pit. This was, if you are Christian, a temporary condition remedied by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. If you are Jewish or Muslim, there is atonement in the hereafter before you enter into the light of Heaven and the presence of God. Forgive me for preaching a history lesson, this is all very important to the overall point, and I would like to make clear where I am coming from.

Of course, as has become rather public lately, martyrdom is one way for Muslims to queue-jump, and enter directly from this life into the presence of God (Though there is a passage in the Qur’an that says you should not destroy yourself, so it may be that suicide bombers have inadvertently made a mistake for which they will pay for all eternity).

Ok, so we have Adam and Eve, original Sin, and untold generations of humans condemned to the Pit. Why?

Because Adam and Eve defied God.

This story is odd to me, since God knew the heart and soul of Adam and Eve before they even existed, and by knowing all things to come, He knew they would eat of the tree. Since He knew they would do this, He knew that they would go to the Pit.

He created the Pit, mind. That is important, too. Not only did he create Adam and Eve knowing they would suffer for an eternity for defying him, he created HUMANKIND knowing that ALL people would suffer the pit, before ever creating Adam and Eve.

Is that not odd to you? “I love this dog more than all others, but before he has even been trained, I have to let you know that I will kill him if he ever pees on my carpet. Oh, he peed on my carpet. Well, I will breed this dog, allow him to die, then take his puppies, breed them, then spend the rest of eternity torturing them. BOY I LOVE DOGS SO MUCH!”

That is only the beginning, though. Our God is a Jealous God (a more famous line would be difficult to find), he is wrathful, quick to anger. He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, millions of people gone, millions of his own beloved creations, because he didn’t like the way they acted. He saved but one, though for good measure He killed Lot’s wife. Lot, the man who was righteous in the eyes of God, then became drunk off his ass repeatedly, and had sex with his daughters. We have here, friends, a God who is a great judge of character. Nevermind that when the people of Sodom wanted to rape a pair of angels living temporarily in the city, Lot said “No, don’t rape the angels. Here’s my daughter. She’s a virgin. Go nuts.”

This is the only man God found to be righteous in all of Sodom.

Let’s move on, out of the book of Genesis. In Exodus, of course, God killed a huge number of people, but he was really only getting started. “I don’t like the Pharaoh,” God tells Moses, “So I will strike down the first born male of all of Egypt.”

The God who knows the hearts and minds of all men saved the Jewish people from bondage, but killed the first born male of every family in Egypt. Were they a social justice warrior of their day? Did they fight against the cruel conditions put upon the salves of Egypt? Doesn’t matter; your ruler, whom you have no control over, made God mad, and now we have killing to do.

We now, from this saga, gain the ten commandments. The fifth commandment is thou shalt not kill.

Reading the Old Testament, we find that God kills an estimated 2,476,633 people EXPLICITLY. This does not count the populations of Sodom and Gomorrah, nor does it count Noah’s Flood. The God who knows the hearts and minds of all of the people saved only eight from His wrath, and four were related by blood.

This is the God of deepest love.

This also does not fully account for the fact that in the book of Judges, God orders (on more than one occasion) the murder of countless people. Not just people in the general sense, he is pretty explicit; He orders the murder of the men, the women, and the children; and their oxen, and their crops, and their belongings (except the gold and silver; you should keep the gold and silver), so that no trace of them ever having BEEN remains here. The book of Judges, please recall, takes place AFTER God thought that Thou Shalt Not Kill was worth a place in his list of SIX moral tenets. SIX! That is the total number of things you aren’t allowed to do. “But Chad, there were TEN commandments. Duh.”

Right. The top four were “No carven images, worship me and no other, don’t use my name as a swearword, and don’t work on the Sabbath day.” At best, those can be said to be good in keeping with his Word, but they certainly do not count as moral teachings. They have nothing to do with morals. So we have six rules God created for morality. And, as many a historian has made note, the Ten Commandments are the ONLY words that are supposed to have been written by God Himself. The rest are by divine inspiration.

Do we have a picture of God’s personality, yet? I think we have a vague outline, but let’s move forward a little.

I will gloss over the rest of the Old Testament and many other pieces of weirdness. (Okokok, I have to mention one. A man of God went to the Philistines and proposed to his girlfriend using an engagement gift of…

Wait for it…

Two hundred foreskins. Yup, that deserves a place in the Bible, friends. I am not sure what I am supposed to learn here, but men inspired of God thought it an important enough story to include. The funny thing? SHE ONLY ASKED FOR 100 FORESKINS! Don’t believe me? Read 1 Samuel, Chapter 18. That story always makes me chuckle.)

So we move from purely Jewish words now, into the age of Christianity. It is important to note that even in its current form, Christianity decided that the God of the Old Testament was definitely worth believing in. But now we have Jesus, the pacifist, the moral teacher, the Rabbi, the Son of God.

To recall a famous quote “I must punish you for the Sin I knew you would commit, then I will redeem that sin by sacrificing myself to myself, because I could forgive you no other way.”

But even then, it would hardly have been believable that the God of the Old Testament would be one to preach love and tolerance of all, so we have introduced a new character. To this point, I would recommend you read the book “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth” by Reza Aslan. He can say more than me, and much better. Long story short, Jesus may not have been what we recall in the Bible. At the very least, there are certainly parts of the Bible we can disprove factually.

But now we have a God who loves and tolerates all people. How odd, from the God of the Old Testament, who periodically purged just about anything or anyone who looked at him funny. He purged everyone in the whole world at one point, condemning billions (I am using YEC numbers, since they are generally the only group who takes the story literally, and puts serious thought into it) to HELL. He created them, and he sent them to hell, and that’s ok, because it is ok for a creator to judge his creation (seriously, they say that). By that logic, should it be ok for me to beat my dogs? My cats? My children? Certainly, in the Old Testament, beating your children was considered not just justified, but actually important for their upbringing. It is the book of Proverbs, a book of the Old Testament, that made famous “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”

Do we have a clear picture of God’s personality, yet? To me, it looks like the canvas was half finished, erased sloppily, then repainted. The picture is actually less clear than it was about a thousand words ago.

Also, is it not odd that even the people closest to the heart of Christianity had no idea what the religion was about when it was first created? I can’t really blame them, with a God who appears dangerously bipolar. I am comfortable saying it; this is the God who commanded the killing of women and children and animals, but ALSO commands that we are to treat all equally, help the poor, and love all.

In any case, Paul (I am going to say he did more for Christianity than Jesus did, and those who look deeply into religious history will likely agree) disagreed with James the brother of Jesus (I’ve talked about it before, but it deserves a place here). Was God here to save all people, or just save those who already worshipped God? Paul will say all should be converted, James would say Jesus came to call the flock (read: the Jewish people) back to the God of their ancestors.

Again, we have two directly conflicting opinions on the personality of our God.

Let’s move forward again, and we end up in the palace of Islam. While they certainly are an Abrahamic religion (One cannot read the Qur’an without having first read the Bible. I do mean that literally; the Qur’an frequently references the Bible), they have many core disagreements with Christianity. In fact, the God of Islam is very much reminiscent of the God of the Book of Judges. The interesting thing, of course, is that this God still recalls his flock; Muslims are commanded, both by the Qur’an and Hadith, as well as by a scrip dictated by the Prophet himself (Muhammed), to protect the Christians and Jews wherever they find them. Not tolerate, not kill, not wipe, but to protect and cherish. But what about those not of the flock (People of the Book, as they are called in the Qur’an)?

They are to be cut down, wherever you may find them. Killed, converted, or wiped out. Apostates (those who were Muslim but have renounced their faith) are to be killed quickly, without thought or mercy. Now we are talking Old Testament! Now we have a God that we recognize from a previous age!

But now the canvas is all muddied again. A God who is jealous, wrathful, loving, kind, merciful (THAT FLOOD WAS SO MERCIFUL, GUYS!), peaceful, but quick to war.

This, the height of morality and love, the greatest of all Gods (certainly, more worship this God, between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, than any other God that came before)… The God we look to for true justice, for help in tough times, is a dangerously bipolar sociopath?

If we look back on the gods of history, and compare them to the prevalent God of today, we find many common themes. We can’t decide on His personality. We can’t decide what He wants.

Perhaps God, the God of the Bible is real. I don’t know, He could be. But if He isn’t, what does that say about humankind?

It says that we WANT to worship a God who is unstable, bipolar, hedonistic, misogynistic, hateful, jealous, wrathful, vengeful… So if we step outside of religion, what do most people worship today? Well, that is clear enough; celebrities. Today, celebrities are often all of these things. When a celebrity has a meltdown, everyone is totally on board. Everyone loves it (even if they don’t love *it*).

That’s right. When society creates something PERFECT to worship, they just take whatever their current celebrities look like, turn the dial up to 12, and there we have it.

We never wanted a moral compass. We wanted someone to tell us what to do, and we wanted someone to tell us what we are doing already is ok. In our gods, in our God, I think we have always had that. In our gods, we have created that, and told ourselves this is what is perfect.

And this dangerous thought… I think it really should make you think.

But that’s just me.

Lesson 5: Fact vs Faith

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Oh man, this one was more deeply offensive to me than any of the previous. Not offensive in the general sense; most would find it just silly, but to me it is just… Unreasonable.

If the title didn’t give it away, the whole point of this lesson was for them to get on a podium and tell anyone who would listen that evolution is a religion that is far less likely than Christianity. But you know what? I don’t even have to rail against it. The discussion questions will give you a clear picture.

Question One: Where does the geologic column exist?

Their Answer: It only exists in the textbook. It is never found in the geologic record, because it is faith-based. It is not fact .

My Answer: Sweet Zombie Jesus, typing their answer out gave me finger cancer. That combination of words should not exist, and here I am duplicating them just for my blog. How awful is that?

Right, onto making good words. Oddly, the Geologic Column is a set of words most frequently utilized by YECs. To make it better, if you search “Geologic Column” and no other words, the first response is the ICR (Institute for Creation Research, whom I’ve referenced before). Now why might that be? Because Geologic Column is a misnomer, and is not used in general science. It has been replaced by the far more accurate Geologic Time Scale. I think it is worth explaining the Geologic Column and Geologic Time Scale, so that I cannot be accused of academic cowardice.

It is difficult to find a place on the planet that has a nearly undisturbed barrier between the layers of the geologic record. The records can easily be disturbed by wind and rain over the course of millions of years, so when you find a clear, clean demarcation, it is a good place to study the properties of the rock above and below. When you find rock that is thousands of miles separated and yet contains the same properties (the same mineral content, the ash content) was likely laid down in as a result of a similar event. The break between the Cretaceous (Dinosaur Golden Age) and the Paleogene (DINOSAURS BE DEAD, YO) was created (likely) by the same event that caused the event that caused the VERY CREATIVELY named “Cretaceous-Paleogene Extinction Event”. Never let it be said that scientists are not creative, amirite?

Due to the fact that the face of the planet Earth is in constant flux (the continents, depending upon your point of reference, are either drifting apart or coming together), you will never find an unbroken column of stone that can be used to create some timeline we can take a photograph of, pretty-up, and then hand over to YECs to look at. Instead, we find a clean break in Australia, and a separate break in the Arctic, and a 40 mile crater in the Yucatan. When we put all of that information together, and calculate the size and speed of the object that created the crater, and the mass of the debris released… We can create a picture of the event that caused this, when it happened, and how wide the fallout was. In this case, it was 66 million years ago, had a global scale, and likely killed the vast majority of species on the face of the Earth. We assume this last part, about the extinction, because there are a huge number of fossils generated around that time (though we do admittedly have issues with dating fossils down to a specific year. I do not recall the exact margin for error, but I believe it’s somewhere between 1 and 4 percent).

The other thing is that I have drastically simplified the geologic dating logic. The reason (and this is my own personal guess) that so many YECs argue that the Geologic Column does not work as a method of dating is that they simply do not understand how complicated using rocks as dating methods is. It is not a simple process of observing how brown a rock is and then stating that we know the age of said rock.

Question Two: Evolution is based upon what two faulty assumptions?

Their Answer: Mutations change things for the better, and natural selection allows this change to become common among an entire population.

My Answer: To make the statement above without any sort of qualification makes it much easier for me to take it and make it sound silly.

First, they have argued that because they haven’t seen any positive mutations in their WHOLE LIFE (read: some 30-40 years, in the case of the speaker, and about 150 years in the case of the idea), then it can’t happen. For example, they state that a bug growing four wings is a worthless mutation, and would never survive (this is a specific example from the lesson itself). If four wings is a worthless mutation, I am confused about creatures like dragonflies (four active wings) or houseflies (two active, two inactive wings [the two inactive wings are used to stabilize the fly during flight, making it more maneuverable, to the dismay of many a swatter-wielding human]). That being said, just having four wings isn’t always a good thing, and doesn’t, by default, mean that a creature will survive. Evolution is complicated, and nature is a cold-hearted bitch. Humans will likely never catalogue one tenth of one percent of the species that nature has wiped from the face of Earth. We have a few hundred thousand species we even know about. You know what that means? That means even a new species can take its sweet-ass time coming about, and it means that in the trillions (quadrillions) of animals that are multicellular (let’s not even try to put a number  on bacteria, as even science only has educated guesses), a one in ten billion event would be common. One in One Hundred Billion? We’d see several of those in a year. One in a trillion? Those might start to get rare (only a few per year). One in one hundred trillion? Now we’re talking in evolutionary numbers.

To quote an older scientific paper (1998), “Events that would occur once in 10 billion years in the laboratory would occur every second in nature.” Think about that, and keep it in mind for when someone tells you that “evolution could NEVER produce a positive mutation.”

Once our one in one hundred trillion (for clarity, 1:100,000,000,000,000 odds) happens, nature may kill it. The PERFECT mutation does not guarantee survival; how many creatures die before they even move? Then we wait again for our 1:100,000,000,000,000, and this time, it may survive, and it may breed, and it may protect its many children, who may further proliferate. Then we have something new.

That is the mechanism for evolution. If you ignore the very interesting, deep, and INCREDIBLY complicated science of determining the age of the Earth, even in 6000 years, evolution is happening before your eyes. Adaptation is just its bite-sized brother.

Question Three: How does natural selection work, and can it cause evolution?

Their Answer: Natural selection only selects what is already available. It does not create anything, and therefore, cannot cause anything to evolve. It only chooses features that already exist.

My Answer: Okay, getting tired of the slow balls, but if they are going to keep throwing them…

I’ll keep this one short and simple.

The common ancestor of EVERY BREED of dog currently alive is a precursor to the wolf. A gray, medium to large breed. Your chihuahua, your doberman, your St. Bernard, your Russian Bear Dog, your teacup poodle, those all came from the wolf. So you know what, keep telling me that natural selection cannot select for things that doe’t exist. Even Liberty University could show you with the Liberty University E. Coli Liberty University experiment, created and patented by Liberty University, that E. Coli can adapt to Liberty University experiments with traits that did not exist. That being said, even I will admit that Liberty University has not created a multicellular life form from Liberty University bacteria, but right now I only have to dispute your current statement.

Question Four: How does Satan use Evolutionism to rob humanity of its belief in God’s Word, and what effect does this have on society?

Their Answer: Evolutionism claims that we are merely an accident, and therefore there is no absolute right or wrong. If science has disproven the existence of a God, then we can do what we want. There is no foundation for morality if the Bible isn’t true.

My Answer: The Bible was neither the first nor the best moral code. The existence of a God as an absolute prerequisite for morality is disproven by the morality of adherents to numerous other theistic and non-theistic belief systems/religions.

Just because YOU want to murder someone (but don’t, ONLY because God) does NOT mean that the rest of us do.

The fact that you actively TRY to convince people that they would be murderous rapists without you should speak to a deep sociopathy that I find horribly disturbing. Why should I sign up for a belief system that tells me I am a murdering rapist?

Evolution, as I have discussed in two prior posts, lays a great deal of groundwork for morality. It also lays a great deal of groundwork for religion.

I am not asking anyone to abandon their religion as a result of what I say here, I am merely asking you to think about the less tenable parts of it.

That’s it for the questions. 

Sorry, this one got a little long. I guess it is because of the massive offensiveness of the whole lecture.

Please allow me to quote the first part of the “Application” section. “As Christians, we strive for truth.” As this is “truth” with a small ‘t’, and not “Truth” with a large ‘T’, I am comfortable stating that this is a lie. An out and out lie, at least on the part of the writer of this curriculum. They are not seeking the truth, they are seeking the Bible. I can’t say this is wrong, but when you absolutely and without question REJECT what we are able to PROVE is the truth about nature and the world, I am willing to say your beliefs are (in that sole case) WRONG.

The application section goes on further, stating “Public schools are teaching religious lies as fact.” Well, in places where Intelligent Design is in public school textbooks, I suppose I can agree with this statement. Does anyone find it ironic that we have to talk about the “Teach the Controversy Controversy”? Right.

Also, I am not saying that evolution has all of the answers correct; certainly not. You are right about one thing, Eric Hovind, the best we have are educated guesses… But the part you miss is that the guesses have to fit ALL of the given evidence. If a guess fails the test of all given evidence, then we have to look back and create a new set of ideas that fit the always growing evidence.

To wit; dinosaur soft tissue. YECs decided, INSTANTLY, without investigation, that this CLEARLY meant that dinosaurs lived recently. Scientists decided that they had to look into it more closely. What they found is that iron had bonded with portions of the tissue, preventing its decay. This was not known before 2013. Science is always learning, even recently.

“Do not leave unchallenged any absolute statements.” Well, lecture, I can certainly agree with that — though you may also want to define what qualifies as absolute statements. When you look closely at any science, you will see something akin to “p<0.01” or “+/-“. That means we are not making an absolute statement, as far as strict definitions go. We are merely making a statement that best fits the evidence.

“We should point out that evolution is supported… by faith. This then levels the playing field…” AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.

*GASP*

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

*GASP**TEAR*

PPFFFFFFAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. *cough cough*

I think that is the single most self-aware statement they have ever made. “In order for us to fight evolution, we need to bring them down to our level.”

And that, my friends, is why Richard Dawkins famously coined “If I were to debate you, it would look great on your [resume], but not so good on mine.”

The challenge section requests that you call your government representatives and tell them to keep the religion of evolution out of their text books (but, of course, Intelligent Design should be in the science text books). Right.

I’ll show myself out.

Lesson 4: Dinosaurs with Man

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Well, I gotta give it to this lesson. It is the first where I actually had to step back and check additional data. I had to study! If nothing else, I respect that.

Question One: Is Noah’s Flood supported by historical fact? What does this lead us to believe?

Their answer: Yes, about 200 flood legends exist among the world’s cultures, leading us to believe the Bible is absolutely accurate in its description of a global flood of God’s judgement.

My answer: They get so cranky when anyone else tries to make leaps in logic, but “Well, there are many flood legends, THEREFORE! Flood is fact.” Right. There are no other possible explanations. Never mind that there is evidence of settlements under water in Mesopotamia, and younger settlements above the water line. They had a catastrophic flood, but their legend means the Bible is correct.

In fact, the fact that floods have historically ruined lives and civilizations, or the fact that most civilizations have formed on flood plains due to their incredible fertility, that means nothing. Despite the fact that people living on flood plains means that floods are likely to be common, and things that are common form legends. In fact… Could… Could that lead to the flood legend in the Bible?

Nah, theirs is the one, true, only flood legend that has any basis in fact. The rest are clearly derivative.

Question two: Could some dinosaurs still exist today?

Their answer: Absolutely! Of course, the land dinosaurs would be much smaller, due to the change in atmospheric pressure [note: see lesson 3 discussion for additional info]. Any that still exist would only live in extremely remote regions such as deep waters and swamps. There are thousands of accounts of dinosaur sightings in modern history. After all, dinosaurs were on the ark, too!

My answer: There are Big Foot sightings, Loch Ness sightings, Chupacabra sightings, UFO sightings, and legends that span the length of breadth of the world. To take 100,000 local legends, sift through for the 1000 that fit your agenda, and call those factual? That is just intellectual dishonesty to an extreme degree. The odd thing is that these are supposed to be huge creatures, in legend. The Loch Ness monster(s) is/are supposed to be huge, but despite innumerable scientific surveys of the area, not to mention the massive amounts of tourism the legend has spawned, there are absolutely no reliable sightings. Funny how that is.

These legends of dinosaur sightings are just that; legends, tales, stories to be told around a campfire.

Do dinosaurs still exist today? Yes, of course they do. Alligators, crocodiles, birds, they are all the descendants of dinos.

Question three: Does the Bible mention dinosaurs in general, or even specifically?

Their answer: The Bible makes many references to dragons (dinosaurs), and even specifically mentions fiery, flying serpents (Isaiah 14:29; 30:6), Leviathan (Job 31), a fire breathing dragon, and Behemoth, a sauropod-like creature (Job 40).

My answer: Like any number of ancient books, there are mythical creatures. To say “Due to these three local mentions, two of which penned by the same hand, completely prove dinosaurs in the Bible,” is just… odd, to me. That’s like saying “I read Homer’s epics, and now I am going on a Minotaur hunt, once I find the golden fleece, but I’ll be careful to avoid the Sirens.”

People have written a lot of legends, but so very few have any historical basis. To say “Someone wrote it down, therefore truth,” is to open yourself to many absurd arguments. To wit, the YECs state that God says the Bible is the Word of God, therefore it is the Word of God. “The Bible is true because The Bible said so,” in other words. You know what, given the corrupted and fallen nature of humans, you are right. I can think of no reason a person would ever want to lie to make themselves sound better connected or more powerful.

No one has ever done that in all of history.

That being said, what about dragon legends worldwide? Well, I am sorry, but Chinese dragon legends don’t really jive with dinosaurs; their dragons are, at best, fantasy creatures.

In fact, most dinosaur legends in China aren’t dinosaur legends at all. Foot imprints in trails have been identified as dinosaur tracks, but the local legends tell that the tracks are not of giant reptiles but of giant birds. Huh.

So you are wrong, I guess? Since legends are fact now, there were giant birds in China recently.

End of Questions

In the application section of this chapter, they fall back on the age old defence. Do not require that the Bible be proven right, but have faith in the absence of proof.

The Challenge section again asks you to accost a young person and tell them that dinosaur sightings in the modern era prove that dinosaurs are still alive, and that this means the Bible is true.

I … I don’t connect the dots the same way.

Crossover, Prologue

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I’d been sitting alone in the interrogation room for hours at this point. The chair was hard and uncomfortable, the walls white and the light over bright. It was definitely not something I would consider enjoyable.

When I was sure no one was watching, I loosened the handcuffs that ran through a loop on the metal table. It was amazing how easy it had become, now, after I’d had some practice. A few months ago, I might have tightened the cuffs so much I’d leave the room with bruises around each wrist.

I was feeling through the one way mirror that dominated the wall to my left, but my range wasn’t good enough to tell who was all in the room. I could feel three people, but that was all the detail I could get. I was guessing that they were trying to come up with a strategy for dealing with me, but since they still had no idea what I could do I guessed that the conversation would end with uncomfortable silence. They knew I could do things they’d never seen before, but since they had no idea how, they didn’t know the limits. To be completely fair, neither did I.

The door clicked and swung open, admitting a middle aged man in street clothing holding a few sheets of paper, looking down at them as he walked over to the table and took a seat. I snapped my focus back from the room behind the mirror; the three people were likely watching us at this point. It amused me that this was all the information they had, as I probed the man who had just walked in. No metal on him, except the key to my handcuffs; well, they’re getting the right idea. Sort of.

“Amanda Simmons, born September 5, 1986. No criminal history, nothing out of the ordinary listed here in any of your school transcripts or records. I see you’ve worked at a few places here in the city, and even done some charity work. I won’t lie, I found that surprising enough that I followed up on it. Glowing references, seems they’d love to have you back.” The man set the sheets of paper on the table and looked up to make eye contact with me. He was smiling. It was an odd smile, not unkind, but seemed out of place given the situation.

My eyes slid out of focus as I felt his nervous system. Every twitch, every move of a muscle he made lit up like the flash of a camera. It helped me catch liars; it was something I had looked into while I was figuring out everything I could do. I read that, when being dishonest, most people made a large number of small, involuntary muscle movements. When I was focused on them, they were as clear to me as the sun on a bright summer’s day.

I couldn’t see even the slightest hint of dishonesty so far, but we were just getting started.

“I’m Detective Charles Sutherland. You can call me Charlie,” he continued after the brief silence. I refocused my eyes on him, but couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Right. Well,” he continued, and flipped the top two sheets of paper over to look at the third page. It showed a picture of me standing over the body of one of the others. “Given your history, I’m at a bit of a loss. We’ve got you on camera killing this guy,” he flipped another page. “Phil Isaacson. 34 years old, security guard working for various businesses down town. Near as we can tell, you two’ve never met before. His criminal record is as clean as yours. The odd thing is the guy was clearly built like a truck, but the footage from the security cameras shows you killing him without much of a fight. Now, I understand we like to think ‘innocent until proven guilty,’ but the video doesn’t exactly paint a picture of innocence.”

There was another silence as he looked back up at me. He seemed expectant, but I still didn’t really have anything to say. I did kill the guy, and I wasn’t in any position to deny it. Maybe this was the effect of watching too many movies and crime dramas, but I decided to say as little as possible. To be fair, what does one say? I knew the guy had to die, but right now my choices seemed limited to prison for staying silent, or a psychologist for the explanation.

I don’t know how long it will be until the human race learns about their fate, but I know that one woman who just killed a man was probably not going to qualify as a reliable messenger.

They all seemed so fragile. I knew it wasn’t my own thought, but that didn’t make it any less true.

The Detective’s eye flicked to the one way mirror for the briefest moment, then back to me. “How about we get those cuffs off? Can’t be comfortable sitting here like that for as long as you have been.” He stood up and pulled the key out of his jeans pocket. A few seconds later, both of my handcuffs had slipped off, and I leaned back in the chair, stretching my back slightly.

“Mind if I stand up to stretch?” My first words to the Detective were straight to the point, and nothing that revealed even the slightest bit of information. My–her training, coming to the fore.

“Be my guest,” the smile never left his face, but he crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair as I stood and did a full body stretch. God, that felt good.

I sat back down after a few seconds and met his eyes. I sent another light probe through his body; none of his muscles seemed tense. No fear there, though he had seen what I could do.

“This being recorded?”

“It doesn’t have to be,” he replied casually, still smiling, still leaning back in a relaxed pose. He turned his head to the mirror and nodded, then returned his attention to me.

Charlie seemed trustworthy, all things considered. Not like I had anything better to do at this point.

“All right,” I adjusted slightly, getting more comfortable in the chair. This would take a while, and I’d have to suppress her instincts. I knew she wasn’t going to let me talk without a fight. “Let me tell you a story.”

Lesson 3: It Was Good

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So unfortunately, part of the course is missing (For $20.00, I was expecting nothing but the best!) and I cannot get page 12 of the leader’s guide which contains discussion question one for this chapter.

To be fair, I get half of the discussion answer from question one, but even with that it makes little enough sense that I am afraid I can’t figure out what the question was supposed to be. In any case, I will put the answer as far as I am able to see it, and you can make up a question in your own head.

Question one: ???

Their Answer: Evolutionists and atheists do not like the idea of a Creator who can give them rules for their lives, has judged His creation in the past, and will do it again for their disobedience. Their problem is their sin, not their science.

My Answer: … … Kay.

Question two: How would a hydrospheric layer, a canopy, on top of Earth’s atmosphere affect living conditions on Earth?

Their Answer: Oxygen and pressure would be increased, allowing for global, tropical conditions, resulting in larger, healthier, more energetic life. This would make larger plants, men, reptiles (Dinosaurs), etc., explaining the evidence found in the fossil record.

My Answer: One thing that I found interesting in this lesson was how they explain from where the water for Noah’s flood came (though I am still unclear on where it went; I believe, if my cursory understanding YEC science holds, God just created more land. Or something.). There was, prior to the flood (they tell us) a Hydrosphere above all current layers of the atmosphere. The Hydrosphere increased atmospheric pressure, as it was actively exerting downward force on the current layers of the atmosphere. Now, this was not gaseous water, it is important to let you know this; it was liquid water. How was it floating there? I have no idea. If it was floating, how was the atmospheric pressure was supposed to be increased? If it was not floating, as by magic (God did it, of course), then it would have just crashed to the Earth in a crushing sheet.

In any case, we know what would happen with a higher Oxygen content atmosphere, you get larger animals. I am not familiar enough with prehistoric atmospheric conditions to tell you what the pressure would have been like. I could go look it up, but that is for later.

Question three: Who is responsible for suffering in the world?

Their Answer: Man. Man’s sin ruined God’s good creation.

My Answer: I agree that the suffering in the world is largely man’s fault, but I am not willing to say that the world was perfect before some arbitrary date in the past (the flood occurred during the year 2400 BC, give or take a dollar).

That’s it for the questions.

During the application section, they posit that evolution was created, specifically and wholesale, by Satan. Evolution, they say, was created for the WHOLE PURPOSE of leading men away from God, and has NOTHING to do with explaining nature. Of course.

Challenge for Lesson 3: Memorize Romans 5:12 (“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”) Then find someone, and quote this at them. Surely, this will prove to them where death came from and thus make them Christian! (Again, maybe a little paraphrasing).

It says that this is a masterfully insightful passage, and will show them that it is not God’s fault that life is a bitch. (Paraphrasing)

Lesson 2: How Old is it?

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Oh man, I actually had to step back and take a 15 minute breather after I watched lesson 2. They are willing to ignore so much science if it means that they can prove that the Earth fits their cosmological model. The best part, for them, is that they can use two different numbers (4400 years since the flood, 6000 years of human history), and anything that even partially correlates to these two numbers can be used to prove they are right. Doesn’t matter how much they have to ignore, so long as they have some correlation.

Anyway, I said I would be posting the discussion questions, not the course material. I apologize.

Question 1: How do limiting factors demonstrate a young Earth?

Their answer: Natural phenomena date back fairly recently, indicating that the earth’s age cannot be much older than 6000 years. (There seems to be a missing bit of text here, because I cannot make sense of it this next part) Otherwise, these phenomena would be much older, too. Other indicators, such as current population sizes, etc, as well as the complete absence of older phenomena, clearly confirm the Bible, which gave us a 4000 year history prior to Christ.

My answer: This isn’t a discussion question at all. This doesn’t ask me to affirm my faith, or talk about anything. They just present limited historical studies, ignore most historical studies, and tell me to move on. I suppose all that’s left is for me to talk about the “Facts” in their discussion answer (which are but a small snippet of what they present in the class). First, let’s look at human history. Ancient Egyptian history dates back to about 3100 BC, which doesn’t show the Earth as older than 6000 years, but it gets more interesting for them when you realize that their history continues unbroken through the flood.

Just throwin’ it out there. Unless Noah decided to preserve some Egyptian writings, I can’t see how that goes away. Or how about there.

How about Sumeria? Same thing, their written records go back to 3500BC, though they talk about having settled the area of Sumer prior to the appearance of writing. Even ignoring that, there is unbroken history that passes trough the period of Noah’s flood.

Cave paintings may not have been writing, but they go back into the tens of thousands of years. You may argue that our dating methods are flawed in this case, but whatever you happen to believe, a worldwide flood would have washed away these paintings, which exist almost exclusively in caves that are situated where the elements would not otherwise wash them away.

Their evidence for natural phenomena is incredibly limited, and basically ignores tree ring dating and ice layer dating, as far as this course is concerned, so I guess that is all I can say about that.

As far as population evidence, they assume a constant rate of growth, which is an odd thing. Looking at uncontacted tribes in the Amazon, for example, we see that their populations are completely static. If the growth of populations was completely uniform, as they (indefensibly) believe, would seem to indicate a world where there are equal numbers of every race of human (as you may recall, as of the year 2400BC, there were only 8 middle eastern tribesmen/women left alive on the Earth). They all had the exact same number of children, for the purposes of this math.

I think that covers their answer in the discussion section, though a book could be written to stand against what they presented in the course itself.

Question 2: Why does the establishment propagate lies such as the necessity of long ages for the formation of stalactites and stalagmites?

Their Answer: Much time is needed to afford the theory of evolution. Evoltuionism requires much more time than is evidenced. Examples such as “million-year-old” stactites are necessary to overcome the embarrassing limiting factors that disprove their faulty worldview.

My Answer: Again, they took a small sample of stalactites from areas local to the United States, and then applied them to all stalactites and stalagmites in the entire world. They did the same to petrification, of course (Look, this petrified pickle obviously proves that ALL petrification can happen in the shelflife of a pickle!). It isn’t even that evolution is some wide ranging science that every scientist clamors to prove, it is just that geology, chemistry, biology, they all seem to point to similar indications. I won’t say there are no flaws, no areas that could be “shored up” so to speak, with better information, but science is constantly growing, constantly learning. If I don’t have the answer today, I don’t believe that to mean I will never happen. In the 1980s, if you said you were looking for extrasolar planets, and perhaps even extrasolar life, they would have laughed you out of the conference. Now we have found over 1500 extrasolar planets, and are searching for factors that could indicate life. This is only 30 years later. That blows my mind, and I hope it blows yours, too!

Question 3: According to the dates given in the Bible, the earth is about 6000 years old. Evolutionists claim that it is billions of years old. How does this conflict affect the lost and the faith of believers?

Their answer: It casts doubt and unbelief in the minds of the lost and unbelievers. If they cannot trust Genesis, a book to which almost every other book in the Bible refers, and a book to which Jesus himself referred, stating, “In the beginning…” then how can they trust other parts of the Word of God?

My Answer: I believe that far too much stock is placed, by YECs, in the literal veracity of certain parts of the Bible, and to the odd exclusion of others. In various other posts in this blog, I have pointed out explicit, point for point contradictions in this “perfect” book.

I am not aiming to take faith away from the faithful, I am aiming to make people think about what they believe. If you believe in the literal, perfect Bible, I can prove your beliefs false. If you believe in a loving saviour, in Jesus the Christ, I do not want to prove your beliefs false. It is only when your beliefs work to the detriment of society that I have a problem, and many, if not most, believers in the Western world are far more moderate, and I respect their God, gods, and/or theologies (as much to the extent as one such as myself can).

That’s it for the questions, but one more thing:

In their “Application” section of the lesson, where they tell you why you MUST believe the things they have taught you, they state that “As the worldview of Evolutionism continues to permeate our educational system and society, crime, sin, disease, and evil continue to skyrocket”

I’ll just leave this here.

The Challenge for lesson two is to start an argument with someone who believes the world is over 6000 years old, and challenge them with cherry picked evidence for a young Earth, and hope they have a very loose grasp of history.

I.. Uhhh… May be paraphrasing a little.

Lesson 1: They are both religions

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As part of my ongoing quest to learn everything I can, I am now posting the discussion questions, and my answers, to the final paper in lesson 1 of my Young Earth Creationist course. Lesson 1 is titled “They are Both Religions”, and compares the faith required to accept religion to the faith required to accept evolution. That is a little bit of a misrepresentation; they accept micro evolution (which they term, staunchly, adaptation, for fear of the “e” word), so what this course really considers a religion is the idea of abiogenesis (life from non-life, ie: how the first life form came into being).

To that end, below are the discussion questions at the end of lesson one, the answers provided by the course leaders, and my answers to the questions.

Question 1: What are the four basic questions of man? Are they still relevant in our society today? If so, why?

Answer provided by the textbook: The four questions are Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going when I die?
The way we answer these questions is related to our worldviews, which have ramifications in any culture or society.

My answers to the questions:

Who am I? I am a homo sapiens, a primate that is the result of thousands of millions of years of evolution. I am a member of the caucasian race, though I do not believe that the color of my skin in any way reflects my feelings towards other members of homo sapiens. I am the son of farmers, who themselves were the son and daughter of farmers, but I have chosen to break the chain and go into an alternate profession.

Where did I come from? I do not know the origin of life, but I also do not know if the origin of life has any bearing on my personal ethics or morals.

Why am I here? This is a personal statement, and does not reflect the general view of homo sapiens, but my own life goal, the whole reason I feel that I am here, is to bring more happiness into the world than I take out of it. I think it is important to discuss why I feel that way, because the point of this course is to cover why, without God, we have no morals or ethics.

I believe that other people are important. Perhaps they would feel, without God to tell them otherwise, that they are the most important person in the universe, but I do not feel that in any way. I want to help others achieve their goals, I want to help others because that is how we create a legacy and be remembered. I won’t be remembered by history, that is a loftier goal than mine, but I will hopefully be remembered by friends and family as someone who was always welcome.

Where do we go when we die? I believe I will enter an oblivion of blackness. To quote Mark Twain, “I did not exist for millions of years before I was born, and I was not inconvenienced by it in the slightest.” I will follow some 60 billion homo sapiens who went before me, and for the hundreds of billions who will come after. History may not recall my name, but why should it? Why would I be so arrogant as to believe that, because I don’t want to die, I will clearly live forever after I die? That seems like it shows the ego that is too common in the human race.

Are these questions still relevant in our society today?

Certainly, I believe that these questions are still important, aside from the “Where we go when we die,” question. I believe using the excuse of “I am a good person because I don’t want to go to hell”, is both dangerous and terrifying. But understanding your place in the universe helps you understand true humility, and the human race requires more humility.

Question 2: Do you believe that your view of the age of the earth affects your everyday life?

Their answer: If someone holds the evolutionistic worldview, he must live his life according to his own will. If someone holds the worldview of Creationism, God is the final authority, and he must conform to God’s will.

My Answer: I do not believe that the age of the Earth is anything worth fighting over. While I do believe that it is painfully ignorant of science to believe the world is 6,000 years old, I do not believe that those that hold this view are in any way inferior to those that agree with science. Even science does not know the exact age of the Earth, of course, and the number even within the last 60 days was modified. Perhaps this is, again, my feeling of humility at work; I do not know the age of the world or the age of the universe, but I have an idea. I am open to the idea that I could be wrong, and I think this tells you more about me than could possibly be revealed in most other sentences. “I know all of the answers, I have at my hands the true words of the Creator, and the world is 6,000 years old,” speaks to an arrogance of belief that I could never hold.

Question 3: Do you believe evolution is scientific or religious?

Their answer: Evolutionism contradicts fundamental science and is supported only by faith – not by evidence.

My answer: The constant response from the religious opponents of evolution that it is a science of faith is disturbing to me. It both ignores what science is (Science is not defined by “Only things we can see exist”) and ignores the mountains of evidence that show the idea of evolution. YEC science often takes a single case and applies it to all instances; multi-strata petrified trees prove that all of geology is wrong, they will tell you. There is an alternate way that the grand canyon *could* have formed that jives with the Bible, and since we already know geologists are wrong about everything, it is safe to write off their guesses. Carbon 14 has easy error conditions (anything that has been underwater tends to get erroneously dated, and C14 dating has limited date ranges for which it is effective). Because of this, we can also throw out radiometric dating, according to YEC science (They will throw out ALL forms of radiometric dating because of flaws with a single element). Tree ring counting? Ice core dating? We can throw those out because we weren’t there to see the rings/ice layers form, so who knows if they’ve always formed at a rate of one per year?

The reason that YECs believe that evolution is a religion is that they are so quick to throw out an excuse for why it might not work that there is no way that scientists can come up with evidence faster than YECs can ignore it (that sentence felt odd to write). In any case, I certainly believe that evolution is sufficiently supported by evidence.

Challenge Question:

I wasn’t going to include the challenge questions, but I found this question so royally offensive I had to mention it in this post or else I would have felt like I was letting something truly dark walk by me without warning those around me.

The Challenge: Ask an elementary school-age child if he knows where everything in the world came from. If his answer involved the Big Bang, ask him where the original matter came from. If he doesn’t know where this original matter came from, consider sharing the Biblical account with him to explain how everything came into being.

What the actual what.

Ask someone who is 5-10 a question that scientists are still currently working on, that people who have spent some 25 years in school, and some 25 years studying this exact question, and expect this child to have the answer?

This speaks to an intellectual dishonesty that really makes me sad. I honestly just … To tell a 5-10 year old child that, if they don’t have ALL of the answers, that they must accept religion… That…

I am sorry, I think I have to step back, rethink, and start over. I am just so sad that this is considered a valid tactic. I support science taught in the classroom, and I support teaching evolution, but I would never, ever, ever be so morally barren as to walk up to a 6 year old and say “Your God is a lie, now listen to me talk about my atheism at you.”

No. That is horrible. That is evil. That is so… AUGH! I can’t even talk about it. Suffice it to say, I find this tactic deplorable. That is all I can say.

ON TO LESSON TWO, TITLED “HOW OLD IS IT?”

THERE’S NOTHING MORE BADASS THAN RESPECTING A LADY!

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The upcoming generation is one of entitlement. I realize that saying this is both as useful and as surprising as a fart at an all you can eat bean buffet, but it is important to start with it.

Each generation has entitlement issues, I had them, my parents had them, but the thing is that the world is designed to teach you that you have to work for a living. In previous generations, you learned this through physical labor, in my generation we learned this through the fact that the world is complicated, and without a lot of education, you will have troubles with the massive number of high skilled jobs that are becoming more the norm than at any point in history in the past.

But this generation, while feeling the same entitlement at a young age as every generation before them, have not had their entitlement checked by the world. In schools, you don’t get zeroes. In youth competitions, you don’t get awards. Even getting proper marks in school is considered unhealthy competition by someone in power, apparently (I have never met a person who agreed with the idea that you shouldn’t get proper marks, and shouldn’t be allowed to fail, and yet somehow it has become a policy).

With that, we come to the idea of bullying. Bullying is exerting some power over others, and while it is a very negative thing, certainly, it helps to prepare children for a world in which not everyone or everything will be nice to them. This is an important point, because bullying has become something of an art form, or theater, in these modern times.

And now we come to the internet and video games. On the Internet, the saying goes, nobody knows you are a dog. Perhaps you think that saying is a bit silly, but it illustrates both the allure and the danger of the internet. Are you a 40 year old man posing as a 12 year old girl? That’s creepy. But more commonly, you have 12-17 year old males posing as 20 year old males, and it is this that causes one of the most common complaints, both of the internal gaming community and of those from the outside looking in.

Let’s take the MOBA (Dota 2, League of Legends, etc) communities as our example. They are, very often, malicious. There is no other word for it. Every player thinks they are the perfect player, better than any other player, and they will instantly let you know as soon as you have made a mistake. Why is that? Well, first, they are 12-17 year old males. This is not, in and of itself, telling, but each will tell you that they are 24. Second, they have never been told they AREN’T the best player in the world, except by others whom they have never met. Everyone playing a game of Dota has been called a noob at some point (even if you have only ever played one game in your whole life; it is that bad), and most of us have been told to uninstall, stick to bot games (games with computers, so you don’t “ruin” the fun of your superiors, I suppose), or told to kill yourself. And this is before they know anything about you; imagine if you are a depressed person on the edge, seeking an escape from the pain of the real world, and then are told to kill yourself?

What happens, though, and why does it happen, when they find out there is a female in their midst? That’s where you see the entitlement turned up to 12, and there are too many reasons for this. The first is that a 17 year old feels like they are owed sex (have you talked to a 17 year old anonymously these days? … … … Ignore the ramifications of that sentence, please.). So when a girl comes up, they are reminded of the fact that they are playing a video game instead of going out; in ages past, they may have been an antisocial person who would have become your usual dungeon nerd (I feel confident in my use of the term; it applies to me more than anyone else I know), but games have become too social, people have become too entitled, to let this INJUSTICE pass.

That is the core of the misogyny in the gaming community, and make no mistake; misogyny is the word. There is so much hate and vitriol, and it comes out at the drop of a hat. There is a saying that some use ironically, but that too many use sincerely, on the internet; please forgive my language, but this is a post about the idea of misogyny. On the internet, if you are discovered to be a female, the first thing you will hear, and you will hear it a lot, is “Tits or GTFO (Get the F*** out)”.

Perhaps the ramifications of this, outside of the fact that it is completely unreasonable, are missed too easily. The person saying this feels entitled. That woman, thinks the person flinging this around, owes me sight of her breasts.

So how do we cure this? Well, some games have mentioned it, sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly (the title of this post comes from a line said by a character in the Borderlands series), but we have started to see society recognize that we created this problem. We’ve been told we are special, then shown that we aren’t (At least to some extent). The next generation has been told they are special and…. Here we are.

I don’t know how to make it go away, but I definitely know that the answer is NOT “Reduce competition, remove failure, and remind everyone that the world is their burrito.” Make them earn their way in the world, like everyone else, and then maybe they will understand that everyone has problems, and the world does not OWE you anything.

Also, don’t be a dick online. Please?

Learning (FOR SCIENCE!)

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So recently an opportunity came up that I could not resist; Udemy (an online learning academy) is offering a 3 hour online course on Creation Science, entitled “Beginnings”. It is hosted by one of my favorite creation speakers, Eric Hovind. The course is actually paid ($20 for the whole course!), which means I am assuming they are actually intending their audience be only people who share their view on things (or maybe they just want money).

In my quest to understand the minds of every human on the planet (I am already at 1 out of 7.x billion! That’s practically halfway there!), I decided to take the course. What is $20.00, compared to the massive trove of knowledge I can take in?!

I won’t share the materials point for point (I respect their desire to make money from this, as they did invest time in making it), but at the end of each lesson (after the exam), they present discussion questions. Well, I am able to look at attendance numbers (that seems odd, but I’ll take it), and I am the second student to sign up.

As there are only two students to sign up, posting my discussion answers to the students only forum (THERE IS A STUDENTS ONLY FORUM!) would feel a little less like a discussion and more like talking to myself. Well, even more than talking to myself than writing to this blog (I am talking to AT LEAST two other people, rather than just one).

To that effect, over the next few days, I’ll be taking these lectures and then making blog posts about the discussion questions posted at the end of each. I am sure sometimes they will be funny, from what I’ve seen many will be philosophical, and I doubt any will be scientific.

I hope you’ll enjoy taking this journey with me. I am learning about non-science, FOR SCIENCE!