As you all know, 2009 is the 150th aniversary of Darwin’s Origin. And our favourite popularizer of piglet rape is working to counter the inevitable evilutionist push.
No surprises here.
What does surprise me is that Ken Ham thinks that natural selection is not evolution.
What does that whackaloon think is?
In response to PZ Myer’s odd letter, I shall attempt to decipher it and provide a translation.
Evolution explains designer
Evolution versus creation is a false dichotomy. Evolution as a viable mechanism causing the ascent of man also explains the existence of the creator.
The false dichotomy argument is familiar, and valuable for helping some theists “have it both ways.”
If man could evolve to his present status physically, culturally and technologically within the age of this planet (approximately 4.5 billion years), then obviously the technology required to build species entirely of one’s own choosing could be developed within the age of the universe.
The first part of this statement is just a fact, however there is no reason to assume “the technology required to build species” could develop over the age of the universe.
Continue reading Translation attempt
After posting the FSM Expelled video, it was obvious to some (and hopefully all) that several quotes were taken out of context, and certain views were shown in a biased way.
This was all intentional! The point of the video was satire, and the target was Ben Stein and the Discovery Institute‘s upcoming Expelled trailer. They take clips from leading”darwinists” and show nice long interviews from IDers. In the spirit of satire I chose to do the same, giving pro-FSMers a long speech and quote-mining the “darwinistic” supporters.
However, I choose to do one more thing to poke at Expelled – I’ve now released all the interviews to YouTube completely UNCUT! Let’s see the Discover Institute’s full interviews online (with the false premises exposed).
So here they are (in order of most to least misrepresentation):
With the UofA Atheists and Agnostics, I worked for the past bit and created the following parody trailer to the upcoming film Expelled:
[youtube=http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=vaULFAZMK1o]
PZ Myers has the pen for wit and sharp criticisms of the Discovery Institute. In this installment we see him drawing an analogy with those non-“Wrightists” who know that people can not fly.
I tackle the Atheist test again in my latest video:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0MVy8F98WE]
I also took the Blasphemy Challenge:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9Ro6ckwN1M]
From the Nova special last week on the Dover trials, it was shown that in an early draft of “Of Pandas and People” (the ID-friendly “biology” textbook from the Discovery Institute) there was a slip up in one of the edits where “cdesign proponentsists” where mentioned (as a change from “creationists” to “design proponents”). This was one of the key pieces of evidence that ID was just religious creationism relabelled.
Now the definition has shown up on UrbanDictionary.com as follows:
The missing link between “creationists” and “design proponents”, as used in the textbook Of Pandas and People. Used to refer to creationist dumbfucks who are all to generally confused by science theology or even common sense.
Science says man evolved from other apes. Cdesign proponentsists say apes smell and prefer the scientific explanation “Goddidit”.
“Evolution isn’t true because clocks never spontaneously evolve,” well if you make them alive and breed them in a computer simulation you can have clocks form from a pile of gears.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcAq9bmCeR0]
I just read an amazing article about a better way to explain or illustrate the concepts of evolution to people it may be unfamiliar to entitled “Evolution and the Wisdom of Crowds.” He uses the examples of Wikipedia, prediction markets, and the Netflix recommendation system to explain how evolution can produce things which seem intelligently designed, but don’t have to be.
Do yourself a favour and read the article.
Greta Christina posted a great article which pretty much sums up what one can be upset about when being atheist/agnostic/non-religious. Many of these are reasons organizations like our UofA Atheists and Agnostics have come into existance.