That’s easy! It’s Anti-Science!

We’re surrounded by it. It’s everywhere! Just look. Here’s a bunch right here!

It obviously makes up the majority of the matter in the United States alone; therefore (and I’m extrapolating here), it must make up the majority of the matter in the rest of the universe.

Mystery solved.

For my next miracle, I will explain why so many women and minorities vote Republican.

OK, on second thought, maybe I can’t explain that one.

On the anti-science front, there was an article in the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday about the quandary the Republican presidential hopefuls are in when they come out here to Silicon Valley:

But the Republican candidates’ views on climate change are being met with the most raised eyebrows in Silicon Valley, the mecca of political fundraising, tech innovation and venture capital dollars.
…
“In a valley of scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs, the science behind climate change is overwhelmingly accepted,” said Carl Guardino, president and CEO of the nonpartisan Silicon Valley Leadership Group, which represents more than 325 of the region’s top companies.

That will hurt them a bit financially, but I suspect there is more than enough stupid money in the rest of the country to make up for it.

Fortunately, their irrational beliefs will also make it harder for almost any of these Republican to carry the state in 2012.

There is little doubt about climate change among likely California voters, 61 percent of whom believe that the effects of global warming have already begun, according to a July survey by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.

It also might work against them, to some extent, in the rest of the country.

Nationally, 55 percent of Americans believe that global warming is a “serious personal threat,” according to a Gallup survey in August.

Here’s where it gets good:

The bad news for Republican presidential candidates: The Public Policy Institute survey found that 62 percent of independent voters, who are the swing voters in the state, believe that, too.

Of course, they always have the idiot core:

Thirty-two percent of California Republicans believe that the effects of global warming “will never happen,” the poll also found.

That’s just not enough to carry the state. If things were settled purely rationally (the way they ought to be!), the election would already be over in California. Just hand over those 55 electoral votes to Barack Obama!

In reality, since Obama is a thoroughly incompetent president, he’ll probably manage to hand over those 55 electoral votes to the Republicans.

An example of this is best illustrated by this tweet from God regarding the recent earthquake on the East Coast:

There was just a 5.8 earthquake in Washington. Obama wanted it to be 3.4, but the Republicans wanted 5.8, so he compromised.

But let’s get back to the Chronicle article:

Only one major Republican candidate has dared to challenge his party on these views. Last month, Jon Huntsman, a former U.S. ambassador to China and Utah governor, tweeted: “To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.”

He is crazy. By Republican standards.

He has other problems, so I could never support Huntsman, but I still wish he’d be the Republican’s pick. Actually, I really wish they’d pick Michelle Bachmann. She’s so crazy that she probably couldn’t win the general election.

Since the Republicans will probably nominate someone else, My hope is for Huntsman. If they pick a “moderate” (by Republican standards), whoever that is will probably win. I’d rather we have a pro-science Republican in the White House than an anti-science Republican. All of the other GOP candidates are anti-science.

In addition to climate-change denial, all of the other candidates also deny evolution. The Chronicle article briefly touches on those views too.

Rick Perry has described himself as “a firm believer in intelligent design as a matter of faith and intellect…”

OK, I can understand it being a matter of faith. But intellect?

…and has called evolution “a theory” with “some gaps in it.”

I think it’s his brain that has some gaps in it.

Mitt Romney appears to be taking a nuanced position. “I believe God is intelligent, and I believe he designed the creation,” he said.

He’s not taking a nuanced approach. That’s exactly what the Intelligent Design creationists are saying.

“And I believe he used the process of evolution to create the human body.”

This actually shows that not only does Romney not understand evolution, he doesn’t understand Intelligent Design creationism! According to Michael Behe and the other pushers of this drug, evolution alone isn’t capable of creating us. God had to step in at critical points during our evolution and poof us to the next stage.

Michele Bachmann…

Who let the crazy woman in here? How did she get out of bed this morning? Didn’t anybody check her straps?

…has claimed that “hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel Prizes,” believe in intelligent design, as she does.

If by “hundreds and hundreds” she means “one or two” and by “many of them holding Nobel Prizes” she means “none of them”, then she’s absolutely correct!

But she said government shouldn’t take sides in scientific debates “when there is reasonable doubt on both sides.”

She’s right. Some scientists look at her brain scans and claim to see activity. Other scientists only see a wet gray sponge. The government shouldn’t take sides in that debate until we can cut her open and check. Evidence! We need more evidence, people!

Ron Paul said he does not accept the theory of evolution. “The creator that I know created us, each and every one of us, and created the universe, and the precise time and manner,” Paul has said, although he has also said there is no “absolute proof on either side.”

Science doesn’t work on absolute proof. It works on data. In the case of evolution, “absolute” refers to the absolute mountain of data we have supporting it. Where is any data supporting his claim?

Newt Gingrich…

Newt Gingrich!? Is that guy still around?

…has said, “I believe that creation as an act of faith is true, and I believe that science as a mechanical process is true.… Both can be true.”

What does that even mean? The universe had two origins? A created origin and a mechanical origin? When we finally look, the act of observing will make the entire universe collapse!

He says both should be taught in schools, evolution as a science and intelligent design “as a philosophy.”

ID creationism isn’t philosophy. It isn’t the intellectual equivalent of Plato or Kant. Just try to justify teaching creationism in the schools, Newt! You’ll discover you Kant.

Jon Huntsman is the only candidate in the GOP ranks who has taken a strong position in support of evolution, recently tweeting, “I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.”

Rick Santorum, who calls himself a fierce believer in creationism, jabbed back at Huntsman, saying, “I believe in Genesis 1:1 – God created the heavens and the earth. I don’t know exactly how God did it or exactly how long it took him, but I do know that he did it.”

And I do know that the Republicans are hell-bent on destroying science and science education. Lose your house in the Republican-caused Great Recession? Don’t worry! Just vote Republican a few more times, and we’ll all be living in nice warm caves again! Then we’ll be arguing over “teaching the controversy” and the “strengths and weaknesses” of the theory of fire.

Since most of us can’t just hop in the car and take a quick jaunt over to Palm Springs to see the creationist dinosaurs, lets hop in our browser and take a quick jaunt over to their web site.

In typical fundie fashion, their home page is designed to be as hard on the eyes and ears as it is on the brain. The first thing that hits you is the awkward color scheme. The second thing is the crowded four-column layout. Four narrow columns of text, but pointlessly-wide margins. It’s not web 2.0, it’s web 0.2!

But the third thing that hits you, is their stupid animated masthead with dancing dinosaur, then below that a tiny animation of a dinosaur farting. I think it’s actually supposed to be the sound of the car that’s driving by. I guess it’s an audio Rorschach test. You hear what your brain thinks it’s hearing. I look at their web site, and all I see is a giant creationist turd being dumped in front of my eyes.

The first column contains some comments from their guestbook:

This place takes you back to pre-historic times.

OK.

This place is awesome.

Uh huh.

God rules, love His creation.

What? Why do fundies just drop God-bombs at random? It’s like a theistic Tourette’s syndrome.

Kids loved it.

Now that one is actually a subtle insult. “Well, the kids liked it, but the missus and I could barely keep from vomiting on your creationism signs.”

So big! Fantastic!

Oh, the statues are anatomically correct!

The second column on their home page has an unremarkable video. Below that, they tell us that they have rides! It’s a veritable creationist Disneyland! Well, more like Bizarro Disneyland. Where Disneyland has minimum height requirements, the Cabizarro Dinosaur rides have maximum height requirements:

Kiddies [sic] rides have height and weight restrictions.

I suspect this is the PZ Myers rule. They’re afraid he might visit.

The third column has the farting dinosaur. Below that, it says:

Add an educational element to your event!

By visiting a different museum?

Then they tell us you can hold your next party there. That is accompanied, without explanation, by the photo at right. I can only guess that is part of the entertainment for little Johnny’s party. For all we know, there is a defrocked Catholic priest in that costume, and he’s going to be at your kid’s party! Maybe that’s what they mean by “kiddie rides”!

(For the don’t-sue-me-record [i.e., you can be like Kevin Wirth and not sue me!], I’m sure there really is not a Catholic priest inside that costume. Instead, it is something far scarier: a fundie!)

The fourth column on their home page mentions their two dinosaurs and their dino dig, all of which have their own pages, which I hope to cover in the next couple of days. Stay tuned!

Anyway, it’s 2:00 AM, so I’ll cheat and just put up a couple of videos. Hopefully I’ll have more time tomorrow to write a longer post.

Both of these videos are by some sort of brain-damaged creationist group out of Florida. They’re somehow connected to Kent Hovind’s bankrupt dino park.

This first video is a commercial for the Cabazon Dinosaurs:

That was just the warm-up. Behold… uh… um… THIS!
(Warning: Not for the squeamish.)

Yes, our nation is well and truly doomed. (How did we win the Cold War, anyway? How did we outsmart the Soviet Union, if 50% of our population is like what you see above?)

[I’m still working way too many hours these days and have no time to blog. It’s frustrating, because so many great topics have flown by that I wanted to cover. I’ve just come across a topic that demands an in-depth look, so I’m going to see if I can write several small blog posts about it over the next few days. In the meantime, here’s a picture of a shaved pussy.]

One of the things that makes America the Greatest Nation on Earth™ is roadside attractions. I love that stuff!

They began a slow decline with the creation of the Interstate Highway System (Here is a documentary about that.). However, some plucky tourist traps managed to hang on, some even thrived, in the new world of the superhighway.

Alas, now that most people fly everywhere, they’re flying right over some of the best cultural exhibits of the United States. As a result, many of these great sites are shutting their doors forever!

Maybe now that the TSA is sexually molesting everybody, folks will get back in their cars and rediscover America. Come on, people! Do you want a cheap grope, or would you rather hop in your ’53 DeSoto and go to the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota?

One of these great American destinations is the Cabazon Dinosaurs, just outside Palm Springs. Wikipedia tells us:

The creation of the Cabazon dinosaurs began in the 1960s by Knott’s Berry Farm sculptor and portrait artist Claude K. Bell (1897–1988) to attract customers to his Wheel Inn Cafe, which opened in 1958. Dinny, the first of the Cabazon dinosaurs, was started in 1964 and created over a span of eleven years.

Everything was hunky dory until Bell died. Seeing the perfect opportunity to indoctrinate the unwary, the site was bought by creationists in the 1990s!

I suppose it’s fitting and maybe inevitable. Something as uniquely American as the roadside attraction ultimately had to pair up with something as uniquely American as a complete and total disregard for facts and reality.

About the current sorry state of affairs, Wikipedia tells us:

Currently located inside Dinny is a gift store and museum promoting creationism with some of the toy dinosaurs in the shop sold under the label “Don’t swallow it! The fossil record does not support evolution.”

The current ownership has expressed a Young Earth creationist belief that most dinosaurs were created on Earth about 6,000 years ago—the same day as Adam and Eve. In stark contrast to that belief are Bell’s painted frescoes and sculptures inside Dinny, depicting a naturalist and evolutionist viewpoint. Bell’s paintings include representations of Cro-Magnon man (labeled “Cro-Magnon Man 30,000 [years ago]”) and Java Man (labeled “Java Man 400,000”). Bell’s historic displays now exist alongside information detailing the creationist viewpoint of the earth and man’s origins.

The real pisser is that I went to Palm Springs just over a year ago. If I had known they had a creationist museum, I would have visited! Oh, fundies! Why do you place your monuments to stupidity just outside my grasp? Just like reality is just outside your grasp!

I’ll leave things for today with this last quote from Wikipedia:

Pastor Robert Chiles, assisting Kanter in turning the exhibit into a non-denominational church, has been quoted as to his belief of why children are drawn to the dinosaur attraction, “There’s something in their DNA that knows man walked with these creatures on Earth.”

The blogosphere is burning up with this video of Christine O’Donnell admitting that she hasn’t read the Constitution. I was going to write a longer article ripping apart her performance in this debate.

Why bother?

This is the best the tea baggers can come up with?

This is who they support?

This is the type of representation they want?

I give up. I really do. It’s clear the cancer has spread too far. This battle is unwinnable.

You can’t fight stupid.

When I was growing up, I spent some of my summers on my grandfather’s farm in South Dakota. It was a fantastic place to run around, although my mother was convinced I’d get maimed.

She was always telling me horror stories about how dangerous a farm is. Allegedly one of her cousins or a friend of a cousin or a cousin of a friend of a cousin of a friend was eaten by pigs. Supposedly this cousin was walking on top of the fence, slipped, and fell into the pig pen. The ravenous pigs descended upon her in a piranha-like frenzy. By the time her father could chase the pigs off, all that was left of her was her hair.

Mothers are full of scary stories.

Another such tale seemed to change a bit with each retelling. She didn’t want me to get too close to the grain elevator while it was running. That’s what she called it, but I guess it was actually a hay elevator. It was a conveyor belt. One end was at ground level. The other end was above a door in the roof of the granary. You shovel the hay onto one end, and the conveyor belt deposits the hay into the loft.

She told me that when she was in school, one of the kids at one of the other farms was loading the hay elevator and he got his arm caught on the belt. Ripped his arm clear off! She saw that one-armed boy every day at school from then on.

But then there was the time she told me not to get too close to the combine. Way back when she was in school, there was this kid at one of the other farms. He had been helping harvest the crop when he got too close to the combine. It ripped his arm clear off!

Then there was the time she told me not to get too close to the windrower, and, well, you can guess the rest. I assumed that her school was populated entirely by one-armed boys.

One day I discovered an old wagon out in one of the fields. This required further investigation, so I started climbing all over it. My grandfather came by and said “What are you doing in the manure spreader?”

I ran out of that thing faster than a creationist running from an evolution book.

Speaking of manure spreaders, I came across our old friend Kevin Wirth on the internet today.

I was searching to see what sort of damage Access Research Network has been doing lately and came across this thread in a forum at the Atheist Foundation of Australia.

One of the members there, who goes by the handle “Eccles”, discovered that ARN was giving away a screensaver of Hubble images. He didn’t really scope out the ARN website too closely. He just downloaded the program and installed it on his computer. He tells us what happened next:

When I downloaded it and ran it, to my horror the images were peppered with BS about “Intelligent Design”. I immediately uninstalled that screen saver, unsubscribed from the site and sent the director, Dennis Warner a nasty e-mail.

Before long, Eccles discovered a very large turd in his email box. It was plopped there, of course, by ARN’s “Director of Turd Disbursement and Misinformation”, Kevin Wirth.

Let’s see what manure Kevin has been spreading in Australia.

I was dismayed to read your email to Dennis (which he has requested that I respond to).
…
First and foremost, we do not exist to proseltyze [sic] religion or religious views. This is a huge, but unfortunately common mistake about our mission.

The only mistake is that they weren’t able to come up with a scheme less obviously religious than Intelligent Design creationism.

Meanwhile, you should read our mission statement at ARN.ORG. Nowhere in it will you find anything about our intent to promote religion.

Duh! If they told people they had a religious agenda, they wouldn’t be able to sneak it into the schools!

Secondly, we do not knowingly promote “lies” about Intelligent Design as you claim.

Sure you do, Kevin. You flat-out claim that Intelligent Design creationism is not religious. It is by definition. The designer has all of the characteristics of God. Ergo, he is God.

While it is true that ID is consistent with many religious views, we don’t exist to promote religion of any kind.

This statement is patently absurd. My best guess is that Kevin thinks that because ID creationism is consistent with many religions, it is therefore not a promotion of religion. This is the sort of logic that leads high schools to think it is OK to have a prayer at graduation ceremonies. (“It’s a generic prayer, so it’s OK!”)

Our focus is on providing resources related to Intelligent Design, and we are frankly not terribly concerned about the religious background of those who advocate for or against this position. We’re more interested in the scientific and philosophical arguments related to this topic, and are willing to allow others to think and talk about where they think the evidence leads.

There are no significant scientific arguments for ID creationism. And of course he’s willing to let others follow wherever it leads. The purpose of Intelligent Design creationism is to give the faithful a plausible-sounding excuse for rejecting science.

Our main concern here at ARN is that you are being given an opportunity to explore information options about ID not found at very many other web sites.

You know, web sites that are about reality and facts.

But it also seems to me that that the fact of the matter is, a reliance upon the Almighty was very much a part of the founding our nation. That’s just a fact, pure and simple.

It’s true. Many of the founding fathers were religious. In fact, there was quite a diversity of Christian sects throughout the colonies in those days. That’s why the First Amendment, protecting religious freedom, was so important to them. So then why is Kevin trying to circumvent that protection by getting creationism taught in the schools?

We also make a distinction between Creation and ID. Creationists openly advocate connections to religious texts while ID prefers to focus on scientific and philosophical considerations

We’re religious. We just don’t focus on it!

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that simply because Intelligent Design is consistent with the idea of a “God of the Universe” that we are attempting to shove that thought or any other religious notion down your throat.

That’s misdirection. He doesn’t have a specific religious goal. ID creationism’s purpose is to provide cover for others to get God into the schools and other government institutions. That’s just those folks’ “academic freedom”. Guess what, Kevin. Facts and data are academic. Religious beliefs are not. Nobody has the “freedom” to inject religion into the classroom.

You’ve probably heard by now that Bing McGhandi over at Happy Jihad’s House of Pancakes has started the I-Am-Who-Am Is Ashamed of Your Slogan Campaign.

It started when he discovered that Asses in Genesis has a new slogan (pictured above). It says they are not ashamed to stand on the Bible. Since these people are Biblical Literalists, Bing had no choice but to take them at their word. He’s now asking people around the world to show that they, too, are not ashamed to stand on the Bible.

I decided to ask one of my friends if he was willing to do so.

Long-time Bay of Fundie readers are familiar with crackpot creatard Kevin Wirth, his crackpot creatard buddy Jerry Bergman, and Kevin’s endless shilling of Bergman’s book Slaughter of the Dissidents. As bad as books such as The Secret and Going Rogue are, at least they’re from reputable publishers who nominally go through the motions of vetting the content. Slaughter of the Dissidents is so bad that Kevin Wirth had to publish it himself. We have to rely on his ability to distinguish fact from fiction. As we’ve seen in numerous comments he has left here, that isn’t one of his strengths. This is the guy who, in all seriousness, compared Ben Stein to Rosa Parks. Caveat emptor!

The very first blog ever to link to Bay of Fundie was Biblioblography by the Krystalline Apostate. I was over at his blog today catching up on his posts and discovered that he has been investigating Slaughter of the Dissidents himself!

His first article is “Slaughter Of The Dissidents – No Blood, No Guts, Just Whining…”. In this article, KA looks at the web page shilling the book and shoots down some of its wilder claims. (I wrote a similar article here. Read them both and compare! Collect the whole series!)

Sure enough, Kevin Wirth’s Google Alert told him that somebody was laughing at his book, so he dropped by and left a couple of long comments. He mostly argued about what the definition of “is” is, or something. My mind wandered. Kevin Wirth is like Ray Comfort. Neither is capable of comprehending what somebody has written, so they spend all their time arguing about what they think the person wrote.

A few days later, the Krystalline Apostate posted his second article in the series. In this article, he specifically looks at the case of one of the victims whiny little creatards named Raymond Damadian. Damadian was one of the contributors to the invention of the MRI. When the Nobel committee was passing out awards later for this achievement, Damadian was passed over, allegedly because he was a creationist. Defenders of the Nobel prizes said that wasn’t the reason at all. Damadian had done some essential early work, but he hadn’t contributed to the actual later invention of the MRI.

I’m on Damadian’s side in this case. I doubt he was passed over because he was a creationist. I haven’t seen evidence to indicate that. I think he was passed over because he hadn’t contributed enough to the invention. But heck! Barrack Obama didn’t do anything, and he got a Nobel Prize! The bar seems pretty low here.

KA’s next article in this series concerns the infamous non-slaughtered Guillermo Gonzalez. The short version is that Gonzalez really was (indirectly) “slaughtered” for being a creationist. What happened is that he spent all of his time pursuing his little religious hobby (creationism) that he didn’t spend enough time doing any of the things a college professor should be doing, such as research. As a result, he was denied tenure. Oh boo hoo!

Tell you what, Gonzalez. I’m going to spend all of my waking hours the next couple of weeks playing World of Warcraft. Then after I get fired for not doing my job, I’ll bitch about being discriminated against. I fully expect you and your buddies at the Discovery Institute to give me a job then. It worked for you.

KA’s next article covers Roger Dehart. He was a public school teacher who got away with teaching creationism in his biology classes for 14 years. When the district finally caught on (and why did it take that long?), did they fire him? Did they “slaughter” him? No! They should have, but they didn’t. No. All they did was take away his biology classes and made him teach geology instead. Umm… guys. That’s not such a good idea. You see, creationists have a thing or two to say about geology as well.

Anyway, this clown later resigned and got himself a sweet gig lying to kids at a Christian school. Oh, the slaughter!

KA’s final article is about Dean Kenyon, whose career was so slaughtered that he still has it.

What really makes this article such a treat is that it (along with most of the others) has a long, rambling comment at the end posted by Kevin Wirth. You have to read his comment on this article. Here are Kevin’s actual words:

After all, that’s what you evolution folks do best! You just tell the part of the story that aligns with what is consistent with your views, and ignore or trash the more challenging stuff as irrelevant! Case closed! Nice and tidy, right?

Kevin Wirth for the win!

Note: For those who are interested, here are my articles dealing with Slaughter of the Dissidents:

• How the Fallen Have Fallen: Jerry Bergman Stoops to Kevin Wirth
• Freedom Fighter Kevin Wirth Fights Freedom
• Slaughter of the Intellect
• Kevin Wirth has the Vapors

That last article has an excellent comment by Jason Failes, who researched some of the alleged victims of this wholesale slaughter of “Darwin skeptics’” careers. Jason also has a great quote in there:

Remember, you have a right to your own opinions, not to your own facts.

[Here is the next installment of my experience at the Darwin Was Wrong lie-fest put on by Logos Research Associates. You can start from the beginning of this story in Part 1, or you can jump to the first speaker in Part 4. You can also watch the videos of this conference at the Logos website (not recommended for the sane).]

The first talk of the morning was given by Marcus Ross, and it was titled “Darwin Was Wrong about the Fossil Record”. Here is how Logos describes this talk:

In Origin, Darwin admitted that the fossil evidence contradicted his theory, but he hoped future discoveries would come to his rescue. Now, 150 years later, the problem of missing intermediates is even more glaring.

Who is this guy? It turns out we’ve met him before. This is the guy who made headlines in 2007 for lying in order to get a PhD (See brief BoF article here. See longer, better Larry Moran article here.).

Ross is a young-Earth creationist. He believes the Earth is 6000 to 10,000 years old, yet he wrote his PhD thesis as if he actually understood the true age of the Earth (4.5 billion years).

He does not understand geology at all. If he did, he would know the true age of the Earth. Therefore, he has failed geology and did not deserve the degree. University of Rhode Island was too cowardly to stand up for academic integrity and gave him the degree so he’d go away quietly and not make trouble. They have devalued their graduate program, and they have disrespected everybody who has ever earned a degree there.

University of Rhode Island is an academic whore.

Marcus Ross is an academic fraud. And a john. He paid URI money for the empty pleasure of a cheap degree, and he infected URI with the venereal disease of creationism.

Now that we know who we’re dealing with, let’s look at what he had to say.

He told us that he would cover three main topics:

1. The use of fossils in geology
2. Looking back: Darwin’s views on the fossil record
3. Our present understanding

The Use Of Fossils In Geology

He said fossils are used for four purposes:

• Organismal reconstruction
• Environmental reconstruction
• Correlation/Biostratigraphy
• Reconstruction of evolutionary lineages

Prior to Origin of Species, fossils had only been used for the first three functions. Once Origin appeared, all the God-hating atheists out there realized they could put together a fake natural history based on the fossils, thereby “proving” that God doesn’t exist.

He didn’t phrase it the way I’ve described it, but it’s clear that this is what he means. He told us how all of the strata containing all of these fossils were laid down during Noah’s Flood. All these freakish-looking prehistoric critters were just wandering around the world minding their own business, and the next thing you know — FLUSH! — a giant flood wipes them all out. Apparently velociraptors, triceratops, and tyrannosaurs were not on Noah’s list of “clean animals” or on his list of “everything else”.

According to Ross and some of the other speakers at this event, atheistic evilutionists just draw lines connecting similar-looking fossils and claim that X must have evolved into Y, because they look similar, and X was in a lower strata than Y. Yet according to Ross and friends, all of these critters existed in that brief 2000-year pre-flood period.

Maybe he explained it and I missed it, but I don’t understand how Ross rationalizes these two issues:

1. Why are certain critters only associated with certain strata? This is true no matter where in the world they are found. Ross freely admitted these associations.
2. Why are the simpler critters (what we would call less evolved or an earlier species in a given evolutionary line) always in strata below the more complex critters (what we would call a later species in the same evolutionary line)?

Steve Austin presented diagrams purporting to show how dozens of layers (totaling hundreds of feet) of the Grand Canyon were deposited in a few hours. If everybody is intermingling and walking around at the same time, how do they sort out so nicely when the Flood comes?

He did show a diagram showing some of the geological eras:

• Cenozoic
• Mesozoic
• Paleozoic
• Proterozoic

He claims those middle two (Mesozoic and Paleozoic) happened during the Flood. My questions above would apply to those eras. There aren’t many fossils from the Proterozoic, but what about the gobs of fossils from the Cenozoic? If all of that is post-Flood, where did they come from? According to Ross’ timeline, all of those fossils would have to be from the last 4000 years. So nobody noticed the giraffe camels or bone-crushing dogs or elephant-sized ground sloths wandering around? Nobody thought they were the slightest bit strange and bothered to write about them?

Looking Back: Darwin’s Views On The Fossil Record

The next main point of his talk was what Darwin said about fossils. Darwin was concerned about the fossil record, so he devoted two chapters in Origin to it.

Ross then did some Darwin quote-mining.

We need a Godwin’s Law for Darwin quote-mining. Godwin’s Law itself is:

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.

However, the corollary is more appropriate here. Wikipedia describes it:

[T]here is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically “lost” whatever debate was in progress.

Our new Creatard’s Law could be:

Any creationist quote-mining Darwin has automatically lost the argument.

Our Present Understanding

This was Ross’ final topic of his presentation. He gloated about gaps in the fossil record. Then he started talking about “baramins” and all of the different horse “kinds”. He said that all of the modern horse variants (zebra, donkey, quagga, zedonk, zorse, etc.) descended from that first created “kind” that Noah had on the Ark.

Here’s a question for all of the creationists out there. You people claim there are no transitional fossils. You people claim that any fossil that looks transitional is actually just a diseased specimen of a known species.

So how do you know that all of these different horse kinds descended from Noah’s horse? By your own definition, you have no transitional fossils to support your claim.

The only “horse kind” creationists can produce is the ass.

[And now, exactly one month since the last episode, here is the next installment of my experience at the Darwin Was Wrong lie-fest put on by Logos Research Associates. I’m writing this at 1:30 AM, so I’ll only cover the praying and singing that preceded the first talk of the day. Tonight, I hope to write up a description of the talk itself.

If you’ve come in late, you can start from the beginning of this story in Part 1, or you can jump to the first speaker in Part 4. You can also watch the videos of this conference at the Logos website (not recommended for the sane).]

I arrived at the church just five minutes late, but they’ve already started the program! Some guy was on stage saying something. Wait! Don’t start praying without me! I hurried to my seat. Made it! You can start praying now.

And they did.

After the prayer, the guy talked about how this was an historic event. Really? That you’ve got a church full of people praying and singing about Jesus and denying evolution?

Pathetic? Yes. Historic? No.

I looked around the church. It was sparsely attended this morning. Only about 25% of the seats were filled. Even the faithful don’t want to be at church at 8:30 on a Saturday morning.

The preacher guy left the stage. Hallelujah! The Jesus singers came out. Oh, crap! They started by singing “I’ll Fly Away”. That’s actually a good song, when it’s done right. They didn’t do it right.

Next, they asked everybody to stand for the performance of “Amazing Grace”. What is it with religious people and that song? I took this opportunity to run to the restroom. I got inside, and…

Oh, lord! They pipe the audio from the stage into the restroom! I can’t even get away from it in here! I discovered, however, that it acts as an excellent stimulant. Who needs Ex Lax?

By the time I got back to my seat, they were on to the next song. I scanned the auditorium and noticed some small kids sitting a few rows away. They were maybe 5 or 6 years old. Most of the lies that would be said that day would go over their heads. The lifetime of indoctrination won’t.

I looked at the video screens and noticed that they put the words to the song up there, so the congregation can sing along. Who needs hymn books? This is the 21st Century. We’ve got Jesus karaoke! The only thing missing is a bunch of drunk Japanese businessmen. Our congregation has them beat. We’re drunk on the Lord! (And not in a Catholic booze-and-crackers way.)

Did I just say “our congregation”? Oh no! The assimilation has begun! By the end of the day, I’ll be completely absorbed!

As I said above, “I’ll Fly Away” is a good song when it is done right. Behold the right doing:

The latest Carnival of the Godless has arrived. You can find it over at Null Session. There are several good articles. I recommend starting with “The Intelligent Design Falsifiability Myth?” by Naon Tiotami at Homologous Legs.

Creationists. I hate those guys.

I know this comes as a shock to you. It doesn’t surprise the rest of us, but we had to check your X-rays to make sure.

You’re probably wondering when this happened.

Frankly, I’m surprised that you’re surprised. Didn’t this tip you off every time you said it?

I hate to break this to you.

In fact, you have more information than I do. I can only surmise.

Your condition may have started even before conception.

Ordinarily I’d live and let live. But you keep trying to get your religion taught as “science” in the public schools. That makes you…

I know you’ve been complaining about my language on this blog. Well you shouldn’t be reading it anyway. There are better things for you to be doing.

And finally…

A note to my regular readers: As you may have guessed, there will be no changes in this blog’s content or style in the foreseeable future.