Not long ago, Conservapedia named their article on atheism as their article of the year. A YouTube user named Shane Killian has produced a video to examine that article and see just how good it really is:

(YouTube page is here)

In that video, he references an earlier video he made on Intelligent Design creationism. Here it is, for your enjoyment:

(YouTube page is here)

I know it can be hard sometimes to tell the difference between science and religion, so to help you figure it out, I present this easy study aid.

I found this over at the excellent but dormant Red State Rabbble. I had to overshrink the thing to make it fit within my margins. You can see the original version here.

An Article by Guest-Writer ParrotLover77

[Note: My life is momentarily complicated by a Michelle Duggar paternity suit. It’s going to take me a few days to settle up (ever wonder how they make ends meet?), so I won’t be able to blog. ParrotLover has graciously volunteered to help out. With his DNA, I should be able to get off the hook. In the meantime, please enjoy this article that he has written for us. Thank you, ParrotLover! You can also visit his own website. Buy some music. Look at parrots.

All of the artwork in this article is from the brilliant Heathen World. Visit them too.

—Ron Britton, editor-in-grief]

Ron has been very busy and asked me to submit a guest article on BoF to keep the content fresh.  I was honored that he would think a mere tech blogger could write for his amazing blog!  Then I was slammed with some of the worst writer’s block I’ve had in ages.  What the heck do I blog about?  Well, I had a few ideas about politics and religion, but nothing came to fruition.  The fingers just didn’t want to strike the keys.  So I decided to visit our old friends at the Answers in Genesis website for inspiration, and boy did I find some!  So today I will discuss an article written by Ken Ham (founder and president of Answers in Genesis–USA) called, Do I Believe in UFOs? Absolutely!

In his article, Ken is trying to convince the reader that life simply cannot exist elsewhere in the universe, because the bible says so.  Is there ANYTHING the bible cannot do?  It slices, it dices, it turns your brain to mush!

Let’s dig into his article and get snarky. *rubs hands*

Occasionally at conferences, someone will ask, “Do you believe in UFOs?”

What conferences would AiG attend where attendees ask that sort of question?  Maybe the alien abductee and literal creation kooks are cut from the same mold…

I usually answer, “Absolutely! Any flying object that can’t be identified is a UFO.”

Wow, that’s actually very intelligent… and almost snarky (me like)!  I almost didn’t expect Mr. Ham to start out so sensible.  Indeed, the word UFO has been, for quite some time, used in contexts it wasn’t meant to be used.  Unidentified Flying Object means just that: it’s flying, it’s an object, and it’s unidentified.  That doesn’t mean it’s from outer space carrying little gray men with big black eyes equipped with a variety of anal probes.

I then continue, “But do I believe in UFOs piloted by Vulcans, Klingons, or Cardassians? The answer is a definite no.” Sorry, Star Trek fans!

Why is he apologizing?  Are there Trek fans that would actually be offended by that statement?  I’m a fan of the Trek, but I certainly don’t believe the aliens made up on that show are real nor have any possibility of being close to real extra-terrestrial life.  After all, Trek’s bastardization of the concept of evolution really doesn’t fit into reality (every planet has a humanoid—what are the odds!).  But I understand that it’s a lot of work just to get a different looking humanoid alien.  One that is TRULY alien would be well over budget and difficult to script.  But I digress… Skipping a little…

A good friend of mine, Dr. Clifford Wilson, author of the million-copy bestseller Crash Go the Chariots, did a lot of research on UFOs. He once told me that he concluded that by far the majority were either misunderstood natural phenomena or misinterpreted manmade objects.

That’s a very reasonable conclusion.

However, he did conclude there was a very small percentage that couldn’t be explained, and he allowed the possibility of some supernatural origin—albeit evil. But regardless, he, like me, does not believe in intelligent physical beings on planets other than our earth.

Fascinating.  So, intelligent life originating on planets other than Earth is far-fetched, but evil supernatural spirits—why, that’s completely plausible!  Very Chick.   So, Mr. Ham has some amazing evidence to back up this very broad conclusion he has come to, right?

A number of leading evolutionists, like the late Dr. Carl Sagan, have popularized the idea that there must be intelligent life in outer space. From an evolutionary perspective, it would make sense to suggest such a possibility. People who believe this possibility contend that, if life evolved on earth by natural processes, intelligent life must exist somewhere else in the far reaches of space, given the size of the universe and the millions of possible planets.

Okay, first of all, Carl Sagan was an astronomer, not an evolutionist (whatever that is; I guess I’m a “gravitist” since I believe in gravity).  Also, evolution has nothing to do with whether or not a planet can support life and whether life can begin to exist out of the biochemical building block precursors to life (as is speculated to have happened on earth billions of years ago).  That process of the origins of life is known as “abiogenesis,” NOT evolution.

All that said, evolutionary theory does seem to postulate that if life arises, it will eventually become clever if given the correct external pressures (at least if it is similar to life on Earth).  As for intelligent life capable of using radio communication (as per SETI)—that’s just mathematics (again, not evolution).  There seems to be a pretty good probability of there being intelligent life out there somewhere.  Whether or not we will ever communicate with them, nobody really knows because we don’t have enough information.  We listen for them because we don’t think they’ll land here like Stan Romanek’s aliens.

One can postulate endlessly about possibilities of intelligent life in outer space, but I believe a Christian worldview, built on the Bible, rejects such a possibility. Here is why.

Remember that amazing evidence I wanted?  Yes.  I was let down.

During the six days of creation in Genesis, we learn that God created the earth first. On Day 4 He made the sun and the moon for the earth, and then “he made the stars also” (Genesis 1:16).

Far be it from me to criticize a deity, but why did it take three days to make the earth when it only took one day to make all the other matter in the entire universe?  Talk about a learning curve!  I guess when you begin by making “day and night” before you make the planet you are making the day and night for; you are starting out on the wrong foot.

From these passages of Scripture it would seem that the earth is very special—it is center stage. Everything else was made for purposes relating to the earth. For instance, the sun, moon, and stars were made “for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years” (Genesis 1:14).

It seems a little bit inefficient to make the great majority of the universe (which is unimaginably vast) just as sign posts and time keeping devices for the inhabitants of this little blue planet.  But this is what one truly believes when one’s reason hitchhikes its way to a dive bar, drinks too much, and drives its car into the river.

Okay, so Mr. Ham goes on and on about how the bible clearly says that the Earth is very very VERY special because the bible says so.  Let’s skip down to the part about aliens.

Now here is the problem. If there are intelligent beings on other planets, then they would have been affected by the fall of Adam because the whole creation was affected. So these beings would have to die because death was the penalty for sin. One day their planet will be destroyed by fire during God’s final judgment, but they cannot have salvation because that blessing is given only to humans.

Screw you, aliens!  You didn’t know about a religion on a planet billions of light years from you, so you are screwed for eternity!  No matter that you didn’t have anything to do with “the fall.”  The deity of the cosmos is going to create you, throw a temper tantrum, and punish you, because of what the first human did.  And there is NOTHING you can do!

When Jesus Christ stepped into history, He became the God-man. The Bible calls Him “the last Adam” and the “second man” (1 Corinthians 15:45, 47). He became the second perfect man (Adam was perfect before he sinned)…

Hold on here, Hammy.  Isn’t that basically saying Adam was perfect until he wasn’t?  If Adam was perfect, he would never have sinned!  Oh wait, I forgot.  It’s all womankind’s fault for tempting poor innocent Adam.  And as a result, we’re all paying for it (even those innocent space aliens).  Talk about a bad temper!

…and He took the place of the first Adam by dying for the human race. As the first Adam was the representative head of the human race, so Jesus became the new head, the last Adam. So there can be no other Savior, only Christ. Jesus now sits in the heavens, still in human form, sitting on His throne next to the Father. If Jesus stepped out of His human form, we would no longer have a Savior. He remains the God-man forever.

Okay, that last bit of babbling made no sense, but I wanted to include it just for its laughableness.

But note, Jesus didn’t become a “God-Klingon,” a “God-Vulcan,” or a “God-Cardassian”—He became the God-man. It wouldn’t make sense theologically for there to be other intelligent, physical beings who suffer because of Adam’s sin but cannot be saved.

You are correct; theologically it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

Now, regarding animal life and plants, we cannot be so dogmatic because the Bible does not state whether life exists elsewhere in the universe. Based on the passages about the heavens and earth, however, I strongly suspect that life does not exist elsewhere.

Okay, so let me get this straight… Animals and plants (wait—aren’t humans animals?) can exist elsewhere in the universe, because, heck, the bible is mute on that issue.  But intelligent life certainly cannot exist because that would mean God would have to punish them for eternity for not being around when Jayzus came to save us all from the first human’s mistake.  This is draining the batteries on my logic-meter. 

So the next time you hear someone talking about UFOs, think on the Scripture passages quoted above, and use them to segue into a presentation of the gospel: “For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:21-22).

Remember, UFO abductee loons are just confusing alien anal probes with the pleasure that is the holy spirit.

I’m trying to get caught up on a couple of things from last week. Here’s one of them. You may have seen this on Pharyngula. As PZ Myers explains:

A couple of college students in Toronto…took offense at the patent absurdity of the “Bible and Bible Studies” section of a large bookstore at Yonge and Eglinton, and decided to help organize the shelves by filing their contents more appropriately. They quietly moved the contents to other places in the bookstore, like Fiction, Humour, Sexuality, Erotica, Cuisine, Parenting, Mental Disorder, Parapsychology and the Occult.

I actually did something similar on a much smaller scale last year. One of the culprits of the Toronto incident describes the event in more detail at his blog, Phaedron Rising.

What I wanted to bring to your attention, though, was his follow-up article:

Many comments on Pharyngula suggested that Science shelves should be bereft of such gems as Michael Behe’s intelligent-design manifestos, or any book on new-age pseudoscience.

It’s with this that I must take issue. When, in my email to Dr Myers, I referred to the democratic marketplace of ideas, I was not paying lip service. It is a fundamental tenet of western democratic society that as long as nobody is literally hurt, every opinion has a right to be heard. I’m not saying that every opinion is worth the paper it’s written on, just that anyone has every right to make their case. This is especially the case in the rigours of the scientific process, where any theory—new or old—is continually vetted by a process of peer review and critique.

In the case of Behe’s ID idiocy and New-Age acupressure guides, they belong squarely in the science section. The questions that they address (Who are we? How did we get here? How can the flow of Chi affect my basement grow-op?) are fundamentally scientific ones. Just because a particular author’s answer to a real scientific question is completely insipid does not mean that it does not belong on the Science shelf.

Call me Naïve, but I truly want to believe that in the great marketplace of ideas, theories will ultimately rise and fall on their own merits.

If you want to rid your local science section of wastes of wood-pulp like Behe’s books on Intelligent Design, here’s how to do it.

Let his opinion be heard.

There is only one appropriate response to a ridiculous proposition, and that response is thorough ridicule. Give Behe and his ilk a seat at the table. Engage him. Expose his ideas for the unscrupulous shams that they are. I’m not advocating that anyone treat fools with kid gloves—far from it. All I’m saying is, give these people just enough intellectual rope to hang themselves with, then help them build their gallows.

That article sums up some of what we do here at BoF. It’s great fun pointing out how foolish the “freedom fighters”, Concerned “Women”, and Family “Researchers” are, but our fun has a very real purpose. These people want to pull our society back to the Dark Ages. Ridiculing these ideas is one of the best ways to expose them for the frauds that they are.

Maybe we haven’t seen our “friend” in the last few days because of a mine collapse.

The 87th Skeptics’ Circle came out a couple of days ago at Action Skeptics.

The absolute best post of the bunch is Bing McGhandi’s story of his contest to sneak a fraudulent article past the “peer review” of Answers in Genesis’ creation journal, and the contestant who almost pulled it off.

Possummomma calls our attention to Kent Hovind’s blog. As you’ll recall from the last time we discussed this creatard, not only was he committing crimes against education (by telling people the Earth was only 6000 years old and poofed into existence by a magical sky daddy), but he was also committing crimes against the government. Specifically, tax evasion. He is now serving a ten-year sentence for the latter crime. He’s gotten off scot-free on the former.

Apparently being locked up isn’t good for this guy’s mental health. He was obviously crazy before, but now even more so. A lot of his posts are his fantasies of talking to God. OK. Lots of theists think they talk to God. But Hovind’s are clearly the mind of a crazy man.

While I was torturing myself by actually reading the blog, I came across this gem in the comments. (You can find it in this thread.) It’s by somebody calling himself “for Jesus’ name: Phillip-George (c)1974”:

…the bible got it right. basically there is no biblical distinction between planets and stars:_ the modern distinction between a planet and a star is arbitrary and scientifically useless.…

the modern distinction between planets and stars has yielded nothing useful.

Yesterday we looked at the advertisement that crackpot creatard Kevin Wirth wrote to try to get us to buy his crappy Expelled knock-off, a book called Slaughter of the Dissidents. The book is written by non-expelled young-Earth creationist Jerry Bergman.

That right there is an interesting point. This whole “doubting Darwin” campaign is the brainchild of the “Intelligent Design” folks, such as the Discovery Institute and Kevin Wirth’s own adorable Access Research Network. These old-Earth creationists insist that their “theory” has nothing to do with religion. So what do they do? The Discovery Institute goes out of their way to promote Ben Stein’s movie, which directly links ID creationism to religion. Then Kevin Wirth goes out of his way to publish and promote a book written by a young-Earth creationist. These people are even incompetent at hiding the religious basis of their “theory”!

I took Kevin up on his offer of receiving a free chapter from the book. He sent me chapter 18: “The Peloza, Bishop, and Johnson Cases”. Apparently that’s all this book is, just a long, itemized list of all the alleged cases of “Darwin doubter discrimination”. What a scintillating read that must be! Well, let’s get scintillating!

As a result of attempts by Darwin skeptics to secure a place both at the table of scientific discussion and in the classroom…

These so-called “Darwin skeptics” don’t belong in the classroom until they secure a seat at the table of scientific discussion. And they don’t belong there until they actually come up with some evidence. Whining about being left out or going to court isn’t the way to remedy things. The answer is much simpler. Just give us some scientific evidence. They’ve had 150 years, and they’ve yet to provide any.

…the federal courts have put evolution “virtually beyond criticism.”¹

That superscript leads you to the footnotes for this chapter. It’s five whole pages of footnotes! Almost every footnote is to document some quotation that they mined from elsewhere. There’s a total of 78 footnotes for this chapter alone! This book is just one giant Kevin Wirth quote dump!

Court rulings in cases involving those who are open critics of Darwinism have been blatantly discriminatory, dishonest, and unconstitutional. Indications now exist that the Supreme Court is aware of this and may try to correct this problem in future rulings.

So Bergman, a non-lawyer/non-Constitutional scholar, thinks that when his side loses, the ruling is unconstitutional. Protecting the First Amendment is the definition of a constitutional ruling, but Bergman is pouting that impartial courts clearly see that his guys are wrong. Then he tells us that the Supreme Court needs to step in. Why? So the activist judges can legislate from the bench?

In past cases involving Darwin skeptics, my research of over 100 cases over the past 30 years indicates that schools typically presented trumped-up and often obviously bogus reasons for dismissal or denial of tenure such as incompetence, erroneous claims that a faculty member falsified documents, or other allegations that were clearly proposed to cover up the real reason—religious discrimination.

Of course it never crosses Bergman’s mind that maybe those were the actual reasons! Remember that the movie Expelled presented just a few cases of alleged discrimination. You would think that those cases would be the strongest examples. Yet in every case, discrimination is not the real story.

Bergman then gets into the specific cases that this chapter is devoted to: The Peloza, Bishop, and Johnson Cases. I don’t have access to all of the materials that Bergman does, so I have no way of knowing what the real story is. It’s fair to assume that these cases are no stronger than those portrayed in Expelled.

The Bishop case is a possible exception to this. On its surface, and as portrayed by Bergman, it does appear that maybe the courts went too far. Allegedly, Bishop, a college professor, mentioned very briefly that he “doubted Darwin”, and that’s the extent of what he said. Supposedly he spent no more than 2–5 minutes out of the entire 2250 minutes of class time. I have no problem with a professor very briefly mentioning this. In fact, I would think it’s beneficial for the students to know what the professor’s biases are, so they can be aware of how they might color his instruction.

As we’ve seen from Expelled, cases like this are seldom exactly as portrayed by the creationists in their whine-fests. I would certainly be open to finding out more about this case, but I can’t take Bergman at his word here. His book has not managed to prove its credibility in the rest of this chapter.

Throughout Bergman’s discussion of these cases, he repeatedly makes two assertions: That evolution is atheistic and that creationism isn’t religious. Both of these assertions are false.

Evolution is atheistic in the same way that history is atheistic. Neither assumes a divine influence or guiding hand. What’s doubly puzzling is how Bergman can “see” the atheism in evolution, but he can’t see the obvious religion in creationism. He tries to frame the creationism as merely “anti-Darwin”, but this is a mere word-game.

Creationists like Bergman get so hung up on linking evolution to Darwin (apparently trying to paint biology as a cult of hero worship) that they get snagged on the many parts of evolution that are non-Darwinian. Darwin only proposed natural and sexual selection as the mechanisms by which evolution took place. Our understanding is much more complete now. The scientific literature is full of non-Darwinian articles. This fact alone puts the lie to everything Bergman writes in this book and Stein says in his movie.