(I’m at TAM 6 right now and can’t post, so I scheduled this to run as cheap filler.)

Here are a few more re-captioned Family Circus panels from The Other Family.

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.

Of course, the granddaddy of all Family Circus parodies is the Dysfunctional Family Circus. It went for 500 panels back in the 1990s, before being shut down by the lawyers. Lucky for us, the whole shebang is archived here. Here are just three examples from that site.

“…and please allow Daddy to continue to use his unfunny comic strip to impose his Christianity on America.”

“OK, Mom. Take the RU-486, squat on this jar, and we’re off to the pro-life rally.”

“Son, if God had wanted you to catch that ball, you would have. It’s that simple. So the question is not ‘Why did I botch that pop fly’, but ‘What have I done to make God angry?’ You haven’t been touching yourself again, have you?”

Few things on this Earth are more horrid than The Family Circus. Bil Keane is now 85 years old, and he still won’t quit. That won’t matter anyway, because his son is poised to take over the strip. Except for the oblong heads and massive thighs, Keane is actually a fairly good artist. The strip could have been funny. Where he falls down are the captions.

Loyal BoF reader Ericsan has called my attention to The Other Family. This is a website that takes Keane’s comics and recaptions them. The three panels I’ve reproduced here are from that site.

It’s really a shame that Bil Keane has been phoning it in for the past 48 years. If he’d apply just a little effort, he could write captions as funny as these.

Douglas Adams died seven years ago today. I thought it would be fitting to direct you to Richard Dawkin’s eulogy of Adams.

That’s not a literal quote, but it’s the logical extension of the latest wild claims of the Discovery Institute. In a recent hallucination on their propaganda website, the Discovery Institute screamed this headline:

Methodists Nail Darwinian Nazi Record, Repent U.S. Past, Warn About 21st Century Eugenics

That caught my attention. Have the Methodists succumbed to DI propaganda? Let’s take a look. The insane ramblings of the DI begin with:

The quadrennial international convention of the Methodist Church, meeting in Fort Worth, today adopted an historic and detailed resolution deploring the legacy of Darwinian eugenics that saw its 20th century extreme expression in the theories of Adolf Hitler.

That sure sounds like the Methodists are laying some of the blame for the Holocaust on Darwin. We’ll check into that claim in a minute. Let’s see what else the DI says:

Yes, that would be the Nazi ideology that the Darwinists of today—and major media—pretend sprang on the world fresh from the head of Hitler…

No. That’s exactly the opposite of what we’ve been saying. I know the DI monitors all the major biology blogs, so they definitely know that we’ve said that what Hitler was doing was selective breeding. This is a technique that is almost as old as civilization. Since they’ve definitely read this fact in numerous blogs, the only conclusion we can come to is that the DI is deliberately lying. Making up facts is how the DI does “science”, so why should the way they argue be any different? Discovery Institute: No Facts Allowed!

The Methodists’ resolution—adopted by a vote of 836 to 28—apologizes for the denomination’s own failure to resist the eugenics movement in this country in the 20th century. They were not alone…. But no other mainline Protestant denomination has yet had the courage to admit to the racism of Darwinist eugenics and the supine attitude that leading American religious leaders, as well as the scientific establishment, adopted towards it.

It is true that many people bought into the eugenics movement in the early 20th century, and many scientists were among them. However, eugenics is not “Darwinism”. Darwin discovered how species evolve. He did not “discover” that killing six million Jews would produce a Master Race.

The Methodists’ Apology

Let’s turn now to what the Methodists have actually written in their resolution, “An Apology for Support of Eugenics”:

The study of eugenics did not begin with Hitler or his German scientists, but rather was first promoted by Sir Francis Galton, in England. Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, who expanded on Darwin’s theories and applied them to the human population.

That’s funny. This is the same document that the Discovery Institute read, but I don’t see anything about Charles Darwin creating eugenics. Sir Francis Galton took Darwin’s theories and misapplied them to human society. Darwin is not responsible for the actions of his cousin, and the Methodists are not claiming that he is.

Galton’s successor at the helm of the Eugenics Society was Major Leonard Darwin (1850- 1943), a son of Charles Darwin. Leonard Darwin, who ran the Eugenics Society until 1928, made the transition from positive to negative eugenics, and promoted plans for lowering the birthrate of the unfit.

Again, this is another one of Darwin’s relatives. That family was really into this stuff. But once again, don’t blame Chuck for his wayward son.

There’s a lot more to the Methodist document (and I encourage you to read it), but that’s pretty much all they had to say about Charles Darwin. Nowhere are they blaming Darwin for either eugenics or the Holocaust. Has the Discovery Institute no shame?

The Hindenberg caught fire and crashed 71 years ago today. That event has nothing to do with this blog. I just thought the above picture was funny.