Kent Hovind Gets Taken Again

Kent Hovind Gets Taken Again

Oh, this is just too precious.

The April 2005 issue of Scientific American included an editorial entitled “Okay, We Give Up” and subtitled, “We feel so ashamed”. The editors said they were contrite for ignoring creationism and ID, simply because there’s no evidence for either one.

That’s what makes ID a superior scientific theory: it doesn’t get bogged down in details.

Good journalism values balance above all else. We owe it to our readers to present everybody’s ideas equally and not to ignore or discredit theories simply because they lack scientifically credible arguments or facts.

This was clearly an April Fools joke. Perhaps not the funniest ever, but still pretty blatant. But Kent Hovind fell for it anyway.

Go read his response. I’m not reading so much as a twitch on the Clue-O-Meter. No wonder he’s a laughingstock, even by creationist standards.

This isn’t the first time this has happened, either: in 1999, New Mexicans for Science and Reason awarded Hovind the P.T. Barnum Award for showing a Philadelphia audience evidence of humans and dinosaurs coexisting. He didn’t realize it was NMSR’s April Fools prank.

Anyway, here are some selections from Hovind’s reply to Scientific American. Those of you who are familiar with him may recognize a lot of it. Those who don’t will discover new depths of kookiness.

The magazine treats evolution as if it is a part of science, when there’s nothing further from the truth. It is a religion, masquerading as science. But there is no scientific evidence that would tell us a dog produced a non-dog, let alone that a dog came from a work 4.6 billion years ago.

There’s actually overwhelming evidence that dinosaurs have always lived with humans. We simply called them dragons. Man killed most of them, and there may be a few still alive today.

As for the flood carving Grand Canyon, why don’t they explain to us why the top of the Canyon is 4,000ft higher than where the river (Colorado River) enters the canyon? Why don’t they explain to us how rivers miraculously flowed up-hill for millions of years to finally cut the groove deep enough so they could flow downhill?

The simple answer is uplift, of course. But Kent doesn’t accept continental drift, so presumably the idea of mountains growing is anathema to him as well.

There’s no such thing as a “fossil record”; there are simply fossils in the dirt.

Thanks for clearing that up. In other news, there’s no such thing as the free market; there’s just people buying and selling stuff. There’s no such thing as the National Archives; just a government building with a lot of old papers.

And if you can’t get your point across any other way, compare your opponents to Nazis or Communists:

Try to get a creationist article into a magazine like Scientific American, and see what happens. Ten years ago if a professor in the Soviet Union tried to submit an article to any Soviet magazine claiming that communism didn’t work, and capitalism is a better system, he would be shipped off to Siberia if he survived. Today, if a teacher in a public university, or a writer at any major science magazine (such as Scientific American) dares to suggest that evolution is not true, and maybe Creation is true, he will be sent to academic Siberia in a heart-beat.

One thing, though: ten years ago was 1995. The Soviet Union had formally become Russia four years earlier. I doubt anyone would have been sent to Siberia for saying that the old regime didn’t work.

I can’t believe these guys think there are scientifically credible arguments for the idea that all life came from nothing, 18 billion years ago. What are they thinking?

I agree with Hovind on this point: you’d have to be crazy to think that life on Earth started 4 billion years before the Big Bang. (For those unsure of the timeline: the universe is roughly 14 billion years old. The Earth is roughly 4.5 billion years old. Life appeared somewhere on the order of 1 billion years after the Earth formed, or about 3.5 billion years ago.)

The truth is that many scientists have come to understand who butters their bread. They have to support the evolution theory or lose their grant money. Ask any number of scientists who have not kissed the sacred cow of evolution and have lost their job, grant money, or position at a university. The list grows every day. See video number 7 for much more on this.

Ah, I love a good conspiracy theory!

The Bible says, “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” Anyone who believes they came from a rock is a fool.

Hovind doesn’t think he came from a rock. He thinks he came from dirt.

You can download MP3s and videos of Hovind’s unique brand of stand-up comedy here.

Update, Sep. 16, 2005: Fixed URL to Hovind’s response. Thanks to alert reader Jamie for the correction.

One thought on “Kent Hovind Gets Taken Again

  1. pcdr,

    Okay, you are all having fun with your mocking and that is fine.

    Good, because I’m not done yet. Since you want to toss quotes around:

    Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them
    — Thomas Jefferson

  2. PCDR:

    Sounds a lot like Romans Chapter blah blah blah

    I’ll see your Bible and raise you a Bhagavad-gītā:

    10.1: The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: Listen again, O mighty-armed Arjuna. Because you are My dear friend, for your benefit I shall speak to you further, giving knowledge that is better than what I have already explained….10.8: I am the source of all spiritual and material worlds. Everything emanates from Me. The wise who perfectly know this engage in My devotional service and worship Me with all their hearts.10.21: Of the Ādityas I am Viṣṇu, of lights I am the radiant sun, of the Maruts I am Marīci, and among the stars I am the moon….10.23: Of all the Rudras I am Lord Śiva, of the Yakṣas and Rākṣasas I am the Lord of wealth [Kuvera], of the Vasus I am fire [Agni], and of mountains I am Meru.10.24: Of priests, O Arjuna, know Me to be the chief, Bṛhaspati. Of generals I am Kārtikeya, and of bodies of water I am the ocean.10.25: Of the great sages I am Bhṛgu; of vibrations I am the transcendental oḿ. Of sacrifices I am the chanting of the holy names [japa], and of immovable things I am the Himālayas.

    I assume you won’t dispute the existence of the Himalayas, the oceans, or the moon. So presumably you agree that Krishna is the One True God™, right?

    But even if we set that aside for a moment, can you explain why, when the topic is biology, we should place an ancient book written by ignorant people above the professional opinion of a living, Nobel prize winning biologist?

    I mean, if I were interested in, say, TCP packet routing, I’d pay attention to what someone like Vint Cerf has to say. I wouldn’t normally turn to the Tao Te Ching or The Epic of Gilgamesh.

  3. To Arensb

    1.Formation of the universe from nothing need not violate conservation of energy. The gravitational potential energy of a gravitational field is a negative energy. When all the gravitational potential energy is added to all the other energy in the universe, it might sum to zero (Guth 1997, 9-12,271-276; Tryon 1973).

    This is saying what? It sounds like nothing split into positive energy(energy plus stuff) plus gravity which is negative energy. So really the initial nothing is still nothing, it just looks like something for a while until the positive energy runs out because the negative energy of gravity cancels it and you end up with nothing again.

    I saw an episode of super powers team that my sons were watching that had evil superheros from bizarro land which were opposites of good superheros. This sounds like your type of world.

    This also reminds me of a riddle asking how to get out of a locked room with only a table and a saw. You take the saw and cut the table in half. You then take the two halves and put them back together to make a Whole (hole) and you escape through the hole.

    Your magic man seems to have pronounced gravity the “Dark side of the Force” and so really there was nothing in the beginning. Now we still have nothing, it just looks really cool and organized, and in the end there will be nothing. AMAZING. I can’t believe more people are not buying that concept. It is so clear and thought out.

    God has written that in the end times there will be poeple who are willfully ignorant of the truth and will be willing to trade the Glory of the our created and wonderful souls for a lie.
    Do you really in your heart and brain believe that all you see touch feel smell observe measure test and experience came from nothing 13.7 billion years ago?

  4. Another interesting evolution unsolved mystery. Tell me about the evolution of intelligence. I am assuming by your posts that you consider yourselves intelligent. I do not argue that you are. At the least you are educated in many topics which is the beginning of wisdom.

    So, how do chemicals made up of subatomic particles made up of energy that is the opposite of gravity have the abilty to think, or to remember, or to propose, or to imagine, or to respond to stimuli?

    How does hydrogen and carbon and oxygen and calcium and sodium and the other elements that make up the human body have the ability to have intelligence and to even begin to be self aware and to discover the laws of math and physics and chemistry and biology?

  5. Fez likes quotes, try these:

    “I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially the extent to which it’s been applied, will be one of the great jokes in the history books of the future. Posterity will marvel that so flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity that it has.” Malcolm Muggeridge, journalist and philosopher (Pascal Lectures, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada).

    “Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con-men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever. In explaining evolution, we do not have one iota of fact.” Dr. T. N. Tahmisian, Atomic Energy Commission, USA.

    “Darwinian science inevitably will, and should have, legal, political and moral consequences.” L. Tiger, an anthropologist at Rutgers (as presented in Scientific American, October 1995, pg. 181).

  6. A ways back a post wanted creationism to propose a list of tests that would disprove it. If the tests all failed it would be a way to further cement the theory as a law. I have a few.

    Show something spontaneouslyarising from nothing.
    Show something alive coming from something with no living background.
    Show a mutation that adds something new to an organism rather than remove something.
    Show how time makes something non living become more orderly and structured rather than more chaotic.

  7. Second, the argument of water on the ark is foolish. It was a flood. Water could be brought into the ark through any number of means easiest would be internal plumbing from the outside. Also, Food stocks need to take into account hibernation.

    I guess no one has ever died of thirst at sea because they drank the sea water. rolls eyes

    Not to mention, have you ever heard the saying, “don’t drink the flood water???”. Every wonder why they needed water toted into New Orleans? How about any other flooded region?

    What you are thinking of is a complex water pumping/purification/desalination system that is present on modern day ships. Even a pumping system into the ship would be highly complex and require a huge amount of energy to accomplish. Something that was no attempted until well into the 20th century. The other two technologies were not practical until much much later in history. Yet you are saying that he utilized an advanced technology that somehow vanished after immediately the flood, but Noah surely would have used and passed onto his children??? Not to mention that if they drank the water no doubt contaminated by all those dead animals floating around as well as plant decomposition and various other vectors in the water they would become horribly ill. No doubt some of the animals could but some could not, which would complicate a dire situation even more.

    What is foolish is how you are ignoring simple facts. Like how that even if a mere 12000 animals were on the ship, the 8 crew men and women would have less than a minute per animal to feed, water, and care for the beasts (including cleaning cages, exercising, and grooming). Even that would be working almost 24 hours a day with no rest, no time for themselves, and no time to eat or maintain that huge barge.

  8. PCDR:

    Show how time makes something non living become more orderly and structured rather than more chaotic.

    Go to your kitchen and put one part water and one part oil into a transparent glass. Shake vigorously. Note the oil droplets in the water, the water droplets in the oil, and the generally foamy appearance of the stuff (if you’ve shaken hard).

    Now put the glass on a counter and stand back. Come back in a few minutes and see whether the stuff in the glass is more chaotic, more ordered, or about the same. Report.

  9. menes777:

    Not to mention that if they drank the water no doubt contaminated by all those dead animals floating around as well as plant decomposition and various other vectors in the water they would become horribly ill.

    You’re forgetting that Noah et al. had to be incredibly tough to begin with: after all, they had to carry a whole raft (no pun intended) of bacteria and viruses that require a human host to survive, like various strains of flu, polio, AIDS, and so forth. If they could survive a year infected with a few score deadly diseases, then drinking a tall glass of E. Coli Cola afterwards would be a piece of cake.

  10. PCDR,

    Since you seem so interested in origins, why not answer where your g-d came from??? That should be in your big book of common questions right?

  11. You’re forgetting that Noah et al. had to be incredibly tough to begin with: after all, they had to carry a whole raft (no pun intended) of bacteria and viruses that require a human host to survive, like various strains of flu, polio, AIDS, and so forth. If they could survive a year infected with a few score deadly diseases, then drinking a tall glass of E. Coli Cola afterwards would be a piece of cake.

    Excellent points. Noah must have syphilis, that’s why he was crazy enough to try a make up a story like that. 🙂

    There was an excellent documentary on Discovery (I think) about how that it is more likely that Noah was on a boat that was swept out to sea in a huge rainstorm during the night. So to him it appeared that the whole world was flooded, yet he was just too far away from land to see it. Once he did find land his story was changed (as oral stories typically do) and possibly even twisted and perverted to be used as a mythical story in which someone attempts to show how powerful their g-d is. Sort of like a kids game of my dad is better than your dad kind of thing. Perhaps it was to use an existing myth as a conversion tool. Either way the story itself really makes your g-d look weak, petty and truly incompetent. With the story itself cobbled together so badly that the writers seemed to have no idea what it would really take to pull off.

  12. Darwin’s Theory of Evolution – Slowly But Surely…
    Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is a slow gradual process. Darwin wrote, “…Natural selection acts only by taking advantage of slight successive variations; she can never take a great and sudden leap, but must advance by short and sure, though slow steps.” [1] Thus, Darwin conceded that, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” [2] Such a complex organ would be known as an “irreducibly complex system”. An irreducibly complex system is one composed of multiple parts, all of which are necessary for the system to function. If even one part is missing, the entire system will fail to function. Every individual part is integral. [3] Thus, such a system could not have evolved slowly, piece by piece. The common mousetrap is an everyday non-biological example of irreducible complexity. It is composed of five basic parts: a catch (to hold the bait), a powerful spring, a thin rod called “the hammer,” a holding bar to secure the hammer in place, and a platform to mount the trap. If any one of these parts is missing, the mechanism will not work. Each individual part is integral. The mousetrap is irreducibly complex. [4]

    Darwin’s Theory of Evolution – A Theory In Crisis
    Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is a theory in crisis in light of the tremendous advances we’ve made in molecular biology, biochemistry and genetics over the past fifty years. We now know that there are in fact tens of thousands of irreducibly complex systems on the cellular level. Specified complexity pervades the microscopic biological world. Molecular biologist Michael Denton wrote, “Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small, weighing less than 10-12 grams, each is in effect a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machinery built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world.” [5]

    And we don’t need a microscope to observe irreducible complexity. The eye, the ear and the heart are all examples of irreducible complexity, though they were not recognized as such in Darwin’s day. Nevertheless, Darwin confessed, “To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.” [6]

  13. When did the oceans begin to get salty? Are they still getting saltier? Can you put a fresh water fish in fresh water, then slowly add salt until you have the level of salt in the oceans, but the fresh water fish still be alive?

    The oceans are getting saltier due to salt being added by river runoff and water being removed by evaporation. So, if they are getting saltier, that means in the past they used to be …. that is right, less salty. Is there any reason the flood was not fresh water, and the initial runnoff as the land and mountains rose up and the layers formed that salt was added to the oceans?

    http://creation.com/images/pdfs/cabook/chapter14.pdf Contains many points on fish and salt / fresh water.

  14. PCDR:

    This is saying what? It sounds like nothing split into positive energy(energy plus stuff) plus gravity which is negative energy. So really the initial nothing is still nothing, it just looks like something for a while until the positive energy runs out because the negative energy of gravity cancels it and you end up with nothing again.

    Right. The total energy budget of the universe appears to be zero. All the stuff we see around us, like galaxies and whatnot, are just temporary. So what’s the problem?

  15. Since you all are on a germ kick, how is it possible given the vast amount of deadly germs, that over the last however millions of years either the germs did not kill everyone and thing, or every person / animal evolved immunity to them? Why do germs/viruses/bacteria still make people sick?

  16. Arensb, you sound like the government.

    We don’t have any money so we will spend a bunch of what we don’t have to create a stimulus that will create a bunch of money to replace what we spent that we did not have.

    How did the NO ENERGY system split into energy and anti-energy? How Did Nothing become something plus anti-something?

    At least I have the guts to admit that that I am trusting in the something that started stuff from nothing. Menes777 brings up the My Dad VS Your Dad argument. Yours sounds like My science contradicts itself but that makes it true because it is science not faith. Science by definition is true even when obviously absurd.

  17. Arensb: Once again you make my point.

    you say
    “Go to your kitchen and put one part water and one part oil into a transparent glass. Shake vigorously. Note the oil droplets in the water, the water droplets in the oil, and the generally foamy appearance of the stuff (if you’ve shaken hard).

    Now put the glass on a counter and stand back. Come back in a few minutes and see whether the stuff in the glass is more chaotic, more ordered, or about the same. Report.”

    You created something. An Oil Water Mix in a Glass jar in suspension. Add time what do you get? Do you get a fine vinigarette for your salad? No it “breaks down” into one part oil and one part water. Give it more time the lid will rust into iron oxide and fall apart the liquid evaporates and you are left with a dried crud in the bottom of a glass jar which over time will “melt” into a pile of silica as glass in a vertical plane will do. Now you have a pile of silica, what ever crud was in the water and oil when you added it to the jar, and watervapor. I do not see something better, I see something broken down.

    Next. I notice you avoided the 3 points before that with even bigger implications for your theory.

  18. PCDR:

    God has written that in the end times there will be poeple who are willfully ignorant of the truth and will be willing to trade the Glory of the our created and wonderful souls for a lie.

    Correction: the Bible says that. You haven’t demonstrated that any gods were involved in its composition.

    And it occurs to me that if I were pushing an idea that I suspected was a load of dingo’s kidneys, I’d put in a bit saying that anyone who tries to talk you out of it is to be ignored. I’ve been told that Scientologists teach that anyone who tries to tell you that Scientology is bullshit has been brainwashed by their body Thetans, or something like that.

    So it would appear that you’ve run out of arguments. You know that there’s no good objective evidence for your beliefs, but you want to keep believing them anyway, so you’ve retreated to “Well, the Bible says so!”, which of course is just a fig leaf for “I believe it because I want to.”

  19. PCDR blatted:

    Next. I notice you avoided the 3 points before that with even bigger implications for your theory.

    Cupcake you’ve demonstrated some magnificently developed ignorance claiming anyone besides yourself has avoided any points. You’ve talked yourself in circles, down the drain, and into the septic. Congratulations, you’ve finally made it to the top!

  20. Could God create a moron so dense that not even He could convince it of it’s ignorance?

  21. For anyone here with a lot of time and interest here is some well documented short pages on a variety of topics. This is not my site so I am not self-promoting here, just interesting reading.

    http://www.big-bang-theory.com/

    Not sure who this is but there is an interesting thread about a mans journey which is similar to mine.
    http://www.allaboutthejourney.org/

    I challange to you read it with an open mind and see what you find.

  22. Ok, I get it. Either you’re spamming for the allabout* ministries or one of the soon-to-appear comments is going to be, “Babba Booey! Babba Booey! Howard Stern’s penis!”

  23. Since you all are on a germ kick, how is it possible given the vast amount of deadly germs, that over the last however millions of years either the germs did not kill everyone and thing, or every person / animal evolved immunity to them? Why do germs/viruses/bacteria still make people sick?

    First when you say germs/viruses/bacteria, it’s like you are saying you have these choices to eat, fish/trout/salmon. Germ is the classification name for pathogens (Viral, Bacteria, Fungal and Prion).

    Secondly, what vast amount of deadly germs? You seem to act like the world is teaming with Ebola and Hemorrhagic Fever. Show me one virus that is 100% lethal to it’s host, is 100% communicable, is not resistable, has no carriers only infected and that is not cross species spread. None you can think of? That’s right you can’t because a virus that deadly will kill it’s way to extinction, especially if it has a quick incubation period. Really soon it runs out of people to infect and either disappears or goes into some form of spore or long term inactivity. Viral infections like Ebola can be spread from bats who only happen to be carriers of it. As long as both exist, there will be Ebola. Bubonic plague is carried by fleas (sometimes on rats) who it is not lethal to. It’s only limited by how far the rats and the fleas can spread.

    Yes a Virus or a Bacteria might go extinct but they are like a Hydra, you kill one and 3 others take their place.

    Thirdly, why would a pathogen that makes a human only sick go extinct? We know the Influenza virus mutates almost constantly (Avian and Swine kinds alike), people get sick by bacteria that grows in rotting (or spoiled) food. Someone might grow to be immune to one strain of the flu, but that is one in trillions and trillions (or more) of strains out there. Don’t even try to become immune to certain bacteria (then again go ahead and try with Yersinia pestis), because it just won’t work. Considering how many bacteria live in the human body you don’t want to.

    Just that question alone makes me wonder what caliber of person you really are. If you have such trouble understanding the dynamics of how humans interact with pathogens and how they exist, explaining the more in depth topics might be in vain.

  24. You created something. An Oil Water Mix in a Glass jar in suspension. Add time what do you get? Do you get a fine vinigarette for your salad? No it “breaks down” into one part oil and one part water.

    Surely you took thermal physics in the process of getting your EE degree. Since you’re dealing with a very mathematical law here, you should probably specify how you’re quantifying “order” and “breakdown” in this system. There’s nothing more annoying to a physicist than people who go back and forth between touchy-feely definitions of “order” and actual thermodynamic quantities whenever it suits them. You’re trying to wrap your intuitive feelings in the respectability of a mathematical law without actually showing how the system relates to that law. That doesn’t fly.

  25. How did the NO ENERGY system split into energy and anti-energy? How Did Nothing become something plus anti-something?

    Once again, PCDR reveals he slept through his physics courses…..

  26. Once again, PCDR reveals he slept through his physics courses…..

    From his questions and his replies, I wouldn’t say he slept through them. I think he was wide awake, he just didn’t understand the material as well he thought he did. Yet rather than admit he doesn’t truly understand he’s applied his flawed understanding to try and make his his belief more rational and more attractive.

  27. PCDR:

    You created something. An Oil Water Mix in a Glass jar in suspension. Add time what do you get? Do you get a fine vinigarette for your salad?

    Say, what kind of mileage do you get out of those goalposts?

  28. Menes777:

    You made my point about germs, I was not the one who said Noah had to be infected with every germ out there. They can be carried on other host animals, mutate, grow on dead things (hummm where would dead things be in a global flood?).

    Eamon Knight:
    You mock my physics course. My physics had facts and truth in it. Your physics apparantly has chemicals elements, solar systems, and entire galaxies forming from nothing (ABSOLUTLY NOTHING). You offer no possible science how it happens but you claim it to be established fact then mock me.
    By the way, I did sleep through a lot of college classes and still graduated with honors because when you apply math and truth to problems you only have one possible correct answer. That is Truth. If you are smart enough to apply the correct math, you do not need the indocrination of a teachers opinions to learn.

    Fez:
    for as active as you are on this site you appear to be the sidekick. You talk a lot but do not say anything. Just mock and make stupid unrelated comments.

    Arensb:
    You are right. What is order? Is a library in order when the books are arranged by size? Is a watch in order when the parts are arranged by shape? Is a house in order when it is built or when all the materials are in piles by wood, nails, shingles, insulation? Is a jar of oil and water in order when it is separated or when it is mixed?

    So what? Lets use the word complexity rather than order. Still not the perfect word I am sure, but maybe more accurate than ordered. Does time make things more complex or less complex? There is a dead deer on the side of the road by my place. The first day all you had was a deer. Only deer parts in a very complex system. One week later the system was even more complex with less order. There were maggots visible, and I am sure one could test the carcass for a plethora of other bacteria. However the deer parts were no longer in their correct places. Things were missing, hair had dissappeared, rib cage had collapsed. In a few more weeks, there will no longer be flesh, maybe some skin, and some bones. I am sure the coyotes will find the carcass and some of the bones will dissapper. The vultures will come and the skin will be shredded.
    Is the system more complex because we added over time insects and bacteria and carnivores? I argue the deer became broken down into a loose and then scattered bunch of elements. Less order, less complex.

  29. PCDR:

    Lets use the word complexity rather than order.

    It doesn’t matter what word you use, as long as you define it. What do you mean by “order” or “complexity”, and how can I tell whether system A exhibits more or less order or complexity than system B?

    Basically, I’m asking you to go through your own questions and answer them, in such a way that I can compare the relative complexity of two systems. Until we can agree on the definition of terms, there’s no point in having a conversation.

  30. PCDR:

    You made my point about germs, I was not the one who said Noah had to be infected with every germ out there. They can be carried on other host animals, mutate, grow on dead things (hummm where would dead things be in a global flood?).

    I wasn’t talking about “germs” in general. I was talking specifically about the ones that require a human host to survive.

    You probably don’t realize this, but there is more variety among bacteria than among all the eukaryotes (I’m not sure how viruses rank, but I’m sure there’s a lot of variety there as well). Saying that “there are bacteria that live in dead trees, therefore smallpox didn’t need to infect Noah’s family to survive” is as wrong as saying “there are eukaryotes (like ferns and oaks) that live in dirt, therefore eukaryotes like salmon and sparrows can live in dirt”.

    Basically, all of your rationalizations for Ye Floode are just-so stories that, if you actually believe them, betray a vast and tragic ignorance.

  31. pcdr sez:

    for as active as you are on this site you appear to be the sidekick. You talk a lot but do not say anything. Just mock and make stupid unrelated comments.

    Wow, and it only took you a bit over a month and a dozen or so comments to figure that out.

    Yes, when someone as willfully ignorant as yourself attempts to set up shop I’ll pop in as the unofficial Office of Citizens Zoning Enforcement Office. I have an exceedingly low tolerance for people dumber than myself. Cope, or STFU and leave.

    Funny though,for all of your bloviating, whining, and painfully juvenile attempts at subterfuge, the total of which probably far exceed my own contributory word count here over the years, you too have said nothing. Nothing of consequence, anyway.

  32. Arensb:

    Smallpox is a virus that infects humans. Either it kills the human, or the human has the genetic makeup to become immune to it. How many years would it take before either the Smallpox mutates and kills all humans or all humans have been born from someone with the genetic makeup to become immune to smallpox?

    If you have a 3.7 billion years of life and x million years of the Homo genus why is smallpox still around.

    Plus your human carrier issue on the ark holds for the 3.x billion years since viruses evolved before humans evolved. Where did the virus live then?
    Maybe your math wizards on this site can calculate the probability of a Human only carried virus evolving only after humans were around to carry it.

  33. Smallpox is a virus that infects humans. Either it kills the human, or the human has the genetic makeup to become immune to it. How many years would it take before either the Smallpox mutates and kills all humans or all humans have been born from someone with the genetic makeup to become immune to smallpox?

    Smallpox is a virus of the Genus type Orthopoxvirus, which includes Cowpox, Monkeypox, Camelpox, Rabbitpox, etc… In your viewpoint there is all or nothing. This is a typical viewpoint that I find quite prevalent among xians. Every human has the genetic makeup to become immune to any virus. It’s only a matter of if the particularly person can outlive the virus long enough to make the immunity mean anything. There is not just a person living because they were immune or developed the immunity or dying because they did not. The reason they lived or died is based on many factors that when combined together determine if a person can outlive the infection.

    The Smallpox virus may mutate (and has into things like Hemorrhagic Smallpox) but the human immunity to the virus just isn’t to the smallpox. It’s any immunity to a virus like the smallpox. That is how the vaccine Cowpox makes humans immune to Smallpox. It just doesn’t make humans immune to Cowpox, it makes them immune to things like Cowpox, such as Smallpox.

    Even if Smallpox mutated into some lethal virus, for it wipe out man, it would still take the following criteria that I explained above. 100% lethality (no virus is), 100% communicability (no virus is), and it must have a mechanism to travel everywhere that humans are (ie airborne with 100% survivability outside a host). Which is of course absurd, but even if it were that way a large number of humans would die, but not every human.

    Lastly, you are assuming that immunities are passed down from generation to generation without any loss of that immunity along the way. Even if an immunity is passed down. I am pretty sure my mom and dad got the chicken pox, but I too got chicken pox. My parents were given vaccines to Smallpox, but I didn’t have an immunity to it when I was born. How about TB, that is lethal yet it hasn’t killed itself off by killing off the human race. Google it and see what you can learn about TB, might help you understand more.

    Is it really hard to understand that the dynamics of viral infections and immunities are not as cut and dry as you wold like them to be???

  34. Smallpox is a virus that infects humans. Either it kills the human, or the human has the genetic makeup to become immune to it. How many years would it take before either the Smallpox mutates and kills all humans or all humans have been born from someone with the genetic makeup to become immune to smallpox?

    There’s no reason to assume that either one of these will be the end state of things.

    Plus your human carrier issue on the ark holds for the 3.x billion years since viruses evolved before humans evolved. Where did the virus live then?

    Viruses that lived only in humans didn’t exist before there were humans. It’s really that simple. If a virus happened to incur some mutation that would make it human-specific before humans were around, it died off. This is really only a problem if you assume that all life has always been around in the same (or largely similar) form. That’s your problem, not ours.

    Maybe your math wizards on this site can calculate the probability of a Human only carried virus evolving only after humans were around to carry it.

    I can calculate the probability of a human-only virus evolving any time before humans were around: zero. The question you’re asking is akin to, “Isn’t it a weird coincidence that companies only started offering car insurance AFTER cars were invented?”

    Personally, I don’t think that smallpox is a really good example of this, because anybody whose point of view accommodates so-called “microevolution” can simply say that it “microevolved” from some more benign virus. I’m much more interested in dealing with more complex parasites that often deal with only one host.

    Even more interesting is whether Noah was specifically commanded to do things like drop koalas off only in Australia where they could get eucalyptus or if he did that on his own.

  35. PCDR:

    Plus your human carrier issue on the ark holds for the 3.x billion years since viruses evolved before humans evolved. Where did the virus live then?

    Dude, you’re embarrassing yourself.

    I mean, I realize that you reject huge tracts of human knowledge, but you could at least pretend to try to mount a serious attack on science. Here, you’re not even trying. Your argument here is on a par with “if gravity is real, why doesn’t the moon fall out of the sky?”

    At this point, it’s abundantly clear that you have no idea what evolution is about. If you’ll accept some friendly advice, the best thing you could do would be to read a couple of books: one on how science works (I think Michael Shermer’s Why People Believe Weird Things is a good one, but it’s on loan to someone. John Allen Paulos’s Innumeracy is a classic. Richard Feynman’s Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! is laugh-out-loud funny in parts. Anyone else wanna jump in with a recommendation?). And one or two on evolution, written by an evolutionary biologist, so that you at least know what scientists claim, as opposed to the caricature you have in mind.

    Richard Dawkins’s The Blind Watchmaker and Climbing Mount Improbable are both very clearly written. Stephen Jay Gould’s collections of articles are also quite good, but I can’t think of a specific one to recommend at the moment. Neil Shubin’s Your Inner Fish is also quite good, and more recent than the others I’ve mentioned.

    I’m not asking you to agree with those books. I’m not even asking you to keep an open mind. All I’m asking is that you educate yourself enough that you can stop attacking straw men. Think of it as “know thy enemy”.

  36. I have been going back through the questions I have been asked, and the main one I ignored the most is – (in many variations) Prove your God. I did not ignore it because I had no answer, but I wanted to point out some shortcomings of evolution first.

    Here is the beginning of my answer. Fez, are you ready to mock?

    I will start with proof of a god. By my definition a god is something that is more complex and outside the realm of human understanding. In my definition a god can not be understood completely or explained completely by humans because if we could, we could substitute something or someone for the god that had all the same attributes. I am not ducking the question here, I am just defining what I will be talking about. An imperfect example would be my dog and me. My dog knows that I exist and that I am his master. I (and other humans) are way more complex than my dog could ever imagine. My dog can not tell other dogs all about me because other dogs can not understand everything about me. My dog is able to recognize me and understand my voice. My dog can communicate with me when he is hungry or hurt or happy or scared. My dog will protect me from other dogs if I am around, but if I am not around there is no way my dog could show another dog who his master is.
    That became a long paragraph to say, I can not describe a god completely because that would mean that the god does not meet my definition of a god. We can debate the definition of a god if you would like, but for now I will give you my proof of a god that fits my definition.

    In math or even chemistry, when you are listing a proof, there are many steps usually. If any of the steps are untrue or just plain wrong, the entire proof is incorrect even if some or all of the other steps are true. This concept is true in nature also. For any object, either animal, vegetable or mineral, 1 of 2 things is true by definition. Either it made itself, or it was made(formed) by outside forces. To define, I would say that a leaf on a tree was formed by the tree. I would say that an arrowhead found in the forest was formed by a person. I would say that a rock was formed by heat and pressure. I would say that a watch,(to pull from the Blind Watchmaker by Dawkins) was made by a chinese company or if an old watch, maybe a swiss watchmaker. I can not think of any examples of something that made itself. Can You? To get back to the steps of my proof, if any of the steps in the formation of anything can not be true, then the proof of how it formed can not be true no matter how many other steps are true. So a leaf formed by a tree formed by a nut formed by a tree (etc insert 1000s of years) formed by a spore formed by a fern formed by a (I don’t know, see I admit when I am ignorant) maybe a fungus, formed by a single cell life form, formed by a aminoid, formed by a volcano and lightning, formed by a supernova dying, formed by a hydrogen cloud formed by a big bang formed by nothing that created itself. I do not by nothing creating itself creating a leaf.

    Take the watch formed by the watchmaker from materials formed by heat and pressure, formed by a supernova… back to nothing creating itself.

    Lets get real complex, take the intelligence displayed by arensb and others here. I admit they have studied many more sources than I have. The sources have vast amount of intelligence. This intelligence is stored where? In a grey pile of carbon hydrogen oxygen and other elements mixed together. What is a brain? How did the elements create the ablilty to think and reason and debate and feel and love and hate and mock and cheer. I don’t even have to take this one back to the big bang before reason and intelligence can say DID NOT EVOLVE from goo in a primordial soup.

    So the two conclusions one can reach is that #1: Nothing Nowhere randomly formed the order and complexity we can see and observe and have the intelligence to comtemplate or #2: Something, somewhere creatively and orderly and systematically formed what we see and observe and measure and gave us a source of intelligence to be able to even be self aware.

    Am I wrong that all we see is either self creating or outside created? Is there a third option I am missing?

    I eagerly await your tearing this apart so I am going to turn in and I will be back tomorrow.

  37. Had a few typos, sorry, one glaring one is “I do not buy nothing creating itself creating a leaf.” as being a true proof of the formation of a leaf.

  38. Once again, it looks to me like we have the following logical chain:

    1) Everything must be created by something.
    2) The universe is something.
    3) By (1), the universe must be created by something.
    4) That something is a god.
    4a) God doesn’t require a creator.

    I don’t see why making exception (4a) for God is any more satisfying than simply accepting that assumption (1) may be wrong. The axiom itself makes no sense to me, especially when the only answer to the problem seems to be positing an exception.

  39. [Apologies if the formatting is boned. The preview display is misbehaving and I’m not positive the HTML is going to render properly]

    Here is the beginning of my answer. Fez, are you ready to mock?

    Always.

    I will start with proof of a god.

    Let’s see…definition, analogy, definition, example, question, question, question, example…nope, there’s not a shred of anything resembling a proof in there. You’ve put forth ~800 words to simply repeat the same mistake that arensb pointed out to you above, Argumentum ad ignorantiam.

    I wanted to point out some shortcomings of evolution first.

    Then why couldn’t you stick to discussing evolution? Is it that you do not fully comprehend that evolution is a process and not a result of “start with X add some Y and you get Z plus some evolution”? If a scientist decides to study the evolution of a particular organism they do not have to prove the organism exists; it should be painfully obvious that the organism in question already exists. There is no need to provide a proof of the absolute Alpha nor the absolute Omega because it is not directly relevant.

    All you have done is restated an opinion and attempted to promote said opinion to the level of factual knowledge by bolstering it with the retold myths and legends humans of thousands of years ago used to explain natural processes, tossing away tens of thousands of years of real scientific progress because it doesn’t agree with your preconceived notions of how things should work. Sorry, that’s not science.

  40. PCDR:
    So. Argument from ignorance, argument from personal incredulity, and first cause. Forgive me for feeling underwhelmed.

    By my definition a god is something that is more complex and outside the realm of human understanding.

    So anything that’s complicated and not understood is a god? Like hurricanes, the magnetic field of the sun, quantum particles, mathematics, and the stock market?

    I would say that a watch,(to pull from the Blind Watchmaker by Dawkins) was made by a chinese company

    That’s not Dawkins’s blind watchmaker: that’s Paley’s original watchmaker, the one Dawkins was playing off of in his title.

    How did the elements create the ablilty to think and reason and debate and feel and love and hate and mock and cheer.

    You may want to take this one in small steps. Start with “how do hydrogen and oxygen atoms create wetness?” and “how do carbon and silicon atoms create the ability to bend light?”, and work your way up from there.

  41. I will start with proof of a god. By my definition a god is something that is more complex and outside the realm of human understanding. In my definition a god can not be understood completely or explained completely by humans because if we could, we could substitute something or someone for the god that had all the same attributes. I am not ducking the question here, I am just defining what I will be talking about. An imperfect example would be my dog and me. My dog knows that I exist and that I am his master. I (and other humans) are way more complex than my dog could ever imagine. My dog can not tell other dogs all about me because other dogs can not understand everything about me. My dog is able to recognize me and understand my voice. My dog can communicate with me when he is hungry or hurt or happy or scared. My dog will protect me from other dogs if I am around, but if I am not around there is no way my dog could show another dog who his master is.

    If you consider this a proof you have a serious needing in learning more about logic. This is more like your definition of a god and how that a creature cannot describe something above it’s intelligence. If you would have considered the more deeper meanings in your analogy you would come to the conclusion that if you are the dog and god is the master (interesting how those are mirror images) you would not be able to tell us (the other dogs) who your master was. Thus either you cannot tell us about your master and your analogy is invalid or you can and your god isn’t beyond understanding.

    Taking this further, consider that in the bible your god is jealous, angry, vengeful, wrathful, loving, etc… etc… Yet for your god to “outside the realm of human understanding” he has many human emotions that are very much describable and understandable. The dog cannot tell other dogs that his master is jealous when the dogs pay attention to other masters or that he if the dog does not obey the master they will be punished. Which sounds to me like the gulf between dog and man is less than the gulf between man and god. Therefore, your god is not that complex or that much outside of the human realm at all.

  42. Dang, I just lost all my comments. Guess they were no good, right Fez.

    I will summarize:
    Troublesome Frog – I claimed to not be able to completely understand a god which is part of my definition of a god – bigger than me. You also claim to not be able to understand the creation of everything from nothing, yet it is fact to you. You call mine faith and yours science. I call them both faith. My faith is in a god who can do things I can not understand. Your faith is in a big pile of nothing that can do things you can’t understand. Neither one is science by the definition of science from any dictionary.

    Fez – tell me what about evolution I do not understand that show how life begins or how Time, space, and matter are created from nothing that exists nowhere.

    Arensb – I am surprised at your last comments. Did your morning coffee mess up your typing? I said a god would be more complex than a created being could understand. I did not say anything complex would be a god. I know that you know better than that. I wrote about Dawkins and the watch to make a point and because you had mentioned his book. Yes, I know that William Paley wrote about watches first. And finally how do physical properties have anything to do with abstract things. I can touch and measure wetness. I can see and measure light. Are you telling me you can see and touch and measure love and memories and thoughts and emotions. How is anger related to hydrogen? How is stupid related to carbon and oxygen?

    menes777 – you are right, the gulf between my dog and me is greater than the gulf between me and MY God. MY God created me in his image. That is not to say slightly overweight, balding, with hairy arms, but with the abstract qualities of self awareness, and emotions, and abstract thoughts, and intelligence. My analogy with my dog is not perfect. No analogy is by definition. However the point is made that My dog knows he has a master and he recognizes me by what I do and have done. I recognize the existance of a god by what said god has done and does do.

  43. So I got no third option. Either Everything we see created itself, or Everything we see was created by something outside. I know I am just a simple farm boy with an engineering degree, but I have never seen something create itself or seen any evidence or fact that it even could happen, so I am going with option B – a god. That is my faith leap. What is yours?

  44. PCDR:
    What little definition you gave of the word “god” was:

    By my definition a god is something that is more complex and outside the realm of human understanding. In my definition a god can not be understood completely or explained completely by humans

    No human can understand all of math. Or keep track of all of the little forces that affect a hurricane or the magnetic fields of stars. Or figure out what the stock market will do tomorrow. Not in detail. So as far as I can tell, my examples fit your definition.

    Are you telling me you can see and touch and measure love and memories and thoughts and emotions.

    Yes. We do it all the time. You can look at people and tell whether they’re in love, or angry, or happy, etc. Not 100% of the time, of course, but certainly in many cases.

    How is anger related to hydrogen? How is stupid related to carbon and oxygen?

    The same way that World of Warcraft is related to silicon. Brains are built out of carbon and hydrogen and oxygen and whatnot, and their behavior produces minds in the same way that electrons zipping around gold and gallium and silicon produce World of Warcraft.

    so I am going with option B – a god. That is my faith leap. What is yours?

    I’ll go with magic universe-creating pixies under the command of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It’s more fun than your version, and has just as much evidence to support it.

  45. Dang, I just lost all my comments. Guess they were no good, right Fez.

    Awww look everyone, he’s sweet on me! I don’t care how many gifts you send peecee, you still don’t get a unicorn ride until you answer the question.

    As for your comment itself:

    tell me what about evolution I do not understand that show how life begins or how Time, space, and matter are created from nothing that exists nowhere.

    You should have saved yourself the embarrassment and gone with your first hunch.

    Peecee it’s clear you need the remedial elementary education. Find yourself a dictionary, look up the word “evolution” (no quotes), and transcribe or copy/paste for us here the definition provided therein, any of them, even the ones that do not discuss biological evolution at all, that relates to “how anything begins” or “how other things are created from nothing.” Can you do that for us sunshine? Hmmm?

  46. PCDR:

    I claimed to not be able to completely understand a god which is part of my definition of a god – bigger than me. You also claim to not be able to understand the creation of everything from nothing, yet it is fact to you.

    I don’t recall claiming that the “creation of everything from nothing” is fact. My position is simply that the existence of the universe is no reason to suppose a god exists. There are alternate explanations, and I can’t think of any reason to prefer the existence of any god as preferable to them. As I’ll explain below, I can even think of a number of reasons why the incomplete models are still more satisfying.

    You call mine faith and yours science. I call them both faith. My faith is in a god who can do things I can not understand. Your faith is in a big pile of nothing that can do things you can’t understand. Neither one is science by the definition of science from any dictionary.

    Here’s the difference as I see it: One of them is at least marginally testable against the data we observe. Whether you like them or not, the hypotheses on the origins of space and time are designed to agree with observed reality and are discarded or refined when they do not.

    Nobody has a “play by play” explanation of everything, but the process of building and trashing those models has given us infinitely more insights into the universe than simply pointing to magic. The revelations we have had about the age of the universe, its scale, and how the objects within it form and change over time are astounding. Even without solving the “what happened in the first 30 seconds” question, science has given us a lot.

    So I got no third option. Either Everything we see created itself, or Everything we see was created by something outside.

    Let me toss out some other options:

    1) Everything was created, but it didn’t create itself and nothing on the outside created it.
    2) Everything has always been here.
    3) Going back far enough in time, there is no longer a meaningful concept of time, so the idea of a “before” and any sort of chain of causality is meaningless.
    4) All of the above are true because logic and reason only happen to “work” in the immediately observable universe and, unfortunately, there’s no rhyme or reason to anything beyond a certain distance from us in space or time.

    Those are just thoughts off the top of my head. I imagine philosophers and physicists could come up with dozens more. Trying to get at the ultimate origins of the universe by process of elimination does not seem likely to bear fruit.

  47. menes777 – you are right, the gulf between my dog and me is greater than the gulf between me and MY God. MY God created me in his image. That is not to say slightly overweight, balding, with hairy arms, but with the abstract qualities of self awareness, and emotions, and abstract thoughts, and intelligence. My analogy with my dog is not perfect. No analogy is by definition. However the point is made that My dog knows he has a master and he recognizes me by what I do and have done. I recognize the existance of a god by what said god has done and does do.

    You got me, I wrote this too fast and changed things at the end and didn’t have a chance to proof. I meant to say Greater not less than.

    Self Awareness, emotions, abstract thoughts are intelligence are not traits that are unique to human beings. Many mammals display a wide range of emotions, from jealousy, to anger, to love, to fear, to sadness, to submission and dominance. Many studies have shown pets to display a wide range of emotions. Pack animals such as wolves, when observed, show that they have an extremely dynamic behavior that revolves around emotions. Abstract thoughts all depend on what your definition of that is. Dogs may not be able to count but they can tell the difference in size between two objects (or piles of things). My dogs have come to relate that if it looks fluffy and soft it’s a bed and it’s theirs to lay on. If we put something down that is hard and not soft, they avoid it. The only way they lay on it is if they have no other choice and/or it’s cool or warm. Yet that seems like a very abstract concept of hard and soft and they have somehow mastered it. Intelligence almost goes hand in hand with that. Animals can solve many problems without human intervention. They may not know what Pi means, but they definitely can escape cages, manipulate their masters and overcome problems that seem to be beyond their capability. Such as pets that wake their masters when there is a fire. Finally, how do you know that some mammals are not self aware? What is self awareness? If it is simply knowing what you are and what is around you, how do you know that a dog is not self aware??? They couldn’t speak to you in a way that you would understand, their vocal chords aren’t developed that way. They don’t have a language that we understand but they communicate with each other. They don’t have opposable thumbs so how could they write something to tell us? Just because they don’t go out in the dirt and scratch in out the words that they are dogs, doesn’t mean they do not know that.

    Your dog is a domesticated animal that only knows humans as sources of companionship and support. If you start abusing them and leaving the food and water dish empty they are going to either turn on you or flee (if possible). Dogs don’t know humans as masters because they won the nobel prize or that they work as a doctors, lawyers and TV repairmen. They don’t even care that you own a sports boat or that you have Ferarri parked in the driveway. All they care about is that you feed them, water them, pet them and play with them. Their definition of master is not the same as yours. So you say the analogy falls short, but if you believe in a god because of what he has done, you surely have a limited outlook on life. There are many people that have done more for humanity than your god ever has, yet they are not worshipped as gods.

    You say you recognize your god by what he has done and what he does? Can you turn over a rock and see “made by god”? Even if you assume that god created everything as perfectly as you say he did, made everything in balance. Why then does he rely on a cryptic, contradictory, incomplete book and imperfect humans to spread his word? If you removed all humans from the earth (and their creations) how would the only person around know that god existed? Even if they imagined a higher power, it would more likely be that mother earth was the god and not some uber powerful sky lord that needs tiny humans for his pleasure.

    You say that both evolution and belief in your god require faith. Yet evolution does not require faith at all, if you don’t believe in evolution, you won’t burn in an eternal fire because you didn’t believe. The opposite also applies that you won’t spend an eternity in a heaven if you do believe. Evolution will happen with or without anyone believing in it and continues to happen when the individual is gone. Your religion forces you to believe or else you will be punished for it. It’s the way that religion puts a shackle on so many people to not only support itself, but make itself grow. The more educated humans become the less that shackle has control over them. At one point in history men believed that gods created thunder and lightning bolts, they made the ground shake, and they thought that volcanoes were from a fiery underworld. Now we can explain all of these things with science, logic and rational observations. What does your religion tell us??? That god did it. Well sorry I don’t buy that your god can create the earth in 6 days, but take almost 6000 years to defeat his arch rival, after slaughtering billions of humans along the way.

  48. I wanted to mention one more thing about emotions. Emotions are very much part of the brain and they require a certain amount of nutrition to work. If a person receives brain damage of some kind they can become more violent and aggressive. They can become more sexual and/or less inhibited. Drinking alcohol pretty much exhibits that as it alters the way our brain functions. The Nazi’s were kind enough to provide a study that if you only give humans a certain calorie amount to sustain them, that they exhibit almost no emotions. Some serial killers have been said to be completely emotionless, yet they are human. What about limited emotional ranges? Some mentally challenged people are incapable of feeling love, yet are they not fully human?

    What do Oxygen, Carbon and Hydrogen have to do with emotions? There are two words that will explain it all, testosterone and estrogen. Testosterone is made completely up of Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen, yet it’s one of the biggest differences between males and females. It also does so many different things in the body (of both sexes). Every steroid, pheromone, endorphin, and so on are made up of the elements, typically Carbon based. These things all affect how we grow, what we feel and how we react. And all of their molecular structures are easily definable among the periodic table of elements. So no hydrogen by itself has nothing to do with love or anger or jealousy, but combine that with carbon and oxygen in the correct sequence and quantity and you can make a romantic, jealous, caring man who loves, hates, gets sad, angry and happy.

  49. Troublesome Frog writes: “Here’s the difference as I see it: One of them is at least marginally testable against the data we observe. Whether you like them or not, the hypotheses on the origins of space and time are designed to agree with observed reality and are discarded or refined when they do not. ”

    I would ask for anything from the Big Bang that is “at least marginally testable” that does not conflict with observed science. Something besides “here it is, you can see and measure it, therefore it happened”

    I would also ask for anything from abiogenisis that is “at least marginally testable” that also does not conflict with the observed science of probablity and possible conditions of the early earth.

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