Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Brian Keith Dalton has become God again in the latest episode of his Mr. Deity series. This time he shows what it’s like to be All Knowing, and how horrible it would be to hang around someone who’s omniscient. I like the bit where Jesus asks him if he finally understands the Trinity. At 4:30 the bit ends and Dalton does three minutes of self promotion and asking for Patreon-age—an ad that goes on a bit too long. But, to be fair, I’ll direct you to his Patreon page: here.
Here’s a 20-minute video in which Brian Dalton (formerly “Mr. Deity”) debunks the old canard that passionate atheists are as bad as religious fundamentalists. At about 3:30, he disposes of the similar claim that atheists always interpret scriptures more literally than do believers. He later argues that religious moderates rather than fundamentalists are the believers who really “pervert the faith.”
Dalton’s bit about the baby and the bathwater at about 12:30 is nice, and don’t miss the powerful summing-up beginning at 19:15.
Of course Dalton’s vigorous defense of anti-theism and criticism of religion is certainly going to brand him as a “fundamentalist atheist.” For in the Thesaurus of Accommodationism and Faitheism, “fundamentalist” is another word for “passionate.”
Here Brian Keith Dalton, in his “Way of the Mister” series (he’s not playing God here), discusses the Chapel Hill murders of three Muslims by Craig Hicks, and the subsequent rush to pin that crime on atheism. His point is that those who pin the violence on New Atheists (none of whom call for violence) while defending religious scriptures (which explicitly call for violence) are simply hypocrites.
We heard Stephen Fry’s response when asked what he’d say to God were he to meet Him, but Richard Dawkins actually got the chance. Here he is in a new video with Mr. Deity. There are a lot of “ingroup” references here, so listen carefully. It’s one of the better Mr. Deity videos I’ve seen in a while.
One plaint: I don’t think the recurrent laryngeal nerve of the giraffe would be only 2 inches long if it didn’t loop down around the aorta. It would, I think, be substantially longer than that.
There’s a mock ad at the end, which is okay, but you won’t miss much by stopping at 5:50.
Using uncharacteristically strong language meant to explicitly demonstrate his rights, Mr. Deity (Brian Dalton) calls out Pope Francis for saying that there is no right to criticize religion. (TRIGGER WARNING: Maybe not for kids?)
Many of you know that Brian Dalton (“Mr. Deity”) used to be a Mormon. Here, speaking from his nearly three decades in the faith, he takes the religion apart in a video that’s remarkably “strident” for Dalton. And much of what he says applies to religion in general.
He’s clearly ticked off that he wasted so many years believing in fairy tales. ~
Here Mr. Deity sheds his persona of God and simply becomes Keith Dalton, going full-out against religionists. In his latest video, “The Way of the mister: In defense of killing babies,” he takes apart an column by Dennis Prager (see below), defending the Noah’s Ark story as not only historically accurate, but, despite its aqueious genocide, “one of the most moral stories ever told”! Dalton is as biting as ever.
Below is Bill Maher’s original tirade about Noah’s Ark (you’ll have to watch this on YouTube by clicking on the link in the screenshot below, for embedding is forbidden).
Dennis Prager is a Jewish conservative columnist and radio talk-show host who’s constantly decrying the erosion of America’s “Judeo-Christian values”. And here’s his original essay defending the morality of the Noah Story, “Noah: One of the most moral stories ever told” . Have a look, but only if your stomach is strong!
That piece shows the ability of apologists to rationalize anything, no matter how hideous, as part of God’s benevolence. I look forward Prager’s explanation for the Holocaust.
I’ve been reading a bit about Mormon theology for my book, and that theology is not only plenty weird, but a major part of it has been decisively disproven by modern genetics, archaeology, and linguistics. (One of my theories, which is mine, is that the closer in time to the present day a theology arose, the weirder it looks. Really, Mormon theology is no weirder than Christian or Hindu theology, and Scientology seems ridiculous largely because we were alive when it was made up.)
An important part of Mormon theology is the contention that the ancestors of Native Americans were in fact Israelites who migrated to the Americas from the Middle East about 2,600 years ago in the form of two tribes: the Nephites and the Lamanites. About a millennium later, their descendants had a big war, with the Lamanites wiping out every Nephite but one. That survivor was Moroni, who helped write the book of Mormon, buried the golden plates in upstate New York, and then reappeared as an angel in 1827 to tell Joseph Smith where the plates were. (These, supposedly written in a hieroglypic language, were read by Smith using “peepstones” and gazing into a hat, as lampooned in the video below.) The Lamanites, by the way, had been cursed by God because they ignored prophetic teachings. Their curse was to become dark-skinned, or, as the Book of Mormon says, God “did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.” That’s one of the reasons why, until 1978, blacks weren’t allowed to be lay priests in the Mormon church. A convenient and timely “revelation” by Mormon elders—the church was expanding into South America—did away with that policy.
But science shows that the Middle Eastern origin of Native Americans is a total fiction (duhhh!). The data are clear: Native Americans, and all native peoples in the New World, descended from east Asians who migrated over the Bering Strait about 15,000—not 2,600—years ago. This comes not only from dating of settlements, but from other archaeological, linguistic, and genetic evidence. Native American languages are more similar to Siberian ones than to Hebrew, and the genetics is dispositive: Native Americans from throughout the New World show a close genetic affinity to east Asians, and are far more genetically removed from inhabitants of the Middle East.
Mormon accommodationists have tried the usual tactics, including moving the migration from the Middle East to Central America (that doesn’t work, because Central American are also closely related to East Asians), or positing interbreeding of the “Israeli” Native Americans with others, an interbreeding that effaced their Hebrew ancestry. That doesn’t seem likely, either.
As far as I know, the Mormon Church still supports the fiction of the Book of Mormon, and can’t even admit that the “Middle East” migration was fictional. And it would be hard to make that into a metaphor! (By the way, the Book of Mormon also claims that Jesus visited North America.)
But enough Mormon theology. The latest Mr. Deity, a good one, shows how the whole fraudulent beginning of the church took place, including the fabled hat. The last few minutes of the video are an interesting disquisition on skepticism.
