Readers’ weekly attacks on evolution and atheism, and Scalia on the devil

May 15, 2014 • 11:03 am

Here are a few of the comments (not approved) that creationist readers have tried to post this week. Again, this is just to keep your finger on the pulse of America. And believe me, there are a lot more comments, similar to these, that I didn’t put up.

Reader “Rasputin” comments on my post “Surprise: Pope Francis believes in Satan and demons“:

We only know the world as far back as our modern science has been able to reach into. What took place aeons before that? Is the current human race the first to appear on this planet? If not, who or what was here before us? Did we just “evolve” or were we “created”? Has science answered all the questions that perplex the mind of man? What really proves that satan does not exist, or God, for that matter? Let’s try to discover the very moment we fall asleep. That is an easier endeavor than proving the non-existence of satan. Cynicism or skepticism is not the answer.

I believe the onus is on those who posit the existence of Satan to provide the evidence! And, of course, “modern science” has reached back to the Big Bang, about 13.8 billion years ago.  Ergo we have a pretty good view, from the fossil record, of what life evolved on Earth over the last 3.5 billion years.  (Remember, though that we probably know of less than 1% of the species that ever lived, for fossilization, and the uncovering of fossils, is rare.) And that evidence shows that yes, Mr. Rasputin, we evolved.  As for science answering every question that perplex the mind of man (what about the mind of woman?), the answer is of course no, but we’ve answered many. Religion, on the other hand, hasn’t answered a single question.  Can you tell me, with the same degree of confidence that we know that evolution occurred, whether there are any gods, and if so one or (as polytheists believe) many?

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Reader “john st laurent” comments on the same post:

You are entitled to believe anything you want, whether it be the devil, God, or the insane notion that we magically came from monkeys when you haven’t a shred of evidence outside of assumptions to prove it. Point being that evolution is a religious belief based on faith in something you cannot see, just like any other religious belief. Isn’t it time for you evolutionists to be honest and admit it?

Where is the science? (by science I mean proof, not your silly theories)

My “theory” is that john is a 13 year old writing this stuff from his parents’ basement. That’s the only way I can explain such stupendous ignorance.  And as for “something you cannot see,” well, he can go to a lot of museums and see casts of Australopithecus afarensis or Homo erectus.

Besides, if we magically came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? QED

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Reader “ozdawn” comments on the same post:

IF “belief in Satan and Hell is as, “about as retrograde a belief you can have in our modern world””, THEN why has there been such a growing number of Devil-worshipers since the Church of Satan was “officially” founded in 1966?

WHY does most of society today especially the entertainment business mirror and embrace the morals of Satan while rejecting those of Jesus and the Holy Bible?

I’ll leave this one to the readers (the sane ones).

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We have two comments on the post “Ask and ye shall receive: Oklahoma’s stupidity brings a monument to Satan to its capitol grounds“, about the plan to put a statue of Old Nick on the Oklahoma capitol grounds. (All misspellings are from posters.)

From reader “Alex L”:

For anyone who supported this satanic staue shame on you supporting this evil and teaching to children that’s it’s ok to allow such evil into America . Any human alive knows that satan is evil and that staue should not be allowed plus putting the future of our children at stake people should really be ashamed of themselves for not evening thinking of the negative things that should happen this staue should have a petition to ban it forever.

and from reader “Kayla”:

Nobodys wants your satan monumement in Texas! Lmao get out of here with all that nonsene.

Lest you think this is some metaphorical Satan people are believing, remember that a 2007 Gallup Poll showed that 70% of Americans believe in the existence of “the devil”.

I could go on, but among the people who believe in the devil is one of our Supreme Court justices. Guess which one? Of course it’s Antonin Scalia, who had this interchange last October with an interviewer from New York Magazine. Questions are in bold, Scalia’s answers in plain type:

Oh. So you don’t know where I’m going. Thank God.
I don’t know where you’re going. I don’t even know whether Judas Iscariot is in hell. I mean, that’s what the pope meant when he said, “Who am I to judge?” He may have recanted and had severe penance just before he died. Who knows?

Can we talk about your drafting process—
[Leans in, stage-whispers.] I even believe in the Devil.

You do?
Of course! Yeah, he’s a real person. Hey, c’mon, that’s standard Catholic doctrine! Every Catholic believes that.

Every Catholic believes this? There’s a wide variety of Catholics out there …
If you are faithful to Catholic dogma, that is certainly a large part of it.

Have you seen evidence of the Devil lately?
You know, it is curious. In the Gospels, the Devil is doing all sorts of things. He’s making pigs run off cliffs, he’s possessing people and whatnot. And that doesn’t happen very much anymore.

No.
It’s because he’s smart.

So what’s he doing now?
What he’s doing now is getting people not to believe in him or in God. He’s much more successful that way.

That has really painful implications for atheists. Are you sure that’s the ­Devil’s work?
I didn’t say atheists are the Devil’s work.

Well, you’re saying the Devil is ­persuading people to not believe in God. Couldn’t there be other reasons to not believe?
Well, there certainly can be other reasons. But it certainly favors the Devil’s desires. I mean, c’mon, that’s the explanation for why there’s not demonic possession all over the place. That always puzzled me. What happened to the Devil, you know? He used to be all over the place. He used to be all over the New Testament.

Right.
What happened to him?

He just got wilier.

He got wilier.

Isn’t it terribly frightening to believe in the Devil?
You’re looking at me as though I’m weird. My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the Devil? I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the Devil! It’s in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil! Most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the Devil.

“He got wilier” is one of the funniest statements I’ve read all year, but remember that Scalia isn’t joking here. The saddest part is that his last statement is absolutely true.

And remember, this is one of the nine people responsible for enforcing the Constitutionally-mandated separation of church and state in the U.S. Is it any wonder that wall is crumbling?

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Good news! Religion expunged from South Carolina fossil bill

May 15, 2014 • 7:38 am

Reader Barry called my attention to a piece on yesterday’s Raw Story that, for once, gives good news.  You may remember the kerfuffle in South Carolina about making the wooly mammoth the state fossil. That suggestion, which came from an eight-year-old girl, Olivia McConnell, riled up some creationist legislators, and though the legislature voted to adopt the fossil, they insisted on inserting creationist language into the bill, to wit:

Screen shot 2014-05-15 at 7.48.06 AM

The Raw Story reprises Rachel Maddow’s report on the fossil:

It passed the state House, said Maddow, “But then it turned out that this fairly harmless, fairly adorable official state fossil bill just didn’t sit right with some members of the South Carolina state Senate.”

One tried to block the state from naming any further state symbols, another said that the bill should go forward, but should include verses from the book of Genesis from the Christian Bible.

Including the Creationist language, Maddow said, invalidates the whole exercise.

“Behold our official state thing that we don’t believe in!” she quipped.

The rewritten bill stalled out in the state House and now, conservative lawmakers have finally agreed to strike the Biblical and Creationist lines from the bill altogether.

“Good work, Olivia,” concluded Maddow. “You’re almost there.”

Well, the governor still has to sign it, but I’m hopeful.

Here’s Maddow’s  3.25-minute report.  I love that woman—and Olivia too!

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H. R. Giger died

May 15, 2014 • 6:20 am

I didn’t really know who the guy was, but I find from Wikipedia that H. R. Giger (born 1940, died three days ago) was a Swiss painter and designer who shared the 1979 Academy Award for best visual effects for the movie “Alien”. Here’s Giger:

HR_Giger_2012

That movie, by the way, is one of the very few science-fiction films that I really like, and the Wikipedia entry for it is huge, including this discussion of Giger’s contributions:

H. R. Giger designed and worked on all of the alien aspects of the film, which he designed to appear organic and biomechanical in contrast to the industrial look of the Nostromo and its human elements. For the interior of the derelict spacecraft and egg chamber he used dried bones together with plaster to sculpt much of the scenery and elements. Veronica Cartwright described Giger’s sets as “so erotic…it’s big vaginas and penises…the whole thing is like you’re going inside of some sort of womb or whatever…it’s sort of visceral”. The set with the deceased alien creature, which the production team nicknamed the “space jockey”, proved problematic as 20th Century Fox did not want to spend the money for such an expensive set that would only be used for one scene. Ridley Scott described the set as the cockpit or driving deck of the mysterious ship, and the production team was able to convince the studio that the scene was important to impress the audience and make them aware that this was not a B movie. To save money only one wall of the set was created, and the “space jockey” sat atop a disc that could be rotated to facilitate shots from different angles in relation to the actors. Giger airbrushed the entire set and the “space jockey” by hand.

But I’m really posting this because it’s a good excuse to show this  cool photograph, which reader Steve sent me with the caption “Ray Comfort’s nightmare”:

10352197_947421825287271_6106313706380675408_nNow that’s art!

NY Times implicitly accepts Biblical account of Jesus’s deeds

May 15, 2014 • 5:04 am

While reading yesterday’s New York Times, I was startled to see this headline in the first (“A”) section:

Screen shot 2014-05-14 at 6.56.36 PMWell, I thought, “may” might denote some doubt about the existence of the historical Jesus or about whether he did what scripture describes, but that wasn’t the case. It turns out that the article in question was about the discovery of the remains of a synagogue where a Jesus whose deeds are not in question may have taught.

Here’s the upshot: in 2004 a Catholic priest, Father Juan Solana, was looking for a place in Israel to build a center where pilgrims could rest and congregate. He acquired land near the Sea of Gaililee to build a large hotel, and during the construction the unearthed the remains of a first-century synagogue. From there the article simply accepts that it may have been connected with Jesus, but casts no doubt about the Biblical accounts of Jesus’s deeds.

Here are some excerpts from the Times piece; I’ve put statements about the acceptance of Jesus’s deeds in bold:

But their spades struck history only a little more than a foot below the surface: a stone bench that, it soon became evident, was part of the remains of a synagogue from the first century, one of only seven from the Second Temple period known to exist, and the first to be found in Galilee. A local coin found in a side room of the synagogue was dated from the year 29 — when Jesus is thought to have been alive.

Those involved in the project say it immediately brought to mind a biblical verse, Matthew 4:23: “Jesus went all through Galilee, teaching in its synagogues, preaching the good news of the Kingdom of God, and curing the sicknesses and the ailments of the people.” The site of the dig was only about five miles from Capernaum, a known center of Jesus’ activities.

. . . Dina Gorni-Avshalom, the archaeologist who manages the dig on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said the synagogue and the reading table provided researchers with extraordinary insight into the nature of the link between the Jews of the north and the temple in Jerusalem, as well as the connection between Judaism and early Christianity. On top of that, she said, there was sufficient “circumstantial evidence” to assume that Jesus may have set foot there. 

Maybe I’m carping a bit here, but shouldn’t there have been a caveat to the effect that “historians are divided about whether Jesus really did the things that the Bible describes”? And really, how much confidence do we have that Capernaum was “a known center of Jesus’ activities”?  After all, how would it sit with Times readers if Manchester, New York was described as “the known place where the angel Moroni showed Joseph Smitgh the golden plates”?

But what do you expect of a faith-osculating paper that regularly gives copious space to the accommodationism of Tanya Luhrmann, as it did on the same day?

 

 

 

A matter of degree

May 15, 2014 • 3:10 am

I’m off to Kamloops, British Columbia today to attend the Imagine No Religion conference, but hope that some posting will continue somehow (it always manages to). Can I get a Darwin?

Over on his website Pictoral Theology, reader Pliny the In Between has a graphic take on Monday’s kerfuffle about whether American women who can’t take off their tops everywhere are treated just as badly as their Muslim sisters forced to wear veils, bags, and other face-and-body-obscuring garments. (Correct answer: “Hell, no!”)

But I digress:

Untitled.002

Thursday: Hili dialogue

May 15, 2014 • 2:20 am

There are still d*g troubles in Dobrzyn for Her Highness:

Hili: Is that dog outside or in the house?
A. In the house.
Hili: In that case I’ll sleep a bit longer. Be sure the door is closed.
10313834_10203365198157996_1546844737224412139_n
 
In Polish:
Hili: Czy ten pies jest w domu, czy na dworze?
Ja: W domu.
Hili: To ja się jeszcze prześpię, tylko drzwi muszą być zamknięte.