The creationism was strong in the non-posted comments this week. Here are some of them that didn’t make it onto the website, and whose writers won’t be posting again. Nevertheless, they do get their day in court:
This first one takes the prizes for both Credulous Belief and Humorous Ranting. It’s from reader James, commenting on the post “Birds may be paedomorphic dinosaurs“. James tries to explain the fossil record by the creationist “hydrodynamic sorting” principle (with a little Satan thrown in for grins).
The serpent in the tree talking to Eve was not a snake. It didn’t crawl on it’s belly until after it was cursed in the tree. Satan tried to get them to fly by immalgamations with birds, but was unsuccessful. Note that all the members of the reptile family do still lay eggs. As they did before the curse. And Taridactils (sp) did not fly across the Pacific and dip for fish along the way. And then were not able to fly on to the our continent supposedly because they were too close to the beach while resting, got splashed by waves and could not fly because their fur was wet. If they could not fly with wet fir, how could they dip in the waves and catch fish. That evolutionary theory does not fly. When Noah’s flood waters were rising up on the mountains,some of which later became the Hawaiian Islands, they were stranded and or drowned when the flood waters rose. They were not allowed on the Ark because they were Satan’s workmanship, not God’s. The serpent was a bird flew into the tree. Satan used it as a medium to talk to Eve, and as the Bible states, God cursed it that from then on it would be on crawling in the dust. Some of the amalgamations had tail feathers as indicated with some North Asian fossil remains indicate, but God said they would not fly and they did not. And of course, never will as they are now extinct. The fountains of the deep that opened up, were the volcanoes of he Pacific Ring of Fire. Thus most of the Pacific Ocean floor is volcanic basalt. The waters were pretty high and as plates shoved them up higher, we now find sea fossils high on the slopes of Mt. Everest. Their were no lofty craggy mountains until after the flood.
There should have been a lot more “(sp)”s. But this reader needs assistance on matters far beyond spelling.
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Reader “SJ” gives encomiums for Ray Comfort’s recent movie that criticizes evolution because nobody’s seen it happen in real time (that claim is not true, of course). My original post was”Odious Ray Comfort movie (watch it below) to be distributed in public schools“:
It’s not atrocious or barf…it’s true. And that’s why all of you are so upset.
There IS no observable evidence regarding evolution. Comfort is making an excellent point. Everyone in the scientific community says, “I will think for myself. I will require proof of God. Only those things you can PROVE will I believe”.
Well, Comfort proved, that science can’t always be provable. That you must have faith in those who make certain scientific claims.
It was brilliant.
How can one deal with such ignorance and religiosity? You can’t. The person is beyond redemption, but we can still attack the source of this ignorance.
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Reader “daniel joachim”, who has a website called JesusFusion, responded to my post “David Bentley Hart responds poorly (and arrogantly) to Adam Gopnik on God.” That post gave a list of supposedly religious scientists put forward by Hart, who turned out to get many of them wrong. Daniel’s take (the quote is mine):
“Yes, all of those scientists, as far as I know—save Einstein—were or are religious, but I doubt that Einstein abjured materialism or naturalism. If you read Hart’s book, you’ll know that he, along with many modern theologians, goes after naturalism and materialism as incoherent on philosophical grounds. What he doesn’t realize is that the pantheon of scientists he lists made wonderful discoveries about the universe using only the assumptions of naturalism and materialism.”
That’s just a plain silly straw man. Do Coyne even know the difference of methodological and metaphysical/ontological? The argument is, and Coyne probably knows, that given metaphysical mechanical naturalism: Reason wouldn’t be possible. Mathematics wouldn’t be applicable. A closed universe wouldn’t exist. Among others.
The argument is that there’s no reason to believe that blind, determined molecules in motion can qualitatively add up to a mind that can reason, intend, do syllogisms or love. Well, if you know the difference between correlation and causality.
This is just ignorant. And people wonder why Coyne is seen as one of the weakest of all gnu atheists? 🙂
This is the old and discredited Plantinga-ish argument (one made also by Hart) that reason wouldn’t be possible under naturalism. Because it couldn’t have evolved, it must have come from God. And God gave it to other creatures too, as many animals beyond primates show the ability to reason. Surely, then, New Caledonian crows were also made in the image of God.
I’ll ignore daniel’s gratuitous insult and just say that yes, there are reasons to believe that naturalism and materialism can produce a reasoning and loving mind. In fact, there are more reasons to believe that than in the existence of some deity who was required to create reason. We have tons of evidence for evolution, and not an iota of credible evidence for God.
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Reader Shaun felt compelled to comment on my “
Atheism of the gaps” piece which, by the way, has met with a lot of pushback from theologians who have tried to engage in the fruitless practice of theodicy:
I find this whole thread quite comical for a few reasons, the first is this. For people that have a lack of belief in deities you sure seem obsessed with them. Secondly Prof Coyne’s arguments are sophomoric at best. I guess if he really wanted to impress me he’d be able to show me how the most advanced processing unit in the known universe not only built itself but invented itself. That would convince me that you are onto something.
Thanks but no thanks, Shaun: you’re requiring me to completely reconstruct the evolution of the human brain, neuron by neuron. (What, by the way, makes you think that it invented itself?) I’ll do that when Shaun tells me what God was doing before the Big Bang, and what evidence he has for that. (No fair saying, “I don’t know!”) The stuff about “obsession” with religion is simply dumb: it’s like saying to civil rights workers that they certainly are obsessed with racism for people who find racism reprehensible.
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It is refreshing that despite some bad policies David Cameron does know where the good comes from in this country! Most schools, most charities, most communities in the UK have been founded by our Christian faith. Make no mistake there is a vast population of practicising Christians in this country who live for truth peace and unity. THIS IS A HISTORICAL AND A MODERN REALITY!
Really, the communities were founded BY Christian faith? And do note that the percentage of Christians in Britain is dropping faster than a priest’s trousers. As I reported two days ago, 41% of Brits describe themselves as nonreligious. Of course, Brits will always be able to say that their country was Christian in historical times, but that’s no more an endorsement of Christianity than saying that slavery is good because many countries once allowed the ownership of slaves.
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The day that so-called “orthodox” scientists can actually prove the “Big Bang” occurred spontaneously within an infinite void, is the day I’ll stop looking at Creationism as a viable alternative theory of how the Universe was formed.
Even the famous Christian evangelist William Jennings Bryan acknowledged that God invented natural law and could, therefore, alter or suspend it at His will.
Sorry, Jim, but scientists already have good evidence about the Big Bang occurring in a quantum vacuum. Are you ready now to stop looking at Creationism as a viable option? Oh, no—I forgot. You’re religious and no evidence will change your mind.
And as for “William Jennings Bryan said it, I believe it, that settles it,” well, that’s just embarrassing. Many “famous Christian evangelists” say all kinds of nonsense about science.
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Reader Jon had a comment on the same post:
Do your research. Teaching creation Science is not religion. You say evolution is true, which evolution are you talking about? 1.cosmic evolution (Big Bang THEORY), 2.chemical evolution (one chemical to another ex. Hydrogen to iron;can’t happen by the way),3.steller and planetary evolution(stars forming spontaneously), 4.organic evolution (origin of life), 5. Macro evolution (changing from one kind of animal to another), or 6. Micro evolution (adaptation of species)? Only number 6 can be observed so you can call that science, the others are dumb theory’s that have already been disproven and take faith to believe them. And don’t say fossils are proff because you can never prove any fossils had children like themselves. Teaching creation science is legal .
What a mishmash of ignorance we see here? Yes, cosmic evolution is true. And yes, despite Jon’s claims to the contrary, one “chemical” can change to another. It happens all the time with radioactive decay (we’re talking about “atoms”, by the way). Stellar and organic evolution are also true, as judging by scientific evidence. So is macroevolution: we have both the fossil and genetic evidence to show that. The argument about the absence of “macroevolution” should be shelved, even by creationists, given the profusion of fossils we have now showing transitional forms—forms whose existence was not only predicted, but predicted to occur at the times they lived (e.g. fish to amphibians, amphibians to reptiles, reptiles to mammals, reptiles to birds, artiodactyls to whales, and early to modern hominins). Yes, we do have the “proff” for all of that.
My heart sinks when I get these comments, and these are only about half the creationists who tried to post this week. Does anybody seriously think that such ignorance would be pervasive if there weren’t religion? As I always say (a Professor Ceiling Cat Aphorism™), “You can have religions without creationism, but you can’t have creationism without religion.” While I’m sure I’ve missed a few secular creationists, the only one I know of is David Berlinski, and I’m not too sure about him!
You have to be blind not to see that creationism is a direct outgrowth of religious belief—one of the lesser evils that religion brings to this planet. And despite this in-your-face evidence, believers (even those who accept evolution) are reluctant to indict religion as the root cause of creationism.
