I believe, first of all, evolution is a crock.
It takes a lot of faith to believe that I came from an ameba. A lot of faith!
So evolution should be taught in Faith Class, otherwise known in parochial schools as Religion Class.
It's a crazy world we live in. Crazier every day. But one of the craziest notions that ever came down the pike is evolution. Who in his right mind would ever believe that the complicated homo sapien derived from a speck? That's getting the larger from the smaller.
No, it's an even crazier world when a clueless twit like Grant Swank can write something as scientifically ignorant as this and not be laughed off the Internet.
TSIB
That rant is very, very, very stupid.
But the stupidest creationist rant ever?
Do you have any appreciation for the level of competition out there?
It appears self-evident to me.
Does he have trouble believing a full-grown man could've come from a zygote? Or does that also require "faith"?
Oh, there is definitely competition out there. Just the other day one of these geniuses left a very typical rant on my blog.
Is there some sort of inverse correlation between number of words in all caps and intelligence?
By comparison, yours looks downright Mensa-worthy :)
My own, annotated, collection of the stupidest creationist rants I've encountered:
http://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au/strange_creationism_ms.htm
I stopped collecting a few years ago, though. The quantity of available stupidity overwhelmed my limited ability to record it.
On the stupid-o-meter it's right up there with Anti-vaccination hysteria and UFO-ology.
The Stupid, It Burns.
Ms. S wrote: "Is there some sort of inverse correlation between number of words in all caps and intelligence? "
I hate to tout my own blog (such a faux pas), but if you want further evidence of the inverse correlation, check out this comment I received from a relativity denialist the other day. Unfortunately, physics has a seemingly growing collection of denialist crackpots.
A valiant try Mr. Swank, but as a long-time veteran of talk.origins, I have to say you've got a ways to go (down) to compete in the Big Leagues of creationist stupidity. I mean, hell: your piece was even correctly spelled and grammared -- better fix that. I was there during the era of Karl Crawford, not to mention one-post morons too numerous to recall, and I have high (ie: low) standards!
Who in his right mind would ever believe that the complicated homo sapien derived from a speck? That's getting the larger from the smaller.
If he wasn't derived from a speck, his mother must have had one monster of a Fallopian tube...
What Orac posted was not the only gem.
Sounds like an argument for remaining ignorant. So if the big sky daddy were to take the time to prove that he truly exists, mere mortals would than be like deities.
That man's website is a hodge podge of stupid. There is a link to Faithmouse, one of the most annoying web comics around. He backs Alan Keyes run for president. There is quit a bit about Terri Schiavo. They just cannot believe that the poor woman was brain dead for over a decade.
For this person, being stupid is a cause for celebrate. And he welcomes our scorn as proof of his devotion.
One must admit Swank's gobstopping power is world class--the bottom line of his website is :
STATS: Total entries: 1842 Total comments: 6
???
he can't believe that homo sapiens evolved from a speck, but being created from dust is believable?
I don't see what all the fuss is about: Swank is simply using a run-of-the-mill argument from personal incredulity.
Ms. S: The example you gave is one of lack of rationality, not lack of intelligence. In fact, it's an example of a kind of irrationality that actually requires a fairly high level of intelligence because it relies on elaborate rationalizations, and those take intelligence to construct. Cognitive skills can just as easily be used to produce self-delusion as they can to produce enlightenment; which path one takes depends mostly on non-cognitive factors.
Slightly offtopic: I was going to make some sort of joke about the spelling of the word "ameba", but checking I found that apparently this is in fact an allowed spelling? How have I never seen this before?
That right column bar scared me. Annex mexico? Expose the abortion holocaust? THREE Terri Shaivo books? *shudder*
That's definitely a very stupid rant, but I'm not so sure of the superlative. I've seen stupider.
Wes wrote: "That's definitely a very stupid rant, but I'm not so sure of the superlative. I've seen stupider."
The problem is, beyond a certain threshold of stupidity, it really becomes hard to quantify the amount present. There's so many ways to be stupid! One person may just be hugely stupid in one way, while another may be stupid in lesser amounts in a variety of ways.
I have the same problem deciding on the worst movie I've seen, which I learned is hard to do from my MST3K-watching.
Perhaps he(? she? it?) has achieved an âµn (aleph-n) level of stupidity that exceeds our ability to count the stupid?
And I started with a headache this morning...
Anyone who posts with Alan Keyes nost definitely is not based in reality. The truly scary things are that this person has procreated 3x and is also the pastor of a church, where he can spew this crap and have a captive audience....
Orac,
I have to go with Randy on this - there is no way that anyone can claim that this is the dumbest anti-evolution rant ever.
That would be like saying that X is the highest number ever - to make a higher number, you just add one to it(X+1). By analogy, all the creationists have to do is take this rant and add one more tiny dollop of stupid.
The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has limits.
I'm especially impressed by the "petroleum engineer" who doesn't believe in evolution. Where did all that oil come from? Or does he only believe in extinction?
After all, if all of the known extinct species had at one time coexisted with all of the currently living species, the world would have been a very crowded place.
Maybe that's what killed the dinosaurs - over crowding.
Seriously, it must take a heck of a lot of effort to continuously ignore the mountain of evidence that evolution happens and that creationism is bunk.
I prefer to relax and follow the data.
Prometheus
That petroleum engineer should be referred to Glenn Morton's site. Glenn graduated from the ICR, went to work in the oil patch, looking at *real* geology -- and promptly lost his faith in YECism.
It takes a special kind of wanker to be as outspoken as Swank about his inability to understand the difference between a theory and an unsubstantiated crock o'shite and then try to defend his unsubstantiated crock o'shite with an unsubstantiated axiom outta his ass:
"They don't try to prove it. In fact, Christians say that finally all that can't be proven for if mortal could prove it, mortal would be God."
I propose such a moronic statement be labelled a "Grant's Wank".
I also saw that particular stupid rant, and commented on it at great length here
We have seen worse, but a few of Swank's remarks were painfully stupid.
Yes this one is stupid, but I guess Orac has never been visited by Legion.
Well, that'd be one ...creative way to take a bite out of illegal immigration.
Gee, a convention of smart guys all congratulating themselves on being smart. How edifying!
"So unabashedly Christians start with faith and say that if you don't want to have the faith, that's your choice. You have the decision-making powers to cancel out faith for non-faith and that is your right as a free will being.
But when it comes to evolution, the adherents make us hold to that nonsense as a fact. They press it upon us as evangelists of Darwin. "
Actually, it seems "adherents" to evolution are only trying to "press" upon those that have an interest in the natural world around them, not those that severely lack a scientific education.
I think the main problem is that this sort of person cannot really understand what it is like to understand something that is not taken "on faith" They are so psychologically accustomed to disregarding logic and science that their very minds rebel against it when it is shown to them. They have to find a way to make it fit their model of thought, so they make it into a dogma, as in the "dogma" of evolution or the "religion" of atheism. It is really just a matter of psychological training. It really isn't their fault, they have been trained since infancy to look at life this way. Perhaps our best approach would be to retrain them psychologically to view life without faith. Not sure how to do that, tho....
"I think the main problem is that this sort of person cannot really understand what it is like to understand something that is not taken "on faith" They are so psychologically accustomed to disregarding logic and science that their very minds rebel against it when it is shown to them. They have to find a way to make it fit their model of thought, so they make it into a dogma, as in the "dogma" of evolution or the "religion" of atheism."
The word you're looking for is "projection."