Do you really want to know Ray Comfort's and Kirk Cameron's qualifications for discussing evolution?
Category: Creationism
Posted on: May 7, 2007 2:00 PM, by PZ Myers
At least it's an easy answer: nonexistent.
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PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
…and this is a pharyngula stage embryo.
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(Complete listing)In the Middle East, the Bronze Age people of Canaan—the ancient region between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean that roughly corresponds to Israel—also failed to adapt to the drying out of their lands around 2200 BC(E). In their case, says Arlene Rosen of Ben Gurion University of the Negev, it was their beliefs that were their undoing. 'In Canaan, people believed that environmental disasters were caused by a deity unhappy with the people," she says. Like the Mayans, the Canaanites could have coped with the new conditions by introducing new irrigation systems for their crops. Instead, they attributed the shift in climate to the wrath of the gods, built more temples and prayed for better times. Within a short time, the cities and towns were abandoned and the people became nomadic herders.
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Comments
If anything, the pike mackerel my mother sautéed for lunch are more qualified to discuss evolution than those two chuckleheads.
Posted by: Stanton | May 7, 2007 2:10 PM
If anything, the pike mackerel my mother sautéed for lunch are more qualified to discuss evolution than those two chuckleheads.
Posted by: Stanton | May 7, 2007 2:12 PM
Same for Dembski, Paul Nelson, Phillip Johnson, etc. And Behe, who should know enough biology not to make an ass of himself, obviously doesn't.
To say "creationist" or "IDist" is to say that their qualifications are, or their understanding is, inadequate. In the rare cases in which the degree the person has indicates that they ought to be able to discuss evolution, as with Jonathan Wells, the distinction "IDist" or "creationist" has overridden those qualifications in every example known thus far.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/35s39o
Posted by: Glen Davidson | May 7, 2007 2:19 PM
Same for Dembski, Paul Nelson, Phillip Johnson, etc. And Behe, who should know enough biology not to make an ass of himself, obviously doesn't.
To say "creationist" or "IDist" is to say that their qualifications are, or their understanding is, inadequate. In the rare cases in which the degree the person has indicates that they ought to be able to discuss evolution, as with Jonathan Wells, the distinction "IDist" or "creationist" has overridden those qualifications in every example known thus far.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/35s39o
Posted by: Glen Davidson | May 7, 2007 2:20 PM
Oh. He's part of the Cavalry Chapel. That answers my question of, "How can anyone possibly be that insane?"
I envy all of you who live in a part of the country where there isn't a Cavalry Chapel next to every Starbucks. Yes, they really do put those Cavalry Chapels in strip malls. Actually, that's the only place they put them.
And the people who go there are not content to remain inside and leave me unbothered. Once, 10 years ago, I went to one (out of politeness for some friends). It turned out to be one of those anti-Halloween things. It featured a dude who swore he had been physically attacked by Satan while building the place (it was the site of an old mental hospital, and he included that since, as we all know, mental illness is caused by demonic possession, and can only be cured by exorcism and three pennyweight of boiled mandrake root), and another dude who was doing a karaoke rendition of "Evolution... redefined" by Geoff Moore and the Distance.
They're all insane.
Posted by: Dustin | May 7, 2007 2:33 PM
Meta/OT Aside: I've noticed several times recently that it looks like nothing happens after hitting "Post," even though it later turns out that the comment actually has been posted. Given the number of double- (or triple-) posts I've seen lately, I'm guessing others are seeing the same effect. Has something about the scripting of the site changed recently? Enquiring minds want to know!
Posted by: Bill Dauphin | May 7, 2007 2:41 PM
A bronze age storm god is smiting the bandwidth because of our impiety.
Posted by: Dustin | May 7, 2007 2:50 PM
Is there anyone out there that thought they did have qualifications to discuss evolutionary biology?
Seriously, these people think they have thought of an angle that was not thought of thousands of years ago which was the same damn position that Darwin squashed like a bug when he wrote Origin of species. The very idea of Batesian mimicry would make Kirks freakin' head explode...
Posted by: Lago | May 7, 2007 2:50 PM
I'm amazed that Kirk doesn't confront his microwave with gibber-talk, rattlesnakes, and anointing oil. Maybe that'll change once I send him a video of his Golden Banana being microwaved.
Posted by: Dustin | May 7, 2007 2:53 PM
Dustin,
Re demonic possession as the cause of mental illness: Did you see the Washington Post article that reported that the mother of Cho (the Virginia Tech shooter) had been seeking help from a minister who believed that Cho's problems were caused by demonic possession?
Posted by: Elf Eye | May 7, 2007 3:43 PM
What I really want to know is: what are their qualifications for discussing God?
A limitless capacity for bullshit?
Prefer to earn a living by conning people?
Enjoy wasting people's precious time?
Posted by: CalGeorge | May 7, 2007 3:48 PM
Those fanataical atheists
Dan Gardner, The Ottawa Citizen
Posted by: quork | May 7, 2007 3:51 PM
(When the SB servers are overburdened or otherwise not responding in a timely or appropriate fashion, what we often perceive as a problem with posting is in fact a problem with redisplaying the updated page after posting. When this occurs, refresh the page before reposting. More often than not your post will appear, making a repost unnecessary.)
Posted by: Kseniya | May 7, 2007 3:52 PM
Everyone should read the link Quork posted, its really good stuff. Best I've read in a long time actually.
Posted by: Robert | May 7, 2007 3:58 PM
Everyone should read the link Quork posted, its really good stuff.
Seconded. Way to go, Dan Gardner! And quork!
Posted by: windy | May 7, 2007 4:05 PM
Thirded.
Posted by: Kseniya | May 7, 2007 4:11 PM
Speaking of smiting bandwidth, wow! My hit counter is spinning so fast that the breeze pushed my monitor off of my desk! This must be what it is like to be slash-dotted. (Is the correct term PZ'd or Pharyngulad in this case?)
Anyway, thanks all for the look at my humble web niche.
Posted by: Calladus | May 7, 2007 4:13 PM
Fourthed. You nailed it, Dan!
Posted by: CalGeorge | May 7, 2007 4:15 PM
I think it's hard for some people to understand how easy it is to be an atheist.
So they make the leap to "fanatical" athiest quite easily. Disbelief is so far removed from so many people that they think you have to have some deep seeded hatred or counter cultural need to be contrarian... or something.
It's easy to be adamant about disbelief because to most of us... it's so damn obvious.
Dan Gardner does nail it.
Posted by: Steve_C (Secular Elitist) FCD | May 7, 2007 4:20 PM
Ah, Divine Simplicity at work. Only the infinitely ignorant can know the mind of God.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_simplicity
Posted by: Christian Burnham | May 7, 2007 4:21 PM
Everyone should read the link Quork posted, its really good stuff. Best I've read in a long time actually.
And in the Ottawa Citizen, no less. Someone there has a brain, at least....
Posted by: Eamon Knight | May 7, 2007 4:42 PM
Child actors these days do receive a good High School education . . .
With all due respect to the Calladus blog, no they don't. Unless their families insist, they typically get barely enough schooling to pass minimal state requirements--which is why former kid actors are so often incapable of functioning as adults (especially outside of the entertainment business).
Mark implies that Kirk Cameron is no better educated than someone who only finished high school, but that's unfair to most high school graduates, who are usually 'way better educated than someone who grew up on-set.
So he's even less qualified to discuss this stuff with any authority than you suggest.
Posted by: Molly, NYC | May 7, 2007 5:10 PM
I guess I was trying to give Kirk the benefit of the doubt, Molly. You may have seen in my comments one argument from ignorance about the education of these two. Perhaps I should have hit this a bit harder.
I have no idea what education standards were like during the filming of "Growing Pains." Today there are strict laws about education for child actors. (But the quality of the education can vary widely.) I'm sure a film set and a generic teacher would more likely result in a less than stellar education.
You know, something else occurs to me - I can't verify that Kirk actually graduated high school. That would also have an impact on whether or not he decided to continue his education in college.
Heh. I guess that no matter how inept I've already portrayed these two, the reality is actually a bit worse.
Posted by: Calladus | May 7, 2007 5:42 PM
i came here to post something along those lines. it explains so very, very much.
i've been to a calvary church, on more than one occasion. i have a friend who went to one, and i went with her every now and then. now, i've been to some strange churches in my time. pentecostal, rolling-on-the-floor, speaking-in-tongue types of churches. calvary isn't QUITE like that. but the use of the word "cult" in that article is no accident. something about the specific ideology of that group of churches promotes fear of the outside world, and a church addiction more intense than any other church i've ever seen.
perhaps it's a lack of coherent ideology, actually. each church is really an independent unit, subject to the whims of the pastor. creating small groups of "true believers" that sometimes even see OTHER calvary churches as dangerous harbors for satan.
Posted by: arachnophilia | May 8, 2007 12:35 AM
I now vaguely remember reading something (probably in Tiger Beat!) about Cameron adopting a weird diet around the same time he got converted, too - I want to say he was an early Atkins adoptee, but I also seem to remember it had something to do with supermuffins, which doesn't fit. One of those macrobiotic kinds of things, probably. In any case, it's more support that he will buy into all sorts of woo.
Posted by: Carlie | May 8, 2007 7:13 AM
I've posted "Part 2" in which I give away the "magic" of Comfort's "The Way of the Master" evangelism.
Posted by: Calladus | May 8, 2007 10:45 AM