…and this is a 
Two tales of whale evolution
Category: Creationism
Posted on: February 20, 2008 8:42 PM, by PZ Myers
A reader sent me two links to video clips. The contrast is fascinating.
Here's the first. It's a nice illustration of the evidence behind our understanding of the evolution of whales, all in 7 minutes.
Now watch a creationist explain whale evolution.
Ouch. He complains that those wicked scientists are trying to turn the bible into a great big joke…but I think this clown does an even better job of that. Try counting the misconceptions — he goes on and on with this story about an animal crawling out of the primordial ooze onto the land and not liking it, and then wishing it could go back into the ocean, where it sucks in its hindlimbs and turns into a whale…and then he calls that story stupid and ridiculous. Guess what: it is! Of course, this ignorant nitwit is the person who made up the story, and it has nothing at all to do with what the evidence actually says.
This is what we have to deal with: morons who think their caricatures are evidence, and this bozo is probably voting for school board members based on how closely they approximate his level of idiocy.
Politics
Life Science
Comments
Oh my. The best part is when he quotes a headline:
"Whales May Have Evolved from Raccoon-sized creature,"
. . and then pauses to indicate how obviously absurd that is. Yet he's had no trouble achieving the mass of a small hippo after spending his first few months in utero as a brine shrimp.
Posted by: Josh | February 20, 2008 8:50 PM
Oh boy, and the guy looks to Vox Day as an intellectual leader. Talk about the 'tard leading the 'tard.
Posted by: minimalist | February 20, 2008 8:52 PM
You found Geoff Simmons teacher, it would seem.
Seriously, what is it about whales that reveals this yahoo, Simmons, and Berlinski as the gibbering ignoramuses (at least on evolution) that they are? Whales seem simply to draw out the stupid in these people.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | February 20, 2008 8:54 PM
OUCH! My brain hurts from the stupidity of this bufoon. What's worse, I'm sure he pushed some useful bit of knowledge out of my brain to make way for this. I am absolutely pisssed ov t thsiu more on........*drools on self in idiocy*
Posted by: Phil | February 20, 2008 8:56 PM
I wonder what the correlation is between being a lunatic creationist and having a Southern accent.
Posted by: Chuck Morrison | February 20, 2008 8:59 PM
"Oh boy, and the guy looks to Vox Day Theodore Beale as an intellectual leader. "
Fixed it for ya. Sorry, I couldn't resist. Vox Day is such a silly nom de plume, and I think we should take every opportunity to call him by his real name, which sounds so i'm-on-the-internets-in-mom's-basement. He probably knows it, too, which makes it even more satisfying.
Posted by: Josh | February 20, 2008 9:01 PM
Man, can we ignore isolated, babbling idiots like this guy, and instead focus on the bigger, more influential voices?
Posted by: Spaulding | February 20, 2008 9:01 PM
I wonder what the correlation is between being a lunatic creationist and having a Southern accent.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/316/5827/996
no need to wonder.
Posted by: Ichthyic | February 20, 2008 9:02 PM
Damn. Does [strike] and [/strike] (with the correct brackets) not work for .html here? And I tried so hard. . .
Posted by: Josh | February 20, 2008 9:03 PM
strikeoutno, but [s] and [/s] do.
Posted by: Ichthyic | February 20, 2008 9:04 PM
Thanks ichthyic. You have decreased my stupid!
Posted by: Josh | February 20, 2008 9:07 PM
I can't wrap my head around which is worse: the painfully moronic idiocy creationists spew out, or the galling fact that these same braindead twits think that they know better than people.
Posted by: Stanton | February 20, 2008 9:07 PM
Much, much sexier narrator for Clip #1--Liam Neeson, I believe.
Posted by: LaRue | February 20, 2008 9:07 PM
Thanks ichthyic. You have decreased my stupid!
If I could hear that every day (in addition to being able to decrease my own level of stupid), I would be a happy man.
Posted by: Ichthyic | February 20, 2008 9:15 PM
@ 6:38: "I would imagine that the chickens were created on day number 5, before the T-rex's. At least that's what the bible says."
Well fuck me I never read anything about T-rex in my bible! Must have been faulty.
Posted by: Stingray | February 20, 2008 9:17 PM
... and in late-breaking news, here's the most recent bit of pernicious hatemongering idiocy I've seen in the news.
Yahoo news link
Posted by: Mez | February 20, 2008 9:26 PM
PZ,
I wrote the music for that show for the Evolution series! I thought the segment on whales was terrific. Thanks for highlighting it!
t
Posted by: tristero | February 20, 2008 9:28 PM
Yes, don't listen to scientists, its all lies trying to debunk the Bible. But it's not the scientists fault, it is the Devil. Don't listen to scientists!
I have a strong urge to make a bunch of stickers á la Dover to put in each and every Gideon Bible that I can get my hands on, saying something like this.
"This bible is made up of stories, not facts. Serious disagreement among biblical scholars has existed for thousands of years about these stories. The stories in this bible should not be taken as literal truth or as facts. There are hundreds of other religious stories throughout the world that contradict and call into question the stories in this bible. This bible should therefore be approached with a spirit of critical consideration."
(Blatantly stolen from David Ryan, www.lawrence.com/blogs/yellowdog/2005/feb/10/mythnotfact/)
Alternatively just stickers like those on cigarettes saying:
ATHEIST GENERAL'S WARNING: Religion Causes Sexism, Hatred And May Result in Genocidal Stupidity.
Posted by: Gustaf Sjöblom | February 20, 2008 9:33 PM
Dear Brain,
I'm sorry for exposing you to more stupid than you have ever witnessed before. Your reaction has pained me to the point of dizziness, and I understand completely why you feel that way. Skin and Appendix have also been complaining, so you are not alone in your peril.
I promise, with all of your brother, Heart, that I will no longer subject you to the idiocy that you have just endured.
With Love,
The Body.
Posted by: Tolga K. | February 20, 2008 9:39 PM
I wish the rapture would hurry up and happen so that these pig-ignorant people would just go away!
Posted by: KiwiInOz | February 20, 2008 9:40 PM
With this level of intellect, he could even be on a school board.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSaINzdgBLA
Posted by: Tosser | February 20, 2008 9:45 PM
too precious.
Posted by: scorebert | February 20, 2008 9:47 PM
Xians offer me a choice between science's beauty, logic, and usefulness and their own pinheaded, bigoted bullshit interpretation of a patchwork of mythology, transcribed oral history, and traditional poetry, served up by people like this (or worse).
I have no difficulty in making science my choice, and only the utterly uncurious, stupid, and/or dishonest - all Xians, and nearly all fundamentalists - would even hesistate in making the same decision.
Posted by: So Laris | February 20, 2008 9:47 PM
I am NOT working under the power of Satan! I'm working under the power of the committee of voices in my head, and know who Satan is, and they really only care about ice cream.
Off to get some ice cream. The voices just told me to get off this website.
Posted by: James | February 20, 2008 9:47 PM
His ignorance is not evidence.
OT:
Hey all you, go out and look at the moon!
Posted by: Eric | February 20, 2008 9:48 PM
What a stupid moronic shit! Just looking at him leaves me
think that if i saw him sunning on the sand I would
mistake him for a beached whale. Could be he is Jonah?
Posted by: Holbach | February 20, 2008 9:48 PM
I wonder what the correlation is between being a lunatic creationist and having a Southern accent.
I must de-lurk long enough to point out that, yes, an alarming number of people with Southern accents do believe the nonsense being spouted by that guy, but I don't. My accent is unmistakably Southern. Please don't blame all of us.
Posted by: Robert | February 20, 2008 9:53 PM
What was the ear of a whale doing on the skull of a wolf?
That was an awesome presentation, and they nailed it with the shot of the otter. I mean, first of all, how cute is an otter doing underwater laps with little foot markers? Secondly, it's painfully obvious that whales and dolphins swim differently than fish. Even an biological ignoramus like myself can't help but notice it. The shot of the running doberman was a coup de grace.
That first video made me happy. The second one, not so much. I stopped watching it at, "'Gee, I'd really like to go climb that tree...' so it magically sprouted legs ..."
What's kinda funny about the pure-creationist critiques of evolution is it's somehow not equally ridiculous that a super-powered being picked up a lump of clay and magically breathed life into it, then gave the clay a percocet so he could remove a rib in order to make a girl lump of clay. Srsly wtf?
Posted by: inkadu | February 20, 2008 9:57 PM
The godbot said two things I kind of liked.
One is that humans might evolve into something else some day. Of course he's mocking evolution, but hey, I think if we could grow feathers and fly it'd be hella cool.
The other is that science keeps evolving itself -- well, um, yeah? If I recall correctly, finding new information and making sense of it is sort of what scientific *discovery* is all about!
This guy reminds me of what Colbert said about W. He believes the same thing on Thursday as he did on Tuesday, regardless of what happened Wednesday. I'd rather go with science - it takes Wednesday into account.
Posted by: zy | February 20, 2008 9:59 PM
"evolutionary thought process"? jesus christ.
Posted by: w1lp33 | February 20, 2008 10:04 PM
Uh, no buddy. In my part of the world we have a type of Christian called Episcopalians. Most of 'em believe in the findings of science, evolution and all that - not all but most. Sorry you're surrounded by ignorant gits, that sucks. But lumping "all Xians" in with that crowd isn't the answer.
Posted by: zy | February 20, 2008 10:08 PM
Two minutes and 13 seconds. That's as much as I could take.
Posted by: Dahan | February 20, 2008 10:09 PM
Frank Fish: LOL!
Posted by: The Science Pundit | February 20, 2008 10:09 PM
"theyre always figurin out something new with evolution".
said in a condescending tone as though it were a bad thing. it amazes me. why doesnt that apply elsewhere?
cars are stupid. every year they figure out how to get better mileage... this xbox 360 is awful, it has WAY more features than the original xbox. man, desktop computers? f**k that, they used to be made out of vacuum tubes.
Posted by: w1lp33 | February 20, 2008 10:12 PM
Good grief! Watching and listening to that crapulous
deranged moronic shit makes me wonder how anyone cannot
deem this retard totally insane. He looks like he crawled
out of the primordial ooze just last week! Man, religion
is down and out scary and dangerous and has to be checked
before the whole planet rots to insanity!
Posted by: Holbach | February 20, 2008 10:12 PM
Most of 'em believe in the findings of science, evolution and all that - not all but most.
so, for the ones that you personally know that don't, have you spent any time at all trying to convince them otherwise?
spent any time checking out your local school board to make sure they aren't trying to fuck with good science standards?
spent any time talking to your pastor about how your particular sect has worked out the differences between biblical literalism and reality?
if you have, great. if not... what difference does it make what you believe?
Posted by: Ichthyic | February 20, 2008 10:16 PM
Here's the link to the article about the raccoon-sized whale ancestor Indohyus. It's even got a picture of the little guy underwater.
Posted by: inkadu | February 20, 2008 10:16 PM
"Two minutes and 13 seconds. That's as much as I could take."
Same here. It's amazing that he can work a fork, let alone a webcam and internet connection.
Loved the first video, that was pretty amazing to watch. Props to this blog on the whole, I think just about every time I come here I learn something new. (Though a depressing amount of time it's something about the extent of some people's willful ignorance)
/Physics student, but likes learning about Evo biology
//not fark, but slashies anyway
Posted by: Bouncing Bosons | February 20, 2008 10:18 PM
@Ichthyic #8 : Yeah...which makes one think about Dawkin's religion-as-child-abuse concept.
@KiwiInOz #20: ROTFL - YES! "The Rapture": I can has no fur and bee Ceiling Cat mouz killer.
Thanks PZ for posting the first video - it includes the part of the program I have missed several times! The poor deluded creature in the second video could so much use his skill to create a site for learning, as opposed to his current effort: http://www.rapturealert.com/index2.html
Posted by: foxfire | February 20, 2008 10:22 PM
"An Israeli parliamentarian says that several earthquakes felt in Israel recently were a consequence of gays and the parliament's acceptance of them.
Shlomo Benizri of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Shas Party, said the way to stop the tremors was for parliament to reverse its trend of liberalising laws concerning homosexuals "
But clearly Dawkins needs to read more theology (rest of Courtier's Reply, etc..). Although I do suspect that this particular idiot is an outlier in terms of the world's Jewish communities.
Posted by: Dan S. | February 20, 2008 10:22 PM
zy:
Here's what the Episcopalian Bishops have to say about evolution:
How can I possibly take these people seriously? It's like saying, Ibuprofen is effective in treating menstrual pain, but that in no way diminishes or contradicts the theory that there are little gnomes wearing spiked shoes and pointy hats doing jumping jacks inside your uterus. What, you want a prize for being able to hold one rational thought and one irrational thought simultaneously? Well, golly, here's a cookie for you, then.
Posted by: inkadu | February 20, 2008 10:32 PM
Well he did use the word ginormous which, as everyone knows, is current scientific jargon. :-)
Posted by: Keith Sader | February 20, 2008 10:35 PM
This isn't a completely fair comparison; you've taken a very well-done, high-budget documentary verse an idiot's videoblog. AIG's videos for example are much better done (although the arguments really aren't that much better). However, we shouldn't kid ourselves about who the real anti-evolution people are. They have large budgets and are very good at rhetoric. Don't worry about this idiot; be concerned about the polished ones who can get people to listen to them.
Now that I've gotten the serious remark out of the way: Dear God, this guy is an ignoramus. He doesn't understand how science works at all. I'm always amazed at the doublethink that people like this fellow can assert that scientists are claiming to be infallible and yet at the same time attack scientsts because their ideas are changing. The level of ignorance and doublethink illustrated by that combination is just amazing. And this fellow manages to make both attacks in about 30 seconds.
His knowledge of Genesis is almost as poor as his understanding of science. He seems to be a KJV-onlyist also or he's just picking that translation out of his own ignorance. Either way, this is so bad as to be almost painful.
Posted by: Joshua Zelinsky | February 20, 2008 10:40 PM
You don't even need a fossil to know that "whales evolved from a raccoon-sized creature", since everything that's bigger than a raccoon should have had a raccoon-sized ancestor once.
Posted by: windy | February 20, 2008 10:45 PM
which makes one think about Dawkin's religion-as-child-abuse concept.
indeed it does. long before Dawkins put that out there, many of us were already discussing the parallels between religious indoctrination and more standard definitions of cultism.
If you look at what's been happening in Florida for the last couple of months in response to the new education standards, it becomes obvious that it is a real problem.
otherwise, there would have been no objection to the new standards.
Posted by: Ichthyic | February 20, 2008 10:55 PM
My favorite part was the bit about whales being "the very first named animal in Genesis! The very first!" Well, hey, that makes it all ever so much more convincing.
Posted by: Gregory Kusnick | February 20, 2008 11:01 PM
I have to stand up against this unfair comparison between homo scientificus and homo moronus !
Posted by: hans | February 20, 2008 11:03 PM
Yeah evolution is so stupid. Rapture alert! Loving god rapture ahead! Looooook ooooouuutttt!!
Posted by: 386sx | February 20, 2008 11:34 PM
Here's my question: Why isn't this post titled "A Whale of a Tale"?
Posted by: Eric | February 20, 2008 11:37 PM
Gregory @46
yeah. That's where I had to stop listening. I mean... wow.
Posted by: YetAnotherKevin | February 20, 2008 11:38 PM
The key words for me:
" . . . the evolutionary thought process . . . "
Hmm -- I think that just about sums up all of his ignorance in three words. No random variation, no differential survival or productivity over generations. Just a thought process. Wow. I guess he didn't put any thought into that video.
Hasn't he ever heard of the concise one sentence summary of evolution? "The non-random survival of randomly varying replicators." I'm sorry, but I'm need to leave now and apply evolutionary algorithms to a problem in computer science.
Posted by: spudbeach | February 20, 2008 11:43 PM
The funny thing is that the word "whales" only appears in two translations. Of course it seems that people have a sick fixation on KJV, but my bet is that the original writers had something more like Nessie in mind. I mean...they lived in the desert.
Posted by: DJH | February 20, 2008 11:44 PM
Crap, my IQ just took a hit... how much more intelligence do I have to lose to become a creationist?
Posted by: Berto | February 20, 2008 11:45 PM
So I'm still kind of very slowly learning about evolution and I was wondering if I could take this opportunity to lay it out as I understand it now and if anyone's willing to put up with my ignorance, they could tell me where I'm going wrong?
Ok, here's how I understand it so far, and I apologize if I'm way off: Basically over thousands and thousands of years sometimes offspring of a given species will sometimes have mutations. If the mutations are good and helpful, they breed more and pass on those mutations. If they AREN'T helpful, they don't breed and die out.
So basically that's how it works? I feel like I'm getting it wrong and I don't want to talk about it to other people and completely misrepresent it.
I know this is a dumb thing to ask and most of you understand it WAY better than me, but I'm only just starting to learn about this, so I hope you'll forgive me.
Posted by: October Mermaid | February 20, 2008 11:54 PM
Crap, my IQ just took a hit... how much more intelligence do I have to lose to become a creationist?
I believe the class characteristics state that a Creationist have an IQ no higher than 9, their alignment can be lawful stupid, neutral stupid, or chaotic stupid. They use blunt weapons at a -1 HP penalty-per-round because they keep hitting themselves on the head (-2 HP for edged weapons). Any race other than elves can become a Creationist, but trolls predominate. Consult your manual for more details.
Posted by: inkadu | February 20, 2008 11:58 PM
Ok, here's how I understand it so far, and I apologize if I'm way off: Basically over thousands and thousands of years sometimes offspring of a given species will sometimes have mutations. If the mutations are good and helpful, they breed more and pass on those mutations. If they AREN'T helpful, they don't breed and die out.
Almost. What happens -- and this is still a simplistic description, because real life is complicated in the details -- is that organisms with mutations that are useful tend to leave more offspring; both may or may not have them, but overall, the bad lineages with more harmful mutations tend to not leave as many descendants. Over time this means they get swamped by the luckier lineages with better, more effective mutations. Some harmful mutations are not greatly harmful, or have a mixed harmful/beneficial effect, so that complicates the simple view. (And there's a bit of luck, where, for instance, a small population that can't move about very far can be wiped out by local bad conditions even though the population is just bursting with all the right stuff.)
There's other factors at play, such as genetic drift, but the basic, simple, view is there. As I mentioned, these descriptions are simple in an overall way, but complicated when you get to the details (kinda like how a game can be simple to describe but difficult when you get to playing -- golf is just knocking a ball into hole, for instance).
Posted by: QrazyQat | February 21, 2008 12:11 AM
Consult your manual for more details.
on a tangent, DnD geeks like myself often appreciate the Order of the Stick:
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0001.html
Posted by: Ichthyic | February 21, 2008 12:16 AM
Ah, thanks, QrazyQat! I had completely forgotten to take into account things like luck, which was a huge thing to forget. It does make sense, though, like you said, that a really great, fantastic species could be wiped out just through sheer bad luck.
Also kind of scary to think about...
Posted by: October Mermaid | February 21, 2008 12:18 AM
Watching that creationist video is almost like falling down a flight of stairs. The pauses in his speech are almost like watching the next stair leap up at you before it hits you in the face.
Posted by: Tom K | February 21, 2008 12:25 AM
Posted by: Gregory Kusnick | February 21, 2008 12:44 AM
October Mermaid (#54)
Your summary is close. In addition to random mutations that occur, there is also selection process imposed by the environment. In other words, evolution occurs when random mutations are selected for or against by environmental pressures.
The classic example used for years in biology textbooks is that of the Peppered Moth. The original moth had light colored wings. Because of heavy industrialization in northern England, many trees were coated in a thin layer of soot. During this period, light-colored moths nearly disappeared, and instead were replaced by a dark-colored version. The theory is that the dark-colored moths were better able to blend in with the now dark colored plants and better avoid predation by birds. When northern England was eventually cleaned up via environmental laws, etc. the light-colored moths made a return and dark-colored moths are now rare.
Now there is some controversy about the methodology used in the original study, but scientists basically agree (afaik) that this is what happened: a mutation occurred that gave some moths slightly darker coloration, and was selected upon to give them an advantage over the light-colored moths.
Note that in this case the dark-colored moths would probably never had become prevalent in the population without the selection pressure of environmental change.
This is one example of how evolution works. Also note that selection pressure can come from a whole range of different environmental or reproductive factors.
Posted by: semi | February 21, 2008 12:53 AM
It is a terrible thing to say and I apologise to any Southerners, but I am getting to the point whereby the caveman in me (Mongo) wants to kill whenever he hears that accent. MMmmmmmm Mongo hungry.
Posted by: A Naismith | February 21, 2008 12:55 AM
Engage in violence only when the person is violently recalcitrant in his or her ignorance, please.
Posted by: Stanton | February 21, 2008 1:21 AM
That is so not fair. People like him make satire almost impossible. How much lower can you go without it dembskifying into mere fart noises?
Posted by: pough | February 21, 2008 1:27 AM
The rapture video guy almost made me yell at my monitor when he mentioned humans evolving into aquatic creatures for "a few millenia" before evolving again.
I don't know if he is so stupid as to take the "mil" in millennia to mean million, or to simply have no understanding at all of the timescales involved. I also can't figure out which would be worse.
Oh, I also have been told that I have a southern accent, but only by a guy I worked with in San Francisco. Trust me, back here in the real South, it's no exaggeration to point to Boomhauer(spelling?) from King of the Hill as an example of what I hear every day.
Posted by: autumn | February 21, 2008 1:28 AM
Engage in violence only when the person is violently recalcitrant in his or her ignorance, please.
dogpile on the Steven?
yes?
Posted by: Ichthyic | February 21, 2008 1:30 AM
Fuck.
The first video was great, but after listening to most of the second video with my head held in my hands, I looked up to discover that the stupid had oozed out of my monitor and was dripping from all sides of my desk. It'll take me forever to clean that shit up.
Posted by: Brain Hertz | February 21, 2008 1:49 AM
Absolutely not.
I don't want to get his stupidness germs on me, and, besides, my morningstar is in the shop.
Posted by: Stanton | February 21, 2008 1:49 AM
Dang ol' whales man...blowholes 'n hip bones n' swim swim swimmin' like a lil' ol' otter, tell you what, evolution, man, just like that.
Posted by: Boomhauer | February 21, 2008 1:51 AM
If that creature was made in god's image, I'm gathering god didn't get too many dates in college.
In the past I've made it my personal policy (my singular moral action in life, if you will) to not comment on videos when I haven't watched the full clip. I felt it would be ignorant of me to comment without being totally informed or instructed. However, this idiot just blew my policy out the window. I just couldn't, could NOT, watch the whole thing. I'm doing quite well destroying my brain cells by myself through copious amounts of wine, I refuse to lose them by listening to that tripe.
Posted by: Bride of Shrek | February 21, 2008 1:54 AM
Homos transitioning back to the water due to environmental adaptiveness? Perhaps, in the future after the polar ice caps have melted and most of Earth is underwater, humans will have mutated into semi-water dwelling mariners. WATERWORLD!
Posted by: noodlesoup | February 21, 2008 2:02 AM
Inkadu @28,
I found that I too couldn't make it past that statement about wanting to climb trees. Once that level of stupid has been broached, I have no need to waste my time on anything following it.
I did love the first video though. It's just phenomenal how much we have been able to learn, despite the vast quantity of what we may never know. It makes me a little more hopeful somehow.
Posted by: Michael X | February 21, 2008 2:05 AM
Oh dear, I found the amount of rum that it takes for the first 4 minutes of that man's argument to sorta make sense. Yes, from a lay or drunk perspective, the idea of animals going in and out of the water sounds odd. But I not drunk enough to ignore the idea of adaptation to ideal conditions over many generations.
In order to go any further, I would risk acute alcohol poisoning.
Posted by: wildcardjack | February 21, 2008 2:28 AM
Thanks for posting that first film (the science one)!! My kids loved it -- they watched it twice and were so excited that they went and explained to their dad what they'd just learned about whales!! (I didn't show them the second film -- I'm not trying to shield them from this sort of thing, but since they're only 6 and 4 they're a little young for Bible stories.)
This is a little off-topic, but I posted an amusing comparison between the science/biology diagrams my son likes to draw with the religious drawings my brother and I were doing at the same age.
Posted by: C. L. Hanson | February 21, 2008 3:06 AM
@Josh #1 Thanks for starting my day with a good laugh.
I didn't even have to start the 2nd video to know its contents. Just that stupid dumbed-down look was enough. The Rupture(sic) Alert should have warned me about the sheer depth of the stupidity, though. Next time I'll be warned. I now have a new stupidity test - if someone says 'Voila! and pronounces it 'Wallah!' I shall ignore everything else they say...
Posted by: davem | February 21, 2008 3:14 AM
Great first video. Did not bother with the second one.
God-created Leviathans should only swim around where they belong- in Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick or, The Whale.
Cute otter.
Posted by: Hipparchia | February 21, 2008 3:23 AM
The first video was great,very informative and well done. The second I was not able to watch it all as the stupidity was making my head hurt. That fucktard has taken stupid to a new level which will be hard for anyone else to reach. In his case I think his mother if he had one should have kept the afterbirth and thown out the baby, or maybe she did
Posted by: Ex Partiate | February 21, 2008 3:37 AM
Quite frankly some people are too stupid to understand the theory of evolution, with or without fundamentalist religion.
The best we can hope for is that they are made to realize that mouthing off in public about their absurd beliefs will only result in ridicule. Or as Monty Python might put it...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhJQp-q1Y1s
Posted by: Sigmund | February 21, 2008 3:38 AM
Bubba the babbling cracker. He probably votes for school board members. That's why we have to pay attention to him.
Posted by: waldteufel | February 21, 2008 3:57 AM
Perhaps, in the future after the polar ice caps have melted and most of Earth is underwater, humans will have mutated into semi-water dwelling mariners. WATERWORLD!
'bout time, I say.
Dagon is waiting to reclaim dominion.
...oh yeah, Cthulhu is waiting to eat the rejects; which most will actually consider a preferable fate.
(he always gets pissed off when I don't mention that)
Posted by: Ichthyic | February 21, 2008 4:11 AM
The hillbilly doesn't mention that the bible changes its story. (I like the way he pronounces "bible" as "babble").
In Genesis One, gawd makes the plants and the animals and then man and woman, at the same time.
In Genesis Two, gawd makes man and then the plants and animals, the latter of which the man named. After that, gawd finally makes woman. So which is it Buddy?
Furthermore, gawd seems to have created the morning an the evening twice: on the first day and the fourth day. Depending on interpretation, gawd may have also created them on the third day. How is that possible Buddy?
Then there is Genesis 2:24, "For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh."
Since neither Adam nor Eve had a father or mother, that doesn't make any sense.
Posted by: bernarda | February 21, 2008 4:20 AM
Bride of Shrek:
I tend to think of my wine drinking as setting up a selection pressure on my brain cells - the weaker ones should die out first, leaving me with a better brain!
Posted by: Thinker | February 21, 2008 4:36 AM
Each of us uniquely created? Someone should tell him about sex.
Posted by: Carsten S | February 21, 2008 4:38 AM
#61
I see what you mean, but I have one (very stupid) question about this: do these changes happen on purpose, sort of knowingly (I don't mean by a creator, of course, I mean on a genetic level or something along those lines)?
Or are they just random mutations that happen to be exactly what is needed, and so it works out well? For example, would it be possible that this mutation never occurred at all and the moths just completely died out? Or do environmental pressures always result in a change that is needed?
I know that's kind of a silly thing to ask, but I'm sort of fuzzy on this aspect.
Posted by: October Mermaid | February 21, 2008 5:16 AM
@october mermaid.
The process is not conscious or deliberate in any sense. If you have a population of a million moths, half of which are black, and half of which are white, the white moths (assuming that environement) are more readily predated upon by birds. Thus over time the 50/50 split changes drifts. 55/45, 60/40, 90/10. Eventually white moths reach some kind of balance between predation and procreation, or possibly get wiped out altogether. Occasionaly, white moths will randomly pop up (where the genetic potential conttinues t exist), and if conditions have changed in their favour (reduced pollution, predators that no longer recognise white moths as food), the population will begin to swing back.
It is merely the environment, in conjunction with random mutation, that forces species into a given niche. There is nothing planned or deliberate about it.
Posted by: Brian Coughlan | February 21, 2008 5:56 AM
Just wanted to coment about the "whales were the first animal to be mentioned in the Bible" bullshit -
In current Hebrew, the word in qestion actually means "aligators"...
Ofcourse, Hebrew was an almost-dead language for 2000 years, so nobody can say for sure what this word used to mean when it was written. Building half your theory on a word that nobody knows the meaning of is even (a bit) more stupid than building all you theory on a thouthands-years-old text.
Posted by: Tamar | February 21, 2008 6:17 AM
October Mermaid,
"Or do environmental pressures always result in a change that is needed?"
No, and species dissappear. Example : the Yangtse Dolphin, a freshwater Dolphin that used to be found in China didn't benefit from a mutation that could have made him better adapted to a more poluted environment, and now it is extinct.
The mutations may be purely random (coppying errors) or influenced by external agents (radiations, exposure to specific chemicals, etc...), but in any case, they create variations in the gene pool, and the less favorable (deleterious) mutations are reduced in frequency in the gene pool by natural selection, while the more favorable (beneficial or advantageous) mutations tend to accumulate. This results in evolutionary change.
Posted by: negentropyeater | February 21, 2008 6:21 AM
@October Mermaid #84
As best anyone can tell mutations occur essentially at random. While the environment may help to cause mutations, there's no reason to believe that an environment favors beneficial mutations for that environment.
I'll add that saying "exactly what's needed" is a bit off the mark because there doesn't have to be any need involved.
Instead a beneficial mutation is one that happens to increase reproductive success (on average) in the members of the population that carry it. The population may have been doing just fine on the whole, but any mutations that make their carriers able to compete better will tend to become more common with time in the population.
Posted by: Escuerd | February 21, 2008 6:22 AM