Pharyngula

Posted by: Marcus J. Ranum | March 17, 2009 12:55 PM

Usually, when I need a lawyer, I pay out of my own pocket.

But, next time, I'm gonna see if the members of my church will pony up for it. Oh, wait. My "flock" is just 2 horses and 2 dogs. No rich deluded old people who fear death.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 17, 2009 12:58 PM

He claims that he was advised by legitimate lawyers that he did not have to pay taxes, and that he did not knowingly structure cash transactions to avoid reporting requirements.

This "lawyer"?

Posted by: Cuttlefish, OM | March 17, 2009 1:01 PM

We'll pray and pray, and pray some more,
To open up his prison door;
We'll pray all day and pray all night
And not give up our prayerful fight;
We'll pray all night and pray all day
Till God hears what we have to say;
We'll pray on hill and pray in dale
For God to let him out of jail;
We'll pray in dale and pray on hill
That Hovind's freedom is God's will;
We'll pray until our throats are hoarse
For God to do the work, of course;
We'll pray--and if you think that's funny,
Look: it sure beats sending money.

Posted by: c-law | March 17, 2009 1:04 PM

Dr. Kent Hovind's oppressors have to decide whether they want to live in fear or learn to live in love. If you don't agree with this I question your commitment to Sparkle Motion.

(please tell me I don't have to explain the references)

Posted by: bc23.5 | March 17, 2009 1:05 PM

From the CSE website:
"This recent decision is a huge disappointment for those who realize the many questions of law involved in the case and who have prayed so fervently for the case to be overturned."

Translates as:
The last round of prayers didn't seem to have any effect on the Circuit Court judge. Pray more sinners, pray more!

Posted by: Chris Davis | March 17, 2009 1:06 PM

According to the update on his site, it was the Devil, rather than the IRS, who put him inside.

Aww - and him such a god-fearing and righteous man and all. How come this deity goes all powerless when one of his most loyal servants is so cruelly treated?

It's clearly a test of faith along Jobian lines. Hovind should bite the bullet and do his time without whining, so De Lawd will see his devotion in all its glory.

Posted by: Michael LoPrete | March 17, 2009 1:12 PM

Zifnab @7:

If they didn't spend the money on a lost-cause legal defense, they'd be dropping the money on "Say No To Gh3ys" campaigns or sinking it into more press time for James Dobson and Tony Perkins.

It's not a binary choice, they might actually spend it on something worthwhile. I'd rather the legal charlatans be put out of work; they're worse in some ways to the clowns of the religious circus.

Posted by: Sigmund | March 17, 2009 1:13 PM

I suspect last years unsuccessful attempt at a jailbreak won't do him any favors.

Posted by: Marcus J. Ranum | March 17, 2009 1:16 PM

listen to conference call

I wonder what would happen if 3,000 pharyngula fans joined the call. Just to listen. It'd really suck if they were using one of those services that bills based on the number of call participants.

Posted by: DaveL | March 17, 2009 1:17 PM

Dr. Hovind is innocent and his case is full of lies.

An excellent choice of wording. Chief among those lies is the claim that Hovind is innocent. Unfortunately for him, the government's case is built on solid facts and established law.

Posted by: True Bob | March 17, 2009 1:18 PM

Well, I suggest they put all their efforts into prayer.

OTOH, Hovind in jail is GOD SWILL! How dare they try to circumvent Teh Great Plan of the One True Lawd! It's HERESY, I says! Heresy and shenanigans!

I'd get my broom, but any omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent gawd has it all well in hand wink wink nudge nudge.

Posted by: Lowell | March 17, 2009 1:19 PM

There are a lot of similarities between creation "science" and what we call "tax protester" arguments in the United States.

Both have been repeatedly shot down by the relevant experts (scientists, on the one hand, and the courts, on the other). And yet, people keep making the same frivolous arguments over and over again.

The tax protester-related articles at Wikipedia are an excellent source if you're interested in this particular brand of delusional thinking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_protester_arguments

The editors there (particularly one going by the name Famspear) fend off the crazies in the talk pages like nobody's business. Reading those exchanges is a lot like reading a creationist getting stomped on here at Pharyngula.

Posted by: Les Lane | March 17, 2009 1:23 PM

I'll try again - this time with parentheses included in the html tag.

Hovind indeed consulted this lawyer.

He has a history of consorting with criminals

Posted by: Nick | March 17, 2009 1:25 PM

@21: That's funny, I could've sworn he consulted this lawyer:

http://www.somethingawful.com/hosted/crabs/

Posted by: Bubba | March 17, 2009 1:31 PM

Ken is my sunshine, my only sunshine.
He makes me happy all night and day.
You'll never know, boys, how much I love him.
Please don't take my Kenny away.

Inmate #6000 (approximately) FCI Edgefield

Posted by: Screechy Monkey | March 17, 2009 1:36 PM

Does Dr. Dino still offer his $10,000 "challenge"? There's a good chunk of the "needed" money right there....

Posted by: Taran | March 17, 2009 1:39 PM

Speaking of creationist kooks, take a look at this email I got just now:

"BEN STEIN EXPELLED AS COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER"
http://account.emailhero.com/t/ViewEmail/r/739E63B25D481255/5F67858C5B6BC219C5EC08CADFFC107B

Posted by: Larry | March 17, 2009 1:44 PM

This is kind of like Spiritual Monopoly(©) where, when you land on Go To Jail, instead of rolling the dice and making pairs to get out, you first pray to Jebus to smite the evildoers who unjustly landed you in jail, then roll the dice. If you make a pair, Jebus gets you out of jail.

If that doesn't work, you ask the other players for money to get you out.

Posted by: Billy | March 17, 2009 1:45 PM

Amazing, isn't it. The baby jesus needs more money. What happened to the concept of omnipotence - oh yeah, it's logically impossible!

Posted by: Billy | March 17, 2009 1:47 PM

Amazing, isn't it. The baby jesus needs more money. What happened to the concept of omnipotence - oh yeah, it's logically impossible!

Posted by: Janine, Insulting Sinner | March 17, 2009 1:50 PM

Taran, that is old news. But what is really funny is the deep discounts for the sale of his DVD that is on that page.

Posted by: flea | March 17, 2009 1:57 PM

It's always nice to be reminded about KH and this lovely song (Kent Hovind: Fucktard):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ge3bDSqKno

Posted by: Ollie | March 17, 2009 2:05 PM

Two notes-

Hovind was actually convicted for failing to collect payroll taxes, not for failure to pay his own personal taxes.

Also, he's asking for about $200K in total for his appeal effort to SCOTUS, which far exceeds what it should actually cost, even if it goes to argument, which it won't.

Posted by: PlaydoPlato | March 17, 2009 2:08 PM

Wait. I thought religious/political conservatives were such high falutin' patriots. Seems to me then, the patriotic thing to do would be for Kent to serve his country by paying his fine and doing his time... like a man.

Posted by: shonny | March 17, 2009 2:11 PM

Fuck Hovind, look at this: http://www.history.com/content/predatorx/predator-x-videos
and enjoy real reality!

Posted by: LightningRose | March 17, 2009 2:47 PM

Hovind and his wife made a whole series of bank withdrawals that were just slightly under the $10,000 limit that would trigger reporting of the activity.

This is the one part of the case I disagree with. If there's a $10K limit, there should *be* a $10K limit.

I don't move that kind of money around often, but when I do I avoid moving more than $10K around just because it's none of the guvmint's business that I do.

Posted by: Screechy Monkey | March 17, 2009 2:54 PM

PZ, how did you end up getting a copy of this? Do you sign up for creo mailing lists just to get blog fodder, or do creos sign you up for them just to annoy you, or did someone actually think, "hey, I bet PZ Myers would be interested in helping Dr. Dino!"?

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 17, 2009 3:02 PM

Maybe someday Hovind will be joined at Club Fed by tax cheat Tim Geithner.

Yes, they were guilty of the exact same thing of course.

Posted by: the pro from dover | March 17, 2009 3:18 PM

To # 50. So what was that, some kind of pliosaur? in a separate but curiously coincidental discovery, it turns out that the smallest therapod dinosaur ever found turned up somewhere in Canada (weighed about 10 lbs.). It seems that AOL produces more interesting paleontological findings than Pharyngula which keeps wasting its time on such irrelevant historical figures as Kent Hovind and the pope.

Posted by: Chas | March 17, 2009 3:19 PM

As a bank teller, you are required to report people who are structuring deposits or withdrawals of just less than 10,000 dollars. Usually it is used to track down drug dealers and terrorists but Dr. Hovind will work just fine. And, structuring reveals guilt because one knows that if they conduct regular business and do not worry about the 10,000 marker than they will have to face the tax man.

Posted by: ??? | March 17, 2009 3:24 PM

Yes, they were guilty of the exact same thing of course.

Called tax evasion

Posted by: Ray C. | March 17, 2009 3:40 PM

And yet the wingnuts can't seem to explain how they plan to pay for their wars, if not with taxes.

Posted by: ??? | March 17, 2009 3:49 PM

You're an idiot if you think the cases are even remotely the same.

I don't think they are the same. Geithner is supposed to be a financial whiz-kid, knowledgeable about the tax code, and should therefore be held to a higher standard. After all, if he's qualified to head the IRS, shouldn't he know what the rest of us are expected to know?

Posted by: Benjamin Franklin | March 17, 2009 4:01 PM

Does anyone else think that Hovind really wanted to go to jail so he could get butt-fucked every night and come out of it saying that he was forced to, and really isn't gay?

Posted by: ??? | March 17, 2009 4:11 PM

And he was convicted of Tax Evasion when?

Around the same time OJ Simpleton was convicted of murder. I guess that means you believe OJ was innocent! Come to think of it, Adolf Hitler was never convicted of anything either.

Geithner, on the other hand, like his fellow-traveler Tom Daschle, paid up when his "mistake" was discovered. Would he have done so if not in the running for Treasury Secretary? I doubt it.

Posted by: Brain Hertz | March 17, 2009 4:22 PM

It does seem rather fitting that pseudoscientist "Dr" Hovind would hire a pseudolawyer to defend him.

I guess his attempts to "debate" with the judge didn't go over so well, though. Odd, that.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 17, 2009 4:28 PM

Geithner, on the other hand, like his fellow-traveler Tom Daschle, paid up when his "mistake" was discovered. Would he have done so if not in the running for Treasury Secretary? I doubt it.

But no you are just asserting intent here without knowing a damn thing about it. Hovind we know for a fact was intentionally trying to skirt the tax laws by illegal means.

You've made a strong case. Good job.

Posted by: ??? | March 17, 2009 4:32 PM

But no you are just asserting intent here without knowing a damn thing about it. Hovind we know for a fact was intentionally trying to skirt the tax laws by illegal means.

How do we know this for a fact? Telepathy? An intent-o-meter?

You've made a strong case. Good job.

Agreed. Good job avoiding responding to me pointing out your "he wasn't convicted, therefore he's innocent" gambit.

Or not.

Posted by: DiscoveredJoys | March 17, 2009 4:40 PM

So Kent Hovind's appeal rests in part on being gullible enough to take advice from an 'expert' promoting a tax fraud scheme.

This is the same Kent Hovind who testifies: "Modern science textbooks are wrong about the age of the earth and the place dinosaurs hold in history. Dinosaurs were created with man and were on the ark with Noah."

My irony meter has now imploded with a sweet little 'foop!' and formed a microscopic singularity.

Posted by: damnedyankee | March 17, 2009 4:44 PM

How do we know this for a fact? Telepathy? An intent-o-meter?

Found guilty by a jury of his peers after a sober analysis of evidence and given a chance to defend his actions. It's the legal system. Deal with it.

Agreed. Good job avoiding responding to me pointing out your "he wasn't convicted, therefore he's innocent" gambit.

Or arrested. Or charged with a crime. Merely asked to pay the money back, which was done. Of course, law-and-order conservatives can't stand the merest whiff of wrongdoing (in a Democrat) even if they don't arise to the level of criminal activity.

Meanwhile, outing an undercover CIA agent is an entirely understandable action when looked at in the broader context of keeping the nation safe. For example.

Posted by: ??? | March 17, 2009 4:53 PM

Found guilty by a jury of his peers after a sober analysis of evidence and given a chance to defend his actions. It's the legal system. Deal with it.

And of course, juries are NEVER, EVER, EVER wrong, right DY? Does that mean you, like the esteemed Rev, believe OJ to be innocent?

Or arrested. Or charged with a crime.

Yep, just like Adolf Hitler. He must have been innocent too, right DY?

Merely asked to pay the money back, which was done.

Demonstrate that it would have been done had Mr. Geithner not been under consideration for Treasury Secretary. Do the same for Tom Daschle wrt HHS Secretary.

Of course, law-and-order conservatives can't stand the merest whiff of wrongdoing (in a Democrat) even if they don't arise to the level of criminal activity.

Who says I'm a "law and order conservative"? Talking out of your ass again DY? BTW I do watch Law & Order fairly frequently, though I'm not a conservative.

Meanwhile, outing an undercover CIA agent is an entirely understandable action when looked at in the broader context of keeping the nation safe.

Bzzzzzzzzzt. Try again. Valerie Plame was not a covert agent. You might know this if you got your information from somewhere other than Daily Kos or DU.

Posted by: Brain Hertz | March 17, 2009 5:04 PM

following up from my post at #83:

Plame's testimony on the covert nature of her job was buttressed by a statement that Waxman read at the hearing's opening which, he said, was approved by Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the CIA's director. The statement said that Plame worked in a covert capacity at the time of Novak's column and that her employment status was classified under an executive order.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/16/AR2007031600276.html

Posted by: mandrake | March 17, 2009 6:00 PM

Around the same time OJ Simpleton was convicted of murder. I guess that means you believe OJ was innocent! Come to think of it, Adolf Hitler was never convicted of anything either.

Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | March 17, 2009 6:34 PM

Something's awry here: isn't the new troll supposed to pop up after an existing one gets whacked?

Posted by: Brachychiton | March 17, 2009 7:06 PM

isn't the new troll supposed to pop up after an existing one gets whacked?

It's come up killfiled for me, so it must be an established troll that I'd got bored with earlier. Unless, that is, the latest edition does the killing in advance ... Now that would be a useful feature.

Posted by: AnthonyK | March 17, 2009 7:24 PM

We are up against spiritual oppression, so there is no textbook-format to follow to make this situation work out.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 17, 2009 8:41 PM

So someone who commits "bumbling omission" should be in charge of the IRS? And what the hell "three-pronged test" is that? Does it have anything to do with a ground pin?

Who said anything about his qualifications for Sec of treasury? Are you ignoring the actual argument to make a political point? Show his actions satisfy the test for the legal definition guilt in the case of Tax Evasion.

And the IRS audit that brought the issue to light was in 2006.

Was he in consideration for Treasury sec then (you don't "run" for treasury sec despite your statement in #70)?

And of course, juries are NEVER, EVER, EVER wrong, right DY? Does that mean you, like the esteemed Rev, believe OJ to be innocent?

Awww. That's cute.

Posted by: «bønez_brigade» | March 17, 2009 10:34 PM

PZ, how great that would have been for you repeat the conference call crash. The note did seem to leave open the possibility of future conference calls, though.

Posted by: raven | March 17, 2009 10:54 PM

Hovind was an idiot and is a sociopath.

If he had just paid the money back and not alienated the IRS, the police, the courts, and everyone else, he most likely would have gotten a civil fine and no jail time.

When he stonewalled and threw in with the tax resistors crowd, he made everything a lot worse.

I knew someone running a new business who didn't pay payroll taxes. It wasn't even his fault, his accountant forgot to pay them. The IRS set up a payment schedule and told him if he missed any payments they were going to shut him down.

Posted by: Ben | March 17, 2009 11:54 PM

You really should check out the free Hovind site. (www.freehovind.com) There is even a forum (http://forum.freehovind.com/browse). There are a few that truly can't accept Hovind is lying.

Posted by: «bønez_brigade» | March 18, 2009 1:50 AM

SSiE,
Did Young Hovind not pull his weight and cover for "Dr." Dad?
Mewonders if said YYEC upheld the remainder of the alleged 700+ speech/yr schedule.

Posted by: CosmicTeapot | March 18, 2009 4:47 AM

"Come to think of it, Adolf Hitler was never convicted of anything either".

Perhaps because he was dead at the time!

Godwin and strawman at the same time.

Sheesh.

Or is it the mind boggles?

Posted by: Discombobulated | March 18, 2009 5:53 AM

Everyone will bow before God. Whether they choose to believe it or not, they will bow before God.

Nice try. No typekey, failbot.

Did you forget the 9th Commandment? (or 8th, if you're Catholic. Funny how God can't even number things consistently.)

Posted by: Josh | March 18, 2009 5:57 AM

Kneel before Zod!

Posted by: Knockgoats | March 18, 2009 7:00 AM

Come to think of it, Adolf Hitler was never convicted of anything either. - ???

I have no knowledge of Geithner's activities, but if you're going to make stupid comparisons, make some effort to get them right. Hitler was convicted of treason in 1924, for his part in the "Beer Hall Putsch" of 1923; he served 8 months of his 5-year sentence, and wrote Mein Kampf while in his (very comfortable) prison. Nor was this his first conviction: in 1921 he served a month in prison as a result of disrupting a rival political meeting.

Posted by: CortxVortx | March 18, 2009 10:13 AM

Hey, if an earthquake doesn't collapse his prison walls, then obviously he's no St Paul and God wants him to stay in jail.

Posted by: Stanton | March 18, 2009 11:27 AM

The entire sad defense story is built on lies. Hovind is not in jail for practicing his religion — he's in jail for tax evasion.

He was practicing his religion...

It's just that one of the tenets involved tax evasion.

Because God wants money.

Lots and lots of money for His favored servant(s) to hoard and spend for Him as they saw fit...

Posted by: Knockgoats | March 18, 2009 1:58 PM

???,
You're a liar; and not a very good one.

Posted by: ??? | March 18, 2009 2:03 PM

You're a liar; and not a very good one.

Evidence? Or is name-calling all you've got?

Posted by: Brain Hertz | March 18, 2009 2:07 PM

Was he convicted of anything related to WWII? You know---those death camps/genocide/bombing of foreign countries?

There's ample evidence, in the existence of the Nuremburg trials, that he would in fact have been tried for such crimes, and presumably convicted, if he hadn't committed suicide in order to evade capture. So your example doesn't work, does it?

Posted by: ??? | March 18, 2009 2:16 PM

There's ample evidence, in the existence of the Nuremburg trials, that he would in fact have been tried for such crimes, and presumably convicted, if he hadn't committed suicide in order to evade capture. So your example doesn't work, does it?

The original argument was:

Found guilty by a jury of his peers after a sober analysis of evidence and given a chance to defend his actions.

I don't see any woulds, coulds, ifs or presumablys in there anywhere. The argument was that guilt = found guilty. Therefore, by modus tollens, not found guilty = no guilt.

By the way, there was also "ample evidence" that OJ Simpleton killed his ex-wife. Tell me how that worked out.

Posted by: Brain Hertz | March 18, 2009 2:34 PM

I don't see any woulds, coulds, ifs or presumablys in there anywhere. The argument was that guilt = found guilty. Therefore, by modus tollens, not found guilty = no guilt.

By the way, there was also "ample evidence" that OJ Simpleton killed his ex-wife. Tell me how that worked out.

Are you being deliberately obtuse? AH was only not brought to trial because he committed suicide. Are you really trying to argue that, had he been alive, he wouldn't have been brought up in front of the Nuremburg trials and/or would have been acquitted? These two situations are not the same.

But you already knew that.

Posted by: ??? | March 18, 2009 2:58 PM

And are you saying that if OJ had killed himself before being brought to trial that would make him guilty?

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 18, 2009 7:52 PM

my bet is that Charlie Wagner is behind the "security" hole (which really isn't).

Charlie is just petty enough (and stupid enough) to do that.

If this really is you, charlie, please, go and take your meds, eh?

you need help, and none of us here are qualified to treat your psychoses.

Posted by: John Morales | March 18, 2009 9:20 PM

Ichthyic, I did weigh the term before using it, but you're quite right.

No, it's not a security hole, but to allow any poster to post as the host is certainly a flaw in the software.

It's not a bug, but I think it's an oversight that needs correction. How hard can it be? The system already responds to the name by using special formatting for the comment, so there's a hook there already.

Posted by: Janine, Insulting Sinner | March 22, 2009 3:54 PM

Betty, PZ will translate letters from kooks into Comic Sans. It is just one of his endearing quirks.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | March 23, 2009 1:31 PM

Franklin, your prayers are worthless here. Find a better forum, like the closet of your soul. Oh, and your god exists only between your ears as a delusion.

Posted by: Janine, Insulting Sinner | March 23, 2009 1:48 PM

Really i'm ought to pray for him and i'm passing this as a prayer request to all my friends in India and the other countries.

What makes you think that your friends are regular readers of this blog? And what makes you think that the regular readers of this blog would want to pray for Hovind, let alone pray?

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | March 31, 2009 7:23 PM

You will all face the One True God, the One who created you, on Judgment Day.

Posted by: Josh | March 31, 2009 7:27 PM

You will all face the One True God, the One who created you, on Judgment Day.

Thor? Nahhh--he and I get along fine. I fear not his mighty hammer.

Posted by: Wowbagger, OM | March 31, 2009 7:38 PM

Ragnarök! Yeah!

Posted by: Kel | March 31, 2009 7:54 PM

Christians have their threat of hell, but are they worried about the threat of reincarnation? The desire to be with God / Jesus is the polar opposite to freeing yourself from desires, and that suffering will mean that Christians come back in the next life born with degenerative neural diseases that will mean the next life will be nothing but agony. Maybe that'll teach them for not believing in the One True Karmic Wheel...

Wait, what's that? Christians aren't afraid of reincarnation? Why is that? If they aren't afraid of a non-existent threat, what makes them think that atheists are going to be any different with the non-existent threat of Hell?

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | May 5, 2009 11:18 PM

Jesus loves you.

And to complete the atheist salute to godbots, fuck you too.

Posted by: Ryan Baggett | May 7, 2009 4:03 PM

This response is addressed specifically to "Janine, OMnivore," though I think it might apply to many who have posted here as well. First of all, Janine, "OMnivore?" - that means one who consumes everything. I wonder why you should pick such a screen name, since you are obviously very particular in the doctrines you choose to accept and consume. And I give this humble suggestion that you change your name, since a diet of equal portions of humanist ramble and honest, sincere Christian doctrine seems as utterly repugnant to you as ravioli seems to be to my 2-yr-old. Get that! The kid positively LOVES asparagus, spinach, collard greens, broccoli, carrots, raw tomatoes, and -yes, even Brussel Spouts, BUT HE HATES RAVIOLI AND LOATHES SWISS CHEESE!!!!

Janine, did you read more than the first line or two of my post, or did you make up your mind that I'm a Christo-fascist (So far as I know, I made that one up when I was an Atheist) and dismissed the rest? Please note I said that I was converted after hearing a much more rational and knowledgeable man, Cliff Knectle, speaking to a crowd of students at the University of Texas. His heart-piercing words were, "It isn't all about you." He was responding to a student who asked him what is life all about. He wasn't talking to me; I didn't ask the question. However, God used this man's words and got my attention. I have found the Holy Spirit is sometimes very subtle in the way he draws people to Christ, just not with me. With me, He's as subtle as a flying hammer. - This one is not original; attributed to Steve Wuertz, a friend and fellow Mac enthusiast.

I also completely agree with you about Kent Hovind, the nature of his thought processes and call the man's words an embarrassment to Christianity. (HOW DO YOU BOLD AND ITALICIZE IN A BLOG??) I've seen the "Doctor Dino" video tapes. In them, Mr. Hovind is trying to be funny, one might suppose, but his humor is cruel and demeaning to a lot of people who have honest questions about the basics: 1) Who am I? 2) How did I get here? 3)What is the Universe and how did it get here? 4) What am I SUPPOSED TO BE DOING?
People who are not Christians and hear themselves being mocked are not likely to have positive feelings about Christianity or Christians - and, unfortunately, that spills back onto Christ himself. You know, Christ warned those he preached to, "Woe for the person who makes one of these little ones fall away [from me]. It would be better for that man if a large millstone were tied around his neck and that he were thrown into the depths of the sea." That, Janine, is a pretty stern warning. It applies to us all, and, yes, even to Kent Hovind. In my honest opinion I think Kent had become too proud and God needed to reign in his pride before Kent hurt people - both Christians and unbelievers. He allowed Kent to lie, cheat, and steal so that the proper authorities would punish him accordingly. It is my sincere hope that Kent Hovind and his wife will emerge from this experience humbled and more powerful in their ministry to a lost and hurting world than ever.

This reminds me of a guy in the Bible named Jonah. The LORD God commanded Jonah to go and preach to the people of Nineveh (the capital of Syria - a dreaded and cruel enemy of Israel) a message of repentance or destruction. Jonah would all too gladly have seen the people of Nineveh - even the women and children - perish and die. He didn't want to see them spared, so he took off in the opposite direction, commissioning a ship from Joppa to take him to Tarshish (thought to be by some in Spain, and by others in Western Britain). God will not be mocked. He will not be refused, even by stubborn Atheists like I used to be. Those familiar with the story will remember that God caused a great storm to arise on the sea. The other men on board the ship all began to cast lots to see which of them was responsible for angering his god and causing the storm. The lots all fell to Jonah, who 'fessed up and told them to throw him into the sea. The Bible then says that the storm IMMEDIATELY departed and the waves and winds were calmed. You have to know that the other men on the ship saw this and when they returned sought out a priest of the Jews to find out about the God with the power to calm the sea. Maybe some of them read the scriptures and discovered the prophesies of the Messiah. I might just run into one of them in Heaven! ....sorry, getting off topic! That's not the end of the story. The Bible recounts that God caused a giant fish to swallow Jonah and for three days he was in the stomach of the fish - with all the gastric digestive juices. After Jonah's prayer for deliverance, the fish vomited Jonah up on the shore and Jonah departed for Nineveh to preach the message God had commanded him to preach. So, stop here and think about what Jonah looked like when he got to Nineveh after marinating in a fish's stomach juices for three days. There probably was little left of his clothes. He was more than likely hairless and bleached white. Maybe pieces of his skin were worn thin so that you could see his insides...ggggrosss!! Now think about how effective his message of "repent or perish" was compared to what t might have been if he had gone in looking normal. It sure will make you think.

Now, we ought to start off by saying just how cruel it is of some of the posters on this forum to have made YouTube links to a really mean-spirited video, calling Kent an F***Tard" and speculating on what kind of treatment he is getting inside a federal prison. I do not know what experiences Mr. Hovind has had in prison, but I think it's safe to say it has been and may continue to be a humbling experience for him.

Lastly, I ask you, Janine, to consider the scholarly works of Hugh Ross, a respected Astrophysicist and Creationist who happens to believe that both science (man's limited groping about in the dark to discover answers to only a few of the big questions - the four I listed above for sure, but there are lots of others) and Scripture (the revealed word of God to man concerning creation which answers all the questions man can ask) point to a universe that is 15 to 17 billion years old and that God brought about creation in several bursts over the course of eons. Dr. Ross is what you might call an "Old-Earth Creationist." These "bursts" are what Dr. Ross calls "Days of Creation." You and other readers of this post can learn more about Dr. Ross on his website, Reasons to Believe (http://www.reasons.org/). I'm reading a great book right now by Dr. Ross, "Why the Universe is the Way it is."
Other respected scientists., such as those of the Institute for Creation research (http://www.icr.org/) believe the universe is only a few thousand years old and that God created it all in just seven 24-hour days. That, too, is a plausible theory. On the one hand there's the evidence from the Hubble space telescope that the universe is expanding and the present "scientific" assumption that the speed of light is constant, giving us a universe approximately 34 billion light years in diameter, or 17 billion light years from the OBSERVABLE edge to the center. The reasonable assumption, then, is that the universe is billions of years old. On the other hand, I perform a thought experiment in which I place myself int he position of the creator for just a day. I have absolute power to create everything from nothing. I'm told to create a TREE. Would I create an ACORN? NO! I would create a HUGE, MAMMOTH OAK TREE, towering into the sky, the branches of which spread from one horizon to the other. the next day *Poof!* and I'm just a normal, limited human again. All I have retained from the previous day is the memory of creating the tree. Observers, including scientists more vastly learned than I, all say that the tree is Thousands or tens of thousands of years old. Only I know that the tree is, in fact, just one day old. It could be that God made the universe just the way he wanted it to be in a very short period of time and mankind, blinded and hardened by sin, sees it and proclaims that the universe is BILLIONS of years old and it all arose from cosmic singularity - a concept, now acknowledged by most physicists and mathematicians to be an ABSOLUTE IMPOSSIBILITY (echo...echo...echo [for effect]).

I'm just not sure which I think is right. The good thing is that I don't have to know why the universe is the way it is to know that I have a loving Savior who lived and died for me and for all mankind. It's great to know that He had to die for only me, He would have done so willingly. That is the love of Jesus Christ... a love beyond compare.

Hey, thanks for letting me share the love of Jesus with others on your blog, PZ Myers, you "godless liberal." Keep up the "random biological ejaculations" and continued hate-filled pieces on "Evolution, development" and other musings.

Yours Truly,
Ryan Baggett

Posted by: Janine, OMnivore | May 7, 2009 4:11 PM

Dumbass, you criticize me for not fully considering your words and then make wild speculations about my moniker.

I will be honest with you, I do not care about your bit of evangelizing. My eyes rolled up with my pupils trying to look through my brain to see the roof of my skull. I did not and will not read it. I have better works of fiction to read.

Posted by: Josh | May 7, 2009 4:19 PM

Ryan, there is still time to repent. Come to the one true faith. Follow Odin. He will lead you. You don't have to be afraid anymore. He'll accept you.

Posted by: Ryan Baggett | May 11, 2009 10:02 PM

Hi all,

I think I'm just going to ignore the comments of Steve_C, Janine, OMnivore Nerd of Redhead, and OMJosh, the entirety of which are rude, ungracious, plagued by profanity, and in the case of Josh, just plain silly. Josh, I can't be taunted that easily. I know I should not expect anything more of you as nothing more could be expected of me when I was a child under God's wrath. In the Bible (Ephesians 2:2-4) it says, "Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest."

But you can't stop me from praying for you. Ultimately, it is God's choice and not man's who will be saved. I can pray and I will pray that God will change your hearts.

But I am interested in the comments of Owl Mirror.

So, here we go. Can it be a "reasonable conclusion" that the universe is about 13.73 ± .12 billion years old when we continually find objects that are farther out than 13.89 billion years and it is by no means certain that the speed of light is in fact a constant. You certainly do not think I'm lying or twisting science to mention the REALITY of EINSTEIN BOSE CONDENSATES and the effect such have on a beam of light fired through them? Light SLOWS DOWN. That's EMPIRICAL FACT, not a lie. It is reproducible in a laboratory. It is a reasonable assumption that in the near absolute zero temperatures of deep space such states of matter exist and might, in fact, be quite extensive. So, light might be traveling and indeed might have traveled in the past at different speeds in different regions of the universe, depending on the medium and conditions through which it has had to travel.

Also, there's the effect of gravitational lensing. You'll need to look this up, Owl. But, in essence, you must acknowledge that what you see is the result of light traveling from the emitting source or from an object off which that light has been reflected. The shape, speed and constancy of that light and it's image is much affected by the distance from an observer and, again, the medium and conditions through which it has had to travel.

Next, let's examine my "tree" analogy. Without resorting to childish name calling, let's examine the facts, as scientists who show each other mutual respect. If we can agree on those terms, I'll continue to view you as a legitimate skeptic with whom I would engage in a logical argument. You say "it looks like you're saying "it could be" that God is a fraud, a liar, a forger, a counterfeiter, a faker." Would it be fraudulent to create something and for a man to come along and say it has the appearance of great age. It seem more logical to assert that the error is in the INTERPRETATION of the man rather than to assert fraudulent intentions on behalf of the creator. Also, keep in mind that in my tree analogy, I was the creator. Please read carefully. I know you're not taught to analyze arguments critically in the public schools these days; it is a disadvantage I'm willing to help you through, if you will but allow me. I'm sorry, Owl. That sounded a bit overbearing and even made the assumption that you are the product of a public education. If such is the case, you are an unfortunate victim.

Next, Owl, I must insist that you legitimize your assessment of me as a liar. It is absolutely true that a majority of astrophysicists have rejected the notion of the universe arising from a "cosmic singularity." It is likewise true that a growing number of mathematicians are increasingly uncomfortable with a theory that requires dependence on the unconfirmed and furthermore unprovable existence of "dark matter" and "dark energy" to account for the 97% of the mass of the universe that must be there so that a really shaky theory holds up mathematically. Ask a mathematician. Ask me, since I am one. As a scientist, I can't support a theory that requires more faith than religion requires. The essence of science is that you pursue a theory until the evidence uncovered fails to support the hypotheses underlying the theory, and then you abandon it and come up with a new set of hypotheses that better explain the observed phenomena and present evidences.
Science, in these days has little to do with epistemology, the philosophy of knowledge - or how we know that we know a thing. Rather, it has become more a religion in its own right. Present assumptions must be supported at all costs, regardless of the mounting evidence to the contrary. After all, the Theory is so important!!

Next, when I say "I'm just not sure which I think is right" I am expressing that there are two basic camps in the theories of creation. One of these states that the universe is young, some 7,000 - 10,000 years old. The other states that the universe is some 15 - 17 Billion years old. There appears to be much good evidence in support of both sets of theories. Any true scientist interested in finding out the "What," the "Where," the "How," and the "Why" first examines available evidence and them comes to a reasoned set of suppositions. At this point in our discoveries no evidence has been found to positively exclude the theory of a young universe. I do care about the facts. For instance, I take the fact that no transitional fossils have been found and none are in the very extensive collection (some 60,000 fossils) in the British Museum of Science and History to be a fairly good piece of evidence suggesting that there are none and there have, therefore, never been any transitional lifeforms. This, then, points me to the conclusion that a prolonged evolution over time has not happened and does not explain how life on earth came to be in the first place, nor how it has come to be so varied.

I would like to present this piece of evidence for a creative intelligence behind the obvious design of the universe, Owl. I'll ask you these three questions: "Do you love anyone?" "Do you hate anything?" and "Does anything frighten you?" Why? How did such complex things as love, hatred and fear evolve from some speculative pre-biotic soup of chemicals?

In conclusion, Owl, you might not want my religion. That's fine; you don't have to take it. No one is forcing you. But you seem very disturbed at having anyone share with you. I don't blame you, though. You're where I was about fifteen years ago. None of the world's religions made any sense to me, and I hated the notion of Christianity, because that is what I grew up in...at least that was what was presented as Christianity. I now know better.

You might have seen the bumper sticker, "Christians aren't perfect...just forgiven." It's funny, but theologically incorrect. Christ gives all whom he chooses to save a free gift of salvation, but he expects our devotion and obedience in return. We can't give this obedience all the time. It isn't possible to do alone. For this reason, we have the Holy Spirit dwelling inside to help us choose to obey Him. That Presence is why I don't respond to some of the hateful things people say on this board with the same hate-filled responses I once would have given. No. Christians are called to be holy, like God. And one day, when He has re-made me, though I am far short of it today, I will be perfectly conformed to His will. So, here's the bumber sticker I propose: "Christians aren't perfect... BUT we are called to be Holy. HOW'S MY DRIVING?"

A blessed day to you all, especially Owl.

Ryan Baggett

Posted by: Janine, OMnivore | May 11, 2009 10:24 PM

Posted by: Ryan Baggett | May 11, 2009

Hi all,

I think I'm just going to ignore the comments of Steve_C, Janine, OMnivore Nerd of Redhead, and OMJosh, the entirety of which are rude, ungracious, plagued by profanity, and in the case of Josh, just plain silly. Josh, I can't be taunted that easily. I know I should not expect anything more of you as nothing more could be expected of me when I was a child under God's wrath.

So the asshole got unset at me for calling him a dumbass. Let's just say you are not going to convince people you have something worthwhile to say when you compare that person to a toddler. So FUCK YOU, Ryan Baggett.

The simple fact that you dismiss Josh in such an off hand manner shows that you have no idea with whom you are dealing with. The fact that you will face up against Owlmirrow also shows you have no idea with whom you are dealing with. Also, telling people you you not deal with them is no guarantee that they will be quiet. It will be so much fun to watch you being pulled apart, organ by organ.

One last bit of advise, you arrogant pile of shit. You can get banned from this site for violating these two terms.

Godbotting Making an argument based only on the premise that your holy book is sufficient authority; citing lots of bible verses as if they were persuasive.

Insipidity A great crime. Being tedious, repetitive, and completely boring; putting the blogger to sleep by going on and on about the same thing all the time.

You will neither be missed nor mourned.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | May 11, 2009 10:40 PM

There appears to be much good evidence in support of both sets of theories.

There's ZERO evidence in support of creationism. Wishful thinking, GODDIDIT, and lying are not evidence. In your post #156 you've done all three. Your sentence I quote in this post is an example of a lie.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | May 11, 2009 10:42 PM

Ryan, advice.

Don't post such long boring diatribes. Pick a point and go with one at a time.

Seriously. Your distortion of accepted science is disgusting enough point by point. Please spare us the large posts where you attempt the gish gallop.

Posted by: Rorschach | May 11, 2009 10:49 PM

And here I was lamenting on another thread that there were no decent christians showing up on the blog, and you Ilk had one collared here. *sigh*

You call the Bose-Einstein-both-sides-are-valid clown a decent christian? Gee,the standards arent very high,are they.

Posted by: Patricia, OM | May 11, 2009 11:39 PM

Rorschach, How dare you! Of course the standards are NOT high. Gawd loves the sinner.

And you are teetering at the edge of the abyss - He that doubtith is damned (Romans:something) you naughty boy.

Now go forth and sin so that gawd may love thee.

Posted by: Owlmirror | May 12, 2009 1:19 AM

[SIWOTI!!!]

Can it be a "reasonable conclusion" that the universe is about 13.73 ± .12 billion years old when we continually find objects that are farther out than 13.89 billion years

And right away you demonstrate that you have no understanding of cosmology. Objects can be farther than 13 billion light years because space itself is expanding.

and it is by no means certain that the speed of light is in fact a constant.

As far as I know, the only way that the speed of light might not be constant is only in what is currently known as the inflationary period -- and it is currently entirely theoretical. We'll see what happens if the theorists find evidence.

You certainly do not think I'm lying or twisting science to mention the REALITY of EINSTEIN BOSE CONDENSATES and the effect such have on a beam of light fired through them? Light SLOWS DOWN. [...] It is a reasonable assumption that in the near absolute zero temperatures of deep space such states of matter exist and might, in fact, be quite extensive.

It is not a reasonable assumption. It's a completely stupid and false assumption, with no evidence to support it.

And it is indeed twisting science; twisting it so much that it is indeed very nearly a lie. Maybe it's not your lie, but it is certainly someone's lie, and you are repeating it. You have no understanding of the underlying physics.

Just because space is cold DOES NOT MEAN THAT MOST OF SPACE IS A BOSE-EINSTEIN CONDENSATE.

Do you understand that the slowing of light is not dependent on the temperature, but from the properties of the Bose-Einstein condensate? Do you not understand that most of space is not a Bose-Einstein condensate?

So, light might be traveling and indeed might have traveled in the past at different speeds in different regions of the universe, depending on the medium and conditions through which it has had to travel.

Of course it did. But most of space is vacuum. Therefore, the reasonable conclusion is that the speed of light mostly is and was at the speed of light in a vacuum.

Also, there's the effect of gravitational lensing.

So what? Really, so what? Gravitational lensing is evidence in support of the current understanding of relativity and the constancy of the speed of light in a vacuum.

Even if the current estimates are off by a bit, there is no way that the universe can possibly be 6000 years old because of changes in the speed of light. It's absurd. It's like saying that because there are uncertainties in calendars and records of birth, an ancient decrepit old man might be a twelve-month-old baby. It's complete garbage and nonsense.

We have the error bars in the estimate of the universe's age. The error is pretty damn small. You are not going to change that with silly, pathetic handwaving about physics and cosmology that you don't even understand.

Without resorting to childish name calling, let's examine the facts, as scientists who show each other mutual respect.

You've done nothing to deserve respect. You show great lack of respect by lying repeatedly and propagating lies.

Would it be fraudulent to create something and for a man to come along and say it has the appearance of great age

As fraudulent as a counterfeiter creating bogus currency, and a man coming along and saying that it looks real.

Or another example: If someone goes to a great deal of effort to create a fake antique, and deliberately fails to tell people who see the fake antique that it is entirely fake, and how it was faked, then that faker is indeed fraudulent.

It seem more logical to assert that the error is in the INTERPRETATION of the man rather than to assert fraudulent intentions on behalf of the creator.

Garbage. The man is making the interpretation based on everything he knows about the world and how things actually age. He's doing the best he can with the knowledge he has and the tools he has. The creator has the responsibility to communicate honestly and completely, else he is a fraud.

Also, keep in mind that in my tree analogy, I was the creator.

Right. You were the fraud, the faker, the liar.

I know you're not taught to analyze arguments critically in the public schools these days; it is a disadvantage I'm willing to help you through, if you will but allow me.

Given that you are completely incapable of understanding science and critical analysis, we will see who needs teaching. Really, do think you're impressive with your condescending attitude and your confused bluster about variable speeds of light, Bose-Einstein condensates and gravitational lensing? Your nonsense might impress the ignorant, but you certainly fail at impressing me, and anyone else with genuine knowledge.

I must insist that you legitimize your assessment of me as a liar.

Why? You're doing your best to continue with the defense of your earlier lies, and your new and current lies.

It is absolutely true that a majority of astrophysicists have rejected the notion of the universe arising from a "cosmic singularity."

And again you propagate a lie.

It is likewise true that a growing number of mathematicians are increasingly uncomfortable with a theory that requires dependence on the unconfirmed and furthermore unprovable existence of "dark matter" and "dark energy" to account for the 97% of the mass of the universe that must be there so that a really shaky theory holds up mathematically.

Garbage. Dark matter and dark energy are not unconfirmed and are not unprovable. And the discomfort of mathematicians demonstrates nothing whatsoever about the nature of the universe.

Ask a mathematician. Ask me, since I am one.

Now this looks like a direct lie, rather than merely a propagated one. I just searched for "Ryan Baggett" in scholar.google.com. Not one single published math paper comes up with your name. Or are you using a pseudonym? What's your Erdős number? Do you even know what an Erdős number is?

As a scientist, I can't support a theory that requires more faith than religion requires.

You're not a scientist. No scientist would write such a nonsensical statement. You're a spreader of lies and confused nonsense who has no idea how science even works. You're a pathetically transparent propagandist.

Science, in these days has little to do with epistemology, the philosophy of knowledge - or how we know that we know a thing.

"Epistemology"-- you know nothing at all about epistemology, you pretentious buffoon.

Rather, it has become more a religion in its own right. Present assumptions must be supported at all costs, regardless of the mounting evidence to the contrary. After all, the Theory is so important!!

Again: No scientist would write such utter tripe; such garbage; such nonsense; such a complete sequence of lies. Heck, no one who knows anything about science would spew such sewage.

Next, when I say "I'm just not sure which I think is right" I am expressing that there are two basic camps in the theories of creation. One of these states that the universe is young, some 7,000 - 10,000 years old.

Right. The liars; the fakers; the frauds.

There appears to be much good evidence in support of both sets of theories.

There is no good evidence in support of a universe younger than 13 billion years. There is no evidence at all.

At this point in our discoveries no evidence has been found to positively exclude the theory of a young universe.

Except for all of the numerous lines of evidence that are consistent only with a billions-of-years old universe.

For instance, I take the fact that no transitional fossils have been found and none are in the very extensive collection (some 60,000 fossils) in the British Museum of Science and History to be a fairly good piece of evidence suggesting that there are none and there have, therefore, never been any transitional lifeforms.

You have no idea what a transitional fossil is, and you don't care either. You simply repeat the pathetic false nonsense about palaeontology that you don't understand.

This, then, points me to the conclusion that a prolonged evolution over time has not happened and does not explain how life on earth came to be in the first place, nor how it has come to be so varied.

Because you don't know or care about the simple fact that in addition to the well-supported multiple lines of palaeontological evidence, we have multiple lines of supporting evidence from anatomy, molecular biology and genetics.

Do you really think that just because you are utterly ignorant of the evidence that supports the scientific theory of evolution that it does not exist?

I would like to present this piece of evidence for a creative intelligence behind the obvious design of the universe, Owl. I'll ask you these three questions: "Do you love anyone?" "Do you hate anything?" and "Does anything frighten you?" Why? How did such complex things as love, hatred and fear evolve from some speculative pre-biotic soup of chemicals?

Are you really so mind-numbingly ignorant that you do not realize that questions are not evidence?

But you seem very disturbed at having anyone share with you.

I do find liars disturbing, yes. Come back with an awareness of how wrong and deceptive you have been and maybe I will be less disturbed.

None of the world's religions made any sense to me, and I hated the notion of Christianity, because that is what I grew up in...at least that was what was presented as Christianity. I now know better.

I am sorry that you have chosen a cheap and easy answer that feels good and encourages you to lie rather than pursuing knowledge and truth honestly.

Christ gives all whom he chooses to save a free gift of salvation, but he expects our devotion and obedience in return.

And I am also sorry that for you, "devotion and obedience" include lying repeatedly. Not all Christians feel that way, and I do respect scientists who are Christians -- as long as they avoid lies and nonsense.

Christians are called to be holy, like God.

Are they called to lie? Because that's all I've seen from you. If that's your standard of being holy, then holiness itself is a fraud and a lie. If it's not, then you're guilty of deep hypocrisy.

"Christians aren't perfect... BUT we are called to be Holy. HOW'S MY DRIVING?"

You're not driving. You're sitting in a chair, holding your hands in front of you, and making "vroom-vroom" noises -- and telling me that you're a great driver.

It's pretty pathetic.

Posted by: Owlmirror | May 12, 2009 3:29 AM

[SIEMWOTI!]

Oh, and another point, which demonstrates Ryan Baggett's stupidity, and emphasizes that he must have been lying about himself being a mathematician.

If the speed of light was somehow lower, then the time that it took for that light to travel must have been higher. Thus, even if there were magical Bose-Einstein condensates magically slowing down light (what, exactly the same everywhere?) all through the universe, the only conclusion that could be reached scientifically must be that the universe is far, far, older than its apparent ~13 billion years!

Posted by: RB | May 13, 2009 3:14 PM

http://www.nwcreation.net/evolutionfraud.html

Posted by: RB | May 13, 2009 3:23 PM

Congratulations, Owlmirror and Janice Omnivore. I posted a response to Owl's diatribe and it has been held for review by the site owner. Nice. If the site owner has the courage to allow thoughtful dialogue here, he'll permit it. If not, you get a lot of Atheists all navel-gazing and congratulating each other on how profound their thoughts are. That's what I call thought provoking. YAWN!

Posted by: Owlmirror | May 13, 2009 3:33 PM

I posted a response to Owl's diatribe and it has been held for review by the site owner. Nice.

If the site owner has the courage to allow thoughtful dialogue here, he'll permit it.

If not, you get a lot of Atheists all navel-gazing and congratulating each other on how profound their thoughts are.

YAWN!

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | May 13, 2009 3:40 PM

"so full of distortions"

And RB if you think that is some sort of rebuttal, you need to lay off the whippets.

Posted by: Owlmirror | May 14, 2009 1:16 AM

Owl Mirror, I pity you.

And I pity you. So we can have a pity party with pity parity.

You levy attacks that you can in no way support.

I've levied attacks which I have not bothered to support, not that I cannot support. It would take effort to do the research and point out exactly where you were propagating lies and/or distortions. If I were to do it, though, would you be willing to honestly admit that you, or your sources of information, were wrong?

You call everyone who doesn't agree with you a liar, fraud, etc. and you call into question credentials of people you don't even know.

If someone claims in all seriousness that colorless green ideas sleep furiously, or that chalk is cheese, do I need to know the person to know that they are lying and/or insane, or propagating the lie, fraud, or insanity of someone else? Because that's exactly the sort of nonsense and lies that you were spouting, only dressed up in fancier language.

You will not even answer questions posed to you

You mean the questions posed about love, hate, and fear? I did not bother to answer them because the questions are completely irrelevant non-sequiturs.

Are you willing to answer any of my questions? Are you even capable of realizing that your entire argument was utterly absurd in more ways than one from start to finish?

as you prefer to attack with diatribes and false assessments of character based only on your own poor judgment.

My judgment is excellent and my assessment of character was and is absolutely correct: You are, at the very least, incompetent to recognize distortions of science and fallacious reasoning, and propagate them vigorously. You may very well be utterly indifferent to honest understanding of science and correct reasoning -- I don't know that for certain, but you are not making a good argument now, preferring to whine rather than address any of the actual salient points I raised.

You asserted blindly that I am no mathematician and rightly identified that as yet I am unpublished in any "scholarly" journals your search pulled up.

Don't forget that I also pointed out a failure in your basic math in your pathetic excuse for a cosmological "hypothesis".

So in other words, my "blind" assertion certainly appears to be correct.

You cannot produce one, single transitional fossil and you know it.

Wrong. I know exactly what I can produce, because I've actually bothered to educate myself on what a transitional fossil is:

  http://www.csicop.org/intelligentdesignwatch/fishibian.html

You and all evolutionists are intentionally blind to facts.

Wrong. You have shown no facts whatsoever. Creationists have no facts.

It is indeed clear that uneducated atheists senselessly rambling and positing their own opinions are all that post to this blog.

Back at you, ignorant wool-brained blowhard that you are.

I gave you much more time than your ramblings are indeed worth.

And I gave you much more time than you are worth. So we both agree that we're wasting our time: You don't care about science and reason, and I do.

I did want to question the meaning of your moniker, Owl Mirror.

Because you aren't actually competent to address anything of substance. You are indeed deserving of pity. Is the pity party over?

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | May 14, 2009 1:38 PM

All I see in you is a bird-brain without the faculty of reason.

Posted by: Ryan Baggett | May 15, 2009 6:49 PM

Owl Mirror: "Then bring him out and let him do it." I certainly wouldn't provoke God to respond as He did on Mount Carmel. It is unwise in the extreme.

Posted by: Owlmirror | May 15, 2009 7:12 PM

"Then bring him out and let him do it." I certainly wouldn't provoke God to respond as He did on Mount Carmel. It is unwise in the extreme.

Oh, nonsense. If God exists, and has all knowledge and all power, then God is reading these very words as I type them, and is perfectly capable of responding in a normal human voice, demonstrating that existence, knowledge and power.

[...I'm listening...]

Of course, there's nothing. There never is anything, because the God you claim exists does not exist outside of your imagination.

Posted by: God | May 15, 2009 7:25 PM

Of course, there's nothing.

Maybe I'm shy. Bet you didn't think of that one!

Posted by: God | May 15, 2009 7:30 PM

Maybe you're grumpy?

How dare you accuse me of being grumpy! I haven't killed a whole lot of people with no mercy since.... hm, well...

Oh, I know! It's all Your fault!

Posted by: God | May 15, 2009 7:35 PM

Am I stopping You from doing anything at all?

Of course not. You can't stop Me from doing anything.

But if something is wrong, then it's all Your fault. Because I say so.

Posted by: RamblinDude | May 15, 2009 8:17 PM

I certainly wouldn't provoke God to respond as He did on Mount Carmel. It is unwise in the extreme.

Aren't they cute when their eyes get all big and wide and they gasp and take a step back because they don't want to get hit by a thunderbolt?

(And aren’t they creepy when their eyes get all big and wide and gleam because they’re imagining the evil atheist getting hit by a thunderbolt?)

Posted by: Ryan Baggett | May 16, 2009 2:50 PM

Owlie??? ..... Where are you pal? Maybe when someone imposes a few ground rules to engage in an intelligent discussion (i.e. no jumping up and down and screaming "Liar, Fraud, Fake, Liar! Liar! Liar!" ) you're not up to the challenge?

On the other hand, it is a Saturday morning. You probably had a late night alcohol binge and aren't feeling very well right now. Well do I remember the mornings after, when I had no comfort from a loving God. Bless you, Owl. I eagerly await your response.

Posted by: RamblinDude | May 16, 2009 3:23 PM

Take a gun and shoot a wristwatch with a bullet and give me a report of your findings about the orderliness of the watch both before and after the shooting. Now, put as many of the obliterated components as you can find, put them in a jar and shake them until you once again have a fully assembled, fully functional watch.

You don't wish to be called a fake and liar, and yet you purposely employ a complete non sequitur of an argument with your bullet-riddled wrist-watch-in-a-jar Gedanken that has nothing whatsoever to do with “decent with heritable modification.” The watch—as even liars and fakes know—is not capable of such a thing.

Now, why would you do this? Is it because you are a truth-seeker, actively engaged in the process of discovery and wishing to cultivate knowledge in yourself and others?

Hmmmm . . . noooooooooooo. . . .

Is it, perhaps, that you’re just a smarmy Christian asswipe who wants to sabotage science with supernaturalism and mythical, mystical bullshit and turn the world’s population into drooling idiots for Jesus? Yes, that makes a great deal more sense. That would be the reason that you do such a thing.

I have a thought-experiment for you. Take your wristwatch—before or after shooting it with your holy hand gun of Antioch *Please be careful not to shoot yourself*—and time how long it takes for it to produce a copy of itself. You can even use the watch itself to time the process! How convenient is that? If you get tired of waiting, try putting a second watch next to it, or on it, or bang them together good and hard, or titillate them with Timex porn, as is your wont, and time how long it takes before a fully functional, separate third watch (or hell, any kind of watch) is produced as a result of the conjoining of the two.

If you pull this one off, Rynie, you will have produced empirical evidence of the self-replicating nature of wristwatches, and you will be famous. (It still, however, will not be evidence that life on earth could not have been originally produced by natural, UNINTELLIGENT processes.)

You can do this, Ryan. You just need the faith of a grain of mustard seed.

Ready . . . go!

Posted by: RamblinDude | May 16, 2009 4:14 PM

Oh goody! I've got a feeling I'm about to learn a whole bunch of stuff!

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | May 16, 2009 4:34 PM

hey, want to hear my Ryan Baggett impression?

Ticktalick looks like a squished alligator to me. That's the best you can do for a transitional fossil? Archeopterix looks like a regular bird to me. The teeth and tail are just what birds were like before The Flud. And its a haox anyway (REFERENCE esteemed and prestigious astronomer Sir Hoyle). Take that, atheist evolutionist riff-raff!

yeah, not quite smarmy enough, I know. Work in progress.

Posted by: Josh | May 16, 2009 4:52 PM

I think I'm just going to ignore the comments of Steve_C, Janine, OMnivore Nerd of Redhead, and OMJosh, the entirety of which are rude, ungracious, plagued by profanity, and in the case of Josh, just plain silly.

You have accused me of being rude, childish, ungracious, and of directing profanity your way.

I'll accept the accusations of being rude and childish, since my comment was both. I don't feel the need to apologize for it as I don't find a particular need to be "all serious" when discussing mythology of any sort, Christian or other. Since by ungracious I suspect you mean rude, I don't know why you would add it to the list given that rude is already there. So I'll ignore that one. As to the charge of directing profanity your way: please point out to me exactly where in this thread I have been profane at all, let alone toward you.

Josh, I can't be taunted that easily.

Hmmm...and yet you responded.

For instance, I take the fact that no transitional fossils have been found and none are in the very extensive collection (some 60,000 fossils) in the British Museum of Science and History to be a fairly good piece of evidence suggesting that there are none and there have, therefore, never been any transitional lifeforms.

Asserting something doesn't make the statement accurate. Can you offer up any evidence that you have personally observed the entirety of the collections of this institution? I doubt you can point me to a single natural history collection on earth that has been completely described in the literature, so unless you have personally examined each and every fossil therein, how exactly can you make the assertion that there are no transitional fossils held within those collections? You wouldn't just be making shit up now, would you?

But okay, let's bite. Please present one of the specimens in the collections of this institution for discussion and demonstrate how this fossil possesses no transitional features. Can we start with something that actually has been described in the literature so there is an impartial descriptive record to begin from? Along those lines, just exactly what museum is this? "British Museum of Science and History" doesn't correlate with any specific institution that I know of or could easily find. Are you talking about the Natural History Museum? The museum in Kensington? What museum? And where are you getting the 60,000 specimen figure from? Links, please.

Posted by: Josh | May 16, 2009 5:20 PM

There are probably a good many fossilized squashed crocodiles out there waiting to be discovered since Noah didn't get them all on board the ark - just two.

Oh goodie...a delusionist on top of everything. Okay Ryan, perhaps you have a better answer than the last several delusionists that have wandered in here:

Why did your god, after the flood, erase all evidence of the event and replace it with a rock record that screams with one unified voice, echoed by every weathering clay mineral, every grain of sand, every caliche nodule, and every mudcrack, that there was no global flood? What was the point?

Posted by: Kseniya | May 16, 2009 5:52 PM

I'm going to rip your argument apart if you give me stupid Archaeopterix Lizard-Bird, so if you have that one in your quiver, brace yourself.

Oooh! It looks like another under-educated, arrogant ideologue who is armed to the teeth with AIG cites. I can't wait.

On second thought, maybe I'll go listen to the Pussycat Dolls while I walk on fresh-cut glass and pour vinegar in my eyes.

Posted by: Kseniya | May 16, 2009 6:02 PM

We never observe orderliness occurring by accident, without an intelligent cause to direct the order.

YOU don't observe that, because YOU have had your eyes sewn shut. (Figuratively speaking, of course.)

Sedimentary layers aren't orderly? Crystals aren't orderly? What about the orbit of Jupiter around the sun? Would that be orderly, or chaotic?

Put random mixture of different-sized marbles into a jar. Shake the jar up and down repeatedly. Eventually, the marbles will be sorted into layers, with the largest on bottom and the smallest on top. What "intelligent cause" directed that order?

Posted by: Josh | May 16, 2009 6:06 PM

...maybe I'll go listen to the Pussycat Dolls while I walk on fresh-cut glass and pour vinegar in my eyes.

There is pretty much nothing about you that doesn't absolutely fucking rock.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | May 16, 2009 6:21 PM

maybe I'll go listen to the Pussycat Dolls while I walk on fresh-cut glass and pour vinegar in my eyes.

I can think of other things to do on Saturday night.

Posted by: Josh | May 16, 2009 6:22 PM

You can see the actual fossil yourself if you'd like. Like thousands have already done.

Bet your ass. Let's go. The original is probably still at the Canadian Museum of Nature, but there's also a cast at the Academy in Philadelphia. Rev. you can come on up too and we can take a road trip.

And I this might make me kind of a dickhead, but I think that if you're going to look at this fossil:
http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu/meetTik.html

and say that the head looks like the head of croc, then you should probably leave the anatomy to the anatomists, because, well...wow.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | May 16, 2009 6:25 PM

Bet your ass. Let's go. The original is probably still at the Canadian Museum of Nature, but there's also a cast at the Academy in Philadelphia. Rev. you can come on up too and we can take a road trip.

I'd love to. Now if my wife will sell a few more houses then...

And I this might make me kind of a dickhead, but I think that if you're going to look at this fossil:
http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu/meetTik.html
and say that the head looks like the head of croc, then you should probably leave the anatomy to the anatomists, because, well...wow.

no shit

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | May 16, 2009 6:39 PM

I like drinks

Speaking of it's time for a beer.

OOOOPS RB might think we're drunks. What does that mean when drunks easily demolish his nonsense?

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | May 16, 2009 6:47 PM

*hoists a cold Saranac IPA*
Na zdorovje!!

Posted by: Josh | May 16, 2009 6:54 PM

*raises glass in salute*

Posted by: seksi | May 16, 2009 7:00 PM

Bet your ass. Let's go. The original is probably still at the Canadian Museum of Nature, but there's also a cast at the Academy in Philadelphia. Rev. you can come on up too and we can take a road trip.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | May 16, 2009 7:04 PM

##%%^&&** TypePad exired. #225 was me.

Posted by: Josh | May 16, 2009 7:07 PM

It's crossed my mind too. But I don't really like the idea of long-distance relationships. I just wish I knew where and how to meet girls like her around where I actually live.

That reminds me of a long serious of "conversations" a sociology professor "had with us" when I was an undergrad about the kids who grow up in small towns and end up meeting 15 possible mates of dating age and narrowing that 15 down to three that they can stand talking to for more than 10 minutes and then finding a connection with one of those three and then running around crowing for the rest of their life about how they found the one girl in the world for them. I have recounted this discussion terribly, perhaps you can understand what the professor was going on about. Those lectures have always stayed with me.

Posted by: Ichthyic | May 16, 2009 8:33 PM

light slowed significantly?

not.

Even the mainstream creationists have moved to table that particular non-argument:

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c005.html

as bad as it is (and the "creationist cosmology" section requires major asbestos protection to keep from being burned by the stupid), even they don't think light has changed speeds.

Problems with comets?

nope.

Seriously, Ryan isn't even trying.

*yawn*

Posted by: RamblinDude | May 17, 2009 11:41 AM

Seriously, Ryan isn't even trying.

Oh, I think he’s trying. He's trying very, very hard to escape reality and turn the universe into a petting zoo for humans, and if we all behave sheep-like enough we’ll get treats.

I’m wondering whether I should have called his argument on “orderliness” a non sequitur, as he was talking about orderliness in general and not just in regards to evolution (I think). But it is, however, the standard creationist response to evolution, and it’s pretty obvious that that was where he was headed with it. And given that the watch-in-a-blender argument is a purposeful misrepresentation of the theory of evolution, of what the science actually says, I think I’ll just stand by my statement. Next he’ll try to tell us how the second law of thermodynamics makes evolution, and any order from disorder, impossible. Apparently, every snow flake is hand-crafted by an angel in Ryan’s world.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | May 17, 2009 11:56 AM

I've tended to notice that those who demand politeness, like Ryan, are typically the ones who are out there on their claims, and they know it, but they don't want to get called on it. So how the argument is carried out is more important to them than the information being exchanged. Ass-backwards of what is really important.

Posted by: Josh | May 17, 2009 12:05 PM

Quite?

http://www.pinetree.net/humor/thermodynamics.html

Posted by: Josh | May 17, 2009 10:11 PM

That made my day.

That's terrific.

Posted by: Anonymous | May 18, 2009 6:17 PM

I'm not sure which of these goodies to answer first! This is like a candy store!

First to Kseniya:
You state,"YOU don't observe that, because YOU have had your eyes sewn shut. (Figuratively speaking, of course.)

Sedimentary layers aren't orderly? Crystals aren't orderly? What about the orbit of Jupiter around the sun? Would that be orderly, or chaotic?"

To wit, I'm wondering if you aren't a closet creationist because of course sedimentary layers are orderly, as are crystallization patterns. It is true that they exhibit a far lower order of design than, say, a human epithelial cell or a neuron or a city electric grid. But the order is undeniable in all of these. I especially like the example of God's orderly design in creation you graciously provided me in crystals. Something as simple as a single oxygen atom bonded with two atoms of hydrogen formed at an angle of 109.47° serves as one of the worlds best solvents precisely because of it's shape and forms beautiful and almost completely unique crystals when water freezes, such as may be found at http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/primer/primer.htm/ God is, indeed, an artist unparalled.
You progress to an argument I find rather interesting: "Put random mixture of different-sized marbles into a jar. Shake the jar up and down repeatedly. Eventually, the marbles will be sorted into layers, with the largest on bottom and the smallest on top. What "intelligent cause" directed that order?" The answer, obvious even to one such as myself with my eyes sewn (figuratively) shut, is YOU DID. You are the intelligent cause that shook up the jar of marbles and observed the result, shaking them up until they had, under the direction of gravity taken on the pattern of striation -largest to smallest- that you desired. Once you have achieved the pattern you (the intelligent cause) desired, you stop shaking the jar and then tell me the cause of the striation is not intelligent. I disagree wholeheartedly with your qualification of yourself as unintelligent.

Next... and this one is telling...from my favorite scholar on the board, The auspicious (and suspicious) Rev BigDumbChimp, who writes," Not only that but predicting they would find a fossil just like this in this very place, and then backing that up by FINDING IT."

Eeesh! Is this what science is all about? Predicting what you will find FIRST and then going out and FINDING IT?

I think not.

No, you Big Dumb Chimp, to the contrary science is about discovery and the proper order of paleontology is:
1) Go mucking about in a field, by the ocean, in a creek bed, etc.
2) Find something that your pattern-seeking brain recognizes as different from the other things around it.
3) Precisely mark off the surrounding area and record where it is you found the strange item.
4) Carefully excavate the area, being especially careful to record all findings (other similar-looking stuff that you dig up)
5) Take the strange things you dug up back to a lab and carefully catalog them, comparing them to other finds in the same region or nearby areas.
6)7)8)9) etc...etc.. etc.. etc..

You don't start out one day and say to yourself and some of your colleagues, "Dudes, we've got a pretty weak theory about all of life evolving from mud that we need to support to get a good grade... let's go find some fossil evidence of transitional lifeforms" and then go out and "find" what you were looking for!

As for the few photographs taken, I do not in any way apologize for saying that something that looks like the front eight inches of a squashed alligator or crocodile head and a few things that might be segmented digits bears no resemblance to the elaborate pictures presented as a Tiktaalik "fish-ibian." That's a Tik-Tak-Tall-Tale, Big Dumb Chimp!

Next in line for his bit of humiliation: the often imitated (though one wonders why) and never replicated (thank you, Jesus) JOSH:

You wrote,"Why did your god, after the flood, erase all evidence of the event and replace it with a rock record that screams with one unified voice, echoed by every weathering clay mineral, every grain of sand, every caliche nodule, and every mudcrack, that there was no global flood? What was the point?"

I call the Uniformitarian idea of geological formation absolutely absurd. There, indeed, was a catastrophic world-wide flood and it occurred some 4,400 - 5,000 years ago. Now, I'll give you my reasons for believing that a world-wide flood is absolutely sustainable by only the geologic record.

I'll, then, go on the produce other evidence from a field of science just as respected as Geology: Anthropology.

Noted geologists in the 19th century pointed to the Falls on the Niagara River as rock solid evidence that the processes of erosion had formed this spectacle over the course of hundreds of thousands of years. Then, man erected a dam upstream (did you know we can actually, in effect, turn the Niagara falls off?) and geologists collected rock specimens from the dry river bed. What they noted was that, indeed, the Niagara River had been chewing away at the dolomite for some time. Then, the river hit a section of sandstone and silt and the Falls receded upstream several miles in just a few days. Here's the quote:
"Around 4,200 years ago, the Falls reached a dramatic point in its journey. It uncovered massive a pre-glacial gorge−an ancient river valley gouged 300 feet into the bedrock. Glacial activity buried this gorge with silt, sand, and stone −loosely packed by geological standards. When the Falls hit the junction where the Niagara River crossed Saint David's Buried Gorge it began tearing through the loosely packed fill at an alarming rate [NO DOUBT VERY ALARMING TO THE NATIVE AMERICANS LIVING IN THE PATH OF THE SUDDEN EROSION]. At this time the Falls probably wasn't a waterfall at all, but rather a muddy mess of rapids as it excavated the filled gorge. The 90 degree turn at the present-day Whirlpool marks where the Falls met the ancient gorge, turned and began tearing it apart."

I do have to wonder why it is supposed that the area of sandstone and loosely packed material had to have washed there to fill in the cut left by a glacier thousands of years before.

This act of nature, dramatic and sudden as it was, cannot be taken to be the only example of sudden cataclysmic upheavals in the earth's history? Even evolutionists, observing the supposed sudden disappearance of the large saurians at the Cretaceous-Tertian (K-T) boundary leave room for dramatic events.

The geologic record practically bursts at the seams with evidence of a global flood event.

In addition, I have observed the fossilized remains of sea creatures on the tops of mountains where only a great deluge could have carried them.

I'm sure you see the same evidence and come to the very different conclusion that these sea creatures' remains were buried at the bottom of shallow seas hundreds of millions of years ago, fossilized there, and then were lifted up through an eons-long geographic upheaval to the tops of mountains. Nice theory, I'll give you. But, what about lithic metamorphism? The immense heat generated by the pressure of one billion-ton plate of rock pressing into and grinding over another billion-ton plate of rock would surely disfigure fossilized remains...heyyyyy..that's where your fossilized transitional lifeforms went...Look! I found what I was looking for, kiddies! IT'S SCIENCE!! Sorry, DumbChimp. That was too good to possibly resist.

I have to say, Josh, your arguments are much more fun to rip than anyone else's on the boards. It's just too easy, no matter how many friends you bring to the party!

Ah! But I promised more compelling evidence, and that from Anthropology. Anthropology is the study of man in his various cultures, throughout the world. This study includes the stories, both oral and written that convey man's understanding of the universe he occupies and how it came to be that way. Anthropology also investigates ancient civilizations and the records they have left behind. Interestingly, ancient civilizations such as those from China, Babylonia, Wales, Russia, India, America, Hawaii, Scandinavia, Sumatra, Peru, and Polynesia all have their own versions of a giant flood.

Flood Legends from Around the World

Ark - Perched Island LandingNative global flood stories are documented as history or legend in almost every region on earth. Old world missionaries reported their amazement at finding remote tribes already possessing legends with tremendous similarities to the Bible's accounts of the worldwide flood. H.S. Bellamy in Moons, Myths and Men estimates that altogether there are over 500 Flood legends worldwide. Ancient civilizations such as (China, Babylonia, Wales, Russia, India, America, Hawaii, Scandinavia, Sumatra, Peru, and Polynesia) all have their own versions of a giant flood.

These flood tales are frequently linked by common elements that parallel the Biblical account including the warning of the coming flood, the construction of a boat in advance, the storage of animals, the inclusion of family, and the release of birds to determine if the water level had subsided. The overwhelming consistency among flood legends found in distant parts of the globe indicates they were derived from the same origin (the Bible's record), but oral transcription has changed the details through time.

Perhaps the second most important historical account of a global flood can be found in a Babylonian flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh. When the Biblical and Babylonian accounts are compared, a number of outstanding similarities are found that leave no doubt these stories are rooted in the same event or oral tradition.
BABYLONIAN

BIBLE
Take the seed of all creatures aboard the ship Gen. 6:19 And of every living thing of all flesh you shall bring.
I boarded the ship and closed the door. Gen. 7:1 Come into the Ark
Gen. 7:16 The Lord shut him in.
I sent out a dove . . . The dove went, then came back, no resting-place appeared for it, so it returned. Gen. 8:8 He sent out a dove...But the dove found no resting-place . . . and she returned.
Then I sent out a raven . .it was the waters receding, it ate, it flew about to and fro, it did not return. Gen. 8:7 He sent out a raven, which kept going to and fro until the waters had dried up from the Earth.
I made a libation on the peak of the mountain. Gen. 8:20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord (on the mountain) and offered burnt offerings.

D = Destruction by Water
. G = (God) Divine Cause
. W = Warning Given
. H = Humans Spared
. A = Animals Spared
. V = Preserved in a Vessel
D . . H A V 01 Australia- Kurnai
D . W H A V 02 Babylon- Berossus' account
D G W H A V 03 Babylon- Gilgamesh epic
D G W H . V 04 Bolivia- Chiriguano
D . . H A V 05 Borneo- Sea Dayak
D . . H A V 06 Burma- Singpho
D G . H A V 07 Canada- Cree
D G W H A V 08 Canada- Montagnais
D G . H A V 09 China- Lolo
D . W H A V 10 Cuba- original natives
D G W H A V 11 East Africa- Masai
D G W H . V 12 Egypt- Book of the Dead
D G . H . V 13 Fiji- Walavu-levu tradition
D G W H A . 14 French Polynesia- Raiatea
D . . H A V 15 Greece- Lucian's account
D G . H A V 16 Guyana- Macushi
D G . H . V 17 Iceland- Eddas
D G . H . V 18 India- Andaman Islands
D . W H A V 19 India- Bhil
D G W H . V 20 India-Kamar
D . W H A . 21 Iran- Zend-Avesta
D G . H . V 22 Italy- Ovid's poetry
D G . H . V 23 Malay Peninsula- Jekun
D . W H . V 24 Mexico- Codex Chimalpopoca
D . W H A V 25 Mexico- Huichol
D G . H . V 26 New Zealand- Maori
D . W H A . 27 Peru- Indians of Huarochiri
D . W H . V 28 X . Russia- Vogul
D . W H A V 29 U.S.A. (Alaska)- Kolusches
D G . H A V 30 U.S.A. (Alaska)- Tlingit
D . W H A V 31 U.S.A. (Arizona)- Papago
D G . H A V 32 U.S.A. (Hawaii)- legend of Nu-u
D . . H A V 33 Vanualu- Melanesians
D . . H A V 34 Vietnam- Bahnar
D . . H A V 35 Wales- Dwyfan/Dwyfan legend
35 18 17 35 24 32 Total Occurrences out of 35

Flood Legends from Around the World

Africa

Southwest Tanzania
Once upon a time the rivers began to flood. The god told two people to get into a ship. He told them to take lots of seed and to take lots of animals. The water of the flood eventually covered the mountains. Finally the flood stopped. Then one of the men, wanting to know if the water had dried up let a dove loose. The dove returned. Later he let loose a hawk which did not return. Then the men left the boat and took the animals and the seeds with them.

Asia

China
The Chinese classic called the Hihking tells about "the family of Fuhi," that was saved from a great flood. This ancient story tells that the entire land was flooded; the mountains and everything, however one family survived in a boat. The Chinese consider this man the father of their civilization. This record indicates that Fuhi, his wife, three sons, and three daughters were the only people that escaped the great flood. It is claimed, that he and his family were the only people alive on earth, and repopulated the world.

Babylon
Gilgamesh met an old man named Utnapishtim, who told him the following story. The gods came to Utnapishtim to warn him about a terrible flood that was coming. They instructed Utnapishtim to destroy his house and build a large ship. The ship was to be 10 dozen cubits high, wide and long. Utnapishtim was to cover the ship with pitch. He was supposed to take male and female animals of all kinds, his wife and family, provisions, etc. into the ship. Once ship was completed the rain began falling intensely. The rain fell for six days and nights. Finally things calmed and the ship settled on the top of Mount Nisir. After the ship had rested for seven days Utnapishtim let loose a dove. Since the land had not dried the dove returned. Next he sent a swallow which also returned. Later he let loose a raven which never returned since the ground had dried. Utnapishtim then left the ship.

Chaldean
There was a man by the name of Xisuthrus. The god Chronos warned Xisuthrus of a coming flood and told him to build a boat. The boat was to be 5 stadia by 2 stadia. In this boat Xisuthrus was to put his family, friends and two of each animal (male and female). The flood came. When the waters started to recede he let some birds loose. They came back and he noticed they had mud on their feet. He tried again with the same results. When he tried the third time the birds did not return. Assuming the water had dried up the people got out of the boat and offered sacrifices to the gods.

India
A long time ago lived a man named Manu. Manu, while washing himself, saved a small fish from the jaws of a large fish. The fish told Manu, "If you care for me until I am full grown I will save you from terrible things to come". Manu asked what kind of terrible things. The fish told Manu that a great flood would soon come and destroy everything on the earth. The fish told Manu to put him in a clay jar for protection. The fish grew and each time he outgrew the clay jar Manu gave him a larger one. Finally the fish became a ghasha, one of the largest fish in the world. The fish instructed Manu to build a large ship since the flood was going to happen very soon. As the rains started Manu tied a rope from the ship to the ghasha. The fish guided the ship as the waters rose. The whole earth was covered by water. When the waters began subsiding the ghasha led Manu's ship to a mountaintop.

Australia

There is a legend of a flood called the Dreamtime flood. Riding on this flood was the woramba, or the Ark Gumana. In this ark was Noah, Aborigines, and various animals. This ark eventually came to rest in the plain of Djilinbadu where it can still be found. They claim that the white mans story about the ark landing in the middle east is a lie that was started to keep the aborigines in subservience. This legend is undoubtedly the product of aboriginal legends merging with those of visiting missionaries, and there does not appear to be any native flood stories from Australia.

Europe

Greece
A long time ago, perhaps before the golden age was over, humans became proud. This bothered Zeus as they kept getting worse. Finally Zeus decided that he would destroy all humans. Before he did this Prometheus, the creator of humans, warned his human son Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha. Prometheus then placed this couple in a large wooden chest. The rains started and lasted nine days and nights until the whole world was flooded. The only thing that was not flooded was the peaks of Mount Parnassus and Mount Olympus. Mount Olympus is the home of the gods. The wooden chest came to rest on Mount Parnassus. Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha got out and saw that everything was flooded. The lived on provisions from the chest until the waters subsided. At Zeus' instruction they re-populated the earth.

North America

Mexico
The Toltec natives have a legend telling that the original creation lasted for 1716 years, and was destroyed by a flood and only one family survived.

Aztec- A man named Tapi lived a long time ago. Tapi was a very pious man. The creator told Tapi to build a boat that he would live in. He was told that he should take his wife, a pair of every animal that was alive into this boat. Naturally everyone thought he was crazy. Then the rain started and the flood came. The men and animals tried to climb the mountains but the mountains became flooded as well. Finally the rain ended. Tapi decided that the water had dried up when he let a dove loose that did not return.

United States
The Ojibwe natives who have lived in Minnesota USA since approximately 1400AD also have a creation and flood story that closely parallels the Biblical account. "There came a time when the harmonious way of life did not continue. Men and women disrespected each other, families quarreled and soon villages began arguing back and forth. This saddened Gitchie Manido [the Creator] greatly, but he waited. Finally, when it seemed there was no hope left, Creator decided to purify Mother Earth through the use of water. The water came, flooding the Earth, catching all of creation off guard. All but a few of each living thing survived." Then it tells how Waynaboozhoo survived by floating on a log in the water with various animals.
Ojibwe - Ancient native American creation story tells of world wide flood.

Delaware Indians - In the pristine age, the world lived at peace; but an evil spirit came and caused a great flood. The earth was submerged. A few persons had taken refuge on the back of a turtle, so old that his shell had collected moss. A loon flew over their heads and was entreated to dive beneath the water and bring up land. It found only a bottomless sea. Then the bird flew far away, came back with a small portion of earth in its bill, and guided the tortoise to a place where there was a spot of dry land.

South America

Inca
During the period of time called the Pachachama people became very evil. They got so busy coming up with and performing evil deeds they neglected the gods. Only those in the high Andes remained uncorrupted. Two brothers who lived in the highlands noticed their llamas acting strangely. They asked the llamas why and were told that the stars had told the llamas that a great flood was coming. This flood would destroy all the life on earth. The brothers took their families and flocks into a cave on the high mountains. It started to rain and continued for four months. As the water rose the mountain grew keeping its top above the water. Eventually the rain stopped and the waters receded. The mountain returned to its original height. The shepherds repopulated the earth. The llamas remembered the flood and that is why they prefer to live in the highland areas.

Flood Legends from Around the World
Offsite Flood Legend References from Creationists

* Ark In Water With Dove A Comparison of Narrative Elements in Ancient Mesopotamian Creation-Flood Stories with Genesis 1-9 by William H. Shea
* A Statistical Analysis of Flood Legends by James E. Strickling CRSQ Abstracts, Volume 9, Number 3
* Aboriginal Flood Legend by Answers in Genesis
* Australian Aboriginal Flood Stories by Answers in Genesis
* Flood Legends by earthage.org
* Flood Legends by Tim Lovett
* Flood Stories - Can They Be Ignored by Roth, A. A.
* Flood Traditions by Noahs Ark Zoo Farm
* Flood Traditions of the World Arthur C. Custance
* Genesis and ancient Near Eastern stories of Creation and the Flood by Christian Answers Net
* Grand Canyon Legend by Answers in Genesis
* Noah’s Flood and the Gilgamesh Epic by John Sarfati
* Panning for Traces of the Flood by Kyle Butt, M.A.
* The BIAMI Legends by Answers in Genesis
* The Genesis Flood and Human History
* The Two Flood Stories; A Comparison of the J and P Accounts by Henry E. Neufeld
* Travels of Noah - book written in 1601 telling of the travel of Noah's and the re-population of Europe
* Why Does Nearly Every Culture Have a Tradition of a Global Flood by John D. Morris, Ph.D.

Secular Flood Legend References

* A possible source of the Noah's Flood story Critical review by the Ontario Consultants for Religious Tolerance
* An Anthropologist Looks at the Judeo-Christian Scriptures
* Choctaw Flood Legends Index USA
* Comparison of Babylonian and Noahic Flood Stories
* Flood Legends by Alan Feuerbacher
* Flood Stories details of many accounts from around the world
* Flood Stories From Around the World by Mark Isaak
* Incan Legends of the Great Flood!
* Language Grouping for Flood Stories by Mark Isaak
* Morgana's Observatory: Universal Myths (Flood Myths Part One)
o (Flood Myths Part Two)
* Myth - Flood by N.S. Gill
* Native American Indian Lore: The Great Flood
* The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet XI - The Story of the Flood
* The Eridu Genesis The Sumerian Noah
* The Flood, Greek Mythology Link
* The Myth of Noah's Flood by Joseph Francis Alward
* The Story of Atrahasis

Flood Legends from Around the World
Quote and References on Flood Legends

* a . “It has long been known that legends of a great flood, in which almost all men perished, are widely diffused over the world ...” James George Frazer, Folk-Lore in the Old Testament, Vol. 1, (London: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1919), p. 105.
* Byron C. Nelson, The Deluge Story in Stone (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bethany Fellowship, Inc., 1968), pp. 169–190.
* “... there are many descriptions of the remarkable event [the Genesis Flood]. Some of these have come from Greek historians, some from the Babylonian records; others from the cuneiform tablets, and still others from the mythology and traditions of different nations, so that we may say that no event has occurred either in ancient or modern times about which there is better evidence or more numerous records, than this very one which is so beautifully but briefly described in the sacred Scriptures. It is one of the events which seems to be familiar to the most distant nations—in Australia, in India, in China, in Scandinavia, and in the various parts of America. It is true that many look upon the story as it is repeated in these distant regions, as either referring to local floods, or as the result of contact with civilized people, who have brought it from historic countries, and yet the similarity of the story is such as to make even this explanation unsatisfactory.” Stephen D. Peet, “The Story of the Deluge,” American Antiquarian, Vol. 27, No. 4, July–August 1905, p. 203.
* C. H. Kang and Ethel R. Nelson, The Discovery of Genesis (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1979). [This excellent book shows that the classical Chinese pictographs contain many stories and details found in the early chapters of Genesis. The earliest people of China, 4,000–5,000 years ago, brought with them stories of past events that became imbedded in their language. (See Figure 37 on page 45.)]

So, there it is, Josh. EVIDENCE. You asked for it. I delivered.

I think in past postings you have required of me to produce evidence for the existence of God.

So, I ask you, what form would that evidence have to take to be convincing to you? I mean, convincing enough for you not just to give intellectual assent (a hard enough thing to do), but to believe and change your life and attitudes toward God?

I'm not offering you salvation, Josh. Only God can do that. I believe that He will, if He chooses to do so and I am a mortal and cannot say when or where He will choose to act. I think, furthermore, that good evidence that He has saved you (theologically this is called justification and it precedes conversion) is that you keep responding and don't just shut off this conversation. Your human will COMPELS you to be here on this blog and respond, even if you respond with jests today. Another great evidence is how these arguments stir up your emotions inside and remind you of past hurts.

Tell me, Josh, what form must the evidence you require take? If you're asking me to cook up God in a laboratory test tube, I can't do that. God, by His definition, defies that kind of empirical test. If I could just add 300mg of omnipotence (ludicrous in itself) to 50mcg of omniscience and add in a few grams of unending undying love, I could not "make" God. If I could, I would BE God.

You don't require the same proofs to believe in the existence of Lao Tzu or Confucius, yet you believe they existed. You don't require DNA evidence to confirm the existence of the Buddha, yet believe he existed.

God isn't like any of these men of the past, you will no doubt say. I know, I said it myself. No, indeed, He is not.

So, again I ask you, what evidence do you require? i will do my best to procure it for you.

Ryan Baggett

Posted by: RamblinDude | May 18, 2009 9:28 PM

Ryan, I’m getting a little concerned about you. Have you gone off the deep end? Did you witness a horrifying murder or something that left you schizophrenic and utterly discombobulated?

Really. Concerned.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | May 19, 2009 7:50 AM

That's going to leave a mark.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | May 19, 2009 8:02 AM

As for the few photographs taken, I do not in any way apologize for saying that something that looks like the front eight inches of a squashed alligator or crocodile head and a few things that might be segmented digits bears no resemblance to the elaborate pictures presented as a Tiktaalik "fish-ibian." That's a Tik-Tak-Tall-Tale, Big Dumb Chimp!

Which doesn't say anything about the validity of the actual fossil, it just shows that you are willing to accept your ignorance of the subject as more valuable than the people who are actually experts in the field.

Like I said, Dunning Kruger in full effect.

Next in line for his bit of humiliation:

The only person you are humiliating is yourself.

Posted by: DaveL | May 19, 2009 8:31 AM

As for the few photographs taken, I do not in any way apologize for saying that something that looks like the front eight inches of a squashed alligator or crocodile head

An alligator? Look where an alligator's nostrils would be. Where are they? Look where an alligator's giant honking teeth would be. Where are they? What kind of alligator has its eyes set close together on the top of its head?

Posted by: Josh | May 19, 2009 9:02 AM

Next in line for his bit of humiliation: the often imitated (though one wonders why) and never replicated (thank you, Jesus) JOSH:

Vague insults--that's very nice. Okay, well then, before addressing anything new that Ryan has written, we should perhaps go back and see if he's interested in answering questions he appears so far to have ignored.

Since we're on the topic of insults, let's start there. Ryan, where exactly was it again that I addressed you with profanity? I'm referring, of course, to the question I asked you in #204:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/03/kent_hovind_is_still_in_jail_a.php#comment-1637450

I notice that you haven't respond to it.

And since we're talking about comment #204, do you have any answer to my question regarding your assertion that there are no transitional forms in the collections of the "British Museum of Science and History?" (or whatever the heck institution you were actually referring to)

Posted by: Josh | May 19, 2009 9:07 AM

In comment #242, Ryan wrote (to Kseniya):

To wit, I'm wondering if you aren't a closet creationist because of course sedimentary layers are orderly,...

But Ryan, in #171, you (prompting Kseniya's question in #210) asserted that:

We never observe orderliness occurring by accident, without an intelligent cause to direct the order.

So from this I have to assume that you believe that this outcrop had an intelligent cause directing its deposition:

http://www.ranjan.net.np/geologyofnepal/image010.jpg

Is this what you believe?

And along those lines, I'll turn again to my previous question that you didn't answer:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/03/kent_hovind_is_still_in_jail_a.php#comment-1637469

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | May 19, 2009 11:32 AM

Ryan…

Did you really believe the 109.74° angle of the water molecule is a miracle?

It's not. It follows straight from the electrostatic repulsion of the electron clouds that make up the bonds between the O atom and the H atoms (these are more constrained, due to the positively charged nuclei of the H atoms that attract them and repulse each other) and the electron clouds in the two remaining 2p orbitals of the O atom (these are less constrained and therefore take up more space).

All of chemistry can be calculated from first principles. All those numbers in any periodic system, all the numbers in the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics (which is about the right size for the half-meter-long hands of Megaraptor), all can be calculated from the numbers and properties of protons, neutrons and electrons, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, and in rare cases (like why mercury is liquid at room temperature) the theory of relativity.

There are only five forces in the universe: electromagnetics, the weak nuclear force, the strong nuclear force, gravity, and "dark energy" (which accelerates the expansion of the universe).

It would be a miracle if the angle were anything other than 109.74°, because that would clash with about 3/4 of physics.

============

Also, if you can't distinguish Tiktaalik from Alligator, that means you literally wouldn't know an alligator if it literally bit you in your literal ass. That's pathetic. It's almost as embarrassing as not knowing how to tell a slug from a snake.

I seriously suggest you simply don't talk about things you don't know anything about. Hey, I don't talk about things I don't know anything about either. You're not forced to have an opinion on everything. There's nothing wrong with not knowing something – as long as you know that you don't know that thing, and act accordingly.

Posted by: Janine, OMnivore | May 19, 2009 11:54 AM

Anthropology also investigates ancient civilizations and the records they have left behind. Interestingly, ancient civilizations such as those from China, Babylonia, Wales, Russia, India, America, Hawaii, Scandinavia, Sumatra, Peru, and Polynesia all have their own versions of a giant flood.

Human civilizations end up growing on riversides, seasides and ocean sides because of the relative cleanliness, areas for food production and trade routes. The advantages outweigh the disadvantages of the floods that will over run those places. So, yes, every one of those societies are going to have legions about floods, they happen on water fronts. But Ryan has to assume that it all points to the THE FLUD.

Here is a silly question, how come they have stories about floods but most lack the detail of the family that saved all the animals on an arc. It would seem that this detail would be just as important as the bloody flood itself. And where is the stories about traveling from the spot where Noah's Arc came down from.

Ryan, you have not the faintest idea about how to handle information. And, yes, you are being pulled apart organ by organ. It is a good show.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | May 19, 2009 12:11 PM

*Gack, headdesk editing failure searches for KoT's cooties in vain*

So either the flud stories from all over don't support local floods and not the biblical flud, the bible tale is a myth, or god isn't omnipotent since every but Noah's family didn't die.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | May 19, 2009 1:47 PM

To: Stanton, RE: comment about Syria vs. Assyria and his assessment of my mental abilities for not being able to distinguish the two. (chuckle) Both Syria and Assyria were enemies of Israel. Assyria was the later and far more powerful of the two. I suggest you read a little before you call anyone an idiot. I forgive you.

This is just too much.

In the times when there was an Assyrian kingdom, let alone before, there was no Syria. There was no political entity called Syria, and there was no political entity that however approximately covered the territory of Syria but not, say, Iraq. Ninive is pretty far away from Syria, it's in Iraq, near the Iranian border.

Really, Ryan. What holds you back from admitting a simple mistake?

Such a simple, inconsequential mistake, and yet you twist around it as if your life depended on not admitting it, throwing convulsions that are as painful to watch as they must be to experience firsthand.

With that attitude, with that compulsive disorder, you'll never become a scientist.

Posted by: TheTruth | May 22, 2009 2:42 AM

Why is it that sometimes as Christians we are our own worse enemy. "Give to Ceaser what is Ceaser's and to God what is God's". Why not pay the taxes? Our Lord does not care about our finances. He cares about our spiritual health. I see all these wealthy TV Evangelist with millions ask for more money yet there is still many homeless and hungry people in the world, why don't I see them giving freely? I tell you why, it is all about POWER! Didn't Jesus "tell the rich man to give away all his possesions and to follow him"? "It will be harder for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle". God will provide for your needs, NOT YOUR WANTS! I do believe that God does bless but I am sure He intends for you to bless others with those blessings! God judges the hearts and minds of people, all we see is the exterior. Let the Lord be the judge. Come soon Lord Jesus!

Posted by: Ichthyic | May 22, 2009 4:22 AM

Why is it that sometimes as Christians we are our own worse enemy.

because in constructing worldviews involving such extreme dissonance between fantasy and reality, the inevitable projection and denial utilized to maintain such dissonance results in saying REALLY REALLY stupid shit.

IOW, it's inevitable that those embracing fantasy utterly opposed to reality will shoot themselves in the head, every time.

good luck.

Posted by: Owlmirror | May 22, 2009 12:58 PM

Gah.

"Give to Ceaser Caesar what is Ceaser's Caesar's and to God what is God's"

Fixed.

Posted by: Ryan Baggett | June 6, 2009 12:25 PM

Owlie,

How glad to see you back!

Okay, let's dissect your most recent foul-mouthed rants. I've utterly despaired of your reasoning ability, so my hope is that in seeing this post someone other than you will observe true premises and logically-reasoned conclusions. I hope God will prove me wrong in my assessment of your reasoning skills.

Which institutions of higher learning, if any, have you attended? It must be that you are a victim of the public education system. Having Baccalaureate degrees in Biology and Chemistry or a Masters degree in Biology doesn't make me a Biologist or a Chemist; practicing Biology and Chemistry as disciplines does. Likewise a person trained in practicing Mathematics using Mathematics as an interpretive tool for understanding the universe about him, does indeed make him a mathematician. Are you really that thick-skulled, Owlie? I smell bullshit on your every word.

Your assessment of me as having a problem with
"compulsive lying" added to your armchair psychologist's diagnosis of "megalomania" and "bipolar syndrome" are completely invalid.

In analyzing your arguments (if they may even be called that... it is a s-t-r-e-t-c-h), I find a pattern has emerged. It goes something like this:

RB questions a conclusion Owl Mirror has stated.

Owl Mirror rather than providing a well-reasoned answer hops up and down screeching obscenities and making rude, unfounded and utterly unrelated assertions such as this one lifted from your response: "Lyin' braggart; yup, sounds about right."

I could go on, but expecting reason from you is pointless. You demonstrate the reasoning capacity of an ill-educated child.

Tell me, though, where have I "screwed up basic bonehead algebra" ? In D=R*T? If this is your assertion, you are more a fool than I thought, Owlie. Or, again, you are just a victim of public education. You either cannot think or are too lazy to do so.

What I questioned is your assertion that "R is the constant c, [the speed of light] 299,792,458 meters per second," bracketed notation mine. That's a reasonable question. And it is one with which naturalists such as yourself are very uncomfortable, for if the speed of light is not constant (it has been slowing down - if ever so gradually- over the life of the universe), then a reasonable conclusion may be drawn that the immense size of the universe is not the indication of its age that you would like to tell them it is. You prefer not to answer the question and instead hurl epithets, Owl. Such actions on your part are indicative either of fear or your weak mind, or perhaps both.

Now, for the benefit of Owlie and all those reading, I would like to show how a fraudulent act has been perpetrated by the "scientific community" upon us all.
I will do this by providing an excerpt from a URL he himself provided. Look at it yourself, if you choose.

math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/speed_of_light.html

In the opening lines, the question is posed, "Is c, the speed of light in vacuum, constant?" The article then goes on to define not only the speed of light, but also the meter, the basic unit of length in the metric system:

"The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second.

This defines the speed of light in vacuum to be exactly 299,792,458 m/s. This provides a very short answer to the question "Is c constant": Yes, c is constant by definition!"

So, you define the meter as the distance light travels under your observation (please keep those last three words in the forefront of your mind) in a given period of time. Then, you go on to define the speed of light as the rate at which light travels the distance you defined above.

Using D=R*T, in order to discover the value of D, you must hold R and T as constants. If they are variable in any way, you cannot precisely measure the true value of D. Likewise, in order to discover the value of R, you must hold D and T as constants. If they are variable in any way, you cannot precisely measure the true value of R.

Owlie, your grasp of basic algebra is not impressive. But I am not surprised. It seems he achieved his immense learning at the Darwinian Dunce Academy.

The article Owlie provided for us then goes on to say, "If we look back to 1939, the second was defined as 1/84,600 of a mean solar day, and the metre as the distance between two scratches on a bar of platinum-iridium alloy held in France. We now know that there are variations in the length of a mean solar day as measured by atomic clocks. Standard time is adjusted by adding or subtracting a leap second from time to time. There is also an overall slowing down of the Earth's rotation by about 1/100,000 of a second per year due to tidal forces between the Earth, Sun and Moon. There may have been even larger variations in the length or the metre standard caused by metal shrinkage. The net result is that the value of the speed of light as measured in m/s was slowly changing at that time.....by the same token it is nonsense to say that the speed of light is now constant just because the SI definitions of units define its numerical value to be constant."

So, what we have here is a change in the measureable definition of distance and time, and that only since 1939 (SEVENTY YEARS), not since 4.5 Billion B.C. or 13.77 Billion B.C. All I have asked is that people consider what is empirically provable: light can and does alter its speed.
It is in no way unreasonable to permit for the gradual - or perhaps the not so gradual at all - slowing of light since the first moments of the universe's life.

As they look out into the cosmos, very much different from the predictions of Edwin Hubble, astronomers and astrophysicists do not see a uniformly expanding cosmos. Rather, they see parts of the universe that they perceive according to respective red and blue shifts as flying away from the earth or flying toward the earth at greatly variable rates. This observation is not at all in line with the hypothesis that the universe originated from a single infinitesimally small point. Perhaps several points "exploded" (that's not a really good word to describe expansion). Perhaps that pin-point that encapsulated all space and matter shed waves of matter, time, space and energy. That's not an idea that I proposed, but I forget the name of the person that did.

Next, I just happened to notice in Owl's post #159, he states, " Light slows down if it goes through any medium. There's a phenomenon called Čerenkov Radiation caused when a particle goes faster than the speed of light in a medium. So if light was slowed down by Einstein-Bose condensates there would be some type of Čerenkov Radiation. Since this Čerenkov Radiation is not detected, then light is most likely continuing to move at 2.99 x 106 m/sec."

This Čerenkov Radiation occurs when a particle goes faster than the speed of light as it passes through a medium. Does this same radiation occur when light goes slower and not faster as it passes through a medium? That is what I asked.

Aww.. I could ramble on like this all day. I could address the fact that the Tiktaalik has already been exposed as an unlikely link between fish and amphibians. The "apparently jointed" digits were discovered in a different location than the head and mouth. They might not even be from the same creature. Also, where is the chief feature of a vertebrate, it's spinal column? I find it disturbing that some paleontologists are so dedicated to the preservation of the Darwinian hypothesis, they will take remnants they presume to be head and mouth structures from one area, "jointed digits" they find in another area and, without the discovery of any vertebral structures of the animal whatsoever, proceed to draw elaborate pictures of it... completely fabricating from cloth it would seem the color and texture of its skin, etc. We'll next likely learn from these same paleontologists that Tiktaalik formed lifelong pair bonds with it's mate, not because they find any evidence to support the fact, but because that is what many 'higher' species do and they need to find some animal to which they might ascribe the first instances of that behavior.

Owlie, you're running scared, clinging to the bare traces of a hypothesis in crisis.

Unlike you, I wouldn't consider it a victory if you ran away, insulted, and never came back. That would be a triumph of sin and a victory for Satan. No, Owlie, I want you to hang around. I'm not stimulated by your lack of scholarship or lack of imagination, but I hope in exposing you to good arguments you will see and recognize truth. The Holy Spirit of God alone will open your eyes to see the Truth and will save your soul from the damnation we all deserve outside the love and forgiveness given only through Jesus Christ.

Peace,

Ryan Baggett

Posted by: Janine, OMnivore | June 6, 2009 12:37 PM

Posted by: Ryan Baggett | June 6, 2009 12:25 PM

Owlie,

How glad to see you back!

Stupid asshole, OwlMirror is a regular here. It has been you who has been missing for three weeks. Sadly for you, OwlMirror has a serious case of SIWOTI syndrome, he will take you apart. I look forward to reading his responce to you later in the day.

Posted by: Owlmirror | June 6, 2009 3:11 PM

Well, I see that the Lyin' Braggart is back after a couple of weeks, violating God's Sabbath with his noisy babbling. Does he say anything meaningful, correct, or honest? No.

Oh, well.

I've utterly despaired of your reasoning ability

It's so scary when someone is smarter than you, isn't it?

Having Baccalaureate degrees in Biology and Chemistry or a Masters degree in Biology doesn't make me a Biologist or a Chemist; practicing Biology and Chemistry as disciplines does.

Since you have not practiced any biology or chemistry, the only reasonable conclusion is that you aren't a biologist or a chemist.

Mathematics as an interpretive tool for understanding the universe about him, does indeed make him a mathematician.

And you're not a mathematician, either.

Your assessment of me as having a problem with "compulsive lying" added to your armchair psychologist's diagnosis of "megalomania" and "bipolar syndrome" are completely invalid.

And yet you come back and lie compulsively and arrogantly, providing excellent support for the diagnosis. Thank you.

I could go on, but expecting reason from you is pointless. You demonstrate the reasoning capacity of an ill-educated child.

Say, speaking of psychology, are you familiar with the psychological concept of "projection"? No? I didn't think so. It certainly is consonant with your profound ignorance of all science.

Tell me, though, where have I "screwed up basic bonehead algebra"

Your original (utterly nonsensical) claim was that the light from distant stars had been slowed by being "lensed" and going through Bose-Einstein condensates. If it was slowed, then it took more time to get here. That time must therefore be added to the apparent age of the light sources, making the universe older than it appears, and not younger.

Only a lazy fool would think otherwise.

And it is one with which naturalists such as yourself are very uncomfortable,

Abandoning naturalism in doing science is not acceptable, dunderhead. If you do that, there is no basis for doing science at all. Anyone can claim anything at all, and there is no method of determining its truth. I could just as easily claim that the universe was created yesterday supernaturally, and all evidence to the contrary, including your own memories of events before yesterday, was also created supernaturally.

When studying nature, we do have to stick with naturalism. And only a complete blithering moron would say otherwise.

for if the speed of light is not constant (it has been slowing down - if ever so gradually- over the life of the universe)

More ignorance of the most basic physics. Only an ill-educated child would claim that the speed of light has been slowing down (from what speed originally, I wonder?) over the life of the universe, without either theory or evidence in support of the assertion. No, you cannot appeal to supernaturalism. Only natural evidence is allowed in science.

I would like to show how a fraudulent act has been perpetrated by the "scientific community" upon us all.

Rather, your pathetically weak mind is incapable of understanding science.

Using D=R*T, in order to discover the value of D, you must hold R and T as constants. If they are variable in any way, you cannot precisely measure the true value of D. Likewise, in order to discover the value of R, you must hold D and T as constants. If they are variable in any way, you cannot precisely measure the true value of R.

I'm sorry, are you saying that given a known distance and a known time that it is in fact possible for them to vary?

Your inane babbling confuses intelligent people.

So, what we have here is a change in the measureable definition of distance and time, and that only since 1939 (SEVENTY YEARS), not since 4.5 Billion B.C. or 13.77 Billion B.C. All I have asked is that people consider what is empirically provable: light can and does alter its speed.

No, you got bored with reading the article after your pathetic failure to understand the important and basic concept that the authors were trying to convey, and triumphantly declared yourself right.

This is pathetic and dishonest, but is utterly unsurprising coming from you.

As they look out into the cosmos, very much different from the predictions of Edwin Hubble, astronomers and astrophysicists do not see a uniformly expanding cosmos.

No, you're getting basic cosmology wrong, even after I included the references that supported the expanding universe.

Of course, you're a moron with an agenda, so this is only to be expected.

Rather, they see parts of the universe that they perceive according to respective red and blue shifts as flying away from the earth or flying toward the earth at greatly variable rates.

Hahahaha! Oh, what a beautiful and perfect example of Dunning-Kruger, with you getting basic cosmology utterly wrong. You really must be profoundly ignorant, and completely unaware of it, or you wouldn't say such an obviously stupid thing.

I assure you, there are no cosmic-level "blue shifts" caused by parts of the universe "flying toward the earth at greatly variable rates."

This observation is not at all in line with the hypothesis that the universe originated from a single infinitesimally small point.

Since the observation doesn't exist, its being in line with current cosmology is utterly irrelevant.

Aww.. I could ramble on like this all day.

Of course you could. You're a Lyin' Braggart!

Re: Tiktaalik:

Also, where is the chief feature of a vertebrate, it's spinal column?

You moron, are you blind, or just stupid? It's right there in the picture! Hell, the entire head and front part of the body including the spine was lifted off of the site still encased in the matrix!

The Holy Spirit of God alone

If you really believed in the "Holy Spirit of God", you wouldn't be violating His Holy Sabbath, you hypocrite and liar.

Peace,

They make a desert, and call it peace.

Posted by: Ryan Baggett | June 15, 2009 9:50 PM

Well, what we learn here is that Mr. Owl Mirror is the inveterate fool I've thought him to have been since our first encounter. Why address reasonable questions, when it's so much more fun to call names? Well, I do not and will not sink to the childish actions you regularly display, Owlie.

But this is absolutely the best:
Owlie - "I'm sorry, are you saying that given a known distance and a known time that it is in fact possible for them to vary? Your inane babbling confuses intelligent people."

No, Owlie! In D=R*T, in order to conclusively and precisely discover the value of D, one must hold R and T to a constant value, but only while the value of D remains unknown. When D is known, R or T (but not both simultaneously) may be variable. The only person uttering babble is you, Owlie. You're confusion is due to your inability to grasp simple arguments.

I would take issue with you calling me a liar, Owlie, were it not you making that assessment. As it is, it is you, and I'm not bothered.

You have no grasp of science or epistemology, or I should say, you have as much grasp as my five-year-old nephew.

You have defined naturalism as science, when it is not. It is a world-view that takes into account only those forces you can see at work in the present. Ultimately, under such a strict interpretation of 'evidence,' you could not 'prove' the existence of Benjamin Franklin ...much less Socrates or Julius Caesar. Do you deny these men lived and had a great impact on civilization? Yes, Owlie, probably you do. What a pathetic waste of what might be a good mind is yours!

So, how would a real scientist prove the existence of any of the noble gentlemen mentioned above? He would, of course, turn to evidences termed 'legal-historical.'

You cannot manufacture Julius Caesar in a test tube. If you believe he existed, you do so on the basis of legal-historical evidence. That is, you rely on the written testimony of reliable first-hand witnesses. This is the same evidence that I rely upon and which convinces me of the reality of Jesus the Christ and His works when He lived on the earth. Sources, both Christian and non-Christian alike, affirm the existence of Jesus the Christ. They speak of His divine birth. They speak of His teachings. They speak of His death and the occurrences surrounding it. They speak of His resurrection. If testimonies of non-Christians and even anti-Christians confirm the historicity of the writings of early Christian scholars, how much more reliable the latter are to be considered!

Julius Caesar died 38 years before Jesus the Christ descended and was made incarnate. If you use the same evidences and affirm the existence of Julius Caesar and yet with a FAR greater burden of the same evidences present deny Jesus the Christ, are you not being hypocritical...untrue to science? Yes, Owlie, you are.

But I part here, for now, laughing aloud at your complete arrogance in condemning me for breaking the Sabbath by posting on a Sunday. There is no Sabbath Day today. Colossians 2:14-16 tells us that the ceremonial laws were nailed to the cross, including the Sabbath Day. Jesus became the fulfillment of what the Sabbath represented in the Old Testament. The Sabbath Day was a ceremonial law, only for the Jews in the Old Testament. It pictured resting in Jesus Christ for salvation. This is plainly taught in Hebrews 4:1-5...

"Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. For he spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, And God did rest the seventh day from all his works. And in this place again, If they shall enter into my rest."

The 6-days of men working pictured man's self-righteousness, which could never save (Isaiah 64:6; Romans 3:20). When we cease from our own self-righteous labors and rest upon the Lord for salvation, we are eternally saved.

Jesus the Christ Himself condemned those who questioned Him for healing on the Sabbath, "Who of you, having found his ass (donkey) fallen in a ditch [on the Sabbath], would not pull him out?" Thus, it seems I have found in Owl Mirror an ass fallen in a ditch of naturalistic ignorance and arrogance of his own design. Will I not strive to pull him out, though he should resist me feverishly?

Good night, all.

Acknowledged:
http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Basics/jesus_is_our_sabbath.htm

Posted by: Ryan Baggett | June 18, 2009 11:20 PM

Well, here comes the shrieking fountain of profanity, Owlie out of his hole once more:

I'll remind our reading audience that not one time in the course of our discourse has OwlMirror been able to prove that I'm lying about anything. He just asserts that I am a liar as though his accusation were proof in and of itself. Riddle me ree...what proof other than your senseless rants have you, Old Brown, that I have been dishonest even once.

It's a curious, if ineffective, tactic you have calling everyone who disagrees with you a liar and then calling them bipolar, narcissistic hypocritical braggarts.

Now, to dissect your argument. You have made this almost too easy.

You say:

" 'Legal-historical evidence' only goes so far. We acknowledge that the written documents exist, but if the claims are contradictory, we can be sure that the writer of the original documents got something wrong. If the claims are extreme, we can strongly suspect the writer of exaggerating. We don't believe everything that is written down."

Well, of course we don't believe everything that is written down! I encourage everyone to read Darwin's infamous "On the Origin of Species" available at http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F373&viewtype=side&pageseq=1.

You'll see that Darwin's underlying suppositions are the unquestioned superiority of the Caucasian race. His naturalistic explanations of how species might have evolved is a thinly veiled treatise on racial superiority and was avidly consumed by great men of the Twentieth Century, like Adolph Hitler and Josef Mengele. Both these men worked great evil upon humanity based on the twisted ideas Darwin presented in his treatise.

No, Darwin's work should not be believed. Though he never once witnessed anything like macro-evolution and in fact only saw and described minor differences between very similar species on the mainland of South America and on the Galapagos Islands (this is micro-evolution), he nonetheless proceeded to make wild claims of trans-speciation in the misty ages of the past. He could not then, nor can paleontologists now, validate these claims, though they hold fast to them as though they were holy writ.

But here I challenge Owlie to find an instance where where the holy God-inspired scripture contradicts itself internally. He already has proved just how biblically illiterate he is by equivocating moral laws with ceremonial laws established in the Old Testament. Let me law this out for you in terms you might understand, Owlie, Jesus the Christ is the fulfillment of the Sabbath. Why was man ordered to rest on the seventh day to begin with? Do you ever wonder that? God's purpose behind that law, was that His people Israel would cease from their work and contemplate the evidences in nature and the testimony from the prophets all bearing witness to the coming of the Christ. Before Christ, man had to struggle with sin, offering sacrifices for every transgression. Just do me this favor and read the Old Testament books of Leviticus (3rd book) and Deuteronomy (5th book). You'll see the struggle. With the advent of the Christ, man gained liberation from the sacrificial system because Jesus the Christ himself became the atonement. Thereafter, Man didn't have to strive in vain to unite with God through his own actions. Christ provided atonement (break the word down: at - one - ment), reconciliation, and REST.

The moral laws were what Jesus the Christ referred to when He said. "I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it. Not the least stroke of a pen shall fall from the law until you see the Christ coming into His kingdom." Jesus the Christ lived a morally flawless life. He had no sin. Thus it had to be for Him to qualify as the spotless Lamb, alone able to be the sacrifice that brought about the reconciliation of perfect God and sinful Man.

Owlie, you're treading water when it comes to science, so shallow is your understanding and capacity to reason. But you are in fathoms over your head when you attempt to reason from the scripture. I would be, too, without the enlightening of the Holy Spirit. He opens my mind to understand the greatness of His word, as he opens my mind to understand the finest and most masterful details of the world the Father made in Jesus the Christ through Him.

"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that has been made. In Him was life and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." John 1:1-5.

No, Owlie, you live in darkness and cannot comprehend light or reason. The world is dark to you.

That is why you plague yourself with "Julius Caesar atheist" nonsense. Had you any comprehension of the history of Rome, you would know why Julius Caesar was proclaimed to be a god after his death. It was a matter of political intrigue. Oddly enough, almost every one of the next eleven Caesars who reigned after him proclaimed themselves to be gods. BUt here is the critical difference, Owlie, and one you would do well to pay its proper and deserved attention. THERE IS ONE GOD AND ONE GOD ONLY. HE LIVES AND REIGNS SUPREME FOREVER, IN THREE PERSONS: A TRIUNE COMMUNITY - GOD THE FATHER, JESUS THE CHRIST AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. God never claims to be one god among many. He says of himself, "I am." "I do not share my glory." and "None has come before me and none shall come after me." Those claims are materially distinct from the claims made by any of the madmen who ruled Rome after the Republic disintegrated. I'm not a "Julius Caesar atheist," because the idea is ludicrous.

Furthermore, if you're going to claim to be God. You'd better have the wherewithal to back it up. Julius Caesar was made a human pin cushion on the steps of the Senate. He died and that was it for him: DEFEAT. Jesus the Christ laid down his life for your salvation, but took it up again on the third day. He defeated death and offers us the same in Him, that is everlasting life. So, He is peace and rest and He is life. Did Jesus alone make this claim about Himself. Nope, sorry to disappoint you, Owlie, but over two hundred of the texts of those who witnessed the resurrected body Christ or those who wrote down what the witnesses saw exist. By comparison, I'm pretty sure you believe that Sophocles wrote Oedipus Rex. One...let me say that for effect, ONE, small fragment of a manuscript exists of what is likely a third or fourth generation copy of this work exists. HUNDREDS vs. ONE. Oedipus Rex is a pretty cool play, but that's all it is. Brother, when the whole planet went dark for three hours while the Son of God hung in agony on the cross... when the earth shook and when dead people got up out of their graves and started walking around and visiting their loved ones, people paid attention. It caused what today would be called a media frenzy. In short, there is no comparison between the claims of hundreds of first-hand witnesses about the miracles of Jesus the Christ and his miraculous resurrection all of which testify to the truth of His claim to be the Son of God and the claims of some politically motivated people who wanted to deify Julius Caesar.

Nice Try, but that doesn't even rate a lollipop.

Can we agree to this, at least, in our future discussions, which by this time are beginning to take more the shape of exchanges of fire: If you want to call me a liar, prove it.
Don't just assert it and reason by the power of your own overblown ego that it must, therefore, be so.

Posted by: Janine, OMnivore | June 18, 2009 11:36 PM

I'll remind our reading audience that not one time in the course of our discourse has OwlMirror been able to prove that I'm lying about anything.

Making that statement does not make it true. Except I would say that some of your stuff is so muddled, it is hard to tell if you are a liar.

RB, you may not call on our sympathy. Most of us have none for you. Be we are laughing.

Posted by: Janine, OMnivore | June 18, 2009 11:44 PM

John Morales, I think a better name would be Old Maggotty.

Why, yes, I did read Elfquest.

Posted by: Owlmirror | June 19, 2009 2:22 AM

I'll remind our reading audience that not one time in the course of our discourse has OwlMirror been able to prove that I'm lying about anything. He just asserts that I am a liar as though his accusation were proof in and of itself.

Actually, I am arguing from the evidence:

Observations:

Comment @#195: You make a claim to have a BA in biology

Comment @#195: You claim that Tiktaalik looks like "a squashed crocodile or alligator", demonstrating ignorance of vertebrate anatomy.

Comment @#270: You cannot recognize a vertebral column, asking "where is the chief feature of a vertebrate, it's spinal column?", demonstrating worse ignorance of vertebrate anatomy.

Reasoning: Ignorance of basic biology contradicts the claim to have a degree in biology.

Conclusion: You were lying about having earned a degree in biology, Lyin' Braggart.

I could go on, of course, but to do that, I would have to re-read all of your ridiculous stupidity and imbecilic blathering, and I am just not in the mood at the moment.

It's a curious, if ineffective, tactic you have calling everyone who disagrees with you a liar

I don't call everyone who disagrees with me a liar -- only the ones who are blatantly lying. Like you.

and then calling them bipolar, narcissistic hypocritical braggarts.

And yet you come back and provide more evidence for the diagnosis. Pathetic.

You'll see that Darwin's underlying suppositions are the unquestioned superiority of the Caucasian race.

I see no such thing. But that's because I am not as stupid as you are.

His naturalistic explanations of how species might have evolved is a thinly veiled treatise on racial superiority

Liar. You didn't read the actual book for context, and you think you can hide it by lying about the title. You're nothing but a Lyin' Braggart.

and was avidly consumed by great men of the Twentieth Century, like Adolph Hitler and Josef Mengele.

Liar. Hitler never mentioned Darwin.

Both these men worked great evil upon humanity based on the twisted ideas Darwin presented in his treatise.

Liar. Hitler was a Christian who believed in breeding -- artificial selection -- which existed for thousands of years before Darwin.

No, Darwin's work should not be believed.

Darwin should be believed more than you, where he argued from the evidence. You, on the other hand, lie continuously.

But here I challenge Owlie to find an instance where where the holy God-inspired scripture contradicts itself internally

Genesis 1:20-27 : God creates all of the animals first, then man, then woman.

Genesis 2:07-22 : God creates man, then all of the animals, then woman.

That's one -- a complete contradiction of sequence.

Genesis 2:17 -- God says that Adam will die on the same day that he eats the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Genesis 3:6 -- Adam (and Eve) eats the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil

Genesis 5:5 -- Adam dies at the age of 930.

That's two -- a complete contradiction between what God says and what God does.

And that's just a couple, off of the top of my head.

He already has proved just how biblically illiterate he is by equivocating moral laws with ceremonial laws established in the Old Testament.

The Old Testament itself equivocates moral laws and ceremonial laws, moron. But hey, go ahead and tell yourself whatever makes you feel good about breaking any of the laws.

Had you any comprehension of the history of Rome, you would know why Julius Caesar was proclaimed to be a god after his death.

Had you any comprehension of the history of religion in the Mediterranean Middle East, you would know why Jesus was proclaimed to be a god after his death.

It was a matter of political intrigue

That goes for Jesus as well, although it was more complicated than that.

Oddly enough, almost every one of the next eleven Caesars who reigned after him proclaimed themselves to be gods.

Yup. Exactly. Anyone can claim to be a God, and anyone can claim that someone else was God, and anyone can claim to know God, and anyone can claim to speak for God. There are nothing stopping anyone from making any religious claim whatsoever.

THERE IS ONE GOD AND ONE GOD ONLY. HE LIVES AND REIGNS SUPREME FOREVER, IN THREE PERSONS: A TRIUNE COMMUNITY - GOD THE FATHER, JESUS THE CHRIST AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. God never claims to be one god among many. He says of himself, "I am." "I do not share my glory." and "None has come before me and none shall come after me."

Says you. You are exactly like the Caesars; exactly like all the others who make claims about God. It was not God who "said of himself" any of that nonsense, it was human beings, just like you, pretending to speak for God like the Romans speaking for Caesar. It's all just a stupid rhetorical trick, claiming that God said something.

Those claims are materially distinct from the claims made by any of the madmen who ruled Rome after the Republic disintegrated.

Nope. They are exactly the same: There is no evidence for their truth in the real world. There is nothing but the words themselves, written or spoken only by human beings.

I'm not a "Julius Caesar atheist," because the idea is ludicrous.

It's exactly as ludicrous as being a "Jesus Christ atheist".

Furthermore, if you're going to claim to be God. You'd better have the wherewithal to back it up. Julius Caesar was made a human pin cushion on the steps of the Senate. He died and that was it for him: DEFEAT.

So? An apologist for Julius Caesar as God would say that he continued his life as a spirit in the heavens with the other Gods.

Jesus the Christ laid down his life for your salvation, but took it up again on the third day.

Says you. Or rather, says a bunch of Mediterranean Middle Easterners that you happen to believe. Because anyone can say anything about God at all.

He defeated death and offers us the same in Him, that is everlasting life.

Nah. If Christians came back from the dead all the time, you might have a point. But they don't, and you don't.

but over two hundred of the texts of those who witnessed the resurrected body Christ or those who wrote down what the witnesses saw exist.

Oh, bullshit. Even I know that there are only four books that specifically tell the made-up story about Jesus resurrecting, and all four of those are mostly copies of one another, and all later books just reference the story in those copied copies, and all of them were written long after Jesus died. And that the earliest -- Mark -- doesn't even originally end with the resurrection, but with the empty tomb.

Funny how Jesus couldn't even be bothered to write anything down himself before "going" back to "heaven".

Funnier how God can't be bothered to speak for himself, here and now.

By comparison, I'm pretty sure you believe that Sophocles wrote Oedipus Rex.

Sophocles didn't claim to have the original manuscript handed to him by the God Apollo himself -- and I wouldn't believe it if he had made such a claim. And neither would you, come to think of it.

Some human wrote the play. Why not call him "Sophocles", since everyone else does?

when the whole planet went dark for three hours while the Son of God hung in agony on the cross... when the earth shook and when dead people got up out of their graves and started walking around and visiting their loved ones, people paid attention. It caused what today would be called a media frenzy.

Bullshit. The only evidence for any of that nonsense is in the copied made-up story itself. No other writer in the Mediterranean, or in the entire world, noted anything like that happening. No-one.

In short, there is no comparison between the claims of hundreds of first-hand witnesses about the miracles of Jesus the Christ and his miraculous resurrection all of which testify to the truth of His claim to be the Son of God and the claims of some politically motivated people who wanted to deify Julius Caesar.

Sure there is. Just like there are political motivations, there are religious motivations. People had religious motivations to make stuff up (like you do, all the time), and say that it really happened. And make up "hundreds of witnesses", too.

Anyone can say anything about God or religion, because anyone can make believe, and then deny that they are making believe. Just like you do.

Can we agree to this, at least, in our future discussions, which by this time are beginning to take more the shape of exchanges of fire: If you want to call me a liar, prove it.

Done! Proof above.

Posted by: Steve_C | June 19, 2009 5:35 PM

The kooks are always so long winded. I can't be bothered.

Go away Ryan. I couldn't give two shits about your "testimony". Your knowledge of the bible isn't testimony it's worthless drivel.

Posted by: Owlmirror | June 19, 2009 6:31 PM

NOW, NOT ONLY YOUR REASONING CAPACITY DO I QUESTION, BUT YOUR ABILITY TO READ!Genesis 1:27 STATES THAT GOD CREATED MAN AND WOMAN AS "THEM." WOMAN WAS TAKEN FROM THE MAN (Genesis 2:21-23)

As I wrote, all of the animals were created before either Adam or Eve in Gen 1, yet were created between Adam and Eve in Gen 2. In other words, a contradiction of sequence.

Looks like you are the one not capable of reading or understanding.

By the way, writing in all caps for whole paragraphs makes you look stupider than usual. Please, continue.

BECAUSE, HONESTLY, IT SEEMS LIKE YOU HAVE INTENTIONALLY STOPPED SHORT IN THE MIDDLE OF A PARAGRAPH, BUT I WON'T.

Actually, it's pretty obvious that you stopped thinking in the middle there. Heh.

SORRY, BUT YOU'RE COMPLETELY WRONG. GOD SAID NO SUCH THING ABOUT THE TIME ADAM WOULD DIE PHYSICALLY.

More all-caps that makes you look stupid, and now you're directly contradicting the bible itself. Wonderful! Keep it up. Keep on screaming and lying and screaming some more. It won't change the fact that you are utterly wrong.

Gen 2:17 -- but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”

( ביום אכלך ממנו מות תמות )

Not 930 years later. That's a contradiction between what God says will happen and what does happen.

Observations: Comment @#195: You make a claim to have a BA in biology"
I DO. IT DOESN'T MATTER THAT I DISAGREE WITH YOUR CLAIMS ABOUT SCIENCE; DISAGREEING WITH YOU IN NO WAY INVALIDATES MY DEGREE.

No, you having gotten your so-called "degree" from a diploma mill or other unaccredited source invalidates your degree. You displaying utter incompetence in science in general and biology specifically invalidates your degree.

THE PHOTOGRAPH IN THE URL THAT WAS PROVIDED LOOKS LIKE A SQUASHED FRONT END OR SNOUT OF AN ALLIGATOR.

Only to someone with no knowledge of biology.

"SPINAL COLUMN" AND "VERTEBRAL COLUMN" ARE INTERCHANGEABLE TERMS.

Yes. That's why I used them interchangeably, moron.

ALL THAT IS VISIBLE IN THE PHOTOGRAPHS ON THE URL PROVIDED LOOKS NOTHING LIKE WHAT YOU SUPPOSE THEM TO BE.

Only to someone with no knowledge of biology.

YOUR CONCLUSION IS AN UNREASONED OPINION.

My conclusion was reasoned and logical, and all you did was blather illogically and unreasonably. Thanks for helping provide more evidence in support of my conclusion.

" The only evidence for any of that nonsense is in the copied made-up story itself. No other writer in the Mediterranean, or in the entire world, noted anything like that happening."

The renowned Roman historian, Cornelius Tacitus, included the following passage in his “Annals,” written early in the second century:

Lying moron. Cornelius Tacitus says nothing about he Earth going dark for three hours, earthquake, or the dead rising and walking around in the year 33 -- which is specifically what I was referring to. Especially since he was writing more than a hundred years later.

All he does is confirm that there were people calling themselves Christians at the time he was writing. Whoop-te-doodle-fucking-doo. I never denied that there were people calling themselves Christians in the second century, you stupid lying moron.

And others confirm the miraculous events and social disturbances surrounding Jesus death and "rumors" of his death, resurrection, post-death visitations and ascension.

Liar. There are only myths and legends told by Christians which are based on the NT (or are just made up, not even based on the NT).

Among them, the most important Jewish historian of the first century Flavius Josephus.

Moron. I've read the lines from Josephus. It's agreed that one set was added or deliberately changed in later copies by Christian copyists, and the other barely says anything about Jesus at all. Nothing Josephus wrote says anything about the Earth going dark for three hours, or an earthquake, or the dead rising in or around the year 33.

Numerous 2nd-5th century critics of the Christian faith who denied that Jesus was what Christians believed him to be, including Trypho, Pliny, Celsus, Porphyry, and Julian. But none of them questioned Jesus’ historical existence.

And? So what? I wasn't even arguing that Jesus did not exist. At least, not at this point in time.

People DIED, sometimes by the most horrible means, in support of their testimony for Jesus the Christ. They knew what was true because they either saw it with their own eyes or received it from someone they knew to be trustworthy.

So? It should be obvious that people can decide that there are causes worth dying for. That's one of the reasons there are wars. As an example which does not involve war, consider the Heaven's Gate incident. 39 people killed themselves to catch a ride on a comet. Does that convince you that they were telling the truth, and they are even now bopping along on Comet Hale-Bopp?

If not, you're just another damn hypocrite who uses a double standard to judge things inside your own set of beliefs.

Keep in mind, please that the miracles didn't stop with the ascension of Jesus the Christ. Not only the apostles, but generations of men after them performed supernatural acts of healing in the name of Jesus the Christ.

Nah. False, utterly false. I would believe it if Christians had 100% healing rates from injuries, and/or survival rates from disease. They don't. Plagues ravaged Europe and the Mediterranean in the early centuries. They killed exactly as many Christians as non-Christians. The same is true today: Christians are no healthier than non-Christians.

Christians continue to this day to be killed for their faith, and willing die rather than recant. The burden of proof is with you, Owlie, to prove these men and women die for a lie.

No. Their own claims are contradicted by their deaths. God does nothing to stop them, and does not resurrect them after they die.

Now, I'm going to turn up the heat just a little.

You mean you're going to lie some more. Whoop-te-doodle-fucking-doo.

I would argue that Darwinism is a religion.

Yup. That's a lie.

I ask you this: if you were held before a mob and offered the choice of affirming Jesus the Christ as God and the sole Savior of mankind or else be fed to hungry lions, what would you do?

Yeah, that's another way that religions spread: Being willing to kill for your religion, as well as die for it, as well as lie for it. So much for that whole "Thou shalt not kill" commandment, right? Looks like I was right in saying that for you, that commandment was nailed to the cross as well. If someone doesn't believe in Jesus, kill them, you say.

Note that North Africa and the Middle East, which were largely Christian before Mohamed, converted to Islam because they were given that exact same choice by the Muslim armies: Convert or die.

Does that mean Mohamed was really the true prophet of God, and Islam is the true religion? I guess so -- by your own logic.

Better brush up on your Arabic, Lyin' Braggat!

Still I await your proof that I have lied, even once.

You have done nothing but lie, bear false witness, and, oh yeah, imply a willingness to murder for your religion.

Posted by: SC, OM | June 19, 2009 6:41 PM

Holy shit! Laminin?! Are you kidding?

Even AiG doesn't want to attach itself to that ridiculousness.

Posted by: Dan Rourke | June 19, 2009 6:50 PM

Go Ryan!!!!! You are a fearless man of God!

Total EVIL-lutionist SMACK DOWN!!

Matthew 16:18
And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

...gates are a DEFENSIVE measure, Ryan. Batter away at the walls of the ignorant posing as scientists.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | June 19, 2009 6:55 PM

Hey, Ryan!

So you're denying the existence of contradictions in the Bible? Did I get that right?

Then how do you explain this list of contradictions in the New Testament on which conditions are necessary and which conditions are sufficient for... wait for it... salvation?

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | June 19, 2009 7:07 PM

BTW, Ryan... comment 262.

You have an error to admit. We're waiting.

Hey, even George "Fearless Flightsuit" Bush has admitted one error in his life so far.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | June 19, 2009 7:17 PM

I ask you this: if you were held before a mob and offered the choice of affirming Jesus the Christ as God and the sole Savior of mankind or else be fed to hungry lions, what would you do?

Well, guess.

I would lie. I would tell the mob whatever the fuck they wanted to hear: black is white, five is four, and I love Big Brother.

And then I'd leave the country at the next opportunity.

I've always been proud to be a confessing coward, Ryan. That's the big difference between me and you.

Posted by: Dan Rourke | June 19, 2009 9:17 PM

IRT:
"Well, guess. I would lie. I would tell the mob whatever the fuck they wanted to hear: black is white, five is four, and I love Big Brother.And then I'd leave the country at the next opportunity. I've always been proud to be a confessing coward, Ryan. That's the big difference between me and you."

Just to be fair, David Marjanović OM, that's the difference between Ryan and the everyone else on this board. He has the courage and the credentials to stand up to your jests, and he does so with integrity. With few exceptions, of which I note you are one, David, Ryan gives his name and doesn't make up elaborate stage names behind which he can hide.

The OwlMirror guy is pretty funny...when he's not being a rude, obscene twit.

RamblinDude should ramble himself into an adult literacy class, since he can't read that well. Ramblin', Ryan was suggesting not that you convert or die, but was offering a well-thought-out reason to reject the notion that early Christians who died rather than recant their faith in Jesus.
Pretty astute, if you ask me.

Posted by: DaveL | June 19, 2009 9:52 PM

I ask you this: if you were held before a mob and offered the choice of affirming Jesus the Christ as God and the sole Savior of mankind or else be fed to hungry lions, what would you do?

Why does it always come down to veiled threats of violence with god-botherers? It seems that boiling inside each one of them is a cauldron of hate and sadism that secretly fantasizes about having the power to torture people who don't agree with them.

Posted by: Ryan Baggett | June 19, 2009 10:18 PM

Dan!! What the heck are you doing in here?

Oh, I see the RamblinDude is back. Lucky me! eh..... No, I'm not a pernicious, tenacious, tedious troll. I'm a defender of God's truth. My brain has not been fried on drugs, though I'm not sure about yours. What a brilliant retort, though. Did you have a look at the URL I posted? When no one will give any due credence to legal-historical evidence for the existence and deity of Jesus the Christ, and time and again demand I produce "physical evidence," I give you some. You just run from the truth, RamblinDude, because the thought of your being accountable to an all-powerful God who will judge the world scares you or makes you angry. That's pretty common, actually.

Do you read, RamblinDude? I think I clearly wrote that Tacitus was a non-Christian. So of course he would refer to the Christ's resurrection as "pernicious superstition." Read! It's good for you!

Posted by: RamblinDude | June 19, 2009 10:30 PM

RamblinDude should ramble himself into an adult literacy class, since he can't read that well. Ramblin', Ryan was suggesting not that you convert or die, but was offering a well-thought-out reason to reject the notion that early Christians who died rather than recant their faith in Jesus.

Says the guy who fails to form a coherent sentence.

You don’t have to explain what he meant. I got it. He was saying that Christians are willing to die for their faith because they have the “truth” on their side, and atheists are not willing to die for their “faith” because their “faith” is false. (Oh, and that they know the real truth is jesus, Hallelujah!).

Well, he has a point. Atheists tend not to be deluded fanatics obsessed with death and torture and martyrdom, like Christians (and Muslim suicide bombers, and Heaven’s Gate disciples) so when we die for a cause, it’s usually for something important and not something stupid. And since “Darwinism” is simply an observation about the world, and not a religion to kill or die for, Ryan’s little thought experiment was stupid and so, apparently, are you.

Posted by: RamblinDude | June 19, 2009 10:34 PM

Oh, I see the RamblinDude is back. Lucky me! eh..... No, I'm not a pernicious, tenacious, tedious troll. I'm a defender of God's truth.

Six of one...

Posted by: Janine, OMnivore | June 19, 2009 11:36 PM

People gave their lives for Hitler.
People gave their lives for Stalin.
People gave their lives for Allah.
People gave their lives for slavery.
People gave their lives for the Kaiser.
People gave their lives for the Czar.
People gave their lives for King and Country.

People have willingly gave their lives for a lot of bad causes. Does the fact that they gave their lives mean that we have to take their cause more seriously. Or only those people who gave their lives for the right cause are the worthy sacrifices. If so, there was no need to give their lives. The cause itself should speak for itself.

I'm a defender of God's truth.

Why does an all powerful being need a lowly human to fight it's battles. And, Old Maggoty, you are a pathetic defender. You gave no prove of anything. Just bible quotes, cherry picked sentences from ancient historian, demands that people take your claims of a biology degree seriously and name calling. Seriously, you think that democrats and people who accept the reality of evolution are the same set. I have some news for you, Old Maggoty, many of the people you are slimming are no americans, let alone democrats. And not all republicans are creationists.

You have not argued in good faith since you shown up here. And no matter verbose you are and all of the use of capital letters will not make up for your lack of evidence.

As for your charges that Owlmirror does not know the bible, I have a question; could you read 'ביום אכלך ממנו מות תמות'? And, no, I have no idea what it means.

Posted by: Stanton | June 20, 2009 11:43 AM

Hey, even George "Fearless Flightsuit" Bush has admitted one error in his life so far.

Posted by: Stanton | June 20, 2009 11:58 AM

So, in other words, Mr Rourke, you're saying that Ryan Baggett is saying that we should rebuked for thinking poorly of people who lie for Jesus, and use their faith as an aegis for their money and stupidity?

Posted by: Owlmirror | June 20, 2009 12:50 PM

The cheerleader who was raised in a barn by wolves bellowed:

It's appropriate, but I like his earlier comment even better about you being a bird-brained fool.

Matt. 5:22 -- But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell.

Guess Ryan and you are not really Christians, then. Or you are in fact already damned and don't even know it. That would be pretty funny.

I don't have any pom-poms.

Says the cheerleader. Yeah, right.

How any of you could say that Ryan has been anything other than scholarly and, with slight exception in just a few places, extremely polite.

Liar.

I can tell you you're wasting your time arguing with people who don't want to believe in a power higher than themselves.

Well, since you're nothing but a cheerleader, it's obvious that the "power higher than yourself" is... Ryan Baggett. Or rather, Lyin' Braggart.

They want so badly to disbelieve because the implications of accountability that the existence of an all-powerful creator has for them, personally.

Actually, the implications (of accountability) is exactly why the "existence of an all-powerful creator" is disproven. God, too, would be accountable, if he were real as you claim. He fails to demonstrate that accountability, and therefore cannot exist as you claim.

But why am I explaining this to a rah-rah cheerleader? You probably lost track after the first word. Go wave your pom-poms.

PS: PZ, if you get the chance, could you compare the IP addrs of "Dan Rourke" with "Ryan Baggett"? I suspect that the cheerleader is a sockpuppet.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | June 20, 2009 4:28 PM

Ryan, your philosophy about god is irrelevant. He either exists or he doesn't. If we can't detect him, then there is no difference if god is used as an explanation, or if god is left out. In such cases, Occam's Razor says that the less complicated explanation, the one without god, is more likely to be correct. So, we see disbelief in all gods to be best explanation. Actually, you are an atheist to 1000+ gods invented by men. We just disbelieve in one more man made god than you do.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | June 20, 2009 4:53 PM

You are wrong. We don't need a god to explain anything. God is simple a null hypothesis. All sound and fury and meaning nothing. Explains nothing. Just takes up space, and if left out, everything is essentially the same. What part of that don't you understand? It has been explained to you often enough.

If you must believe in imaginary deities, you have my sympathy.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | June 20, 2009 6:11 PM

I'm curious about why in every solar system we've observed, gas giants are always farther out than the rocky inner planets.

According to the JPL's New Worlds Atlas, every one of the 353 extrasolar planets is a gas giant.

Posted by: Ryan Baggett | June 20, 2009 10:50 PM

Hi Nerd of Redhead,

Okay, you state "God is simple a null hypothesis. All sound and fury and meaning nothing."
- Not quite Shakespeare's words, but very close.

“Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets upon the stage and then is heard of no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” - Macbeth.

Sorry, but I have always had a great admiration of the Great Bard, and am at times tempted to wax poetic.

I found a pretty amusing website:
http://www.null-hypothesis.co.uk/science/item/what_is_a_null_
hypothesis.

The illustration, admittedly for children but nonetheless instructive, is of a hypothesis posited to explain the disappearance of matching socks. The alternate hypothesis runs, "Alien activity is responsible for the missing socks. The null hypothesis, then, would be "Alien activity has nothing to do with the missing socks." In statistics, the only way of supporting your hypothesis is to refute the null hypothesis. We can both agree on that point, I think.

Rather than trying to affirm your idea (the alternate hypothesis) you must show that the null hypothesis is likely to be wrong – you have to ‘refute’ or ‘nullify’ the null hypothesis. Unfortunately, you have to assume that your alternate hypothesis is wrong until you find evidence to the contrary. So, in this illustration, it’s innocent until proven guilty for the aliens.

If God is so fortunate to be the null hypothesis, as you have above granted Him to be (remember, you did this, not me), then you must show that the null hypothesis is likely to be wrong – you have to ‘refute’ or ‘nullify’ the null hypothesis.

How can you do this? It will be tricky, but I'm sure you are up to it, given all the instruments of man's modern science at your disposal.

I'll simplify matters a bit to say that the null hypothesis is that God created life. This is, by definition, the fallback assumption, until you can completely nullify it, making sure that there is no possible way it can be true. The null hypothesis (God created life) must be utterly negated.

So here is your task: beginning with completely inorganic chemicals and a completely sterile environment, create a new form of life.

If you can accomplish this elementary task you will have dealt a serious blow to those who believe in God's design of the universe.

Thanks for being so patient and kind, Nerd of Redhead ( I do wish you would tell me your name, since I feel like I'm insulting you every time I address you by your nom de plume).

Posted by: Ryan Baggett | June 20, 2009 11:10 PM

That is very disappointing, Nerd of Redhead. I thought I could expect you to rise to the challenge. Also, it seems the least you can do, if you're going to hold to the pretense of science and throw out words like "Null Hypothesis" to make yourself sound educated, is defend the ground you have staked.

Rather, you follow OwlMirror's example and resort to childish name-calling (creobots and godbots). That is truly disappointing. I will close with this declaration: my beliefs are a reasoned and supportable conclusion, not a delusion. I pity those who cannot join in rational discussion and I will pray for you.

Good Night,

Ryan Baggett

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | June 20, 2009 11:22 PM

my beliefs are a reasoned and supportable conclusion, not a delusion. I pity those who cannot join in rational discussion and I will pray for you.

Posted by: John Morales | June 21, 2009 12:02 AM

Burke the Burk:

But, hey Ryan, I came in here because you asked me to pray for the people on the Pharyngula blog when we met at breakfast last week. It took me forever to find it, but I did.

Forever, eh? Yes, such an obscure site with so little Web presence as Pharyngula would be hard to find. After all, it would require using a search engine, and such advanced 1337 skills are far beyond the norm...

Having found it, and read the comments, I can tell you you're wasting your time arguing with people who don't want to believe in a power higher than themselves.

Wasting his time, yeah, since (a) he cannot argue cogently and (b) has no veridical basis for his claims. However, wanting to believe or not is irrelevant to the issue — unlike you, we realise it's not a matter of "wanting to believe in something makes that something real", but of accepting reality and avoiding magical thinking. You want to believe in imaginary beings, go ahead — but they remain imaginary nonetheless.

They want so badly to disbelieve because the implications of accountability that the existence of an all-powerful creator has for them, personally.

Wow. That's completely backwards. We, the rationalists and realists (unlike you) realise that we and we alone are accountable for our actions. We don't blame imaginary beings for our bad actions, and we don't credit imaginary beings for our good actions.

Think it through (hard for you, apparently): Any "all-powerful" being that wished for us to believe in it would, definitionally, cause us to believe in it. If you presume the existence of such an "all-powerful" being, you must presume all that was, is, and will be is precisely what it desires. That includes our laughing at your childish beliefs, and our disbelief in this "all-powerful" being.
By your claim, what we do and what we think is precisely what this imaginary being of yours wants. You should be thankful to us for doing precisely what it wants.

You ought to cut the people in here some slack, realizing that just as you were a child of wrath and bitterness owned your life, the same is true of them now.

No, please. We love it when you emotionally-stunted, willfully intellectually-disabled, cognitively neotenous godbots come here and yap at us.

You're funny.

"Child of wrath", eh? I take it then he was born into a strongly-religious family. I do feel sorry for him, for that. Still, he might overcome this handicap one day.

Also, Ryan, arguments don't bring salvation. The only One who saves people is the only One who can change hearts. The mind gets changed after the heart gets changed.

Nice hypocritical platitude, O he who argues.

However, there is truth in that last quoted sentence.
First, ignore reality and decide what you want to believe, and then ignore, rationalise or compartmentalise away the incoherence of your beliefs and their incongruence with reality. Ah, religion, sop of the fearful.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | June 21, 2009 10:47 AM

Yawn, RB with no evidence, just an inane poem about his imaginary deity. Lots of persuasion there for us evidence based types--NOT. What an idiot.

RB, you might be persuaded your imaginary deity exists, but without the proper physical evidence, we will not agree with you. And that evidence, if it exists, has not been produced, and testament by you, like your silly poem above, is worthless. We've been telling you that for a while now. Your failure to understand that says a lot about your lack of perception.

Posted by: Owlmirror | June 21, 2009 8:17 PM

OwlMirror, or whatever your real name is, I wish to ask your forgiveness. I have been unkind to you in several of the interactions since I first posted.

Your apology is noted, as is your attempt to modify your conversational style. I shall provisionally accept this attempt at self modification, and will avoid making personal attacks in this particular response, at the very least.

I make no further promises beyond that, though. If I become irritated enough to express that irritation in words, you will see it.

Let us suppose that there is a God (I believe it and you do not, and that's okay. Let's set that disagreement aside for a moment), and by definition this God is above all.

I do not understand what you mean by "above all". It is far too vague of a phrase.

My understanding, for the sake of argument, of what you mean by God is a person that is most powerful, most knowing, and most good; a disembodied entity with the greatest amount of those attributes. And those attributes are defined by how we see them expressed in other human beings (in far lesser amounts, of course -- humans can be knowing, but do not have perfect knowledge; humans can have power, but not unlimited power; humans can treat each other with goodness, but are not infinitely generous and good).

To be able to manufacture Him

If we begin with the provisional premise that the above entity exists, then "manufacture" is a non sequitur. I would indeed argue that God is "manufactured", precisely because God offers no sign of his own existence. But that's a later conclusion, not part of the premise.

My argument is not that you "manufacture" God, but that God must speak for himself, as all humans do. After all, if God is a person as humans are persons, then speaking for himself is certainly within the scope of God's abilities; his power and knowledge.

or summon Him by my word or will (like Aladdin rubbing a lamp) would make Him less powerful than me

This too is a non sequitur, and contains a further false analogy. If you address God -- that is, speak and invoke God's name and request a response -- you are not "summoning" God, but communicating with God, as you communicate with any person. Just as when you communicate with any person, addressing them has nothing to do with how powerful you are or they are -- you are simply communicating as best you know how.

If you were to address me, and I were to ignore you, it would be rude. If I were to ignore you every time you spoke to me, it would be very rude indeed. Rudeness is, at the very least, not goodness. It arises from either utter indifference -- no goodness whatsoever -- or from ill will; the desire to cause harm (hurt feelings and confusion), the very opposite of goodness.

For God to ignore communication, and permanently refuse to communicate when addressed, demonstrates a lack of any goodness at all -- even assuming God exists and has at the very least the power to communicate and the knowledge of how to communicate.

Am I right in understanding that you believe He cannot be God, nor can He even exist if He does not explain himself to you or call at your mere beckoning?

Correct. God cannot exist with the claimed attributes of all knowledge, all power, and all goodness if God does not communicate as even all (non-defective) humans can do.

Now, some argue that God has some good reason to not respond to every communication request made to him. Even if we accept this excuse made on God's behalf by imperfect human beings, it ignores that there are situations when only God speaking for himself will prevent an obvious and definite evil from occurring. For example, when two different factions of humans insist that God wants completely different things, and these factions are willing to torture and kill each other over what each believes what God wants. Obviously, for God to speak up and clearly explain what he wants would end the conflict and prevent the evil of torturing and killing -- but this never happens. Instead, each faction claims that God has spoken to their leaders (or to themselves), and has not spoken to the other. Thus, this excuse cannot be valid.

There are other conceptions of God, but these can be rejected by the principle of parsimony.

Posted by: Owlmirror | June 21, 2009 9:10 PM

Okay, I have not heard of Occam's Razor before, but I see it defined elsewhere on the Internet defined as "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily." But that doesn't help me understand your statement, "the less complicated explanation, the one without god, is more likely to be correct. So, we see disbelief in all gods to be best explanation."

If God is unnecessary to explain things, then clearly God should not be invoked to explain those things. That's parsimony.

Now, this might be the leap I take that you do not: orderliness implies design and design implies a designer.

But it is an unparsimonious leap: The "orderliness" can be explained without invoking God. The orderliness arises from the interaction of noncontradictory interactions of basic forces and rules governing those forces. God is unnecessary to explain the orderliness.

Consider: 1+1=2. Is it necessary to invoke God to explain why this holds? It is not even coherent to say that 1+1≠2 would be true if God did not "force" 1+1 to equal 2. Therefore, 1+1=2, and God is unnecessary to explain it.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | June 21, 2009 11:12 PM

A piece of shitty proselytizing by RB. No intellectual or scientific content present. RB, you still haven't proven your imaginary deity exists, or your holy babble is inerrant. What a waste of a post.

Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble | June 21, 2009 11:58 PM

Dear Ryan Baguette,

Thank you for your tremendously long posts for Jesus. Some deluded fools will tell you it's not the size that counts, but how you use it, but I can see you are a man who believes that length equals potency. I was so impressed with your thread clogging abilities that I put in a good word for you with Jesus:
"What about that Ryan Baguette, Lord. He may seem like a wanker with all his hymn quoting, bible bashing, confused obfuscation and desperate rhetoric, but he is a well meaning, if simple, soul. Aren't you going to bless him?"
"I might give him a couple of points," Christ replied. "But if earnest ignorance was a virtue Sarah Palin would be President and Joe the Plumber would be her VEEP by now, and I'd have converted to Islam!"
"Islam, Lord? You'd never do such a thing. We Christians need you. We love you!"
"Is that right?" replied Jesus bitterly. "Then quit with the eating bits of me all the time. I'm not fried chicken, you know. At least the Muslims get a few dozen virgins and chance to relax. I hate having to sit around listening to you lot begging all the time."

So I'm sorry, Ryan. As you can see we got a little off track. Jesus did say you weren't a bad child of his, if a little thick. So I think you've earned your ARMOUR OF GOD.

Yours in prolixity for Jesus,

Smoggy

Posted by: Stanton | June 22, 2009 12:21 AM

So, how does pretending what "Darwinians" will say about the purpose of life, as well as saying that God engineered humanity's own downfall into sin disprove evolutionary biology?

Posted by: Feynmaniac | June 22, 2009 12:47 AM

Arg!!!

I'm tired and as a result I didn't catch all the errors I made in #343. Here are the most significant ones:

- false positives and they really do much harm ---> false positives and they really don't do much harm

- Miss California Carrie Prejean said in James Dobson --->Miss California Carrie Prejean said to James Dobson [Insert dirty joke]

- the Buddhist say Buddha ---> the Buddhists say Buddha

This is (partly) why I went into science and not the humanities.

Posted by: Owlmirror | June 22, 2009 1:22 AM

The null hypothesis is that assumption held first. It is the assumption you are trying to disprove, if you hope to prove the alternate hypothesis.

No. It is not the assumption held first, it is the situation that would hold if your assumption -- your hypothesis -- was not correct.

To claim otherwise is, of course, shifting the burden of proof, and is a logical fallacy.

So, if you were to have posed the idea that the universe and all life came into being merely by accident and completely without the intent, design and skill-craft of a Superior Being, one not limited by the laws of nature or by dimensionality, to say.........Isaac Newton, you would have been laughed at and held to scorn.

Did you know that Isaac Newton denied the Trinity, based on his own reasoning? I suspect that given a carefully crafted argument combined with a presentation of the evidence of modern astrophysics, geology, and evolutionary biology, he would not have laughed at all. He might not have accepted the argument ... but I don't think he would have laughed it all away, either.

The idea of a Creator being responsible for creation has always been held

Wrong. It was not held in the ancient philosophies of Greece, which predate Christianity. It was not held in the ancient philosophies of India and China, also predating Christianity.

And, as noted, if it were held first, it would still not be relevant.

The null hypothesis is that the universe does not require a God in order to explain it.

and his 'invisible' (yet) 'pink' [Stop and think about that for a moment, 'Tis et. al.] unicorn

Yes, it's a deliberately absurd notion. It was conceived as a deliberately absurd notion. And it is absurd in the same way as a God who sacrifices himself (except not really) to himself in order to save that which he created from himself, which you so volubly and imaginatively write about further down in the same comment.

What was that about not learning logic and rhetoric?

Thus, the assertion of 'Tis, himself, when he claims that a pig , "if you threw one off a cliff would fly for a little while." No, it would not fly. It would fall! Falling and flying are not the same thing... consult the records of Orville and Wilbur Wright, if you don't believe me.

Would you at the very least concede that a pig in a flying airplane is, by necessity, a pig that is in fact flying? Is that logical enough for you?

Christians believe that God created man with rationality and a will. He could choose to obey or to disobey and the consequence for disobedience was laid out:

But that which was supposed to be obeyed was arbitrary, and the consequence was ridiculously extreme. Only an evil God would come up with an arbitrary restriction, and an excessive, permanent and inherited punishment.

Where is the logic and rhetoric in that?

death, which is spiritual separation from God.

Speaking of arguments that lack logic.... This is an incoherent and meaningless definition of death.

Now, God allowed a being, Lucifer, who had been the most perfect of the angelic beings to enter the garden where he had also placed the man and the woman.

No, it was not "Lucifer". It was the serpent. I realize that you are in love with your late Christian exegesis, but if you are going to claim any logic or rhetoric on your own side of the fence, you need to not bring in made-up stuff.

And note that not only did God allow the serpent free run of the garden, he walked away and kept his mouth shut when the serpent spoke.

It was in the purposes of God and man can only speculate why God allowed this.

We can speculate... but we can also conclude that God, in the story, is cruel and evil.

Regardless of God's "purposes", we can clearly and logically see that in addition to the arbitrary restriction and the excessive consequence, God weighted the situation against the man and woman.

Lucifer, also known as Satan, offered autonomy to man, telling him God was a liar.

More illogical late Christian exegesis. Lucifer is not Satan, and neither was the one speaking, and the serpent was not making an offer.

The serpent said that (a) the woman (and the man) would not die from eating the fruit (that is, that it was not inherently poisonous), and (b) their eyes would open and they would know good and evil, like God. Both of those statements turned out to be true.

Faced with the opportunity, so they thought, of being "like God" the woman and then the man chose autonomy. And in that day, both the man and the woman did die.

No, they didn't. It is exceedingly illogical to assert that an event occurred in the story which it is blatantly obvious did not occur.

They knew they were naked and immediately felt something they had never felt before: shame. Before, they had never thought of hiding from God, but that is what they did immediately after they lost the treasure of spiritual connection with God.

Shame is not death. And if God is all-knowing and all-powerful, hiding from God is impossible and meaningless. There is nothing in the text that indicates that there was a "spiritual connection" with God to begin with.

With man's first leap for autonomy from God (taking the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil), he found his will perverted and himself incapable of choosing the right. Man became like a car with the front left wheel removed: incapable of driving in a straight line, but only in circles, pulled to the left.

If refusing to eat from the fruit was the right choice, then obviously they never had a non-perverted will. Clearly, God condemned man for a pre-existing flaw; a flaw that God himself knew was there, and which God must have put into man in the first place.

God had to intervene. He generated a plan to save mankind from sin and the hateful effects of sin (war, murder, incest, rape, torture, etc.).

More illogic. God is the one that condemned man to sin and suffer the hateful effects of sin.

Even if he did not, an all-powerful, all-good, and all-knowing God would simply have "repaired" man's flaw immediately.

Therefore, we can be absolutely certain that God is evil, or possibly insane.

The holiness of God required an exacting payment to bridge the chasm between Holy God and unholy man. Only perfection would do, so God Himself offered propitiation in Jesus the Christ.

God Himself "offered propitiation" -- to who? To himself, of course. That's as absolutely insane as an "invisible" "pink" unicorn. It is this sort of ridiculous illogic that leads to intelligent people rejecting the Christian religion and doctrine, even if they do not become atheists.

A Darwinian might tell you that the purpose of life is simply to eat, to mature, to mate and to die. Nothing else.

This is a pathetic strawman argument, and you follow it with some arguing from ignorance and incredulity.

I would say that He definitely has not hidden himself,

Yes, but as seen above, you are illogical and wrong.

but has committed revelatory acts one might consider (though this is blasphemous) to excess.

Nonsense. God has committed no "revelatory acts" whatsoever that can be perceived by the skeptical, or even the believer. You believe because you have been told to believe, and you have accepted that you must repeat that they occurred without any evidence whatsoever. This is nothing but blind faith.

The problem lies in the second consequence of the fall of man due to his striving for autonomy and independence from God. First, man's will was corrupted.

Illogical nonsense, as shown above.

Second, man's mind was corrupted. He can look out into the cosmos with the aid of telescopes and see stars, nebulae and galaxies all created to display the power and glory of the Creator and see nothing but gas, explosions, and randomness. Likewise, he can look down into the microcosm of a drop of water and observe with the aid of electron microscope the fine detail of the motor responsible for the locomotion of a flagellum, and beholding all this intricate design, say "it is all the result of an accident."

More illogical nonsense. If I want to communicate with someone, I do not put a nebula in the sky, or a flagellum on a bacteria. I write or talk -- just like all sane, logically thinking humans do.

God has not hidden Himself from man; man has become willfully blinded to what is obvious.

God does not speak. That is obvious. The God of the bible is evil -- and you do not see that clear and logical deduction. It is you who has willfully blinded yourself to that which is obvious.

Does God, therefore, desire sin and the pain that is its consequence?

Yes, obviously. If God exists and is all-powerful and all-knowing, then God is responsible for all the sin and pain that occurs.

Can God, however, use the choices man makes, even sinful ones, to bring about his final will?

Saying that God has a "final" will that is in contradiction to God's "non-final" will is as illogical as an "invisible pink" unicorn.

What is the will? Does man have an independent will?

If God knows all, then man has no real independent will. All that happens is known to God, therefore the will of man is an illusion.

That is but one primary difference between God and man; it is the lie Lucifer told man in the garden, "You can choose to disobey and not suffer consequences set in place by rules you did not make."

More illogical late Christian exegesis. Lucifer was not the one in the garden. And the serpent did not lie. They did not die from eating the fruit. It was God's choice to inflict the excessive consequences for the violation of an arbitrary rule.

How thankful I am that Jesus willingly took upon himself the penalty for my sin and all the sins of those He came to save.

And how absurdly illogical you are to do so.

Posted by: Phrogge | June 22, 2009 2:48 AM

Oh, Owl, you wrench my heart with your unkindness! Ryan has condescended to enlighten us through his explications and exegeses, to confute our heathen heresies with his hymns, to sacrifice untold electrons in the cause of our redemption; bravely venturing hither whither none other has previously dared, offering his words and words and words and words for a noble cause, selflessly strewing his supplications fluidly before the swine: and you ruthlessly reject them with mere reason, rationality and command of original sources! I fear me thou may'st dent his dauntlessness, causing him to gather his con, bag it, and descend elsewhere...

...a consummation devoutly to be wished!

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space | June 22, 2009 11:36 AM

OK, what is it with fundies and statistics. Logan over on the other Hovind thread was screwing up the null hypothesis concept, too! I mean, Good F***ing God, don't they offer stats courses at Liberty U.? Or are you guys just the product of home schooling?!?

Here's the deal. The reason for the null hypothesis is that statistical methods are of necessity comparative. You want to see how much better your theory WITH YOUR HYPOTHESIS is at explaining the data than it would be WITHOUT YOUR HYPOTHESIS (the null hypothesis). You look at how probable the data would be WITH your hypothesis vs. how probable they would be without your hypothesis (NULL). If the difference exceeds a predetermined level of significance (e.g. 10%, 5%...) you reject the null and accept your hypothesis. Under no circumstances do you ACCEPT the null--you merely can't reject it. Got it?

The null hypothesis against which evolution would be judged is not GODDIDIT. GODDIDIT cannot be a null hypothesis for any scientific theory because GODDIDIT can by definition explain anything (since it assumes an omnipotent deity). GODDIDIT=NOT Science.

Ryan, now quick. Go learn something, before that empty little head of yours implodes!

Posted by: Janine, OMnivore | June 22, 2009 11:58 AM

SC, I would have linked to the video by Duran Duran except for the fact that I absolutely hate that band.

Nice try.

Posted by: Ryan Baggett | June 22, 2009 1:28 PM

Hi OwlMirror,

You bring up some very good points, and these I shall have to consider. When I was an atheist, I did not consider these points, as you clearly have. The root of my anti-theism, as I can call my views, was the experience of being brought up in a home led by nominal Christians (in name only). Sure, we went to church every Sunday morning, every Sunday night and every Wednesday night. When the doors were open the Baggetts were there. But, I watched parents who were too proud or oblivious give up a child - my brother - to drug addiction that eventually led to his death in October of 2000. I also watched a father walk out the door in 1986 and never come back.... not exactly what you would call a Christian act.

But I could have agreed with you on one point you make here several times ....God is so powerful and yet seemingly blind to the sufferings of man that He must either be NOT Omnipotent or must otherwise be the extreme of EVIL.

I'd rather not think of you as an opponent, and will not do so. To me, you are a fellow human and worthy of much respect. However, our world-views are at odds. If I take some time to research and consider these points, you and all readers and contributors to this board should not consider this victory. I'm just researching.

I am especially moved, now, to read more from the original writings of Sir Isaac Newton that survive to gain his insights on God, creation, the Trinity, etc. Thank you for revealing that to me.

It seems, OwlMirror, that we have a problem with definitions and with identities. For instance, we do not agree that Lucifer is Satan. Nor do we agree that it was Lucifer in the Garden who, inhabiting the serpent, tempted Eve and then Adam to sin. Why do you think this was not so? Is it because it was not stated explicitly in the text?
I'm going to look into that as well. Who do you believe is the angel present before the LORD in the opening chapter of The Book of Job?

May I ask you this question: what is evil and what is the origin of evil? Please don't respond with something like, "GOD is EVIL and GOD is the origin of evil." That's too simple an explanation. I've been very transparent and vulnerable to you in this post.

Nothing of what I said about my family in this post is untrue - though I will admit it sounds like an episode of the "Young and the Restless." If you demand proof, I will send you a copy of the coroner's report of the autopsy of my brother to a P.O. Box or mailing address you send to my personal e-mail address: PrimusGenus@gmail.com.

Wow, we just got real, huh?

Now, may I ask you a technical question? I do not know how to excerpt text from blog entries as you and others on this board do. Perhaps it has to do with the OS I'm using (MS Vista) Or the browser (Firefox)? Your assistance is greatly appreciated. Also, when I use CTRL+i to italicize, it just throws me over to another tab, rather than italicizing the highlighted word. That's annoying. Can you help?

In closing, I'd like to tell you that I would leave this board if I simply didn't care. Nobody but a masochistic idiot likes being called an idiot, a moron, a sadist, a delusional liar. But I do believe there is a God and He is infinitely good. It is His infinite goodness that demands an infinite punishment when it is transgressed upon, not that I might perceive the nature of the transgression itself to be, in itself, finite.

To be completely honest, this is a point of Orthodox Christian doctrine of which I am only maybe 70% convinced. For, likewise, it doesn't seem reasonable (to me) that the unbridgeable gap between a Holy God and unholy man should be bridged by the finite sufferings of one man, Jesus the Christ, as He suffered for just six hours on the cross before he died and was beaten and otherwise treated ill for just ten hours before that. Sixteen hours versus ETERNITY? Is that FAIR? I've been confronted by Jehovah's witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists whose doctrines of punishment after death for the unredeemed state that they shall be burned up, consumed in fire even to the level of their souls being annihilated and then shall be no more. I have a hard time convincing myself what they say has no merit and can only rely upon what the Bible says in the Gospel of Luke about the Rich Man and Lazarus. The Rich Man looks up from his ongoing torments. Is this poetry? Is it a factual account?

If I didn't believe this or if I didn't care about you or anyone else on this board, I'd leave and perhaps you would inherit the punishment the Bible says you will. It is ultimately God who determines who will inherit a place in heaven and who will be condemned to eternity on hell, not me. Hell could be your destination no matter what I do. PLEASE DO NOT TAKE OFFENSE AT THAT!! I just don't know how to say that in any other way. Take it as a mark of my verbal clumsiness, if you'd like. But Jesus the Christ has commanded all those who believe in His power to save to tell everyone about this salvation through belief. It would be nothing less than my earnest hatred of you and everyone here to say "Well, then, let 'em burn!" and walk away. I'm not like that.

Be Happy and Well,

Ryan Baggett

Posted by: RamblinDude | June 22, 2009 1:44 PM

If I take some time to research and consider these points, you and all readers and contributors to this board should not consider this victory. I'm just researching.

Dude, it's what we want you to do. Do some genuine research. Keep looking at it from all angles and don’t stop. Perhaps you will then understand why you lost us way back up in your first post when you related how you became an atheist for the perks.

Posted by: Stanton | June 22, 2009 2:08 PM

So how does Ryan Baggett's blasphemously inane proselytizing because he's concerned that we're probably going to go to hell supposed to invalidate evolutionary biology? How is proselytizing even relevant to refuting evolutionary biology?

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | June 22, 2009 2:50 PM

Interesting to see when "Dan Rourke" vanished. (Check it out.) Parsimony says it's a sockpuppet.

If so, the puppet master is still here, and I must reply to comment 302. Here goes: The "OM" part is an in-joke, but the rest is real. Find me in Google Scholar and drop me an e-mail if you doubt that.

There's also a very easy reason for why the gas giants are farther out than the terrestrial planets: when a star ignites, the solar wind blows the gas away…

How is proselytizing even relevant to refuting evolutionary biology?

Ryan didn't come here to talk about evolutionary biology. He came here to proselytize, as he has made very clear in comment 356. Mentioning evolutionary biology is just a tool to him.

But this is a ScienceBlog, so I'll talk about evolutionary biology anyway.

A Darwinian might tell you that the purpose of life is simply to eat, to mature, to mate and to die. Nothing else.

"Purpose"? That kind of concept doesn't even enter the question. There's merely a fact: those genes that survive survive, and those that don't don't. :-|

But this is hardly satisfying.

Too bad. :-| Science is about what is, not what ought to be.

This does not explain why one feels sorrow at the death of a child.

Think about it.

Those who recklessly let their children die, because they didn't care, because they weren't afraid of being grief-stricken afterwards, have already died out, and their recklessness with them (assuming it was heritable). This fact we call natural selection.

Some things in science are simple.

Posted by: Watchman | June 22, 2009 4:14 PM

Those who recklessly let their children die, because they didn't care, because they weren't afraid of being grief-stricken afterwards, have already died out, and their recklessness with them (assuming it was heritable). This fact we call natural selection.

Some things in science are simple.

Yeah. It amazes me how many people just don't get that, as if they believe that every emotion and instinct were projected into our minds by the glittering stars in the firmament.

And will we ever be free of this nonsense?

orderliness implies design and design implies a designer.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | June 22, 2009 6:37 PM

Ryan, really read the old testament cover to cover. Then ask yourself, "Do I really want to worship the scumbag that is Yehweh?" He is one corrupt amoral dude.

Posted by: Ragutis | June 23, 2009 3:38 AM

Posted by: Owlmirror | June 23, 2009 2:36 AM

And really, if God is malevolent, you're in the same boat as I am, and as all the rest of humanity: You might be performing the worship he wants wrong (if he even wants worship) -- and he'll never tell you until after you die and it's too late.

Also, if God is malevolent, he's undeserving of worship. One would only do so out of sycophantic fear.

Posted by: RamblinDude | June 23, 2009 9:17 AM

But there is an answer that God himself provided: Jesus.
How thankful I am that Jesus willingly took upon himself the penalty for my sin and all the sins of those He came to save.

When I was a kid in church, there would often be time given during a service where members of the congregation would stand up and testify. One of the most anticipated and inspiring type of testimonials was the “prodigal son” confession. It’s when a person loses their faith in the lord, usually for a number of years, and then goes through a long dark period of soul searching. Sometimes, this included mindless debauchery, womanizing, drinking, drug use, and the more perverted the tale, the more guaranteed to evoke a rousing chorus of “Amen’s.” You doubt the existence of god; life is meaningless, you’re living in hell and you don’t even know it; you live only for yourself; yadda, yadda, yadda . . . and then you find Jesus! And for real this time! Preachers would give entire sermons on this theme, often with personal anecdotes.

The message was clear, and it was ingrained in everyone’s head from childhood: it’s normal to question and lose one’s faith (after all, we’re only human and far from perfect), but god never gives up on you, and is still speaking to you (if only you would hear), and then when you reach your breaking point and have totally fucked up your life by being willful— voilà!—you find yourself running forward to the alter to fall hard on your knees, and with tears streaming down your face, you confess your sins and return to Jesus’ loving arms. You realize that “it isn’t all about you” and that true happiness is only to be found in subservience to the will of your lord and master.

This is typical. It is a standard Christian formula. This is how this world-wide cult operates, and when you complete this routine, you go forth and try to beguile others to play this game, to join your group and be incessantly preoccupied with joy and redemption and salvation and good and evil and eternal life and forgiveness and hellfire and angels and devils. It’s a bit like immersing yourself in a maudlin version of Dungeons and Dragons. Except without the dragons.

I’m just saying is all.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space | June 23, 2009 10:00 AM

Owlmirror says: "And infinity cannot be diminished."

Ah, yes, but is it aleph0 or aleph1. In Quantum Electrodynamics, there's a procedure called renormalization where you take an expression that is divergent, isolate the divergent term, and replace it with what it SHOULD converge to based on the physics. Crazy, right? Yet you do this and you get predictions that agree with results to dozens of significant figures! They've developed very definite rules for the procedure. The infinities can only be logarithmically divergent--which is why a friend used to call it "physics in the limit of small infinity."

The thought is that the divergences are an artifact of some actual graininess to spacetime while we are approximating it as a continuum. Anyway, maybe God's infinite goodness, etc. is only logarithmically divergent.

For comparison, the divergence of this post is far greater than logarithmic.

Posted by: Watchman | June 23, 2009 10:35 AM

Owlmirror, stop using all that logic on Ryan. You'll break him, and that wouldn't be very nice.

Posted by: Knockgoats | June 23, 2009 12:10 PM

And infinity cannot be diminished - Owlmirror

For a numerical system in which this is possible, see the "surreal numbers" defined in On Numbers and Games by John Horton Conway, in which you can define quantities such as ω-1, ω/2, and the square root of ω (see wikipedia on surreal numbers). Great fun!

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | June 23, 2009 1:41 PM

Great fun!

Literally gave me a headache.

Posted by: Kseniya | June 23, 2009 11:22 PM

Ooh. I missed some much-needed adoration a few days ago.

I need to stop into this joint a little more frequently.

Posted by: thalarctos | June 24, 2009 1:40 AM

I need to stop into this joint a little more frequently.

I'll share my freshly-killed seal pup, if that will bring you back more often :)

Come for the carrion, stay for the adoration!

Posted by: Kseniya | June 24, 2009 1:57 AM

What can I say, my dear, to make it clear
I need you badly, badly, Madam Libraaaaaaarian...
Maaaaaaarian
If I stumbled and I busted my what-you-may-call-it
I could lie on your floor
'Till my body had turned to caaaaaaaaaarrion....
Madam Libraaaaaaarian.

Posted by: Wowbagger, OM | June 24, 2009 2:09 AM

Kseniya, have you gotten into the 'shrooms again?

Posted by: Kseniya | June 24, 2009 2:25 AM

Oh, come now, you know I don't do any of that mind-altering stuff!

I have seen "The Music Man" though. :-p

Posted by: thalarctos | June 24, 2009 10:39 AM

What is Kseniya doing? I think I am amused but I am also rather perplexed.

Pharyngula: come for the carrion, stay for the karaoke.

Posted by: Kseniya | June 25, 2009 12:42 AM

That's right.

(Where did everybody go?)

Posted by: Abe | August 20, 2009 4:43 PM

Free Kent Hovind! Please sign this petition, we have over 7,000 signatures so far!

Keep sending him your support and let God Bless him and his family through these hard times. Let's not let the government try to shut him up, let's stand for God and the good fight! Long live Kent Hovind!!

Posted by: Ryan | August 20, 2009 6:51 PM

God bless you!

Posted by: Shawn M. Kennedy | September 14, 2009 12:57 AM

"Let he who is without guilt throw a stone at himself"
Haven't the FEDs brainwashed society with their utter contempt and disregard for our Creator Adonai. Should we keep supporting a central government that can not show or account for any of the taxpayer's dollars. Where has my money gone? I want proof of where they say its going!! What has our country done for our "school system". Our children will claim to be wise and are constantly proven to be fools. Third world countries have a better education than AMERICANS.

When each state of the United States separates requesting individual sovereignty we will see who cries "Lord, Lord save us". Kent Hovind fought for Adonai. He is very intelligent and I feel none of us should pay taxes to an arrogant NAZI nation. Thats what our country has become. Remember the Boston tea party? How soon we forget our roots. Those who do not pray for Kent's freedom have already tried themslves in Adonai's court of law.

Freedom for Kent Hovind!!! Prayers for Kent Hovind!! A great man that answers to Adonai not UNCLE SAM.
Kent Hovind has saved souls and has opened the eyes of the American people to the ignorance of these so called "Educated People". He didn't need a degree to teach Gods word. I am an engineer and and have more knowledge than half of these fools that claim to have intellect. I have God's knowledge as given to me through prayer and the Bible. Wisdom is the proper application of God's knowledge not man's ignorance. Release Kent Hovind. The best teacher I have have ever had the pleasure to learn from.
May the Mercy and Grace of Adonai abound toward kent and may Yeshua free him from his bonds. Adonai is in charge and soon judgment will come to "America" for its war crimes and arrogance. Mark my words!!

Posted by: Owlmirror | September 14, 2009 1:19 AM

"Let he who is without guilt throw a stone at himself"

You know, that doesn't even make sense. What have you been smoking?

Haven't the FEDs brainwashed society with their utter contempt and disregard for our Creator Adonai.

Hm. No, not really.

Should we keep supporting a central government that can not show or account for every taxpayer's dollars.

I'm in favor of taxing the churches myself.

Where has my money gone.

Let me Wiki that for you...

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget

Our children claim to be wise and are constantly proven to be fools.

I blame the parents.

Third world countries have a better education than AMERICANS.

Third world countries like Sweden, Japan, and Canada?

When each state the United States separates requesting individual sovereignty we will see who cries "Lord Lord save us".

That doesn't make any sense either. I blame your parents.

Kent Hovind fought for Adonai.

The Hell he did. Kent Hovind fought for Mammon.

He is intelligent

He's a lying moron scumbucket.

and I feel none of us should pay taxes

I feel that you should go to jail for non-payment of taxes. Gosh, one of our feelings actually reflects the law of the land!

to an arrogant NAZI nation that our country has become.

Fortunately for you, the country you insult is still free, or you would be in trouble for seditious libel.

Remeber the Boston tea party? How soon we forget our roots.

Pfft. "Forget our roots", indeed.

The slogan was No taxation without representation. You have representatives. Feel free to write them, or run for office yourself, on a "Free Kent Hovind" platform.

If you fail, maybe it's Adonai's Will that Kent remain in jail.

Those who do not pray for Kent's freedom have already tried themslves in Adonai's court of law.

If Adonai wants for Kent to be free, he can send an angel to Kent's parole hearing.

Freedom for Kent Hovind!!!

Jail for Kent Hovind!

Prayers for Kent Hovind!!

Farts in the direction of Kent Hovind!

A great man that answers to Adonai not UNCLE SAM.

A great criminal who deserves to be in jail!

/SIWOTI

Posted by: Owlmirror | September 14, 2009 1:35 AM

Kent Hovind has saved souls and has opened the eyes of the American people to the ignorance of these so called "Educated People".

Kent Hovind has lied like a rug.

He didn't need a degree to teach Gods word.

Exactly. God's word is so vague that any fool can say anything they want about it. There's no standard whatsoever.

I am an engineer and and have more knowledge than half of these fools that claim to have intellect.

You're a brain-damaged moron who can barely compose coherent sentences.

I have God's knowledge as given to me through prayer and the Bible.

In other words, you think that make-believe is the same as reality, therefore you are delusional.

Wisdom is the proper application of God's knowledge not man's ignorance.

So in other words, you're doing it completely wrong.

Release Kent Hovind. The best teacher I have have ever had the pleasure to learn from.

My condolences to you that your teachers were so uniformly poor that a lying moron scumbucket was the best of them.

May the Mercy and Grace of Adonai abound toward kent and may Yeshua free him from his bonds.

He can't feed the starving, or heal the sick, but he's going to bend over backward for a lying moron scumbucket. How nice.

Adonai is in charge and soon judgment will come to "America" for its war crimes and arrogance. Mark my words!!

Blah blah blah blah blah.

/MOAR SIWOTI

Posted by: SC, OM | September 14, 2009 1:44 AM

"Let he who is without guilt throw a stone at himself"

This must be one of those Erudite Theologians we keep hearing about.

The Australian guiltless may have some luck with rock boomerangs...

Posted by: Gyeong Hwa Pak | September 14, 2009 1:53 AM

Why is Shawn M. Kennedy refering to Yahweh as Adonai and Jesus as Yeshua? Is he trying to impress us by using the various Hebrew names of his God?
예수, it is hard to read his post and not make a dumbfounded look on my face.

Posted by: John Morales | November 2, 2009 1:53 AM

David, your post is evidence that "Hovind's followers, however, are still treading the long and candy-sprinkled road of self-delusion."

A quick check of the Federal Bureau of Prisons shows:

Name: KENT E HOVIND

Register #: 06452-017

Age-Race-Sex: 56-White-M

Release Date: 08-11-2015

Location: EDGEFIELD FCI

He perhaps should've paid note to these wise words: "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's"

Posted by: Kel, OM | November 2, 2009 2:20 AM

So it seems to go if you enjoy the fact that as compulsive liar who makes a career lying about the field your employed in goes to jail, you must be bitter and not have a grasp on reality.

Why is it that people always defend the intellectually dishonest against those calling them out as such?

Posted by: nickname1 | November 15, 2009 5:44 AM

I went to a Christian school where in 7th grade they showed us some videos by Mr Kent Hovind. About a video a week for a few weeks (can't remember how many we saw).

I wanted to say that, EVEN AT THE AGE OF 13 AT A CHRISTIAN SCHOOL HAVING BEEN RAISED CHRISTIAN I was very skeptical of his "rational" arguments and, although I didn't know why then, he simply left a bad taste in my mouth, the feeling you would imagine having while watching propaganda.

After all these years I go to look him up, by chance remembering his name - of course by now I knew it was all rubbish - and was not too surprised to find out what Mr Hovind's been up to.

I am even more convinced that there are many people out there who are both very mentally unbalanced (batsh*t insane) and at the same time successfully function, generally unnoticed by society in general. However every once in a while one of them writes a book, stats an organization, or otherwise comes into the public eye. One of these people was Hovind.

I was surprised at some posts on here by intellectual, rational people, spending the time to dissect these insane arguments. Although the arguments deserve trashing, it seems unreasonable to think, no matter how rational and thorough the refutation, they will never convince insane people.

Posted by: randomid1 | November 15, 2009 11:44 PM

I double dog dare you to say that some of our leaders are not corrupt.

Although this has nothing to do with Hovind and is an early example of your soft logic... good! then you agree Hovind is corrupt.

If they don't believe in God or Creation, what in the world are they doing on this site

themaster's touch, You claim to have read the comments. Apparently only enough to realize it didn't fit inside all your beliefs, after which you immediately stopped. In fact, you were so hasty you failed to notice that "this site" is not about God and Creationism.

I agree with the blogger that said that they should have just fined him. Why jail

Why ask me? Look it up. At sentencing the judge said that he would receive jail time to instill in him some respect for the law and to serve as an example to others not to follow his example.

Respect he clearly lacks. He calls democracy evil, he says Jews don't run the "new world order" (but adds someone does and it's most likely them). He believes that the government will place computer chips in each major muscle group and it will be the "mark of the beast" (how even one part of that makes any sense is beyond me). He has further stated that the IRS has no more authority over him than a foreign government -- among equally ridiculous beliefs. The person who you so blindly make allowances for is factually insane.

This is not a sudden change, it has only become more public. Dr Mr Hovind has never been a sane or educated man, I encourage you to get over the initial shock of someone disagreeing with you and calmly examine some facts, although in my experience such rational behavior is very unlikely.

I teach American Government, have gotten A's & B's in college science and have watched Kent Hovind's DVD's. I have been a Spirit Filled Chrisitan for over 33 years and have a very close relationship with Jesus Christ. My family agrees with a lot of Mr. Hovind's teaching on creationism VS evolution; HOWEVER, as a Christian, I cannot agree with his evading taxes.

The fact that you mention not supporting law breaking at the end does not absolve you of the manure above it.

Also,
please reconcile the following:

and as long as the laws of this land do not go against God's law, we must obey them to obey God.

God, out of love for His children will allow them to be disciplined but not punished!

Because the law of the land includes provisions for punishment upon transgression, you say yourself that such punishment must be obeyed... if you are to obey God that is.

Also please take note of:

There are people we have voted into office who are making laws to go against the constitution everyday

This is fantastic evidence of soft logic. First you inconsistently (see above) appeal to God to show Hovind has been done wrong and now use this logic, which is not only an exaggeration, and a red haring argument, it also goes against your previous argument that laws should be obeyed so long as they do not violate the Bible not the constitution. However now you seem to have adopted the constitution as infallible in order to gain more logic manipulation by use of any patriotism you yourself feel (these arguments only blind yourself).

In fact, because of the disparaging comments made toward the USA by yourself and the near treasonous beliefs maintained by your idol, Mr Hovind, it calls into question your whole appeal to patriotism in the first place.

I believe all of our energy could be better put to use in making this country a better place to live.

In conclusion you change the subject entirely. This is not so incorrect as it is a clear representation of your "logical" process.

Your reasoning only further solidifies my belief that there are severely imbalanced people who pass as "normal" among society. Myself, a Christian at the age of 13, sat in a Christian classroom and watched his videos, presented as truth, among peers and leadership figures. I turned it all over in my mind again and again -- why do his arguments seem so poor. With clearly no scientific training himself, he used very basic arguments with very basic science terms to disprove scientists who had spent their entire careers evaluating and weighing evidence -- even to a Christian child this did not add up. I do not believe I'm special for this assessment. I believe it is the assessment of any sane person.

I never expect to convince anyone like yourself of anything ever. Either one day you will personally decide to educate yourself or not. I read all 400 some comments made (not sure why, but I did), I suggest you do the same before posting again. Logical rational people have already utterly annihilated the soft logic (and rancid bullshit) trotted out as ultimate truth.

I encourage you to read all 400 comments in their entirety, overcome the initial shock of "someone is disagreeing with me" and simply read for content and facts. If you do not, I fear you'll waste a lot of time posting more trash.

Posted by: Stanton | November 16, 2009 12:23 AM

So has this latest Hovind fanboi explained specifically where in the Bible it says it's okay to use one's faith in God to commit tax fraud?

Posted by: Ron Benjamin | November 19, 2009 1:21 PM

You will find, after listening to the teachings of Dr. Hovind, that most of what he reveals is true. You will want to watch "Expelled", a documentary by Ben Stein to get confirmation of this. In which you will see that some of the false scientific theories that Dr. Hovind exposes were used by the Nazis against the Jews in the Holocaust.

Evolution wasn't smart enough to leave explanations or explain its own signature, but God did! No thanks, I don't want to evolve into more ignorance and confusion.

By the way, I don't believe in tax evasion either, but our current IRS Czar was not sent to jail, now was he? Dr. Hovind wasn't mass killing people like Al Capone. So, what was the agenda of the courts? I did hear he's raising the IQ and conscience level of his fellow inmates. Hard to stop a good thing!!

Thanks for reading,

Ron Benjamin, MFP
Financial and Tax Consultant
Law Student

Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | November 19, 2009 1:35 PM

In which you will see that some of the false scientific theories that Dr. Hovind exposes were used by the Nazis against the Jews in the Holocaust.

Ahhh... another opportunity to use my favorite new phrase: PRATT.

Evolution wasn't smart enough to leave explanations or explain its own signature, but God did!

And you're so smart you think it's perfectly rational to assign attributes like "intelligence" to a theory... I'll warn you, this might make evolution angry... you wouldn't like evolution when it's angry.

Oh... by the way... please provide the evidence of god's "signature", if you would... something testable and observable if you wouldn't mind. Good luck with that.

Ron Benjamin, MFP Financial and Tax Consultant Law Student

also:
Intellectually Dishonest Moron
Liar for Jesus
Flamin Idjit

Posted by: apple | November 19, 2009 1:50 PM

Ron Benjamin, MFP Financial and Tax Consultant Law Student

If I may say so, this is such a lousy appeal to authority. Being a Financial consultant is completely irrelevant to understanding biology and biological evolution. Creationists toss this fallacy around as though it were some sort of "nail in the coffin" argument.

Posted by: apple | November 19, 2009 2:01 PM

Well I think that was more pointed at his "I don't believe in Tax Evasion" tempter tantrum.

I will be honest and tell you, that I don't understand that point of that web page.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | November 19, 2009 2:10 PM

I will be honest and tell you, that I don't understand that point of that web page.

Click the blue button.

That, as I like to refer to it, is the fail horn. I

It's a sound bite from an American Game show that is played when someone fails.

Which Ron has done and in spades.

I autoplay that in my head when I see something really faily. Like Ron's blabberings above.