I love blog carnivals.
In fact, I love 'em so much that I hosted four of them took one over when its creator decided to retire from blogging.
But here's one that PZ, RPM, Afarensis, and all of the other ScienceBloggers inclined to defend evolution will want to wander over to see just how inane some creationist arguments can be. Indeed, the Pooflinger has already targeted them for some particularly ripe debunkings:
Yesterday marked the launch of an entirely new carnival over at Radaractive called, amusingly, the "Darwin Is Dead" carnival. Oh yeah: and it began with a whopping five (count 'em: one... two...) submissions of such high quality poo target material that I feel I might spend quite a bit of time over there in the coming days.
I can't wait.
My favorite entry? This one, of course, right there on a blog with a picture of Jesus holding a rifle. It even uses the some of the most easily debunked creationist canards as serious arguments, canards such as the "carbon dating is inaccurate fallacy" (in response to a TalkOrigins piece that points out that the age of the earth has been estimated by Pb/Pb isochron age yet) and the "evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics" canard. Of course, this article mines one of the creationists' favorites, the "evolution is a religion" territory.
Heck, maybe some of us should submit articles to the next carnival.
Wow! Some of those people apparently do not know how to read! The one guy keeps arguing C-14 is used to date the age of the earth even in spite of linking to a site the proves him wrong...apparently doesn't understand that C-14 is completely different from say Ar/Ar or Pb/Pb dating. Totally amazing...
At first I thought that site had to be a spoof, it was so bad. As well as the 2nd Law nonsense again, he quotes:
- And yet there is no such law.
How embarrasing for them. So bad it's not worth the effort to even start to debunk it.
Why is it, pray tell, that creationists bow down before certain "laws"? They love the second law of thermodynamics, although they do not understand it. They religiously cite the biogenetic law ("life comes only from life") although it doesn't even exist (as Skeptico just pointed out). I offer creationists the "first law of anti-science": Anything that conflicts with my narrow interpretation of the Bible is false. And the "second law of anti-science": My misinterpretation of a valid scientific principle is superior to any rival explanation by an actual scientist. If there were a third law, it would be something like this: A clueless creationist tends to remain clueless.
If it looks like a canard, walks like a canard, and quacks like a canard...
Does anyone else think Jesus looks like sort of a wimp with that little Marlin? Shouldn't he be, like, carrying... oh, I don't know, a bazooka or a big freaking sword? Just a thought...
The part where it said
"Greg, from Rhymes with Right" I instantly thought - Shite.
I'm on a business trip and was looking for something funny to read.
That hit the spot. Highboy surely must be that....high.
Why is it, pray tell, that creationists bow down before certain "laws"? They love the second law of thermodynamics, although they do not understand it.
I think I figured out the reason. When they read the second law of thermodynamics, what they see is the antique theological principle of causal adequacy, as defined in this article on Hume, who didn't believe it: "No cause can produce or give rise to perfections or excellences that it does not itself possess." Entropy is just read as the opposite of perfection or excellence, and its actual technical definition as a constant times the log of the number of microstates is ignored.
(In the process of writing this comment, I Googled "causal adequacy", and--I swear I did not know this beforehand--the first godzillion hits that came up all had to do with modern creationists using the term as if it were itself a scientific principle. Dembski apparently loves the phrase. I guess I'm right, then.)
...Well, OK, I'm exaggerating; a lot of them seem to be using the phrase in some social-science context instead...
You know, that picture of Jesus made me wonder if he was going hunting with Dick Cheney.
I just posted this comment:
Seemed like the only sort of thing worth bothering to post.
I'm no longer into bashing people over the head with science. When i was younger, i met people who bashed me over the head with bits of the Bible. Never mind i was already a Christian. Never mind i knew the Bible better than they apparently did. They had memorized their bits, and seemed to need an outlet for it. Its very hard to come up with a reply while unprepared for anything but waiting for a train.
For a bit, i wrote down references, researched them, and memorized reasoned replies. These people fall apart when you quote context at them from memory. They seriously believe they are outclassed, when all you did is research their very narrow set of bits. Even if it isn't the same people. There just aren't that many topics they know.
Then, i went for exhaustion. It turns out that i could talk for hours on nearly any subject at the time. I was proud of causing a Jehovah's Witness pair to walk away from me.
These days i don't have patience to talk to someone for hours. If they aren't open to new ideas, if they don't understand simple logic, if they have nothing to add to the conversation, i either move the conversation to something in common, or look for someone else. And it turns out, i do know someone who is very diligent and good at CCD based astrophotography, who is also an ID proponent. We've already discussed ID to death, and its time to talk about subjects of mutual interest.
But the picture is, after all, very funny.
I found it enlightening that, in the comments, anyone who argued with the author's "logic" was described a leftist who embraced tolerance. Perhaps that is apropos of nothing, but I found it interesting that reason is considered the sole provence of the political left now by at least some creationists.