Every time I talk to creationists, I'm always stunned at the depth of their misconceptions. There are always the same old boring arguments that are ably dismissed with a paragraph from the Index to Creationist Claims, but there are also occasions when they get, errm, creative, and unfortunately they always take your gape-mouthed I-can't-believe-you-are-so-stupid-that-you-said-that reaction as a triumphant vindication that they must be right.
Orac takes a right-wing idiot to task, and I don't need to jump in—he's done a fine job dismantling him—but I made the mistake of actually reading the ghastly blog article he's criticizing, and even worse, reading some of the comments there. The very first comment will make your jaw drop at the combination of sublime arrogance and impenetrable stupidity. There's a list of 7 objections to evolution, all wrong, but I'll spare you and show just the first.
If any two species chosen at random share a common ancestor, would that not imply that every living creature today was ultimately derived from one singular "Mother-Beast"? Just what did this creature look like (I imagine a bulbous sphere, fourteen stories in diameter, with various heads sticking out all over: cow, porcupine, squid, human, etc. Most are confused; none are happy.)
This person learned everything they needed to know about evolution from playing with Mr Potato Head at the age of 4, and has not progressed since. They have not bothered to read word one of any actual science text, but are still convinced that they can accurately summarize evolutionary theory. (It's also telling that one of their objections is that they are uncertain about whether biology argues that plants and animals are related; of course they are.)
Evolution is not a mix-and-match game of shuffling preformed body parts. The last common ancestor of all life on earth was a population of single-celled organisms, not some unlikely chimeric behemoth. The last common ancestor of all animals would have been a near microscopic, multicellular worm-like creature, or something even more bloblike, like Trichoplax, and would have had much in common with modern choanoflagellates, with relationships revealed by similar molecular pathways, not similar heads.
I would never have imagined someone coming up with an argument against evolution as stupid and fact-free as this "Mother-Beast" nonsense, but that's because my position is constrained by the evidence. We have to explain the world in terms of what we can see and measure…and what we have to work with are molecular patterns, fossils, and the observation of processes at work in the modern world. From a position of complete ignorance, you can invent anything—as that creationist thread demonstrates—and even better, can be pretentious, arrogant, and utterly refractory to any counterargument.
That's what we face: the arrogance of the ignorant.
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It is interesting that with apparently no knowledge of the science or the history of the science what-so-ever, that this ignorant individual was able to draw the obvious conclusion that if you take common ancestry back far enough there must have been a last common ancestor (or multi-cephalic ur-beast). It shows that this person has a hint of reasoning ability buried under misinformation, misunderstanding, and general obfustacation. I guess that's an encouraging thought. . . sort of.
I've always suspected that creationist/IDers/whatever get their ideas about early man from watching Flintstones reruns. I may have been giving them too much credit.
Interresting thing is that he imagines an All-in-one style Mother-Beast in #1, but in #7 says "The basic gist of the Theory of Evolution is that stuff came from earlier, simpler stuff".
.
consistent thought is not a priority for them I'd guess.
Mis* is not the prefix. Creationists and religions long ago passed making mistakes, misrepresentations and having misunderstandings about the universe and mankind. They are straight out lying about everything and it does the truth no justice to use such civil descriptions of a damning and vicious movement no matter the denomination or cult.
QUOTE: "...That's what we face: the arrogance of the ignorant."
So true. I actually chuckled at the "mother-beast" idea. I seriously have *never* heard that one before. It's creative, in a 50s cheap pulp fiction horror movie sort of way
But isn't that the point? Like the myriad religions out there, their own respective interpretations of how things came to be are completely subjective, just like everyone's vision of their god. In a bit of irony, the label "creationist" is accurate, in the sense that they create ideas from their subjective thoughts. This is all well and good for fictional writings and movies and such, but they are certainly unable to generate meaningful science from such a lack of objectivity.
But it really is sad to see people being sold on the whole anti-evolution scam. I think it is prudent to press creationists on how a world based on creationism solves any single problem humanity faces today. How would knowing and believing creationism solve the problem of terrorism? How would it solve economic downturns? How would it feed the poor? How would it educate our children? How would it prepare them for international competition in the global marketplace? How would it solve global warming?
The comment above reminds me of a judging stint at the CT state science fair about 15 years ago. There was a middle school student who had the idea of detecting the presence of iron in breakfast cereals using a magnet. It was an obviously sincere effort, unmoderated by parental or teacher input, and we gave it an honorable mention. Medieval science for sure, but with a bit of mentoring, the kid could be good. It wish I knew how he turned out.
Well, if the mother-beast reproduced by dividing, we might have something here. But who made the mother-beast? Thanks PZ for bringing such a novel creation story to my attention.
In response to Diego's comment, I agree that there's a kind of reasoning going on here, but a very odd failure to take account of obvious extant reproduction styles of complex organisms...very odd.
I would never have imagined someone coming up with an argument against creationists, as stupid and fact-free as this article. There are some stupid creationist, so all of them must be stupid. Congratulations, you are on the same level as they are! One could have written so many facts against them, but a so lame one...
Re: The Mother Beast.
It's actually a damn good question. Her hypothesised answer is absurd but if you could sit her down for a couple of semesters of genetics and molecular biology...
Bingo! Spontaneous brain implosion!
One less Creationist to argue with.
jeez, "Mr. Argument." Check the archives.
You might also be interested in the way Misha is misrepresenting the Sternberg case now.
Oh I'm sorry, is this a five minute argument, or the full half hour?
Curiously, I just dug up a fossil of the Mother-of-All-Beasts
behemoth in my backyard. It's complete with porcupine head, squid tentacles, whale blowhole, a lion's mane, and human fingers. Are you saying I should just bury it and pretend I never saw the thing, PZ? You're no fun!
(PS. Mr Argument: I think you need to read up on the meaning of "fact-free". PZ cited a fact about a particular creationist claim. He rebutted it because it's ridiculous. Your argument appears to be "not all creationist arguments are as stupid as this one." If you have a valid argument, feel free to actually bring it, and not keep it secret from interested readers. If you cannot do that, then you can kindly keep your derision to yourself, thank you.)
Mr. Argument... Vargas is that you??
It doesn't matter how smart or stupid a creationist is...
They deny Evolution. Think they know and that the scientists don't. It's arrogance.
I've gotten to the point that I tend to skip over most Cretinists posts, since they're all just the same century-old canards over and over again. I suppose I should be glad: I think I suffered, like 50 mCo worth of brain damage reading that quote, it was so stupid.
Sometimes I think Cretinists learned everything they know about evolution from Pokemon.
This guy's more like the reverse of Jade Cocoon. (I liked that game, but it's, you know, fantasy, not a scientific text.)
Oh, and Mr. Argument, there are these things on the Internets called "links." Here, they show up as blue, underlined text. Move your cursor over "Index to Creationist Claims" and click. There, you'll find plenty of fact-filled refutations of Creationist claims if you click on them. These things are supposed to be common knowledge.
Brilliant point Mr. Argument. Yeah PZ, why didn't you do exactly what the article you linked to did or do again exactly what you have done dozens of times already? HAH EVILUTIONISTS DEFEATED AGAIN!
Mr. Argument, an argument is not the same as taking a contradictory position.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3Ts1EUsNWY&search=monty%20python
There are 170 years of peer reviewed research concerning the validity of evolution. Whereas creationism has nothing but a heavilty rewritten 1,700 year old book, superstition, and fear. If creationism wants to be on an equal footing then the proponents of it need to provide evidence. Just because you want something to be true doesn't make it so, provide evidence.
Offer an acceptable alternative explanation to the fossil record, offer an acceptable alternative to speciation, offer fact based reasons why christian mythology is more valid than that of classical Greek or Norse mythology, and/or have Jehovah come give a public presentation on his works. These are moderate requests and should be easily attainable for one on the side of THE TRUTH.
Curse your mangey hide Steve LaBonne! I was just linking to that. :p
Dang messed up the html. Index to Creationist Claims
well as the creative spammer on this blog let me suggest that "the mother beast" is an archetypal fear of TIAMET, LEVIATHAN, the oruborus.
What do you think of Dr. Jeremy Narby's book "The Cosmic Snake"?
Or what do you think of Dr. Karl Pribram's claim that all of evolution is driven by an asymmetrical sine-wave?
That would line up with the "digital biology" revolution at M.I.T. based on professor emeritus Brian Goodwin's secret in his book "The Temporaral Order of Cells" 1963
The undertone frequencies create a significant increase in amplitude and the most efficient driver of asymmetrical nonlinear evolution is the sine-wave.
Blow that baby up and you get: Chaos -- the Mother Beast.
That's Dr. Jeremy Narby's literal argument. Visions are actual communication with the spiral DNA biophotons.
Perhaps this creationist is confusing geology and biology. Pangaea was sort of a giant ur-continent, after all, and both disciplines end in -ology, so it's easy enough to see how they could get confused.
RickD: Read a book about arguing techniques, on the first page you will find bad arguments used by politicians which are about the same used here: the one in the other party is stupid so what he has to say is also nonsense.
My argument was that this article is of no use, uses misleading techniques, nothing else.
"There are no limits to creationist stupidity" there are also no limits to non creationist stupidity, both are facts. This proves nothing.
Sorry from the author, I don't know him; it was my first (and last) visit to this page. I work in a scientific institute, and now what science is, but this article is lame, even if the goals which it argues for are true. That is my opinion you don't have to accept it of course. Sorry for disturbing the community.
is drew the resident kook?
I'm still trying to get past "2) Barring mummification or other forms of human intervention, to create a fossil, 99.9% of the time the creature must be BURIED ALIVE."!
Bronze Dog, I don't think that it was Pokemon that they get all of their knowledge of paleontology from. I blogged about this a while ago-they all seem to know about mammoths and dinosaurs but you never hear trilobites or stromatolites mentioned. Have they ever had a trilobite powering any modern looking appliances at the Flintstone house? Did Fred or Barney ever pick up a roundish bowling ball after finding it at the beach?
Well, according to the Straight Dope, looking for iron in an iron fortified cereal is not so crazy:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_091.html
Pardon me, Mr. Argument, I thought you were here to present a point.
Of course, the ridicule does have a point: It highlights the inability of Creationists to understand what they're objecting to. It may not be a typical case, but it should teach the typical cases to try actually researching evolution before they make carp up about it, like this guy did.
I doubt it'll work, though.
And yes, drew seems to be a new, local Kilik. I wouldn't worry too much about reading his stuff. I doubt he's here to argue.
Kooks are fun!
How many kooks does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
None. They use candles... the goverenment monitors us through lightbulbs!
That project with the food iron sounds nifty. I would have tried to encourage it too. Certainly beats all the endless playing music to plants and electrolysis "experiments" I remember.
My favorite quote from the linked article:
"Let me be more precise: You CANNOT question Evolution in the slightest in a peer-review, because you'll find yourself out of a peerage in three seconds flat if you do."
What? Wait...when did they start handing out scientific peerages? Does this mean we have to start addressing you as Duke Pharyngula? or the Honourable P.Z., Lord of the Morris Estates and keeper of the Flame of Darwin? or is Sir Myers sufficient?
Aw, come on, PZ. You know perfectly well that this is just a mangled vision of Behe's Ur-nucleus argument, that the "original created cell" had all of the DNA and exogenetic material necessary for all of the body parts and processes all of biology will ever want or need, and we've been losing information ever since as different parts of this Primordial Creation⢠have disappeared over the millenia. The poor fellow you're lambasting was just trying to dumb down the argument for us ignorant types.
Nah, even I can't believe that.
To steal from the comedian Ron White:"You can't fix stupid."
To "Mr Argument", I point out that there are several links in my rebuttal to ideas about choanoflagellates and trichoplax, which directly address the nature of the "mother-beast." which obviously is nothing like the nonsense the commenter made up.
I'm sorry, Smartie, but titles will not be tolerated on this leftie blog. The appropriate form of address used here is either "Citoyen/Citoyenne" or "Comrade". If you really want to make the new visitors from the Idiotarian Rottweiler have seizures, spit up, and die, we could refer to each other as "Rafiq."
I find it galling, to the point of tears, that these people are arrogant enough to assume they know everything, nevermind that I can get more, truthful information from a box of animal crackers.
I find it a sheer tragedy that Evolution doesn't seem to select against these Christofascist twittards.
PZ:
Nah, if they learned from Mr. Potato Head, they'd actually understand at a surprisingly deep intuitive level that you can generate a large combinatorial space by combining a small number of traits in different ways. But this person seems to think that the "common ancestor" of all Mr. Potato Heads had a separate head for each possible combination.
The reasoning evinced in this passage is closer to the kind that leads one to accuse somebody of stealing three of the gears from your ten speed bicycle because you can only count seven of them (taken from PKD's A Scanner Darkly--not sure if that scene is in the current film).
No one seems to have pointed out that this "argument" against evolution is an argument against ancestry itself. Did my parents each have five heads, one for each child they produced? Of course not, but then how could they have given rise to me?
The "ancestors must possess all traits of their descendants, fully developed" claim has got to be the most amazing absurdity I have ever heard creationists put forth. But I guess anything will do, if it advances the "cause". We're dealing with pathology here, folks, not reason. Keep that in mind.
You know what bothers me the most about that comments list? The use of self-disparagement is just one more tactic the right-wing has co-opted from the rest of us.
Hmmmm. That mutha-beast sounds awfully familiar. I either was married to it, or read about it some SF story. That "most are confused. None of them are happy." phrase is ringing bells...
Not medieval science at all. Iron fortification in cereals sometimes involves adding tiny iron filings to the cereal.
Hmmmm. That mutha-beast sounds awfully familiar. I either was married to it, or read about it some SF story. That "most are confused. None of them are happy." phrase is ringing bells...
My subconscious is pushing up a Far Side cartoon, with an object that has both cow and human heads, but I don't recall it clearly enough to remember the joke.
It's not so much that they're inconsistent, it's that they don't understand what the word "simple" means in the context of scientific reasoning. There's a basic fault in the way that the average Joe thinks about Occam's razor. No stripe of kook -- from the IDiots, to the UFOlogists, to the international conspiracy theorists, to wowos like Drew -- seems to grasp that the most pat answer is not the simplest answer. It's actually the most complicated.
Things like this are why logic and rhetoric should be required components of all high-school curricula. In common parlance, "Occam's razor" is nothing more than a content-free buzzword, completely divorced from its original, and still only truly accurate, formulation ("entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem").
It's called the Law of Parsimony, not the Law of Making Up Stupid Shit and Arbitrarily Calling It "Simple."
Yow. The creationist comments on that blog read like a Festival of the Ignorami.
One thing I never understand about the anti-evolutionists is how they manage to avoid considering the evidence of their own eyes, of daily life. I mean, pretty much everyone is aware that there are different (often remarkably different) breeds of dogs and cats, no? I'm also pretty sure that everyone knows that breeds result from being bred, right? Even the Christianists acknowledge this, as far as I know -- I haven't heard that, say, collies resulted from divine intervention.
Where's the big mental stretch in moving from seeing artifical selection and imagining natural selection? Are we supposed to consciously steer clear of it because that known agent of the anti-Christ, Darwin, noticed the same thing?
The problem with the word "simple" is that nobody has a good way to nail down what it means. Attempts to quantify it usually fail, for instance--does it have to do with entropy? Huh, well, a page full of all zeros is low entropy and clearly simple. A page full of ones and zeros determined by coin flips is also pretty "simple" in that it looks like any other such page, but it has high entropy. A page with a bitmap containing the design of the "Eludium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator" is almost certainly not simple, but it has entropy somewhere in between those extremes. So entropy is a lousy proxy for what we mean by "not simple." Anyone got a better idea for one?
Actually, what people usually mean by simple is "I think I understand it." This is nearly always wrong. Like the Raffi song says "You and I and everyone know how oats and beans and barley grow" not, for instance "...how the fast fourier transform works." But actually, the fast fourier transform is an algorithm that is breathtaking in its simplicity and uniformity, whereas despite what we think, we have barely scratched the surface when it comes to oats and beans and barley.
Could the creationist's mother-beast have been unconsciously inspired by Noah's Ark (a gigantic volume with lots of different heads sticking out)?
On the cereal, I think they add iron in the form of ferrous compounds in liquid form, and not all iron compounds are magnetic.
It's creative, in a 50s cheap pulp fiction horror movie sort of way
Yeah, my first thought was the finale of John Carpenter's The Thing.
And for those who didn't click through, objection number six is a doozy. Paraphrased, the commentor asks why corrective lenses are so widespread, as "evolution" should select against a possibly deleterious trait like poor eyesight. I guess there's no such thing as the relaxation of selection pressures in Creationist World.
'm sorry, Smartie, but titles will not be tolerated on this leftie blog. The appropriate form of address used here is either "Citoyen/Citoyenne" or "Comrade". If you really want to make the new visitors from the Idiotarian Rottweiler have seizures, spit up, and die, we could refer to each other as "Rafiq."
I think that we should all refer to each other as "Jack".
"...combination of sublime arrogance and impenetrable stupidity."
I like this; it's more economical than my "...someone spleen-rupturingly stupid making confident, even smug comments" from the other day:
http://scienceblogs.com/bushwells/2006/07/a_reminder_that_humans_are_af…
The YEC site I unearthed and discussed in that post is worth a look, provided you've taken your Phenergan today.
I mixed it up quite some time ago with the Anti-Idiotarian Wha's-His-Dog over something similar, and it quickly became clear that I was dealing with one more instance of an ignorant bloviator who substituted voluble canards and the mindless support of sycophantic troglocommenters for substantive discussion, a la Bill O'Reilly.
Why is it that these right-wing blogs are always so slow-loading and scroll-challenged? Talk about nystagmus. There's ample symbolism here. Maybe the preponderance of U.S. flags, bald eagles and military personnel filling the headers and lining the sidebars chokes the whole operation.
First comment:My hermetically-sealed Christian mind just has to know...
An alternative nuclear waste storage solution: inside fundie heads!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=EtOoQFa5ug8
I wonder if senator ted stevens is a creationist. hehe.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6iMDRVzMfEM&mode=related&search=
Dan:
Sorry, but I simply can't imagine someone who seriously thinks that a Mother-Beast thing packed with all organs, all body parts of all future creatures is an "earlier, simpler stuff"
It is too much for the tiny speck of brain matter I have...
I just pulled a great Stephen Colbert audio quote: "The problem with evidence is that it doesn't always support your opinion." hehehe
Actually, what I find interesting about the comments over there is that when you take away the bad science, they look a lot like our side's. Take this one, for instance:
That really does seem strikingly similar to some of the things we say in the other direction. Which is why I think we need to be careful to stay away from invective, and stick with the science. [No, I'm not accusing anyone, and Prof. Myers certainly does present the science. I'm just saying that it's easy to fall into arguments that go nowhere.]
But, you know, I do like the idea of a Mother Beast; it sounds pretty cool!
Re. detecting iron in cereal, I saw a nifty demo of this on Discovery Channel Canada, by their regular contributer Alan Nursall. You can watch the video here.
"well as the creative spammer on this blog": drew hempel
"creative spammer" aka troll. At least you have the guts to admit it, Drew. Welcome to my killfile.
That mutha-beast sounds awfully familiar.
Shub-Niggurath.
Nothing simpler than an asymmetrical sine-wave -- that's what Kepler thought and that's what Sir Karl Popper thought as well.
Sir Karl Popper stated that Kepler forsaw Schrodinger's wave function and Sir Karl Popper stated that
"resonance governs science."
That's from Routledge 1999 -- so it hasn't trickled down into the "pop science" blog scene yet.
Any university library will have that information.
drew hempel, MA
Welcome to the Twilight Zone.
What? Personal accountability + government isn't enough?
I don't need anything more to do a good deed: The first will suffice for me. Just the other day, while I was shopping for groceries, I performed a few small examples:
1) Moved a shopping cart some jerk put in the exact center of a parking space.
2) Moved some boxes of frozen chicken from waaaay in the back of the freezer thing up to the front, where the next person could see and retrieve them.
3) Put my shopping cart in the nearest (but still distant) storage thing.
I don't think anyone saw me doing it. If these nuts were right about us eeeeeville-utionists, I wouldn't have bothered. I don't need some threatening deity watching over my back to have generousity in my heart.
And, of course, I'm spending a share of my time fighting back the tides of unreason. I'm glad I was raised to have an arguably irrational love of doing good.
Okay, I'm done gushing.
Yeah, well that's all good. But have you saved any souls for Jesus? I mean come on. Keeping things tidy and organized here on Earth is all good, but this is just a rehersal for our entry to heaven.
Bronze Dog, I wonder if the Iron Law of Right-Wing Freudian Projection isn't striking again. One of the significant facts about the 'Christian' and other right in the US today is just how fast they're dropping any and all traditional values. From budget discipline to respect for veterans to any regard for the truth, these guys act like they think that God is been paid off.
Just wanted to feel what it's like speaking from the other side. Really wierd.
So fun. All people who believe in evolution are "libbies" and "hippies," they are saying. I always love how these people's opinions come as a set, even though the colors often clash... There are two kinds of people, and either you are exactly like them and hold exactly the same opinions as they do, or you are the one other type of person... the "libbie" who is wrong about everything.
And I just knew there would be a comment where someone complained that "scientists think they know everything" and then goes on to state as fact that "God" obviously created the universe. I love it when they do that.
I used to respond to that with "I'm not the one claiming to have all the answers - YOU are," but they never seemed to get my point.
I'd like you to comment on this:
http://www.christiananswers.net/dinosaurs/j-age1.html
"Many dinosaur remains are still not completely turned in to rock. More than half of the fossil is still original bone, not stone! Some even have chemicals from the living animals (proteins and amino acids)! Some fish fossils still have a fishy smell when first uncovered."
Is that possible? Heh.
Then they have their own Great Alaskan Dinosaur Adventure and claim to have found fresh dinosaur bones. http://www.christiananswers.net/dinosaurs/alaska/home.html
Do they expect to be taken seriously after naming their expeditions like Disney rides?
...all of evolution is driven by an asymmetrical sine-wave?
*splutter* Does that even mean anything?
It's entertaining, though.
Demiurge : just an other old canard http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dinosaur/blood.html
Nah. If anything, sounds to me more like Abhoth.
Unless you're talking about the version of Shub-Niggurath presented in the first printing of the first-edition Dungeons & Dragons book Deities and Demigods. But that was really more or less just Abhoth given Shub-Niggurath's name; it didn't match Shub-Niggurath as described in Lovecraft's books.
Uh...yeah, I'm a geek. Sorry. I'll shut up now.
Popper, Karl Raimund, Sir, 1902-1994.
Title All life is problem solving / Karl Popper ; translated by Patrick Camiller.
Published London ; New York : Routledge, 1999.
Other Title Alles Leben ist Problemlösen. English
Contents 5. Towards an evolutionary theory of knowledge. 6. Kepler's metaphysics of the solar system and his empirical criticism
Panpsychic Materialism TRANSCENDS the I.D. versus Darwin debate -- and was supported by Sir Karl Popper, a master of Occam's Razor.
I fail to see any transcendence in whatever drew's talking about. Except for maybe transcending English and meaningful statements.
"Rafiq". My first arabic, cool! I always try to learn "Hi!", "Thanks!" and "Cheers!" first. But perhaps "Cheers!" were out of the picture anyway.
The motherbeastie sounds like the mothertree in Burroughs' Barsoom novels.
Parsimony in science isn't simple - it's meaning is various and context dependent. Theories themselves are supposed to be most parsimonious in some sense, and applications are allowed to bloviate as they need.
The entities physicists seem to want to minimise most aren't the number of proposed objects, but the number of free parameters. Perhaps the desire to fix parameters is due to a wish to avoid chance and anthropic coincidence, perhaps it is because it has been a successful strategy. It is used together with goodness of fit to try to select the best candidate theory in cosmology explaining CMBR for example.
The entities biologists seem to want to minimise are instead the number of inferred changes in common descent trees, for example in cladistics phylogenetic trees. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_parsimony ).
hehe. someone's gone off medication.
Regarding dino soft tissue - there's been one interesting case of soft tissue being recovered from a T. rex bone.
Here's a brief post with some nice pictures:
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=103152
And some comments by our esteemed host:
http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/creationists_lie_about_the_…
Bronze Dog: obviously, you did those "altruistic" things in a foolish attempt to _trick_God_. Shame on you! ;-)
I think that we should all refer to each other as "Bruce".
Rule #6: there is no rule #6.
On the other hand, as much as I ordinarily hate this explanation, maybe the "mother beast" person was just playing too many video games. Their argument is DOOMED :P
Not "Jack", not "Bruce". What do those names have to do with SCIENCE?
Obviously, it should be "Steve".
Piffle. The rule is that you are to be referred to by your first and middle initial only. That's how we do things on Pharyngula, you know.
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/2952_the_tshirt_2_16_2003.asp
YES! Over 600 scientists named Steve agree!
I'm not a scientist however.
These hilarious collections of non-thinking clangers at least generate a lot of interesting discussion, and provide fascinating insights into how naive creationist minds work: e.g. the bogus essentialism inherent within their "kinds" psuedo-arguments.
Two previous quotes ...
"That's what we face: the arrogance of the ignorant."
and
"There are 170 years of peer reviewed research concerning the validity of evolution. Whereas creationism has nothing but a heavilty rewritten 1,700 year old book, superstition, and fear."
Not just the ignorant, because ignorance is cureable - stupidity isn't cureable - except by death - usually, unfortunately of some innocent victim ....
...superstition and fear.
Fear of the unknown, and, the fear and blackmail perpetrated by the religious.
All religions are blackmail, remember?
Dan: (re: simple) Or, as Bunge says in The Myth of Simplicity, simplicity is not simple.
Barry: Ironic, given that Luther's grievances included the selling of indulgences ...
I don't think this kind of creationist argument deserves the honor of a reply. Only people being completley dishonest with themselves will not recognize that evolution proposes nothing like this, but more of a step by step acquisition of new traits.
This is an example of an argument so bad it CAN be tolerated. It will only preach to the choir, to people who are already willing to be dishonest to themselves. It deserves no respect, and therefore, no action at all.
OT.
Comrade Jack Bruce... wasn't he in Cream?
The Russians have that cool nomenclature where you use the first name followed by "son of" (ovich) or "daughter of" (ova). I quite like that.
My dad's name actually was Jack. A common nickname for John. In Russian, Ivan. Fnxtr Ivanovich. I like it. I like it a lot.
Yup, those names are called "patronymics" and are used as a form of address between the casual (first name only) and the hyperformal (in which the family name is used). There's not native titular "Mr." or "Mrs." form of address in Russian, and patronymics fill that gap.
S prcs. :) thnks