I get email

It's the return of Andrew Rosenberg!

Hello Proffesor Myers,

I see that I have become somewhat of a celebrity amongst your endless supply of past-student minions on your forums. Its hard for me to reply to such a massive amount of information that was thrown back at me in the last 24 hours, but I will do my best.

First of all, you replied by asking me why I came to you with questions if I was "so intelligent" myself. I simply put my high school accomplishments down, not as a way to brag, but to try and show you that I was someone with the mental capacity to listen to your replies--not just another Fundamentalist Christian saying that you are the devil himself. That is unintelligent and was not my motive at all. I came to you, PZ Myers, because of your reputation as the greatest satirist and critic of intelligent design and creationism in general that I could find on the internet. Do you really blame me for asking a college proffesor, who is supposedly one of the greatest atheists (by seeing the amount of time you put into proclaiming yourself one), simple questions about our existience? I know I am 18, will probably look back at myself in 50 years and think "how naive was I," but to reply with such a harsh, public response to someone who asked simple questions just further shows what kind of person you really are. You didn't bother to listen to my questions, but simply came back with yet another witty response to boost your own self esteem. One of your big criticisms was that I am young. Really? Thats the best you have got? So now if someone is not your age they are not allowed to ponder the universe or ask questions? Thats a great argument, especially coming from someone whose proffesion is to promote learning amongst people my age.

I truly am not trying to insult you proffesor. And spelling mistakes aside, I had genuine questions for someone of your expertise. You also asked me why must you believe in my Christian God. Did I once bring up Jesus, the bible, or my God? No. I made a simple reference that I was raised as a Lutheran and practiced Christianity. My real question was on the topic of Creationism, rather than religeon. I was not trying to convert you--that is clearly not possible. I just wanted some answers to my questions. Creationism, which is my topic, is completely different than religeon. Religeon promotes a specific belief set or God. I was asking about a general creator sometime in the universe's existence. Which I still have no answer for. To think that the great PZ Myers, critic of creationism, finally receives a legitimate question from a genuine person and the only answer he can give is "Uhh. I'm sorry. I study Biology and Zebra Fish. I cannot help you so go talk to so-and-so or read this or that book."

I'm sorry proffesor, but that is lame. If you claim to be a godless critic of creationism, then for the love of standing up for what you believe in please at least give me an intelligent response. Don't pass it on to the next guy because you don't know. If thats the case, and your Biology cannot disprove a creator, then it is not right of you to call yourself a critic of creationism. Maybe you don't agree with intelligent design, but that is different than Creationism. For all we know, some supernatural being (who does not need to be created itself. That is the whole point of calling it supernatural) could have created matter and energy and just completely walked away, no intelligent design at all. That is the whole the point of my questions. I don't know and I wanted a response. Instead I was publicly put on display using the typcial tactics that you use to make your army of atheists laugh. You could have just sent me a private email saying "I don't know Andrew. I really don't have time for this." But you didn't.

And on the notion that you provided of chemicals assembling themselves randomly all the time in space, that still does not provide the answer to where matter itself came from. If things assemble themselves randomly, is not that supernatural in itself? Where are the building blocks of matter coming from?

I am sorry. I should really stop asking you questions. Because I know I will not receive any answer. You will continue to hide behind your aura of rudeness and bad jokes, and I will continue to get more adds from your blog friends on facebook. I guess I will learn from this experience. Seeing how you finished our conversation by threatening to yell at me should you ever come to Racine, I now know that I cannot expect civil answers from you. For I will only be blessed with more outbursts and obnoxious threats from your bullying, childish attitude (you are how many years my senior? 40?). Should you ever come to my town, I would be happy to go out for lunch and discuss our beliefs in a modern, civil way. I will now go back to my day and not waste another moment of my time viewing this pointless blog. I doubt you even have the pride to post this email on your blog again and I hope that in the future you exhibit more "teacher like" qualities towards someone asking you a question (opposed to the dictatorship you run online). Good luck this year at Morris.

Andrew Rosenberg

A few quick suggestions for Mr Rosenberg:

• Spell check. It's on your computer.

• Look up the First Rule of Holes.

• Reading comprehension is a very useful ability. I did not criticize you for being young; in fact, I told you that you could know more about physics than I do by reading a couple of books, and gave you links to them. I accused you of being lazy because you were demanding to be spoonfed.

• You asked why I was an atheist, and I told you. The burden of proof lies on you to provide evidence for your silly beliefs, not on me to explain why I don't believe in patently ridiculous ideas about Jewish zombies.

• Biology cannot disprove a creator. Physics cannot disprove a creator. We can nonetheless legitimately stand as critics of creationism because religion claims to have proof of a creator, yet can't provide even a scrap of evidence.

• Creationism is a religious belief. You are very confused if you think otherwise. God is a religious concept.

• Again, if you sincerely want to know where matter came from, go read a book. I gave you a list; I recommend Krauss's Atom, because it will tell you exactly what you want to know.

• Randomness is not supernatural, and there's more to the universe than randomness: there is also order. Order does not presuppose an intelligent agent.

• The only reason I promised to yell at you is that were so disappointed and so disparaging about the fact that I'm a "little man with a quiet voice." You're going to have to make up your mind about what you want.

• I recommend you learn some more student-like qualities if you are sincere about wanting to learn. As it is, you come across as a demanding brat with an unwarranted sense of entitlement.

I won't be wasting any more time on the demanding Mr Rosenberg. I suggest, since he is reading this, that if he's really honest in asking his questions, he try leaving them in a comment here, without the pushiness and the demands for privilege. There are people here who will even try to answer them nicely. Couple them with those whines and that insistence on the reasonableness of believing a magic man in the sky explains everything he doesn't understand, though, and he'll discover the true nature of rude replies.