I’ve just got too many bookmarks in my “blog this pile†this week, so, rather than give each the attention it deserves, I’ll just lump them altogether…
This one is just too funny, someone over at Fundies Say The Darndest Things has collected their top 100 list of the most nut-job, fundamentalist, crackpot religious comments, with some beauties like these:
One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted EVERYWHERE BY EVERYONE. Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn’t possible: UNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it.
Ummmm… How about… the sun?
or
If your original Hebrew disagrees with my original King James — your original Hebrew is wrong. If your original Hebrew agrees with my original King James, your original Hebrew is right.
That quote is, no doubt, about the longstanding theological debate about which came first, 17th century CE or the 4th century BCE. Many a theologian has spent his entire career pondering that question alone.
Or, it might just be a truly dipshit comment.
Moving along to the lighter side, over at Google Groups, there’s an article entitled, “Christians: Tips to Doing Battle With Evil Atheistsâ€, which reminds me of many a “discussion†I’ve had with Christian Fundamentalists back when I used to run the Crunchy Frog BBS. (Oh, so long ago!)
If only this article had been available to them back then, they’d have known important things like:
Don’t under-estimate their knowledge of the Bible. Many of them are more familiar with the Bible than the average Christian is. And they know all of the passages that will cause you a problem, and will not hesitate to challenge you with them.
or
Remember that while the Bible may be authoritative to you, like it is to me, to an atheist it is just an old book and has no more authority than the Iliad.
Then there’s the new movie, “Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed.†(Presumably, they mean, no intelligence will be allowed in the theatre while the movie is showing.) This is nut job Ben Stein’s crack at proving that Intelligent Design ought to be taught in schools alongside real science. PZ Myers, who blogs about this sort of thing over at Pharyngula, has been harping on their rear ends ever since the duped him into appearing in their movie under false pretenses.
In honor of Darwin Day yesterday, the movie’s blog site posted an editorial piece pointing out the injustice that Lincoln’s birthday was removed as a holiday and now we celebrate Darwin Day on February 12. (Lincoln and Darwin were born on the same day.) The injustice, they infer, is that Lincoln was the great emancipator and Darwin was just a racist who believed one race of man was superior to another and produced a theory of fatalistic pessimism.
Dr. Myers has produced an excellent rebuttal, which is worth reading in full. This sort of so-called argument is typical of the creationist loonies (and make no mistake, the Intelligent Design crowd are nothing but Creationists is Halloween lab-coat costumes.)
Finally, this weeks Skeptic e-newsletter has an excellent article that has nothing at all to do with creationism or religion. It’s just a solid grounding in reality about broadcast journalism, entitled “Journalist-Bites-Realityâ€.