Too stupid to be real

Well, from the department of the ineducable idiocy, I have found a blog which I don’t for one second think is a legit creationist / theist blog. I refuse to accept that anyone can be as stupid as this person, yet still be able to breathe unaided. Seriously. Still, it has given me a chance to rant about a few topics which have been annoying me lately.

The blog in question is called “Atheist Stooges” and, from that name alone, you just know it is going to be full of juicy idiocy. In this instance, the idiocy is so bizare I can only assume (hope?) that this is a wind up. Can people honestly hold to ideas like this and still function in society?

The blog has an article called “Enter the excavation” which really does hit a new nadir of nonsense. The basic crux of what is a long, wordy and badly written, post is that because you can not pin down a point in time which some human invented Atheism it must be sent by demons. What wonderful logic. There are so many fallacies in the post it would take months to unravel them all. This tends to happen when you take a false premise and try to make conclusions based on it though.

The opening paragraph sets the tone:

Do you know that if you make an endeavor to find out when and by whom atheism was authored you will not be able to find such information from any source? Not even the most “educated” atheists – particularly those associated with the most elite universities throughout the world can truthfully inform you when and by whom atheism originated. They can enlighten you as to who were its main perpetuators in different cultures; but they cannot identify its founder and when it actually originated. Continue reading

Diving headfirst into the dark side

The things I do for you….

Intrigued by the concept of Gog in the last post, I had to google gog. I found a truly scary websmite. Contender Ministries’ “the Coming War of Gog and Magog” basically sees the world in terms of two camps – Israel and the West vs the Muslim world.

(And guess which side He is supposed to be on? No prizes, sorry. Though someone offered the Contender websmite a million dollars if they could actually prove that the Sodom and Gomorrah bit in the Bible meant homosexuality. They scathed the email writer.) Continue reading

Rapturous

Spurred by a post here that mentioned that some Pat Robertson followers have the date of the Rapture pinned down to a very specific 13 Sept 2007, I thought it best to do a bit of emergency last minute research on the Internet.

Rapture? Some of you will immediately think of a 70s or 80s (?) record by Blondie or the name of a current band. Get with the programme. It means Armageddon, the Apocalypse, and lots of other really Bad Things..

OK, I’ve already confused you haven’t I – human extinction and rapture? Not easy to see an upside, is it? Don’t fret, there are loads of websites that can only see the end of humanity on earth as a Very Good Thing.

I’m following Google here, which is a broad measure of the top ranking sites on a given topic. Number One with a bullet is Rapture ready.com (I just can’t bring myself to post a link) Continue reading

We have them here too – Dubious English ID blog

The British Centre for Science Education: Revealed blog is crying out for a good metaphorical kicking.

It exists solely to attack the British Centre for Science Education (whatever that is) on the grounds that it’s basically an atheist plot.

The purpose of this blog is to examine the new group calling itself the “British Centre for Science Education”. We aim to shed light on the available facts concerning its membership, published statements and discussions. In doing so, we expect that you will come to the same conclusion as we have – that anybody taking it seriously needs to take another look.

The blogista’s personal statement says:

I am a graduate in both science (Masters) and theology (Bachelors), and a minister of Grace Church Belper, an evangelical Christian church in Derbyshire, United Kingdom

Well, I am surprised. An evangelical church? Who’d have expected this blog to have an evangelical agenda? That is almost as surprising as there being atheists in an organisation called the British Centre for Science Education. This world is truly full of new and surprising wonders every day. You would almost think there must be an all-knowing designer behind it all. 🙂

It’s hard to pick out any specific posts for your entertainment as the whole site oozes rage. This is mainly directed at the arch-atheists seen as in charge of the the BCSE, as the other members are assumed to be too naive to understand what they have signed up to.

I suspect that some of BCSE members are simply philosophically naive – they really do imagine that a hard materialist approach to science is “neutral” or “value free”.

(I really would be surprised if anyone with any epistemological understanding thought science – or any human endeavour – was “value free”. At the same time, it’s quite difficult to think of much in the realm of science where a “hard materialist approach” wouldn’t be the only option.)

I can only assume that the BCSE must be some organsiation that is seeking to support the teaching of evolution, otherwise how could it have stirred up this blog’s ire to the extent of devoting a whole blog to opposing it.

You wouldn’t think that standing up for rationalism in British science education would even be necessary, would you? It would be like having to set up an organisation to support the value of integrating exercise into PE lessons. Sadly, this blog suggests otherwise.

I’ll resist the temptation to quote any posts from the blog as I would be spoilt for choice. Look at it yourself if you have an obscure sense of humour and a very high boredom threshhold.

Uncommon Stupidity

It has been awhile since I have “braved” the well of stupidity, vitriol, hatred and confusion which is Uncommon Descent but today I had a look.

Wow.

The stupidity remains. An entertaining highlight was ““No thanks, I’ll take two fivers” — Dumping Darwin from British currency.” Now, this really is full of nonsense. I was planning to post some select highlights but there are too many to choose from!

Basically the post (by Dembski) is that we (the British) should drop Darwin from the £10 note. He starts off going on about how, with the new twenty, the Bank of England is changing the “famous person” on the note and continues:

This is a news-worthy cause for British Darwin-doubters, who should urge that Darwin be dumped from the 10-pound note whenever there is a new security-upgrade version, on grounds that he is the chief prophet of the materialist religion, and his presence on the 10-pound note is an inappropriate endorsement of that materialist religion and its related anti-religious ferment. Now, it’s true that Britain has no 1st Amendment, but still, Britain is trying to be multi-cultural. A part of the effort could include a long list of choice inflammatory quotes from the new anti-religion books currently out in the bookstores (and in Darwin’s own writings — see the previous post here at UD); the effort could point out that the government, by honoring Darwin, implicitly lends its prestige to their venom.

See what I mean? Gibberish at its best. Dumbski Dembski moves on to talking about Darwin being a racist (nonsense but the UDders seem to like it) and decides William Wilberforce would be a better contender (on the apparent advice of the Fabian Society but I can find no confirmation of that with the search engine there…). This leads to a fantastic line of woo:

Thus, this effort would also kick-off a comparison of what good has been brought to the world by these two people — Darwin vs. Wilberforce. Nazi Eugenics vs. the abolition of slavery. Is there really any contest?

Which brings up the reason I keep posting juicy bigotted and racist quotes by Darwin and his disciples here at UD. While the intellectual community may know them, the general public does not. Suppose the public decided that every time it accepted a “Darwin” (a 10-pound note) in payment or in change for a purchase, it was implicitly endorsing those terrible quotes? People would likely say, “No thanks, I’d rather have two fivers. I don’t take money that praises racists and bigots — and neither should you.”

In other words, promote a boycott of the Darwin 10-pound note because it promotes racism. It’s like putting Robert E. Lee on the ten-dollar bill because he was a great general, and ignoring the cause he served. This would work particularly well because the goal of the Fabians and other multiculturalists is to re-define Britain to be racially-inclusive. Thus there is a particular reason to highlight the racism of Darwin and get rid of him.

I really do think this is some one going off the deep end. Proponents of ID still have no science, evidence or data to support their ideas. The best they can aim for a rather pathetic attempt to paint a dead person in a bad light. They constantly fall foul of the fallacious idea that attacking a person (Darwin, Dawkins etc) is the same as attacking their ideas. In really, it wouldn’t matter if Darwin was racist (he wasn’t – at least not by the standards of his time), it wouldn’t even matter if what Darwin thought was the “Theory of Evolution” was wrong. Things have changed. Time has passed. Science has progressed and the theory of evolution has evolved.

Sadly, the IDers are trapped in a world which means not only are they incorrect but they are incapable of properly arguing their side, but can never give in.

You have to pity them, don’t you?

Department of the Stupid

Although online time is limited here today, I took a look a the ever entertaining Pharyngula and found a post about CreationWiki. Now, not being one to pass up something which has farce written all over it in big creationist-style letters, I just had to have a look.

Wow.

The CreationWiki is almost beyond belief. Reading the posts there is almost vomit inducing and I honestly hope it was put together by school children at best. It strikes me that the contributors have had a brushing acquaintance with science, decided they didn’t like it and have run in the total opposite direction. I am far from the best scientist in the world (if I was, I wouldn’t be blogging here..) but it takes, on average, less than 60 seconds to find critical faults in almost every one of the “wiki” entries on this site. It really is that bad. You have to check it out.

It’s blurb on the front page speaks volumes about what you can hope to expect from such an august website:

The CreationWiki is a free encyclopedia of creation science being assembled by the international creationist community. We encourage all creationists to get involved with the development of this valuable resource.

And yes this wiki does show how thin on the ground Creation Science is. They cite the crank Vox Day as if he is a credible source of knowledge. They jump at every chance to insult or denigrate Darwin – for some reason it is common for creationists to think the theory of evolution is in the exact same form as it was when Darwin first thought of it, that it may have evolved itself is beyond their ability to comprehend.

For some reason I am not fully sure of yet, while this site mangles Physics, Cosmology, Biology, Palaeontology (etc.), it seems to leave Chemistry largely unscathed. That is either because my chemistry is a lot worse than any other subject or maybe Creationists are just chemists in disguise….

Bad Bad Science

Although it only attracted minimal response here (one troll who never came back), the news about Cranky McKeith being told to stop calling herself a Doctor resulted in mountains of posts (281 last time I looked) on Ben Goldacres’ BadScience blog.

Now this is understandable as it was one of Ben’s regular readers who shopped McKeith to the ASA and resulted in bringing her Woo to the news. (Not to mention it is supported by a column in a national newspaper…)

That said, there are some striking similarities between the woo posted by the pro-McKeith (and her ilk) lobby on Badscience, the troll who stopped by here for a few seconds and the rest of the nonsense which pollutes the internet.

Take this, from badscience.net, as an example:

Ben, I think you will turn out to be just as arrogant as all the doctors that go before you. Gillian Mckeith, if nothing else, has encouraged people to realise that nutrition has a direct link to their quality of life and health. I would rather trust in good nutrition to prevent me from getting ill than an ever increasing supply of pharmeceutical drugs that cover up symptoms until they get worse. How many people do die each year from side effects of drug intervention? and what exactly was your Hippocratic oath? With all the incentives doctors get from pharmeceutical companies and the huge power those companies wield one could imagine that it was not really in a doctors best interests for a patient to get better. Humans are not machines, we are self-healing organisms and should be encouraged to remember this. Doctors are trained in body mechanics but not in healing or health and most of them are too arrogant to accept that there are other journeys to health.

I mean, that is good…. I am fairly sure it hits pretty much every logical fallacy I can think of.

The big claim goes along the lines of “if nothing else…” and this is used by apologetics of all flavour – ranging from the religious who say “if nothing else religion has made people happier” (or whatever) to the cranks who think the cruel and inhuman treatment of fat people doled out by McKeith is a GOODTHING™®. While it is (remotely) possible that McKeith has made people aware that nutrition is related to health (and if they needed McKeith to become aware of this, then I suspect letting them die would have been the kinder thing to do), this does not for one second excuse the nonsense, crackpottery and sheer, unadulterated bad science she wrapped her nonsense up in.

Creating weird rituals, falsifing science and tricking the public is not an “acceptable” means to an end.

The “how many people die each year” is fantastic. The appeal to fear there is brilliant because at its core, the sentence carries some truth. People do die of drug side effects. Side effects are called side effects for a reason. No one in their right mind thinks anything which works to treat an illness is 100% safe. The only possible reason McKeith’s recommendations were safe is because they do not do anything. This argument always pops up from the homeopathic woo-ers and it is tired and repetative at best.

This poor poster puts the nail in the coffin with “Doctors are trained in body mechanics but not in healing or health and most of them are too arrogant to accept that there are other journeys to health.” Well done.

Sometimes I despair that we allow people like this to have recourse to the NHS when they get sick and suddenly realise that crystals (or whatever nonsense they are in to) will not mend them.