Refuting Creationism - How Mediterranean Biodiversity Evolved - 5.5 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Marine sediments hosting abundant fossils dated in the Late Miocene, from about 8 to 7 million years ago.

Credit: Konstantina Agiadi

Fig. 2: Reconstruction of a marine landscape of the Early Pliocene (5.1-4.5 million years ago)

Art © Alberto Gennari.

How a salt giant radically reshaped Mediterranean marine biodiversity

Because they were so ignorant of the history of their part of the world, the origin myths made up by the Bronze Age authors of Genesis, told us nothing about the rich history of the sea that was almost on their doorstep, and the one in which they set daft tales like that of Jonah - the Mediterranean.

The Mediterranean Sea (the sea in the Middle of the Earth to the Romans) was central to history of the Middle East, Western Europe and North Africa but few people then could have been aware that the sea itself is a mere (on a geological timescale) 5.5 million years old in its present form.

It was formed firstly by the African plate pushing north towards Eurasia causing a water-filled depression to form that was originally connected to the Atlantic Ocean, but, as Africa pushed further north, causing mountains in modern-day Morocco and Spain to rise up, the Mediterranean became isolated and, with low inflow and high temperatures, what had been the Mediterranean Sea became a salt-filled depression, known to geologists as the Messinian Salinity Crisis (MSC) when the sea dried up leaving a thick deposit of salt and gypsum and of course exterminating just about all marine life.

Recreation of one of the proposed models for how the Mediterranean was isolated by the sinking of a lithospheric plate into the Earth’s mantle (approx. 6 million years ago) and how dry climate then lead to the desiccation of that sea during the Messinian Salinity Crisis (approx. 5.5 million years ago), until 5.33 million years ago, the level of the Atlantic exceeded that of the Gibraltar land bridge and triggered a fast refill.

© CSIC - Daniel García-Castellanos.

This was ended abruptly when the Atlantic Ocean broke through at the Western end in what is now the Straits of Gibraltar when the Mediterranean basin refilled extremely quickly, possible in a few months to two years.

Trumpanzee News - How QAnon Lured Gullible People Into The Trumpanzee Cult

How people get sucked into misinformation rabbit holes – and how to get them out

From our perspective in Europe, it seems almost incomprehensible how the political situation in the USA has degenerated to such an extent that Donald Trump may be elected as POTUS again, despite the incompetence, buffoonery and criminality that characterised his earlier term.

What was once the 'shining beacon on the hill', which set the rest of the world an example (albeit more than a little idealised) of how democracy operated to produce a prosperous, egalitarian society where aspiration and enterprise were rewarded and the economy worked for all, has degenerated to warring factions, full of mutual hate and fueled by the most ludicrous and lurid conspiracy theories.

A significant number of adult Americans now believe there is a 'deep state' run by senior Democrats, that operates as a Satanic paedophile cult and that the serial adulterer, insurrectionist and crook, Donald Trump, was personally appointed by God as their saviour, because God obviously takes a keen interest in US politics and would pick someone with a narcissistic personality disorder to do his work for him. This god also promised to ensure Trump was reelected 2020, so the fact that he was kicked out of office must have been due to the same deep state/Democrat conspiracy to steal the election - and then hide the evidence where even God can't guide Trump's supporters to it.

And of course, the serious criminal charges Trump is now facing in a number of different US courts, are all part of that conspiracy, as are the judges, prosecutors and prosecution witnesses, so the more damming the evidence and the more charges he faces are evidence of the conspiracy, not evidence of Trump's guilt and unsuitability to hold elected office, let alone be in charge of a nuclear arsenal and the US public finances, and able to appoint senior members of the judiciary.

The only real conspiracy in the USA is that run by the shadowy and rabidly far-right, pro-Trump QAnon, so how did the QAnon cult lure so many people down their particular paranoid rabbit hole to the extent that they are prepared to take up arms against their fellow countrymen and stage an attempted coup d'etat in the name of patriotism?

Creationism in Crisis - Why Science Works (And Creationism Fails) - Rethinking Shark Evolution

Sharks’ non-bony skeletons were thought to be the template before bony internal skeletons evolved, but a new fossil discovery suggests otherwise.

Minjinia turgenensis, evolved before sharks.

Ancient bony fish forces rethink of how sharks evolved | Imperial News | Imperial College London

On of the great strengths of science, apart from its rigorous fact-checking and peer-review process, is the way scientists constantly reassesses what they thought they knew and change their mind when the facts demand it.

Unlike creationism, there are no sacred truths or dogmas that must never be questioned in science, and the best way to make a name for yourself in science is to overthrow an established consensus, just as Einstein overthrew Newtonian physics and Darwin overthrew the teleological thinking that had dominated biological science.

Creationism, by contrast, have a form of 'Morton's Demon' that filters all information and only allows information that supports and reinforces creationism to enter their world view.

An example of science reassessing the evidence is this paper by an international group of scientists led by Dr. Martin D. Brazeau of the Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, Ascot, UK, and the Department of Earth Sciences, Natural History Museum, London, UK. It reassesses the evidence for the origin of sharks, which were assumed to have evolved from the cartilaginous fish that preceded the boney fish, and suggests that they may in fact originate in the bony fish and have since reverted to a cartilaginous skeleton.

Why Religious Fundamentalists Won't Change Their Minds

Everyone, even scientists are prone to trying to cling to cherished beliefs, but this is especially noticeable with people who are wedded to extremist cult beliefs such as Creationism, Fundamentalist religions, and/or wackadoodle conspiracy theories such as the belief that the 2020 US presidential election was 'stollen', COVID-19 is a hoax or that 9/11 was a 'inside job', as anyone who tries to engage these deluded fools in the social media will quickly discover.

Reinforce that natural resistance to change with the paranoid idea that there is a mind-reading, invisible sky man who will punish you with unimaginable horrors for eternity for even thinking of doing so, and you have the explanation for this intellectual cowardice and scientific bankruptcy.

In this article reproduced from The Conversation, reprinted under a Creative Commons license and reformatted for stylistic consistency, Professor Keith M. Bellizzi, Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences, University of Connecticut, USA, explains this basic aspect of human psychology. The original article can be read here.

Creationism's Demon

The Keeper at the Gate of Creationists' Perception

Creationism's Demon, or Morton's Demon to give it its correct name, was discovered by Glenn Morton, a former YEC, who, when he graduated as a geologist and began to do some serious scientific research, not only realised the data did not support the notion of a young Earth but actually falsified it. If he was going to earn his living as a professional geologist, he needed to abandon creationism and use real science.

Trying to understand how he had been deluding himself, he realised there was an explanation already in the form of a psychological devise, which was analogous to an idea invented by James Clark Maxwell in 1867 (Maxwell's Demon) to explain how the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics could theoretically be violated. This psychological devise he called Morton's Demon.

In Morton's own words (reproduced in full as a copyright condition):

Talibangelist News - And Right Round The Twist Goes Another Trumpanzee Loon

Ricky Skaggs, Talibangelical Trumpanzee

Famous Musician Ricky Skaggs Says the Election Was 'A Crime' and God Will Return Trump to Office | Right Wing Watch

The country singer, Ricky Skaggs appears to be the latest Talibangelical Trumpanzee to follow fruitloops like Robin Bullock, Steve Quayle, Rick Joyner, Jonny Enlow, Hank Kunneman, and Kat Kerr, round the twist into psychotic delusion. He is now claiming God talks to him and gives him important messages for the rest of us. This is a common phenomenon in the excessively religious and shows how the line between excessive religiosity and psychosis is so fine as to be invisible on occasion.

So, when Skaggs appeared on the "Elijah Streams" Talibangelical YouTube program last Tuesday, his audience heard him say:

Why Trumpanzees Go along with President-Reject Trump's Delusions

August Landmesser 1936. The lone dissenter from the Nazi cult.

Source: Wikipedia

Compelled to Conform: When Tribal Ties Trump Truth | Psychology Today

An article in Psychology Today, by Noam Shpancer Ph.D., explains very well the current strange phenomenon of dedicated Trumpanzees insisting, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary and the singular lack of evidence for it, that President-reject Trump actually won the 2020 presidential election.

The answer is that cult-think, i.e. the need to belong and conform to the pressure from a group, rather than have the courage to stand up and tell the truth, is the stronger motive for these weak and intellectually dishonest individuals. Conformity has greater value to them than the truth does. They will be admired more for conforming and not spreading doubt and dissent than they will be for defending the truth.

The Pattern-Recognising Ape

Mt Susitna. Looking west across Cook Inlet from Anchorage, Alaska, USA.

Photo: Bob Jones

If humans are good at anything we are good at recognising things.

In fact we are so good at it that we see lots of things that aren't really there. Take a good look at this picture. What do you see, other than a very beautiful vista of a low mountain range seen over water. It is a view of Mt Susitna seen from Anchorage, Alaska, USA but it is supposed to look like a familiar object from which it gets it's popular name.

Can you see it? Don't cheat but have a good go. What do you see when you look at that scene - other than the obvious?

Martyrdom And Mind Viruses

Martyrdom of St Stephen

One man's heroic martyr is another man's deluded fool or misguided idiot who probably deserved what he got.

I wrote yesterday about how the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris were the effects of mind control by viral memeplexes we call religion, which take control of human minds and convert them into machines for replicating not humans or human cultural ideas, but of the religion virus, just as a genetic virus can take control of a cell's DNA replicating mechanism and convert it to a machine for making viruses.

The characteristic of these viruses, memetic or genetic, is that the host has only a utilitarian value to the parasite and so is disposable once its usefulness has passed.

An especially powerful mechanism often used by the religion virus is to kill the host in such a manner as to impress the minds of its other carriers, or at least render them less susceptible to resistance. This is of course to turn the victim into a 'martyr' where their disposal can be presented as some great act of heroism rather than the act of an automaton being controlled by a mind virus. The notion of martyrdom is of course already present in the human meme pool in the form of

What A Waste Of A Life - Grovelling To God!

What's with this idea that somehow belief in gods gives your life a purpose? What is it that induces otherwise normal people - at least I'll assume they are in the absence of evidence to the contrary (though I concede that these tweets may indeed be that evidence) - to tell the world this sort of thing?

Believing Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast

In a recent blog, Francis Collins - The Language Of God Delusion I showed how Francis Collins needed to use double standards to maintain the compartmentalised thinking it takes to be both a devout Christian and a scientist, and how he uses the very same straw man fallacy he accuses others of using, albeit possibly subconsciously.

Another example of this can be found in his book "The Language Of God"

The major and inescapable flaw of Dawkins's claim that science demands atheism is that it goes beyond the evidence. If God is outside of nature, then science can neither prove nor disprove His existence. Atheism itself must therefore be considered a form of blind faith, in that it adopts a belief system that cannot be defended on the basis of pure reason.

What Collins ignores in this arguments is that, if God is outside of nature and so beyond the reach of science, this can only be because it cannot interact with nature in any way. If it can interact, then this interaction would be detectable by science and God would be part of nature, and so open to examination by scientific methods.

"There's no use in trying", said Alice: "One can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Lewis Carroll, Through a Looking Glass

Collins appears to hold to two mutually contradictory beliefs simultaneously:

1. God can interact with and influence nature and we can interact with and influence God.
2. God cannot interact with nature and we cannot interact with God.

This ability to hold opposite views simultaneously, and often with equal conviction, is a characteristic of delusional doublethink and compartmentalised thinking. It is a psychological strategy to enables religious people to cope with cognitive dissonance and behave like perfectly normal, rational adults, and yet still believe in the magic invisible friends their parents told them about when they were gullible and susceptible to indoctrination.

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How To Spot A Militant Secularist

With all the dire warnings now in the media on the dangers of militant secularists and the imminent threat they pose to the fabric of society, law and order and life on this planet as we know it, I thought I would produce a handy print-out-and-keep list to help people recognise these individuals and show why it's important to resist their perverted ways.

The first thing to remember is that most militant secularists try to look like perfectly ordinary people. They wear the same sorts of clothes and may not even look particularly scruffy. They may have a proper job, even a well-paid one. They may even live in your street and drive around in cars or use public transport just like normal people.

Are you sure your neighbours or even members of your family aren't militant secularists? What about aunts and uncles, even cousins or the mailman or school bus driver, even that friendly neighbourhood policeman? They do not have green or purple skin and very rarely have red eyes. In fact, in most respects they look just like you or me and are not easy to pick out in a crowd - unless you know the signs.

It is important to remember that, just like socialists, they may look like perfectly respectable, ordinary people!

However, there are a few tell-tale signs that, try as they may, militant secularists are not able to keep hidden for long. If you learn these they can become fairly easy to spot even across a crowded room.

Yes Dear! Of Course Atheism Is A Religion.

One of the more bizarre accusations theists, and especially creationists, level at atheists is that atheism is a religion and requires faith.

It's almost as though they believe if only they can persuade people this is true it will somehow justify their religious faith whilst simultaneously disproving the atheist position that there is no evidence for any god and so no reason to believe in one.

One wonders if they've actually thought about this or if, as seems more likely, they are simply mindlessly parroting some charlatan or other who is obviously supplying them, probably for money, with the spurious rationalisations they crave to maintain their infantile belief in magic. These people don't seem able to work out that if they could discredit atheism by calling it a religion or saying you need faith to be one, they are also discrediting their own superstition.

They seem quite capable of holding two diametrically opposite views of religion and faith simultaneously: that religions and faith are false therefore atheism must be because it's a religion, etc., and that religion and faith is the only way to determine ultimate truth and of acquiring unquestionable knowledge and understanding of the world.

Quetalcoatl.

And of course, they are capable of holding diametrically opposite views simultaneously. Indeed, they pride themselves in their ability to do it. This is an essential mechanism for self-delusion. This is precisely why they are religious in the first place.

A whole industry has grown up supplying them with books and on-line articles (with the give-away 'donate' button conspicuously displayed) providing them with the arguments, lies, deceptions and mental techniques required to do so. Many people earn a very good living supplying this industry and assiduously maintaining through fear and misinformation, the ignorance upon which it depends.

So, how much 'faith' does it take to not believe in Zeus or Ra, or the thousands of other gods which different people at different times have believed in with just the same level of evidence as exists for the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Shinto or Hindu god or gods? How much of a religion is not believing in Wotan, or not believing in Quetzalcoatl?

The answer, of course, is none at all. It takes no more faith to not believe in Apollo or Horus than it takes to not believe in some god once believed in by Amazonian Indians or New Guinea Highlanders of whom no one alive now has ever heard.

It takes no more faith to not believe in those gods than to not believe in Yahweh, the god of an insignificant tribe of Bronze Age nomadic pastoralist marauders whose god just happened to be taken up by the ruling class of a declining Iron Age Roman Empire, who could equally well have adopted any other of the many mythical gods then on offer, leaving Yahweh to sink into the obscurity of myth, or maybe to be forgotten altogether, the way so may gods have done in the past.

Surely the charlatans who feed these unfortunate simpletons this pap can come up with something just a LITTLE more intelligent than "It takes too much faith to be an atheist!", and "Atheism is a religion!" for them to trumpet under the sad delusion that it shows deep wisdom instead of revealing their shallow stupidity.

Surely they can think up some slogan which makes their victims look just a little more intelligent and just slightly less thick than two short planks. Or can't they? Maybe that would be asking the impossible.

---

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This book explains why faith is a fallacy and serves no useful purpose other than providing an excuse for pretending to know things that are unknown. It also explains how losing faith liberates former sufferers from fear, delusion and the control of others, freeing them to see the world in a different light, to recognise the injustices that religions cause and to accept people for who they are, not which group they happened to be born in. A society based on atheist, Humanist principles would be a less divided, more inclusive, more peaceful society and one more appreciative of the one opportunity that life gives us to enjoy and wonder at the world we live in.

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Religion's Misguided Missiles - Richard Dawkins - The Guardian - RichardDawkins.net

Written 4 days after 9/11.

Worth reading 10 years on.

Religion's Misguided Missiles - Richard Dawkins - The Guardian - RichardDawkins.net:

'via Blog this'

The Darwin Creationist Award.

Introducing The Darwin Creationist Award.

A Darwin Creationist award candidate is a tweet from a creationist so spectacularly stupid it reduces the influence of creationism in the cultural meme pool, so advancing human cultural evolution.

Please enter suitable candidates as a comment below, including:

Tweeter’s account name

Date and time

Full Tweet

I'll add them to the blog in due course.

The following are candidates so far:


1. 03-Jul-2011 22:09 @WhySoloWhy:
 Even satan know God is real #atheist


2. 04-July-2011 20:59 @laserlytinmyeye
@chummy4life @RosaRubicondior @freethinkgeek nne m ur on point...don't mind dem goofers...d big bang is still keeping dem alive....hahahaha


3. 27-June-2011 @05212011
OCTOBER 21, 2011 IS THE END OF THE WORLD/UNIVERSE!. GOD SHALL BRING EARTHQUAKE, RAPTURE, & ANNIHILATION FIRE...IN A SINGLE DAY!
GOD SAID SO!


4. @imhOme 
obviously evolution is garbage because rocks are not conscious,


5. 07-July-2011 08:53 @davidknight63
@FlyingFree333 So how come apes at the zoo dont become human? Maybe they have 2 be jungle apes. But wait, they ain't turn'in into man either


6. 08-July-2011 13:02 @CasReeves
If we only share our faith with #Christian people how will the #atheist, #Buddist, #Muslim, #Pagan, #Evolutionist, etc hear about #Jesus?


7. 08-July-2011 22:16 @WhySoloWhy
Dear #Atheist Explain The Baby in China that falled from an 10 Story BUILDING in a Woman Arm? Yes, the Baby is still ALIVE!


8. 09-July-2011 14:38 @MissRaissa
#Fact 95% of #Atheists on twitter are racists. #Atheism


9. 09-July-2011 17??:39 @PepperGOP
@RosaRubicondior So you think the earth spontaneously combusted? Let's just start at the beginning. This is my feeble attempt to understand


10. 10-July-2011 15:47 @ChicoZoe
Fuck u and I hope u watch ur mom and grandma get raped today u piece of shit CRACKA RT @DavetheAtheist @ChicoZoe ... http://tmi.me/cOAtv


11. 13-July-2011 06:25 @erichovind (In reply to my blog "Eric Hovind's Very Silly Questions")
@RosaRubicondior LOL, I can't stop Laughing! You call those answers? Wow, trying super hard to suppress the truth that you really know!


Although not strictly within rules, I feel this example from WND.com justifies a special award all of it's own:

12. TESTING THE FAITH
Evangelist drowns trying to walk on water
Pastor reportedly told congregation he could repeat miracle of Jesus
Posted: August 30, 2006
6:14 pm Eastern

An evangelist who tried replicating Jesus' miracle of walking on water has reportedly drowned off the western coast of Africa.

Pastor Franck Kabele, 35, told his congregation he could repeat the biblical miracle, and he attempted it from a beach in Gabon's capital of Libreville.

"He told churchgoers he'd had a revelation that if he had enough faith, he could walk on water like Jesus," an eyewitness told the Glasgow Daily Record.

"He took his congregation to the beach saying he would walk across the Komo estuary, which takes 20 minutes by boat. He walked into the water, which soon passed over his head and he never came back."
© 2011 WND


13. @AngryUScivilian 16-July-2011 08:14 (Included for the sheer profundity of it's ignorant stupidity)
 #Atheist worship Allah and admit to wanting Christians dead, they are all for Sharia Law! #tcot


14. @simplyBNreal 1 July 2011 (Submitted by @GodsDontExist)
Why do atheist want proof there is a God when they can't prove there isn't a God?


15. 17-July-2011 14:52 @Weirdodo
@RosaRubicondior No, just looks like #Atheist are Muslim in disguise, trying to undermine Christianity, live in America, live by OUR rules!
[As my bio points out, I live in the UK]


16. @schicagos 18-July-2011 22:30
@GodsDontExist so one last time: Good and evil are distinguished by distinction. and youre a moron if you dont think so. #god #atheist


17. @Steveufc 22-July-2011 05:04
@RosaRubicondior You're a socialist piece of shit, go die the world doesn't need people like you, fucking athiest loser
[Note the inability to spell atheist making this an especially strong contender]


18. @schmoollala 20-July 2011 00:30
God only makes happy endings. If it's not happy it's not the end. If it is happy, just remember, you're gonna die really soon.
[So, live a miserable life if you want it to be a long one and never be happy or you're done for, eh?]


19. 22-July-2011 18:38 @AshtonBrit93
@RosaRubicondior you have fun burning in hell. Just because you're too stupid to believe the truth doesn't mean we care about your opinion.


20. 23-July-1845 @TheFloodsCame
@RosaRubicondior Well I guess I'm just not an idiot then. Sorry to disappoint you. Only an idiot would think that a universe creates itself.
[Has to be said though that this one had to be coached and this was the best it came up with after several abysmal efforts.]


21. 23-July-2011 22:03 @Thessaly
@RosaRubicondior Every scientific "fact" about the beginning of time is a theory cause no one saw #!@%*#. So I'll leave you to your atheism. Bless


22. 28-July-2011 21:00 @lauramzy
@RosaRubicondior i havent been judgmental. I'll defend my religion and beliefs from ignorants such as you.
[Oh! Sweet irony!]


23. @IslamNotMuslims 30-July-2011 21:00
@TroyBeast @RosaRubicondior Evidence?! Evidence doesn't prove anything, only suggests. I have proof!
[So, proof without evidence!]


24. @IslamNotMuslims 30-July-211 20:41
@RosaRubicondior "All the others"?! You silly little atheist! There's only One God! If there were more, they'd all be fighting!


25. 31-July-2011 10:03 @OhDengItsColy
Your gay for being athiest.
[Illiteracy and ignorance in so few words]


26. 31-July-2011 20:49 RT @kramerassman:
@RosaRubicondior cool lets see how far being a pentadactyls gets you when your burning in hell sinner #darwinhadsexwithmonkeys
[This in reply to my answer to his question about why humans have five fingers, which he apparently believes is a killer knock-down question for Atheism]


27. 05-August-2011 19:15 RT @American_NazBol
why is the hatred of God called "a theism"? because it requires more faith to be an atheist than a theist. #atheism


28. 09-August-2011 20:30 @gemimms
 @RosaRubicondior if atheists believed that all Christians should be put to death, would you worship them?#idiots

29. 20-Aug-2911 10:20 @jesslansdowne
 I teach my students that 9/11 was done by #atheists because true followers of "Allah" (the Muslim name for God) wouldnt kill people #atheism
[Note: the 'No True Scotsmen' fallacy, a lie and no moral qualms about blaming innocent people, all to defend religion.  And all in under 140 characters]



30. September 4th, 2011 at 11:33 PM @Frankfurt4
ATTN. all evolutionist think they came from rocks or dirt or dust or a hot steamy turd on the edge of a lake>LOL
[Note the unashamed display of crass ignorance so showing how Creationism thrives in the presence of the stupid arrogance which comes from proud ignorance].


31. 06 September 2011 21:37 @_nataleigh
I know he is the right one. Many of the other gods were just regular people who couldn't do any of the things God has done. There
(Submitted by @JoeUnseen)



32. 10 Sept 2011 04:47  @ITSDEEJAYBITCH
If your an #atheist go fuck your self you life is pointless and your dumb as hell.
[Illiteracy, condescension, impure thoughts  and hypocritical judgementalism all in one short sentence]


33. 19 Sep 2011 21:48  @shotglass49
@RosaRubicondior  perhaps if you studyed a little more U would know.  he knew U would doubt him, yet U where created..
[Illiteracy and condescension yet again]


34. 20 Sept 2011 01:02 @JeffreyHarkins
 @RosaRubicondior You know your an atheist when you kill your brother because he looks to much like a ape.
[Difficult to know where to start with this one.  Illiteracy, lies, ignorance and stupidity all in one. ]


35. (Undated) @yprimachenko
 @JoeUnseen Secondly... Every other religion their god died and has a grave... But when you go to Israel you will find His grave is empty...
(Submitted by Joe Unseen)


36. (Undated) @ImH0me
@JoeUnseen Believing stupidly w/out knowing, that ur Origin are Unconscious Dead Stones over Conscious GOD, is also an exercise of freewill.
(Submitted by Joe Unseen)


37. 26 Sep 2011 22:17  @That_0ne
 @LionheartOF Well, I hope you know Evolutionists control censorship in America so you honestly can't see good books on science.
(Submitted by @vinctee)
[A good example of one paranoid delusiona phobia, theophobia, giving rise to another paranoid delusion]


38. 26 Sep 2011 22:25 @Frankfurt4The common evolutionist probably has pictures of female monkeys playing in swamp water making poop castles. WE Still Dont Understand this
(Submitted by  @vinctee)

The Daft Things People Believe

Imagine. You're walking down Main Street one day and you bump into man who is talking to the people in the street as though they're a public meeting. Because you have nothing better to do you slip him some spare change for a drink and get into conversation with him.

He tells you he has come with a special message to the world. Everyone is in mortal danger and only by following him can they be saved.

You decide to humour him a little and ask him how he knows this and what makes him think he’s a messenger.

He tells you his mother was a virgin.

“Okay”, you think. “Let’s see where this is going”. You ask him about this mortal danger that we're all in.

“It's my father.” He explains. “He has something especially unpleasant prepared for you and only I can set you free from it."

“Er... I thought you said your mother was a virgin! How does that square with having a cruel and threatening father?"

“That’s not the point! My mother was a virgin because I’m pure so she mustT have been. Anyway, my father is invisible and doesn't live on Earth. He didn't make her pregnant in the normal way. She saw a man with wings and he told her she was pregnant."

"And another thing! My father isn't cruel. He’s only like that because he loves you. You wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for him!”

Dilemma: should you cross over to the other side of the street out of harm’s way, or should you stay with him to look after him until something can be done for him?

Extraordinary to think that, before we understood mental illness, people used to think this condition was caused by magical beings living inside you. A few people still think that way, apparently.

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Is There Anything More Bizarre Than Religion?

President of the National Academy of Fairy Tales

Imagine a world in which the President of a national Academy of Science issues a statement that the truth about the origin of the universe has been revealed to him. It DID originate as a singularity in a black hole from another universe and this is now the official position of the Academy.

Furthermore, since this is revealed truth, no evidence will be presented as none is needed. Revelation is enough and transcends any need for evidence. There will now be no further controversies in science since all remaining issues will be resolved by the President meditating on the matter and he will announce his revelations in due course.

Henceforth, all true scientists will meet in laboratories every Sunday morning and will declare their adherence to the Academy’s edicts on this and any other matter and will be told this week’s revelations. These meeting are to be conducted by heads of departments who will wear robes appropriate to their rank and dignity.  The audience will listen quietly and respectfully.  No discussion or disagreement is to be permitted.

Any disagreement will result in expulsion from the Academy and heretics will be forbidden from practicing science or associating with any scientists.

Furthermore, the President is now to press for an urgent meeting with senior politicians, legislators and judges to demand that he now be consulted on all matters of public policy which must receive his personal approval before becoming law.  All areas of government, including the military, policing, welfare and education are to be subject to oversight by the Academy.

What a truly bizarre world that would be.

In reality, of course, such a person would be swiftly removed from his post and, in a civilized society, would receive the psychiatric support and medication needed.

Why then does religion operate in just this way?

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The Doublethink of the God Delusion

Doublethink or the ability to simultaneously hold two mutually contradictory opinions.

This blog is a response to the challenge from @TweetMinistries on Twitter to comment on a blog by Gary Gutting, a philosophy teacher at the University of Notre Dame. The blog was a critique of, “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins.

Gutting's orginal blog may be read at: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/11/on-dawkinss-atheism-a-response/

Gutting starts off badly and shows he hasn't understood what he is criticising by summarising Dawkins as saying natural selection explains the complexity of the universe. Dawkins only ever argues that natural selection accounts for the diversity and complexity of life, not of the universe. However, this is not the central argument of Gutting’s case.

The central argument is that Dawkins failed to take into account the theological argument that God is a special case and can be regarded as irrational, therefore it should be exempt from arguments aimed at showing there is no rational basis for a belief in one.

Gutting correctly points out that Dawkins' argument is that a creator god would necessarily be more complex than the universe it created, therefore the argument for a god from complexity is unsatisfactory in that it simply introduces another unexplained layer of complexity, so not only failing to solve the problem but actually making it worse.

He then complains that Dawkins never addressed the fact that, “philosophers from Thomas Aquinas through contemporary thinkers have offered detailed discussions of the question that provide intelligent suggestions about how to think coherently about a simple substance that has the power and knowledge attributed to God”.

This neatly sidesteps the problem of the necessary knowledge and information required to create a universe with all its complexity. The definition of God is shifted dramatically away from an omniscient, omnipotent god capable of emotions such as love and anger, able to formulate morality, hand down laws of behaviour and to monitor and record our thoughts, and in whose image we were created, to something much easier to fit into the debate at hand. This god is now a simple substance, presumably having no complexity whatsoever, yet still has the “power and knowledge attributed to it”.

In other words, this god has complexity without having complexity. Yep! That IS irrational, but that’s not a problem either. You see there is always “the possibility that God is a necessary being (that is, a being that, by its very nature, must exist, no matter what). On this traditional view, God’s existence would be, so to speak, self-explanatory and so need no explanation...”, something Gutting also complains that Dawkins didn’t take into account.

What Gutting is complaining of here is that Dawkins should have accepted the workarounds for the difficult questions which theologians have assiduously devised to help them ignore them, and that he cheated by not allowing for them.

Yes indeed, Dawkins, in his argument that there was no rational explanation for a god did not take into account that there is an irrational explanation which should have been regarded as rational because it’s not fair to subject it to rational analysis (because it would fail that test).

Gutting then attempts to support this view by reference to Bertrand Russell’s point that we would require very strong evidence to believe that there is a teapot in orbit around the sun. Dawkins agrees with Russell that an extraordinary claim such as that requires an extraordinary level of supporting evidence to justify its acceptance.

He points out that, if astronauts had reported a teapot shaped object in orbit and satellite data had strongly suggested that there was indeed a teapot in orbit, this would be sufficient evidence to at least cause us to allow for the possibility of the teapot hypothesis being correct.

Gutting then tries to argue that there is indeed just such strong evidence to support the god hypothesis. Unfortunately the only evidence he has to offer is, “There are sensible people who report having had some kind of direct awareness of a divine being”, neglecting to point out that none have ever produced evidence of a reality, and, “there are competent philosophers who endorse arguments for God’s existence”, as though arguments from authority are a good as real evidence.

What Gutting is attempting to do here is to suggest that somehow, the subjective interpretations of perception and the opinions of philosophers should be place on an equal footing with scientific data and independent eye-witness accounts. This is, of course, nothing more than special pleading again. The god hypothesis will only work if you exempt it from the normal tests you apply to other hypotheses, therefore it should be granted these exemption without further justification.

Gutting reinforces this claim with, “But religious believers will plausibly reply that science is suited to discover only what is material (indeed, the best definition of “material” may be just “the sort of thing that science can discover”). They will also cite our experiences of our own conscious life (thoughts, feelings, desires, etc.) as excellent evidence for the existence of immaterial realities that cannot be fully understood by science”.

He has ignored the fact that neurophysiology is material and so consciousness, thoughts, feelings, etc, are not evidence of the immaterial at all (‘plausible’ seems to mean ‘convenient’ in this context). And there again is that plea of special status for the god hypothesis. Now the reason is that this god should be exempt from ALL tests of existence because it is now assumed to be immaterial and so beyond the reach of science.

In summary then, Gutting is arguing that Dawkins was wrong to argue that there is no rational basis for belief in a god because belief in god is irrational and Dawkins should have accepted that as er... rational.

Presumably this form of 'logic' is perfectly acceptable in theological circles.

We also have here yet another example of the special pleading which theologians use to defend their god hypothesis. Their little hypothesis wants to play with the big boys of science and compete on an equal footing, but it needs affirmative action and special assistance to get by. It’s not fair that it should have to take the same tests scientific hypotheses have to pass. It’s perfectly fair to claim it is as rational as scientific hypotheses even though it is irrational.

This compartmentalised doublethink is a perfect example of Dawkins’ God Delusion.

It's really rather sad that humans, in attempting to create a god, have only managed to create a seriously handicapped one.

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