you can hear einstein’s ghost weep…
Two of my favorite things about blogging are reading comments and talking to my readers, especially when it leads to a fun and engaging debate. However, some of the replies I get just beg for the kind of response that can only be done in a full blown post. Previously, it was a comment about alternative medicine that managed to cram virtually every pro-quackery cliché out there into a few sentences and an unintentionally ironic set of anti-science fallacies which epitomized most creationist arguments. And now comes this little tirade which would make the ghost of Albert Einstein’s jaw not just drop, but fall off its hinges if he were to come across it.
Before you proceed though, I’m probably obligated by some sort of law to notify you that we’re about to plunge into some of the most asinine commentary about science I’ve ever read. Unless your neurons can withstand the searing flames of stupid, you should look away now. Still reading? Well, you were warned…
How can you claim the Earth is not around 6000 years old? Don’t you know that: 1. time is relative 2. the speed of light is actually slowing down.
Actually, I’ve heard that a lot and from a physics standpoint, this is just meaningless babble if you pardon my bluntness. Yes, time is a relative concept. Absolutely correct. However, what’s meant by this notion is that we can’t use our arbitrary measurements of time and expect them to be perfectly consistent in every place across the universe because of the disturbances in time and space caused by gravity and the speed of moving stars, planets and other celestial objects. The only way you can compare the degree of relativity is by comparing the flow of time for two like objects, not to some random calendar. I’m also not sure why the speed of light would be slowing down and how, or what it has to do with the relative flow of time for different objects in space. Even if the Earth was traveling at a relativistic velocity (which it’s not), time would keep flowing the same way for us.
Now, having this not even wrong argument by itself would be bad enough. But it seems that Mr. Johnson just doesn’t do things halfway and while he’s at it, he’s also going to assemble some tattered Frankenstein of old, well worn apologetics and intelligent design arguments.
So it may seem utterly ridiculous to imagine there were countless billions of stars in the sky, when you could actually count them. Yet we NOW know the truth backs up a Biblical claim written 3,000 years ago… ie.. the stars in the sky number as much as the sand on the sea shore.
From the most pristine locations on the planet, you can see less than 8,500 stars in the night sky. But they’re pretty hard to count so in ancient times, many civilizations referred to the number of stars as countless. While the claim that the Bible somehow accurately predicts how many stars are out there is widely circulated by the apologetics establishment, it’s wrong in practice because we can only see so many of them from Earth, and because the quote in question, Jeremiah 33:22, says no such thing. Instead it reads…
I will make the descendants of David my servant and all the Levites who minister before me as countless as the stars of the sky and as measureless as the sand on the seashore.
Basically, this is an out of context quote which loses all meaning when taken solely by itself and says nothing specific about the number of stars. Of course, after giving us another argument after which it would be best to just quit and leave it at that, Mr. Johnson keeps pouring on the ridiculousness thusly…
Anyway, the first scientists were not indoctrinated Atheists as they tend to be today, and just as a priest has his predisposition on a certain outcome, so does an Atheist. Where we can all agree is in being open and truthful with the facts. Atheists had their time when evolution theory couldn’t be refuted scientifically, but now it is entirely laughable to attempt to claim Nothing created Everything.
Wow. Where to start with this homunculus of asinine assertions? Since when have scientists been somehow indoctrinated as atheists? How would that explain Ken Miller and Francis Collins who are devoutly religious in their attitudes but still consider themselves scientists and produce work of major scientific value and merit? I also want to take issue with the ironic arrogance of creationists who ridicule evolutionary basics by saying that it’s impossible for nothing to create everything. It’s like coming up to the blackboard in class, writing that 2+2 is equal to five, then proudly telling the math teacher to shove it. If you don’t know what the theory actually states, maybe you should pipe down for a minute and do a little studying first. Evolution is not the Big Bang, nor has it anything to do with abiogenesis beyond being a side effect of how life formed. The noting to everything retort is a ridiculous strawman that does nothing but show the ignorance of the person who uses it.
DNA has a code more complex than a software program, and is very specific in its transfer… mistakes or mutations cause errors, not improvements… EVER!
Oh my, I was going to point out that this is a completely unsubstantiated statement that has no basis in reality and shows that Mr. Johnson doesn’t even know the simplest points of evolutionary theory but the big all caps “ever!” convinced me of the error of my ways. Ok, no, not really.
please don’t pretend that a virus or bacteria changing its characteristics to get around immunities is a mutation, those are its built in survival mechanisms and are the equivalent to building muscle by working out… arnold didn’t mutate huge biceps
Again, this isn’t even wrong. We’re now descending into complete and utter blithering nonsense. This concept could only work if we ignore all the science done over the last 50 years and just start comparing apples to jet engines on a sudden whim. Equating the growth of protein strands in muscle as a response to stress and a well known mechanism generating countless random mutations in viruses and bacteria a very tiny fraction of which can get around our immune system and antibiotics, could only be done by someone who didn’t just take a few too many naps in biology class, but spent his middle and high school science classes in a coma.
Darwin’s mutation theories say [that] a frog getting eaten by birds decides to grow a shell and in 2 million years becomes a turtle, which is B.S.
Oh. My. Dear. Sweet. FSM. This already gigantic pile of pure, weapons grade imbecility just got even worse. If someone, anyone, could just tell me this was a Poe and snap me out of this nightmare! How did Darwin, who knew nothing about genetics or mutations and worked on exclusively on natural selection, possibly come up with something like this? Ah, right. He didn’t. That was Jean Baptiste Lamarck whose theory was rejected as ridiculous right after he concocted it by pretty much everyone, including Darwin. Of course this scenario is utter nonsense which is why it’s never been a part of evolutionary theory.
The funny thing is that even from a Biblical standpoint, the idea that our planet is just 6,000 to 10,000 years old is a complete guesstimate based on woefully incomplete and arbitrary chronology. But here we have people who proudly grasp on to something that wasn’t even in the Bible as the divine truth and proudly put their stark, shocking ignorance on parade. Read over Mr. Johnson’s comment one more time and just try tell me that you would be a-ok with someone like him telling school boards how to structure science classes. Seriously. Go ahead. I’m all ears…
[ illustration by Jhonen Vasquez, alternative comic artist and creator of Invader Zim ]
Bravo. I should have read this before I wasted my time responding to his magnum opus of lunacy. I would have seen that the work was already done much more adroitly.
Well done Greg, you have more patience than I. I would have swing the Ban Hammer long ago.
Good Lord (no pun intended), that man just made a mess of himself. Most of the time when I don’t know much detail about a subject I find myself arguing about, I just stop or listen to what the other guy has to say. I don’t just start bringing factoids and ideas out of the blue and welding my argument around those. I would feel so foolish! Apparently this guy doesn’t have that mechanism built in to him. Not all is lost though; I’d suggest he go eat some smart guy with plenty of logic and have an ancestor a few generations down the line with some smarts of his own.
I’d bet quite heavily that the boy is a bona fide Answers In Genesis drone. This sounds like many of their triumphant, yet woefully ill-informed, arguments. And thanks for taking the time to address as many as you did! The chances that Mr. Johnson will register any of it are fairly slim, since most times people who come to blogs to blather are only trying to reassure themselves that they’re right. However, you may have at least started the doubt, and for any others reading along who have heard the same arguments, they now get to hear why such arguments are so fatuous.
Fundamentalists seem to think, for some reason, that repeating the same nonsense long after it’s been debunked or trashed will somehow make it viable. Maybe that works on the simple-minded, and perhaps that’s the target audience. But for anyone with a little brainpower, all it does is make fundies look even sillier. You have to appreciate that kind of help, really.
It’s interesting the lengths some will go to seek “meaning” when there really isn’t any.
“…virus or bacteria changing its characteristics to get around immunities is a mutation, those are its built in survival mechanisms and are the equivalent to building muscle by working out…”
“a frog getting eaten by birds decides to grow a shell and in 2 million years becomes a turtle, which is B.S.”
Both of these want to anthropomorphise things that shouldn’t be. People turn to religion to answer the question “what is the purpose in life?” “Why am I here?” After getting their “answer” then they want to apply the same mode of thought to every thing else.
[snark]
The explanation I have meets with my preconcieved notion of how the world SHOULD work, so I accept it as fact.
Thus God has a “purpose” for me and no matter what good/bad happens to me, it’s in line with the “Great Plan.”
My life has innate purpose due to my belief and has nothing to do with what I actually do with my life – but what beliefs I practice.
There aren’t random mutations that sometimes result in changes that are beneficial and thus become evident in later generations, a virus/frog/bacteria must “decide” to change to get around a problem or the change must be part of the “great design.”
[/snark]
However, I’m sure Ahnold would love to be compared to a bacterium. That bit I chuckled at rather than clutching my head in pain.
Argh.
The education system is in a sorry state, and this guy is a wonderful example of just how bad it is. An education in some basic science would serve him well, but before that can happen someone should teach him where the switch is to turn on his brain.
BULL
SHIT !!
Sad, scary, stupid, wrong and inaccurate fundamentalist crap vs. calm, intelligent, reasoned, accurately sourced and noted, entertainingly snarky reposte from someone who has the apparent patience of Job (if you’ll forgive the reference.) The School Board remark really got to me – it’s not that Mr. What? Me Worry? might be presenting his idiocy TO the Board; it’s that so many Boards are comprised of his clones! Have you been to a Board meeting recently? Any town, any time – they pack the place like sardines. Science and reason are not winning.
I feel sick for looking at the stupidity and arrogance of these people.
Such people always engage in baseless arguments.
I always deem it fit not to reply to such comments.In fact replying to them makes them seem like they are respectable thoughts.
I went to a Christian high school and a hard-core creation came in and preached to the class. He basically ranted exactly what all the comments said, word for word.
Well, this just elicited the “wrestle with pigs” axiom. This tier of argument is beneath you, and does no service to the cause of rational thought and Evolution. You cit the ‘note even wrong’ principle of Fenyman – yet do not seem to heed its call. Do not stoop.
When you stoop, you degrade the argument and you degrad yourself. Perhaps the struggle in pseudo medical quackery lies more in the real of application of the scientific method to areas where our medical science is failing: Area such as food sensitivities and allergies, our lack of depth on hormone axes, the continuous rule of heart disease despite our best social and medical interdiction steps, the 25:1 increase in the rate of alimentary canal cancers, etc. This is where the intellectual horizon lies; not in wrestling with pigs.
Apply your superior acumen to solving these things. Challenge the pat answers and defacto rules which live in presumed luxury without test via the scientific method, press to solve that which helps mankind and not just enforce the current misery.
If you need to determine whether there is enough necessity of plurality to change our medical thought – just spend a day perusing the denied medical claims – or an evening in the ER of your local hospital. We suffer from ignorance as a people, and presumptions of rationality and superiority – just seem to not really excite me. On the part of anyone.
Wrestling with pigs adds nothing but noise. And noise is a waste of your talent. Drop the fake intellect and apply your talent to REAL problems and REAL cognitive challenges. Not this internet teenager level dribe.
“Drop the fake intellect and apply your talent to REAL problems and REAL cognitive challenges.”
Craig, just in case you don’t know, people like Mr. Johnson here pack school board meetings today and want this nonsensical tripe taught as fact to our future leaders, scientists, doctors and tech experts. Dismantling their arguments with real science in the public eye without mercy and fake amicability to their personal beliefs is a very real and very necessary thing to do.
I wish it weren’t, but unfortunately, today it’s an outmost necessity. I’m trying to play my small part in helping to protect science education for kids and I consider that a very real application of my ability to a very real challenge.