The Atheist Blogger

In my random stumbling around on the internet, I found a bunch of creationist websites that contained photos of various creationists as part of some kind of “about our team” page. Now some of these pictures are just plain and boring, but there are a few that simply cry out for a funny caption. So I’ve decided to create a caption competition in order to correct this massive lack of creationist captions, and here is the first picture.

So dear reader, what exactly is Eric Hovind reaching for? Why does he have a look of terror on his cute creationist face? Why is he clinging to that rock so desperately? The answer to those questions is up to you.

Now onto the issue of a prize. As a student I generally don’t have any money, which means I cannot promise a prize, although I do have an extra signed copy of Ray Comfort’s latest masterpiece “You can lead an atheist to evidence, but you can’t make him think”. To be quite honest, such a book would be better off as a booby prize instead, but it is all I can offer at the moment. Perhaps I could get some cheap badges made, I’m open to suggestions.

So really, it’s a double competition now: Whoever comes up with the best caption and a great idea for some cheap (but cool) prizes will win…er…one of the prizes (and a copy of Ray’s book that I will sign / doodle in). You have a week to do so; off you go!

Time again for another YouTube Thursday, and we start with 2 videos from YouTube user Thunderf00t; the first is a short but funny comparison of the old VenomFangX and the new VenomFangX (Shawn recently closed his channel due to “death threats” and gave it to another creationist). The tag-line is a kicker though: “Creationism: when being naturally stupid just isn’t good enough”.

The second video of his is part of the fantastic series “Why do people laugh at creationists?”, which involves the elegant destruction of popular creationist arguments. This is part 30, and if you want to see the other 29 (highly recommended) then check them out here. In this video, Thunderf00t points out the hypocritical nature of the Discovery Institute, and one of its prominent spokespeople, Casey Luskin.

Jesse Ventura (ex-Governor of Minnesota) has been on a campaign recently against waterboarding, and he should know all about it, given that he himself was waterboarded as part of SEREs (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) training. He says it’s torture, but Elisabeth Hasselbeck of “The View” disagreed with him. Hilarity ensued as Ventura hit back with some great points, ending with the great line
“You give me a waterboard, one hour, and Dick Cheney and I’ll have him confessing to the Sharon Tate murders”. Jesse Ventura once said of religion “[it] is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers. It tells people to go out and stick their noses in other people’s business.”

Finally, I end with some wise words of wisdom from the legendary Steven Fry. His advice on being happy? Stop feeling sorry for yourself.

Well, after almost a month of inactivity on the blog, I’m back! I firstly want to apologise for not making even small posts during my absence, but I honestly had so much to do I either forgot or couldn’t get the time to write anything. I have been reading and following my favourite blogs though, so I haven’t missed any of the things that have happened recently. The reason for my absence was a large number of exams that I always try to prepare for, but tend to ignore right up until they are actually upon me. Thus for the last 3 weeks I was studying like crazy, only stopping to send the occasional message on Twitter. I think that during that period, Twitter replaced my blog almost completely, and I know that large number of my readers follow me on Twitter as well (and if you don’t yet, please follow!).

So, now that exams were over, I went to stay with my mother for the weekend, and was cut off from the internet (apart from my mobile phone’s internet) for 3 days. To top it off, when I arrived back from a 3 hour train journey yesterday, I was whisked away by my friends to a Godfather film marathon. It was the first time I’d seen any of the movies (please forgive me), and I thoroughly enjoyed them all. With the help of two bloggers and Skype friends of mine, Splendid Elles (@elles) and Andrew Milne (@footbullet), we successfully created a new religion using Twitter, based on a truly awesome British snack: JaffaCakeology. If you want to join, simply hashtag all your tweets with #JAFFACAKES, and pledge devotion to our prophet, @cmkempe.

Back to business then, and I have 4 months off doing practically nothing other than some programming and various projects. This leaves plenty of time for writing blog posts, both short and long. Today I’m going to write about a presentation I saw over the weekend. It was the start of Salisbury Festival, which is an event spanning several months in which numerous activities are run in the city where I grew up. One of the events this weekend was a talk given by Charles Foster, a lawyer who has written a book called “The Selfless Gene”. His talk was entitled “Living with God and Darwin” and promised to

[demonstrate] that orthodox Christianity is not incompatible with what evolutionary biology says about our world.

The real problem, he said,

centres around the ethical implications of natural selection, and what such a system – based on selfishness, waste and death – might say about the loving creator God of the Christian faith.

I thought such claims were interesting, so I went along to hear his argument. However the talk was not what was promised. Instead of showing how Christianity wasn’t incompatible, he simply spent his time laughing at creationist claims (along with the rest of the non-creationist audience). He talked at length about how Young Earth Creationists were foolish, how the evidence contradicts their claims, how nobody can possibly claim such things without being ignorant. This was all very well, but he didn’t cover how this was wrong in a Biblical sense, which would have actually supported his argument. I highly doubt there were any Young Earth Creationists in the audience; this is England we’re talking about! I highly doubt there were any Old Earth Creationists there either! He spent a good 20 minutes talking about creationism in it’s various forms, spending a few extra on Intelligent Design, and ending his case against creationism with a passionate argument against a “god of the gaps”.

The rest of the talk was a haphazard presentation on the evidence for evolution, and I wasn’t impressed. He didn’t go into any detail, and his slides were all extremely bad quality, as if they had been photographed from some other talk. He never mentioned the mechanisms that make evolution tick, and he kept on blaming the “neo-darwinists” and “disciples of Dawkins” on most of the confusion over evolution. Overall though, there was nothing there that could convince anyone of either position. At the beginning he told people he would make creationists in the audience “very angry”, and atheists (well, “disciples of Dawkins”) very angry too. Neither of his prophecies held true.

At the end of the talk, an atheist at the back stood up and asked him to give the evidence for God, since his talk was about showing how God was compatible with Darwin. Mr Foster explained that the way he saw it, the lack of explanation for civilisation and morality is an indicator that a God exists. In other words, because science cannot explain everything about us, God must still have some hold. What a strange conclusion for the man to make, given his argument against a “god of the gaps” that he made clear earlier on. I started to raise my hand, but another atheist across the room from me got there first, pointing out his contradiction.

So poor Mr Foster lost out to the regular thorn in the side of theists: self contradiction. Such a pity. His book was on sale in the lobby afterwards, but there was no way I was paying £11.99 for it. I suspect it will include all the same repeated arguments against creationism, which in this country aren’t really needed. Nobody apart from the fringe churches accept creationism as a legitimate claim anymore. I further suspect that the arguments for evolution will be equally bad, thus misleading the people who read it into thinking that science knows very little about the subject.

Ray Comfort has issued an apology for his banana video in which he described how the banana had certain features that made it appear designed, insinuating the “designer” was the Judeo-Christian God. As you will see when watching the “apology” below, it doesn’t cover Ray coming up with a bad argument; it is more of an excuse, blaming atheists for editing the original video to appear out of context.

The video presents some very bad logic in the first 30 seconds, when it tries to explain the “bananaman” reference:

“Bananaman” is a reference to an illustration presented by Comfort, in which he compared the complex design elements of a coke can to the complex design elements of a banana, in order to demonstrate that thoughtful design by an a designer is required for both examples. (0:20 -- 0:35)

Ray wants us to believe that God made the banana, but even knowing this is untrue (at least in regards to the modern banana) all it does is prove what we know already; that certain things in the world are the result of human intervention. Whilst it is true that the banana is a product of design, the same cannot be said if you replaced the banana with a wild blackberry, which is perfectly edible, very sweet, and not the product of human intervention. Replace the blackberry with something like the pineapple or the coconut, and you immediately have to start questioning the sanity of the “designer” Ray implies on such things. Pineapples and coconuts have to be some of the hardest fruits to get into, not to mention the amount of preparation needed before eating.

When you do not know the process in which certain things are created, you cannot compare them to things of which the creation process is known. It is a logical fallacy. In fact, the creation process of the wild banana is partially known, and we refer to it as the theory of Evolution. This doesn’t explain the entire process of the banana creation, but it certainly gives a mechanism for understanding how it could have possibly come about. This is a far greater explanation than the idea that “God did it” which has no evidence and holds no grounds in proper scientific debate.

Ray presents to us his often-repeated lie that atheists somehow misrepresented his point in the banana video:

However, atheists removed the coke can from the video version, and sent it across the internet, saying that Comfort believed the banana was conclusive proof of God’s existence, missing the point of the illustration completely. (0:42 -- 0:55)

You see this simply contradicts the last point, as Ray admits that the comparison was to show that a designer is needed for both coke can and banana. In the original video (even in the edited version which only shows the banana) Ray mentions God as the creator of the banana, and he also mentions the coke can in comparison. His exact words were:

Now if you go to the top of the banana, you’ll find as with the soda can makers, they placed a tab at the top, so God has placed a tab at the top.

Implying that there must be a designer, and then stating that the designer is God, therefore proving God’s existence seems to be exactly what Comfort had in mind. If Ray had not mentioned God as the designer, then he may actually have a point about not trying to prove God’s existence, but as soon as he said “so God has placed a tab at the top” he left the realm of speculation and entered the realm of certainty.

They also said that the banana had been modified over time by man to fit in the palm of the hand, and not by God (0:55 -- 1:02)

Well yeah, that’s because it has been. This intervention is very well documented.

But in their effort to make him look foolish, atheists gave Ray Comfort and international platform for his message. (1:03 -- 1:09)

Effort? I think you’ll find Ray does enough to make himself look foolish without us there to help. Anyone with a (to quote Ray) “brain that works” can tell his arguments are weak, and his views on science are stuck in the middle ages. The number of times simple scientific concepts have to be explained to him reveals his as the willingly ignorant fool that he is. Now for his “apology”:

Comfort apologized for his mistake about the banana saying “My apologies for not explaining myself more clearly. I was not aware that the common banana had been so modified by hybridization, however, the truth remains that God gave man the knowledge and ability to modify it, so that it perfectly fit into his hand.” (1:31 -- 1:50)

So once your original premise is destroyed, you simply move the goalposts back a bit? Nice work Ray, but while this “truth” might be logical to your warped mind, you don’t give any evidence that God exists to give us this knowledge. In fact, since your original reason for using the banana argument was to show that certain things must have a designer, and that the designer of the banana is God, I fail to see how you can simply assert God exists when your argument for him via the banana was so utterly destroyed. I can do the same thing see: My car was designed, and the designer was God, therefore God exists. What’s that? My car was designed by Ford? Well…God gave Ford the knowledge and the materials to design the car in the first place! It isn’t a proof if you have to assume God exists for the proof to work.

Ray also leaps on the chance to misquote Richard Dawkins in the film “Expelled”, claiming he thinks aliens seeded life on this planet.

In “Expelled No Intelligence Allowed”, when Ben Stein asked Richard Dawkins, ‘What do think is the possibility that intelligent design might turn out to be the answer to some issues in genetics or in evolution?’ he answered,

‘at some earlier time somewhere in the universe a civilization evolved by probably by some kind of Darwinian means to a very very high level of technology and designed a form of life that they seeded onto perhaps this planet … and that designer could well be a higher intelligence from elsewhere in the universe.’ (2:17 -- 3:22)

The beginning of this quote is left out, and the full thing reveals some vital clues to Dawkins’ explanation, specifically the words “It could come about in the following way: it could be that at some earlier time somewhere…”. This clearly shows that Dawkins is speaking hypothetically, in response to the question by Stein. Dawkins is a scientist, and as such he isn’t going to close his mind to the possibility of intelligent design. However, if he is going to explain it, he is going to do it rationally and scientifically, not by mentioning some sort of supernatural deity.

Dawkins again says in the middle that such ideas are a “possibility”, that they are “intriguing”, and that you might find evidence if you looked at the details of biochemistry and molecular biology. However he never stated that he believes such things, nor that any evidence has been found to suggest it. He goes on to say that such intelligence would have had to come about by some kind of natural (and possibly Darwinian) means. Things don’t just magically appear out of nowhere, at least not in the realms of science.

So Professor Dawkins believes that highly intelligent aliens from somewhere else in the universe may have created us. (3:46 -- 3:54)

No Ray! No. Commenting on an idea, or even trying to explain some form of natural intelligent design does not automatically mean you believe it. As I said before, Dawkins is well aware that there is no evidence for such views, and he didn’t attempt to present evidence in the film. He was commenting on a hypothetical basis for intelligent design in the universe. Stein may have had ulterior motives for asking the question, but Dawkins answer was accurate. Aliens seeding life on Earth is at least one possibility of intelligent design that doesn’t invoke the supernatural.

Will there be a debate between Comfort and Dawkins? I doubt it, but one can dream. I’d personally love to see both Dawkins and Hitchens take on Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron for a double smackdown of logic.

So Ray Comfort is off to his home country of New Zealand in order to participate in a debate about Evolution. I don’t see how a person who has repeatedly shown to not understand the theory can even think about participating in a debate about it, but Ray has drawn up a great debate plan:

1. An atheist is someone who believes nothing created everything. If he denies that and believes that “something” created everything, he’s not an atheist.

Ok, so the subject is Evolution, the scientific theory. It’s a debate concerning one of the fundamentals of biology, but why not throw in philosophy as well? Given that evolutionary biologists are often religious, I do not see how Evolution can been seen as a purely “atheistic” idea. On the subject of the whole “atheists believe nothing created everything”, the so-called “Ray Comfort Fallacy”, please read my previous blog post.

2. Man can’t create a grain of sand from nothing. How intellectually dishonest is it then to say that there was no Intelligent Designer?

Still not even close to the area of evolutionary biology. True, man cannot create a grain of sand from nothing, but why does this mean that some unknown “Intelligent Designer” has this ability? Humans are very intelligent designers, and yet we have limits as to what we can do in this universe. How do our failures imply that there exist beings that can do these things? It’s not intellectually dishonest to say that there is no evidence for an Intelligent Designer, simply because there isn’t any evidence, and we never will. A natural explanation will be found for everything, because to imply some kind of supernatural being is no explanation at all. Even if we can’t explain things naturally, there is no saying we won’t be able to at some point, and it certainly doesn’t make the supernatural any more viable.

3. Where did females come from (in every species)?

Finally, 3 stops down on the debate train and we get to biology. We also see Ray Comfort’s dishonesty out in the open, because he knows the answer to this question already. It has been explained to him at great length by P.Z. Myers after a few blogs post went back and forth between Ray’s blog and Pharyngula. After Ray challenged P.Z. to explain the origins of sex, P.Z. did so, and did so with gusto. I don’t think you could ask for a better summation of the evolution of species and sex, so I won’t even try to write one.

4. Which came first? The blood, the heart or the blood vessels?

Ray needs to learn how to use Google, because the results for a simple search will reveal far more than you could ever want. Panda’s Thumb has a great article about it.

5. There are variations within species, but no species to species transitional forms in the fossil record.

Nope, there are no transitional forms in the fossil record. I repeat, there are no transitional forms in the fossil record. Every time this argument comes up I still find it hard to believe it’s still being used.

6. God made Archaeopteryx with teeth and a tail. It’s a bird, not a dinosaur. He made many weird animals. There’s a huge mouse with a pocket in its front that hops all over Australia, horses with stripes, weird desert animals with humps on their backs . . . and He made some birds with teeth.

Calling Archaeopteryx a “bird with teeth” is a gross understatement. The fact that the creature has more in common with small dinosaurs than birds isn’t just confined to teeth, but the claws, tail, toes, and other skeletal features. Archaeopteryx is a bird, but it is also a dinosaur, and it is clearly a transitional form that shares elements of both, showing how dinosaurs first started evolving into birds.

7. Paleontologists have a huge incentive to twist the truth, just a little. If they can find a bone with a lump on it, theorize that it was a limb or a feather, give it an impressive name, say it is 73 million years old, and suddenly he has his picture on the cover of National Geographic magazine, has a book deal and lectures for life. The human propensity to gullibility is evidenced by evolution’s many believers. Malcolm Muggeridge: “I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution . . . will be one of the great jokes in the history books in the future.” Evolutionists have done to science, what hypocrites have done to religion. We have men who call themselves scientists, when they should have instead got a job with Disney as imagineers.

Ray presents this view but doesn’t go into detail with specific examples of paleontologists doing this. Double blind dating is done on fossils to ensure the result isn’t skewed, so I don’t know where Ray gets the idea that numbers are simply placed on fossils at random. The theory predicts we should find these fossils, and when we do find them, they should rightly be presented to scientific enquiry. Evolutionary biologists have advanced science beyond the realms thought possible, and we now know so much more about our origins. In return, we have used this knowledge to forge a better future for our race. Where religion kills and feeds a misleading doctrine, science shows us the true light, and we are much better for it.