In an admirable effort to make even Dr. Roy look like an intellectual, Denyse asks the jaw-dropping question: "What would happen to science if Darwin ceased to be God?"
I don't know, Denyse. Conversely, what do you think would happen to religion if it wasn't being run by a gang of corrupt, hypocritical, child-molesting, scientific illiterates?
So many questions, so little time to make fun of them all.
THE COMMENTS, OH LORD, THE COMMENTS: My personal favourite:
Since consensus science incorporates hostility to traditional religious views, a change in the materialist outlook of the science community would make science careers more attractive to young people from traditionally religious, or open-minded secular backgrounds.
Translation: If we open up science to imbecilic religious beliefs, it will be more appealing to religious imbeciles.
Sure, and how could that possibly go wrong?
11 comments:
They're just getting into the spirit of the season, giving you early presents.
Wow. That piece was wrong on so many levels. Not enough time in the day to deconstruct all of the intellectual dishonesty jam-packed in there.
The absolute funniest part, for me, came in the comments section:
At Saturday, December 15, 2007 1:03:00 PM, Jack Golightly said...
Good, Denyse. However, perhaps some clarification concerning point (5) considering the fact that Christianity is responsible for the rise of science in the first place.
You have got to be freakin kidding me! This has to be the biggest howler that I've ever read. And what's more, they actually seem to believe this tripe. Religion be responsible for science is like saying that Gonorreah is responsible for the rise of Penicillin.
The crazy old bat is just bitter because she's not getting scientific foundation grants so she can be paid to do field research while she's at church every Sunday, snarfing wafers and sucking back cheap wine.
She's a wingnut-welfare wannabe barking up the wrong welfare tree.
Actually, I don't what the fuck she's talking about. I didn't make it past the first paragraph of point #2 in her "thoughts." I think her brain is caught in some causality loop and I find myself getting sucked into its vortex the closer I examine it.
Oh, and this from the comments:
As a scientist, I would say that a fully non-materialist program would look like the following:
1) On the positive side, there would be an explicit sense of what we are doing is "reverse engineering," or, as they used to say, "thinking God's thoughts after him." In other words, when seeing something in nature, we would tend to assume that it is good for something, and not just muck of no interest.
If you posit a designer, everything is and has always been reverse engineering. So come up with the designer, already, or at least demonstrate verifiable physical processes by which the forward engineering occurred. You don't even have to do original research for that.
considering the fact that Christianity is responsible for the rise of science in the first place.
I'll be sure to remember that the next time I'm being forced to drink hemlock, being burned, stoned or drowned to death for heresy because I don't believe that the earth is flat and has four pillars to support a big clear dome through which god pours the rain.
Christians created science. Sounds a lot like Al Gore created the internet.
If only Pythagoras had known...
Put simply, materialist atheists are the only people who cannot live with a designed universe, and they currently dominate science faculties (not necessarily scientists at large). Their materialist views are formed without any reliance on evidence because the evidence is actually against them.
Obviously I'm not a proper atheist then because I don't care if the universe was created or not. Whether it is or isn't, it obviously isn't going to change just because of that fact. The sun will still rise. The water will still flow down hill and the interactions of molecules that make up my physical form will still vibrate according to their frequency. So, to quote one of the US's founding fathers - It does me no harm to say their is no god. It neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket. The universe doesn't give a rats ass one way or another what I believe. Even assuming for one second that the universe was actually designed and created by something, that doesn't necessarilly posit that a god or many gods were responsible for it. Perhaps we're all just memory engrams in some quantum computer somewhere. Or plug into some gigantic consensual hallucination like in the Matrix. Does it matter? No because if it were we'd never find out about it and since the whole point of science is to discover the universe in a verifiable way by using devices and senses nothing would change in the slightest. Except perhaps there'd be more assholes who think they know the intimate 'mind' of the universe.
There is also the unmentioned matter that even if there was a god, who is to say it is the Christian's god? Christians? Yeah I'm going to take their word for it. Becuase they have a book and a symbol and a lot of stupid people willing to spend billions to keep their clergy properly outfitted. Just like every other religion.
Even if it was and I knew it for certain I still wouldn't be going around telling farie stories about invisible sky spirits who know and see all.
it is a monistic creed, and a single exception would destroy it. It's universe must be bottom up, not top down.
As opposed to Christianity? Take out Christ or more specifically his resurection and the whole thing collapses like a house of cards. Just ask any Christian. Truth is, Christ can not even be proven to have existed beyond a reasonable doubt and even IF he existed there would be no proof that he was anything more than a man. There is no indicator in the Bible as to WHEN he was born. Christians just assume it was on December 25th because that's what they were told. Where are the extra-biblical stories told and written from the 5000 thousand people he supposedly fed with a couple of fishes and loaves of bread? Nobody out of that entire crowd said jack? Expect me to believe that? Where are the exra-biblical stories about that wedding where he magicked water into wine? Hell if I could pull that trick these days people would still be talking about what a hell of a wedding party it was 500 years from now. Where are the records of his execution by the otherwise meticulous bean counters in the Roman government? Where are the extra-biblical stories of the supposed 1000 people he appeared to after his tomb was found to be missing? But no, instead we have some weak mentions of Christ beyond the bible is some weak ass stuff by people who were born two or more generations after Christ supposedly lived. And we're supposed to just accept that these people weren't bribed, high, possessed, mistaken, creative, in on a conspiracy or just plain crazy. Uh huh.
(3) the pace at which Darwinian evolution actually works, belief in Darwinism is belief in magic.
Do me a favor. Get yourself 10 million standard white six sided dice. I want you to roll all of them ( build a machine or something ) and put aside all of the ones that roll a six. Only the sixes get to survive to breed the next generation as they represent a trait that is advantageous to the environment they appear in. Repeat, rolling all the non-six dice until you have nothing but sixes. Now occasionally remove ( kill off ) 10000 randomly sampled dice from the whole 10 million including the ones you set aside to represent catastrophies, floods, meteor impacts, disease and so forth. You don't get to pick them, they must be determined completely at random. Additionally to simulate the effects of viruses toss in some red colored dice once in a while, whatever these dice roll you take the nearest white die and add the numbers together. If they add up to six, put them aside. How long does it take you to arrive at a pool where all of the dice are sixes? There are actually 4 known chemicals that make up DNA in all known life forms: Guanine, Cytosine, Adenine and Thymine which should make it simpler for you. Now tell me that it is impossible for random molecules affected by the random forces of a universe to organize in such a manner. Believing that water turns into wine and crackers turn into flesh is magic ( not to mention cannibalism and vampirism ). Belief in evolution is taking all of the available evidence and trying to make sense of it without turning to a supernatural explanation like 'Zeus's Head split open and we popped out'.
there is a "God spot" in the brain which explains religious convictions and experiences
I don't see why there wouldn't be a structural, or chemical explaination for why one species could have both Fred Phelps and Penn Gillet. There is after all the phenomena that when portions of the brain are exposed to high EMF you start feeling paranoid like you are being watched. I would love to research the brain and find out. Care to donate yours to the cause?
It may be a simpler explanation to just run around shouting 'God did it', but then you beg the question of which god? What makes you think it's yours? Because you say so? Why the hell should I take your word for it? Maybe it was the Great Spirit? Maybe it was Zeus. Maybe it was Siddartha. Maybe it was me. That's right, I created the universe. Prove me wrong.
What is more plausible, a bunch of cavement ancestors sitting around terrified in their newly developed realization that they die and attempting to explain why based on their limited knowledge and observation of the unsympathetic universe around them which eventually develops into religion? Or *POIT* there's people fully formed from dirt, because I say thats the way it happened so there. Nyah.
and that's the entire point.
I'd really like to know...who exactly canceled the Enlightenment? Cause no one told me.
You guys have to be a little more open about mixing some magic in with your science. I'm not talking about Indian Legends or Greek Gods or any of that hooey. I'll nip that straw man right in the bud. I'm talking specifically about Christian Magic.
Certain things that science cannot explain can, by an incredible turn of good fortune, be used to explain science.
You can see immediately that this will make a whole bunch of stuff way easier.
Wow. One thing I *do* know is that my G-spot is most certainly not in my brain.
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