A former Atheist, whom I was chatting over coffee with recently told me he found it quite compelling when studying world religions before realizing the Truth behind Christianity that so many secluded regions of the world have a World-wide flood story among their heritage.

I have been compelled to a literal interpretation of Genesis given it being Historical Narrative in nature, and rejected more liberal Theologians that claim a regional flood would have been interpreted as “worldwide” by observers.

Here is some very strong evidence that the Chinese as a people are in fact descendants of Noah:

Thanks to Kang and Nelson in their book, “The Discovery of Genesis” for this info:

Comfort and his stupid friend… puke, if gawd did really exist he wold hate those 2 just as much as me.. or even more.

I had been planning on writing a post called “Thoughts on Eskin Kuhn’s Pterosaur Sighting” wherein I examine young earth claims that an American soldier named Eskin Kuhn (I’ve seen it spelled differently on other sights) saw a pterosaur while stationed in Cuba. The claim is a hoax. I no longer have the patience for dealing with creationist-related debunkings and I have no intention of actually writing up one for this topic.

From Sadiea:

Here are a few of my questions regarding evolution, I would welcome any answers anyone has, but please cite your source and please use scientific sources not John Doe’s opinion.

I’ll begin my line of questions with this post about the now famous “Lucy” since this is a blog that has been referred to me by a supporter of evolution as a reliable source:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/lucy.html

Where do the “sketches” come from?  There are no complete fossils from what I could find on any websites to support the picture that most people have of the ape-men that evolutionists claim before us.  In the words of “talk origins” in reference to the number of “skeletons” to support evolution:

“They are however mostly fragmentary, often consisting of single bones or isolated teeth. Complete skulls and skeletons are rare.”

If they are so rare where do we get the pictures from?  How do they guess at what formed an entire body based on a few bones?  I looked through several and found zero that had a skull (or even partial skull) to go along with a spine, and even one upper limb and lower limb.  So there would be no evidence of being stooped over, no evidence of any “transitional” beings.  There would also be no evidence of a hairy ape-man, bones can tell us some information about where muscles possibly attached as well as where tendons were, we can see based on bone wear-and-tear a general idea of osteoporosis or previous breaks/fractures but even that would largely be conjecture when the bones are considered to be millions of years old.  Where does the hair come from?

Why are abnormalities not taken into account?  There are genetic abnormalities that would account for someone being incredibly hairy such as generalized Hypertrichosis.  This is an inherited disease characterized by thick hair growth over a person’s entire body.  This is not an ape-man…simply an abnormality that can even be caused by certain medicines or androgen imbalance in women.  Or how about dwarfism?  Several articles refer to “short stature”, even stooped, there is a very simple explanation to being stooped, it’s called Kyphosis, it naturally occurs in much of the population due to age, immobility, osteoarthritis, or any number of common factors none of which promote evolution.  Progeria is another interesting one: this is an abnormal aging, a 5 year old would have the body and diseases of an 80 year old.  If the skull of a child with Progeria were found Scientists would incorrectly assume he was much older than he truly was based on his bone structure.

Why is Lucy said to have possibly been “tree-dwelling”?  Was that based on where her fossil was found?  Was it based on the shape it was found in?  She has no hands, no feet, no head, no complete rib cage, in fact very few complete bones at all except her sacrum (I think…couldn’t tell for sure though).  Was that tilted a certain way?  That could also indicate breaks in her spine, could indicate trauma in the manner she died, it could indicate osteoarthritis of the spine, osteoporosis of the spine, SO many possibilities that are present today.

I am sure there are answers to these questions and I have many more related to each fossil but I’ll keep it short for now and see what responses come.  There are plenty of scientists in this world on both sides of this argument smarter than I am who have argued with a lot more intellect, I’ll just start with the basics for now.

PZ Myers worries about the potential of the creationist movement voting praying Sarah Palin back into high office in spite of because of her disdain for evolution.

Unfortunately, about half the American electorate will think what she wrote is just ducky. Those words won’t dissuade very many voters at all, so don’t make the mistake of thinking this revelation will somehow cripple her campaign to become president of the US.

The statistics relating to American belief in creationism are total crap.  Nowhere close to ‘about half’.  PZ, please don’t continue to spread this malignant creationist meme.  The actual population of true flat earthers is ten percent….tops.  Much more numerous than WMD’s in Iraq, but not so far from zero as to pose a serious threat.

I understand how one might be tempted to believe that half the US population rejects Darwinism.  Religious nutjobs infest much of our government (Godless PTSD victims e.g.) and control big swaths of our media.  The only political fear of religious radicalism on the wane is their possible manipulation of the vote, not the voters.

If manipulation of the voters really worked, we’d already see rioting in the streets over the various other delusional fantasies spit out daily by Fox News et.al. etc.   Don’t get your Obama birther rally attendance figures from Fox News, and don’t get your statistics on evolution denial from Answers in Genesis.

When I look around, I see a whole lot more gay people than religious freaks, and I surmise that the population of gays is bigger than the population of actual evolution deniers.  I fear neither though I do loathe the latter.

Enjoy.

For God’s sake, could Bryan Appleyard be any more of a creationist suck -up?

Darwin divided and still divides the western world. It’s not just a division between scientists and fundamentalists. Science itself is divided.

That’s one of many intellectual Palinisms that infest his piece.  From this misbegotten foundation springs an ongoing cornucopia of standard creationist claptrap and concern trolling.  That was this January.  Now he’s back to take a slap at PZ Myers.

Enjoy.

Sarah Palin is a creationist.

I’m going to start a list — “who I will not vote for”.

#1 -  Creationist (especially Young Earth Creationist)

Intelligent design fails because it has no evidence to support it. But, it would fail even if there was evidence of design. This is because the conclusion that ID proponents want to prove is that God was the source of the design. However, even if we found out that DNA was designed, intelligent design would not be the logical conclusion.

There are better natural explanations than positing a supernatural creator. Directed panspermia, for example, is a better explanation. It hypothesizes that the seeds of life may have been purposely spread by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization. Richard Dawkins answered in a similar the same way when Ben Stein asked him how design might work. But, of course creationists created the straw man that he actually believed this.

Then again we have a great theory for explaining the complexity of life. It is the theory of evolution which is arguably one of the most supported theories in science. So, we don’t need intelligent design (the pseudo-scientific approach of creationism). Evolution is a fact and if you don’t want to accept it then don’t. But, you should stop trying to corrupt science with your religious pseudo-science.

Brian Auten of Apologetics 315 has written a nice review of Dawkins’ new book. He is very polite in this review, but also very effective.  He also posted the audio for the recent debate between John Lennox and Richard Dawkins.

Brian starts his review by explaining Dawkins’ plan for the book:

Dawkins seems to place all doubters into the young-earth category, while the illustrations he employs put them on par with “well-financed and politically muscular groups of Holocaust-deniers.”

That’s right. He is not refuting the work of intelligent design theorists – he is refuting young earth creationists. He spends an entire chapter on the age of the earth. The names of intelligent design scholars hardly even appear in the index of his book! This book is not a refutation of the likes of William A. Demsbki, PhD, PhD or Jonathan Wells, PhD, PhD. (That is not a typo, they each have two PhDs, and from top-tier schools)

And then it goes from bad to worse.  He uses intelligent selection by human dog-breeders as proof of the efficacy of random mutation and natural selection. Intelligent design that produces micro-evolution is used as evidence for unguided macro-evolution.

[...]“The difference between any two breeds of dog gives us a rough idea of the quantity of evolutionary change that can be achieved in less than a millennium. The next question we should ask is, how many millennia do we have available to us in accounting for the whole history of life? If we imagine the sheer quantity of differences that separate a pye-dog from a peke, which took only a few centuries of evolution, how much longer is the time that separates us from the beginning of evolution or, say, from the beginning of mammals? … Can you imagine two million centuries, laid end to end?”

Actually, this “can you imagine” argument is a lot better than his fraudulent drawings of embryos argument. Neither of them works, but at least he isn’t using fraudulent evidence with this “can you imagine” argument.

Oh, but here’s the “you’re stupid and evil” argument, which taken together with the “can you imagine” argument and the fraudulent embryos, forms the beginning of a very persuasive case for macro-evolution.

“If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worse than ignorant, they are deluded to the point of perversity.”

Did you know that human pregnancy is actually evidence for macro-evolution? Yes – babies evolve in a Darwinian fashion from a fertilized egg until their birth! That’s macro-evolution!

Chapter eight is entitled You Did It Yourself in Nine Months. Here Dawkins cites an interaction between J.B.S. Haldane, a leading architect of neo-Darwinism, and an evolution skeptic. The skeptic poses a complex question of how, even given billions of years, a single cell could develop into a complicated human body that thinks and feels. Haldane’s one-liner response was, “But madam, you did it yourself. And it only took you nine months.”

Brilliant! Sheer brilliance! Let’s call this one the “pregnancy is macro-evolution in action” argument. Put that with the rest.

Dawkins says that scientists don’t even need to observe any fossils in order to know that evolution happened, even on distant planets.

“I love speculating on how weirdly different we should expect life to be elsewhere in the universe, but one or two things I suspect are universal, wherever life might be found. All life will turn out to have evolved by a process related to Darwinian natural selection of genes.”

He knows that aliens evolved because what else could have happened? Evidence is irrelevant when you have blind faith. Let’s call this the “fossil record? we don’t need no stinking fossil record!” argument. And of course you know that Dawkins thinks that these aliens who evolved unobserved may have seeded the Earth with life – that’s his solution to the origin of life problem.

OK, one more quote from Brian’s review before I really have to stop. It’s Christopher Hitchens’ “I wouldn’t have done it that way” argument!

“…the overwhelming impression you get from surveying any part of the innards of a large animal is that it is a mess! Not only would a designer never have made a mistake like that nervous detour; a decent designer would never have perpetuated anything of the shambles that is the criss-crossing maze of arteries, veins, intestines, wads of fat and muscle, mesenteries and more.”

Oh, just one more! This is the “origin of life? what’s that? (nervous titter)” argument.

“We don’t actually need a plausible theory of the origin of life…”

OK, I really have to stop. You will all go to Brian’s site and read his review. It is awesome. It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims to believe that Dawkins is NOT a lazy-brained ignoramus, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that).

Note to Darwinist commenters. If you want to defend Dawkins here, then pick one of his arguments that I cited here, and go for it. For everything else, comment on Brian’s site.

I’ve decided to be more diligent with my “Proofs” section at the top here since I’ve finished school.  I’m going to try to add at least one every week.  That being said, I won’t be allowing comments in any of the tabs at the top, so I figured I’d post it here so some of you would get a chance to voice your rebuttals to the proofs I’m putting up there.

The following “Proofs” are in my own words, and not entirely faithful to the original language the philosophers intended.  I have done this, not because I am any smarter than the original authors, but quite the opposite.  I have reworded these to make them understandable to men like myself who can only marvel at the intellect of great thinkers.

PHILISOPHICAL_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Anselms Argument:

If an un-caused first cause Creator exists, that Creator is necessary.

If that Creator does not exist, His existence is impossible.

Therefore, either He exists, or does not exist.

Therefore, either His existence is necessary or impossible.

Are you willing to say that the Existence of that Creator is impossible (only someone with omniscience could make such a claim), therefore He is necessary.

COSMOLOGICAL_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Thomistic Argument:

1. Our Universe is interdependent (Plants need our Oxygen and we need their C02, sexual beings are dependent upon each other for species survival…)

2. A sequence of events that are dependent cannot be infinite.

3. An un-caused first-cause (God) would have had to create dependent beings simultaneously in order to ensure their survival and begin the dependency process.

MATHEMATICAL____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Statistical zero  is the amount that mathematicians agree to, that if chances for something fall below, then for all intents and purposes thee is no chance that said event can occur.  To visualize it, it would go something like this:

1/100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

To put it in perspective, chances that you will win Powerball is less than 1/200,000,000

It has been estimated, that at minimum, the chances that our planets exists and is able to support advanced life is:

1/100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

In summary, there is zero chance God had nothing to do with us being here.

_________________________________________________________________

I’m reading The Apocalypse Code and Hanegraaf links John Nelson Darby to Charles Darwin in a way that sent chills down my spine. As this is (for now) primarily a medium against Atheism and not Pre-Millennium Dispensationalism, I will hold off on fighting that battle. Some of the following are downright offensive, so if you’re easily offended, you’ll want to just CLICK THIS then come back tomorrow:

“The German Fuhrer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the practice of Germany conform to the theory of evolution” -Sir Arthur Keith, Evolution and Ethics, 1947.

“Anxiety, paranoia and other metnal disorders each embody modes of behavior that were once adaptive for the human species in stages of evolution.” -Sigmund Freud, A Phylogenetic Fantasy, 1915.

“[Down syndrome is] a throwback to the Mongolian stage in human evolution” -John L Down, Natural History, 1980.

“The best human beings were not breeding as rapidly as the inferior ones… The plan was to identify individuals who were feeble minded-Jews…foreigners…blacks… and stop them from breeding.” -Michael Crichton, Ibid., 576.

And finally, from the Great Father or Evolution himself. Talking about how Blacks, Australians, and Gorillas all occupy the same “sub-species” in between White’s (on top) and Baboons (on bottom).

“it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla.” -Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, Chapter 1.

Harun Yahya, whose real name is Adnan Oktar, is someone I have despised ever since I came into contact with one of his creationist booklets. I tried to find out as much as I could about who he was but there wasn’t much written about him at that time. My search led to an article written by the Koranist Muslim Edip Yuskel on the website 19.org which alerted me to his shady character. Over the last few years Harun Yahya has become synonymous with the Muslim creationist movement and globally his  profile has risen exponentially. This has also brought with it increased scrutiny of him and his followers. The following is an excerpt from an article in the New Humanist:

Throughout the 1980s and early ’90s, Oktar built up his community. Followers were especially active in the swanky summer resorts along the shore of the Sea of Marmara. A friend of mine, who spent most of her holidays in the late 1980s at her parents’ summer flat in the area, recalls how the followers’ targeting worked: “They bought flats there and singled out attractive girls and boys. The boys were very good-looking, boys who can easily charm you. I guess this is why they started with the boys. Once the girls entered the cult, they had to give up sexy fashion, so they wouldn’t be able to attract new members. But for the boys, the rules were more relaxed, so that they could continue recruitment.”

The social organisation within the group was becoming rigidly hierarchical and, as is common in messianic cults, sexual relations were tightly controlled, with the putative messiah given access denied to others. Oktar considered all female members his legitimate possession. Berk, a recent defector after seven years, describes the groups: “There were sisters (bacilar), concubines (cariyeler) and brothers (kardesler), the male members. The brothers were allowed to marry the concubines, while the sisters were all married to Adnan Hodja.” Of course these marriages were not legal, but they were treated as such within the group. As with Scientology, discipline was maintained through humiliation, the threat of expulsion and physical violence. “I know personally,” Berk told me, “that Oktar beats the sisters.”

Okatr also insisted on uniformity in dress, behaviour and even home furnishings. “Everyone had to be the same,” says Berk. “The hairstyle, the shoes, the jackets. It had to be the most expensive brands, like Versace and Gucci, and it had to be exactly how he wanted it to be. Even our communal flats had to be furnished according to his taste. It had to be heavy antiques, all with gold leaf and dark wood.” Video cameras were installed in the communal apartments, which allowed Oktar to exercise control over his followers and outsiders. As the criminal indictment vividly illustrates, young girls were lured into sex parties with the promise of being admitted to the group, but ended up having to perform sexual acts with men of influence, whom the group needed for its economic and political success. The encounters were filmed and used to coerce the men in question to act in the group’s interest. In witness statements, the models Tugce Doras and Seckin Piriler give detailed accounts of how members of the group treated them as “sex slaves” and how Oktar and his followers compelled them to perform oral sex and other sexual favours.

No matter how bizarre the rules, Oktar was able to provide them with apparent legitimacy through his reading of the Koran and Islamic history. Concubinage was justified by reference to the Ottoman harems, while passages of the Koran were recited to justify the practice of severing the ties of the young followers to their families. As a leading legal scholar involved in some of the court cases against Oktar puts it: “In [Oktar’s] reading, the love for mother and father is an offence to God. Parents are seen as the executors of God’s will to raise the child. Once the child reaches adulthood, their role is fulfilled. If the parents happen to join, they are considered pious and may become fellow comrades. If they remain ‘infidels’, they are considered enemies.” It was with this justification that the followers cut off relations with their parents, on whose financial and social resources, however, the group ultimately depended. The indictment details the way in which followers were encouraged to plunder their parents’ bank accounts and sell their assets.

I recommend reading the complete article . It can be found here.

There are many parts of life that science wants to explain and that they strive hard too explain that “Godly” people just say, “God made it that way”. However, this retort of “God made it that way” isn’t the best answer. When science tries to find the origin of life, Christians may say to them “God made us.” However Science has many different theory’s that counter the latter. When Scientist try to explain how the Universe was formed they say that the Big Bang Theory is supported by the fact that the Universe is constantly expanding, not static, and Christians say, “God made the Universe like it says in Genesis, he made it to expand.” When a Scientist looks at things he tries to see a reason for the expansion. Do you think that God would purposefully create a situation that had a conclusion that goes against Christianity?

Darwin’s theory of Evolution through Natural selection says that life started out then evolved slowly over time to the current state it’s at now. Genesis says that God created Man from the dust of the earth and all that he made all of the animals too. Would God make man from almost the exact same genomes that other primates are made from? The Christians argument may be that… “We’ll what’s similar between a house in America, a house in England and a house in Japan? We’ll they’re all made out of wood but there from all over the world completely separate.” Some people hypothesize that God may have made humans from the same materials as primates. However this detracts from the view that God made humans from the dust of the earth. Another question to be raised is, ‘why would God make it look like we may have descended from other primates?’ The trail of evidence only makes it look more likely to the scientist, and others, that humans are of primate decent.

The origin of the Universe is an even more puzzling question that scientist are trying to figure out. However when the Big Bang theory was introduced in the scientific community, backing that the universe is slowly expanding supports an alternative theory to God’s word “In the Beginning God created the Heaven’s and the Earth.” Why would God make the universe continually expand when He knew that man would eventually start to believe in the Big Bang theory? Also, why would God give mankind written Words that contradict the universe He created? Surely this is not the case. Why would God try to deceive man into thinking something that contradicts the Bible? Perhaps the theory is true and God desired mankind to find it. Perhaps God wanted mankind to further their thoughts in the Bible by questioning the Bible itself.

If God is the creator and knows what is going to happen to man, then it would make sense to say that humans would question the world. However, if an individual begins to say that God knew that humans would question the universe and its origin, then he is beginning to say that God knew that humans were going to gain free will. But can really say that considering the order of events in Genesis, the creation (During which he decides to make everything expand) then Man was created (Much like monkeys) then the Fall of Man, you could say that God wouldn’t have known that these things would be deceptive because Man wasn’t given the liberty to examine. However if you don’t believe that God didn’t know that Man would question things. then it would mean He would have known what he was doing when he put the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. Meaning we were suppose to have free will and question the world around us, inevitably leading to our discovery of different “anti” Christian Theories.

If God were a deceptive God, then He wouldn’t be the Loving God most Christians believe in. God isn’t deceptive and he is the controller of all things including the Universe. He also has the Power over all of what he created, the heavens and the earth and the creatures on it from the beginning of time. Why would God make a man out of near similar materials as other primates? Why wouldn’t God just make primates and turn them into Man slowly overtime? These question are of a series that make you question, not is there is a God, but rather the question what about God is what I think it is. It’s a question of whether you can except that Science and Religion not only coincide but support each other, low and behold we see a world were people agree and there is more peace and understanding then there was a day before a conclusion that is, God worthy.