Crazy things Creationists have said

[Evo]

I was just listening to the conversation between two co-workers. The one speaking is a Young Earth Creationist/Intelligent Design believer. He was relating a conversation he had with a "non-believer" the other day.

The bits I picked up were

"sure animals adapt to their environment, but there's no such thing as evolution. We're supposed to believe that we evolved from apes? What, some apes said "let's turn into humans, while the other apes decided to pass?"

When asked about dinosaurs "you can make anything you want out of a bunch of bones, there weren't any dinosaurs". "Now there were things called dragons, but they lived at the same time men did".

Then he was explaining why the Earth and humans aren't perfect. "God designed everything perfect, it's sin that has caused things to become imperfect".

Unfortunately I missed what he said about the big bang.

He did say that the Earth was at most 7,000 years old.

 

[radou]

This guy deserves a medal.

 

[neutrino]

"sure animals adapt to their environment, but there's no such thing as evolution. We're supposed to believe that we evolved from apes? What, some apes said "let's turn into humans, while the other apes decided to pass?"

I think this is more or less the same argument put forward by people who did not believe in evolution during Darwin's time, which led to that infamous cartoon of Darwin atop a tree.

When asked about dinosaurs "you can make anything you want out of a bunch of bones, there weren't any dinosaurs". "Now there were things called dragons, but they lived at the same time men did".

Oh, yes. Dragons are real...even Discovery Channel made a show about them.

He did say that the Earth was at most 7,000 years old.

Right, and the universe is just over 12,000 ly wide.
(http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/08/14/its-a-small-universe-after-all/)

 

[neutrino]

Sadly, people are that stupid when the follow religion.

Not quite. There are 'sane' people who are religious. It's those who take things to the extreme that are stupid. They neither know about their so-called religion nor do they know the facts [or just want to ignore it].

 

[Cyrus]

I have a friend who says the same kind of garbage Evo posted, and he's an engineering student!

I have another friend that does not believe in evolution and he's a biology major.

There are 'sane' people who are religious.

I have not met a single 'sane' religious person.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I'm floored that this hasn't been locked. What am I missing?

 

[Cyrus]

Locked for what? If people think the world is 7,000 years old there crackpots. Let's not dance around the obvious.

 

[arildno]

Why should a thread concerning rank idiocy be closed?

 

[Lisa!]

I have not met a single 'sane' religious person.

What's the yardstick(?) for measuring sanity here? You?
I've seen religious people who believe in Evolution and Big bang as well

 

[Evo]

Generic discussions of Intelligent Design creationism and evolution are allowable. I will remove the negative religious remark, although it wasn't about a "specific" religion, which is what is not allowed.

The thread is about people refusing to understand basic science, this is something that affects all of us.

He's telling people that dinosaurs are fakes.

 

[Cyrus]

What's the yardstick(?) for measuring sanity here? You?
I've seen religious people who believe in Evolution and Big bang as well

Go make me some gourma sabzi you crackpot!

 

[marcflores]

Not quite. There are 'sane' people who are religious. It's those who take things to the extreme that are stupid. They neither know about their so-called religion nor do they know the facts [or just want to ignore it].

Some people like to call it extreme, I like to call it fundamentalism.

It sounds like that coworker of Evo needs a better science education or to maybe look up the word "speciation."

 

[Lisa!]

Go make me some gourma sabzi you crackpot!

Just note that I'm not defending them! Anyway as Evo mentioned she's going to remove negative religious remark

 

[zoobyshoe]

Go make me some gourma sabzi you crackpot!

That's my wife you're calling a crackpot. If she happens to make any gourma sabzi, it's not going into the end of you you think.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Then he was explaining why the Earth and humans aren't perfect. "God designed everything perfect, it's sin that has caused things to become imperfect".

You might point out to this person that except for some unimportant details, this is pretty much a description of evolution.

 

[Monique]

Did you see the documentary "100 Reasons Why Evolution Is Stupid"? You should see it, you can find it on google and it is quite entertaining. The guy is correct on some points that in some ways science is a religion as well, but it is hilarious how he is so convince that evolution is 'stupid'

 

[Smurf]

I've seen it! And while even my grasp of evolution is superior to his, I actually agree with his underlying premise, that being that our schools are teaching our children stupid ideas. The 'evolution' taught in schools is exactly what he describes, and it has all the flaws that he describes. Just one more problem with our education system...

 

[Beeza]

I thought you guys would enjoy this peanut butter proof :-)



Wait until about 60 seconds into it.

Did you guys know a banana is an atheist's nightmare? This one is realllllly good. It looks like the guy next to him is actually laughing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zwbhAXe5yk&mode=related&search=

 

[Moridin]

Did you see the documentary "100 Reasons Why Evolution Is Stupid"? You should see it, you can find it on google and it is quite entertaining. The guy is correct on some points that in some ways science is a religion as well, but it is hilarious how he is so convince that evolution is 'stupid'

...

Did a PF mentor just claim that science was a religion?

Let us examine it, shall we?

To call science a religion should immediately be recognized as an ideological attack, rather than one based on facts. It is a rather ignorant claim in attempting to discredit scientific research and development.

Does science make supernatural claims? No.
Does science differentiate between sacred and profane objects, places and times? No.
Does science have ritual acts focused on sacred objects, places and times? No.
Does science have a moral code with supernatural origin? No.
Does science employ religious feelings? No.
Does science amount to a dogmatic world view? No.
Does science engage in communication with the supernatural (prayer, meditation and so on)? No.
Is science a social group bound together by the above areas? No.

etc.

Courtesy of Austin Cline.

 

[Moridin]

Did you guys know a banana is an atheist's nightmare? This one is realllllly good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zwbhAXe5yk&mode=related&search=

The Creationist Nightmare

http://www.disabledhands.com/paperclip.jpg

A paper clip is not complex at all. Yet we know that it has been designed. Why? Because of its artificiality. That is how you infer design.

</off topic rant>

 

[chroot]

Well, at a minimum, I'm now convinced there is no intelligent life among those who post comments on youtube videos.

- Warren

 

[mgb_phys]

Of course if we included COMPUTER science:

Does science make supernatural claims? Yes - if I turn it off and on it will magically fix itself.
Does science differentiate between sacred and profane objects, places and times? Mac vs PC.
Does science have ritual acts focused on sacred objects, places and times? It's the only way it ever works.
Does science have a moral code with supernatural origin? Linux.
Does science employ religious feelings? Vi vs emacs.
Does science amount to a dogmatic world view? see above.
Does science engage in communication with the supernatural (prayer, meditation and so on)? Sometimes it feels like that with Exchange server.
Is science a social group bound together by the above areas? well that and Star Trek.

 

[mgb_phys]

Did you guys know a banana is an atheist's nightmare? This one is realllllly good. It looks like the guy next to him is actually laughing.

This is a wind-up right? Especially since the cultivated banana can't reporduce in the wild it has to be grafter by man.

 

[Moridin]

Of course if we included COMPUTER science:

Before dismissing your argument out-of-hand by showing the woeful logical inconsistencies in it, I'd like to point out that it may apply to individual computer scientists, not computer science. In any case, the logical inconsistencies speaks for itself.

Wait, was it a joke?

 

[Math Is Hard]

Of course if we included COMPUTER science:

Does science make supernatural claims? Yes - if I turn it off and on it will magically fix itself.
Does science differentiate between sacred and profane objects, places and times? Mac vs PC.
Does science have ritual acts focused on sacred objects, places and times? It's the only way it ever works.
Does science have a moral code with supernatural origin? Linux.
Does science employ religious feelings? Vi vs emacs.
Does science amount to a dogmatic world view? see above.
Does science engage in communication with the supernatural (prayer, meditation and so on)? Sometimes it feels like that with Exchange server.
Is science a social group bound together by the above areas? well that and Star Trek.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

He's telling people that dinosaurs are fakes.

They are! I've never met one who is sincere.

You all can throw out all logical objections since "God the trickster" takes care of all that.

 

[zoobyshoe]

They are! I've never met one who is sincere.

I don't think it's particularly enlightened of you to extrapolate the qualities of all dinosaurs from the small subset of them you've personally encountered.

 

[Evo]

They are! I've never met one who is sincere.

What was so funny is that this loon was talking to people that would consider themselves very devoutly religious, including one girl that's a minister and after he left they were all in utter disbelief about this guy's views on science. What's even scarier is that his wife teaches science in a public middle school. But hey, this is Kansas, home of science deniers.

Also I didn't mention that he ended his rant with repeating Intelligent Design is the truth - twice.

 

[G01]

Since we are pointing out ridiculous scientific illiteracy, I'll post these examples, even though they don't really have anything to do with religion:

1. A girl in one of my classes didn't know the moon had any gravity. Another one was equally surprised Jupiter had gravity.

2. My friend's mother actually wondered why the people in Australia didn't fall off the Earth, since they were "upside down." ...Seriously, I'm not making this up!

EDIT: This next one just happened on MSNBC:

3. The guy who owns one of Elvis Presley's old houses in Britain, believes that Elvis's "energy" is absorbed into the house. He then proceeded to try to use E=mc^2 to justify this belief...I had heard the physics education in the UK was going downhill, but I had no idea it already fell this low...

 

[zoobyshoe]

Since we are pointing out ridiculous scientific illiteracy, I'll post these examples, even though they don't really have anything to do with religion:

1. A girl in one of my classes didn't know the moon had any gravity. Another one was equally surprised Jupiter had gravity.

2. My friend's mother actually wondered why the people in Astralia didn't fall off the Earth, since they were "upside down." ...Seriously, I'm not making this up!

EDIT: This next one just happened on MSNBC:

3. The guy who owns one of Elvis Presley's old houses in Britain, believes that Elvis's "energy" is absorbed into the house. He then proceeded to try to use E-mc^2 to justify this belief...I had heard the physics education in the UK was going downhill, but I had no idea it already fell this low...

A lot of people, a lot of them, think that formula is evidence for life after death. It goes something like: "Einstein said energy can neither be created nor destroyed, therefore, the energy field we have around our bodies can survive even when the body dies."

 

[DaveC426913]

Of course if we included COMPUTER science:

Does science make supernatural claims? Yes - if I turn it off and on it will magically fix itself.
Does science differentiate between sacred and profane objects, places and times? Mac vs PC.
Does science have ritual acts focused on sacred objects, places and times? It's the only way it ever works.
Does science have a moral code with supernatural origin? Linux.
Does science employ religious feelings? Vi vs emacs.
Does science amount to a dogmatic world view? see above.
Does science engage in communication with the supernatural (prayer, meditation and so on)? Sometimes it feels like that with Exchange server.
Is science a social group bound together by the above areas? well that and Star Trek.

 

[Monique]

...

Did a PF mentor just claim that science was a religion?

Let us examine it, shall we?

To call science a religion should immediately be recognized as an ideological attack, rather than one based on facts. It is a rather ignorant claim in attempting to discredit scientific research and development.

Did you miss my statement "in some ways"? We don't know all the facts and dogmas have been proven wrong over time.

 

[Moridin]

Did you miss my statement "in some ways"? We don't know all the facts and dogmas have been proven wrong over time.

Oh, I thought that the phrase 'in some ways' was just an attempt to limit backlash.

Notice how you said that 'in some ways science is a religion as well'. That suggest that science and religion has one or more things in common that makes them related in a meaningful way. If the relationship is not meaningful, like saying that science and religion is related because they both have an 'e' in them or that they both include people who tries to explain things does not suggest that science is a religion, even "in some ways".

We do not know all the facts, but we know that we do not know all the facts and that is was separates science from religion. Science is aware of it has a strong mechanism of self-correction and makes use of evidence to support its findings. The concept of religion doesn't even come close.

Religion on the other hand generally discourages questioning dogma. Science doesn't claim that its findings are absolute but a approximation that will get better as more and more data is coming in and as the knowledge paradigms are passed. I'm sure you know this already.

The usage of science is not to say that something is true and that's that, but to show that scientific methods and facts are useful in making predictions and understanding the world.

http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/dogma

Individual scientists may be dogmatic, but science is hardly dogmatic as it completely goes against the very point of science. Isn't science the very cure for dogma, not dogma in itself?

 

[Monique]

Some areas in science are very theoretical, that is what I meant with in some ways. What I had in mind are areas like string theory or what happened during the origin of our universe. Believing in such theories is almost like believing in a religion: what evidence do we really have that the stories are true. This is also what the '100 reasons evolution is stupid' touches on. We say it is stupid that the universe began with a creator: who created the creator. Someone who believes in god says it is stupid that the universe began in a big bang: what set off the big bang? I'm not saying science is a religion, I'm saying that you need to be critical of the evidences otherwise science can be like a religion: we all like to believe these elegant theories as scientist and hope they are true.

Ofcourse the method is different and this is where science diverges from religion: through experimentation and observation we can come closer to the truth.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I think Monique's observation was perfectly valid at the casual level it was made. Science certainly fills the same personal voids in many people's lives as religion does in others and they pursue it with the same degree of absorption. It's what gives their lives the kind of purpose and meaning we'd only otherwise expect to see in a religion. Here at PF, for instance, you'll see some people ask quetions about the nature of Einstein's genius with the same burning fervor that people ask quetions about the existence of free will in religious conversations.

 

[Evo]

I think Monique's observation was perfectly valid at the casual level it was made. Science certainly fills the same personal voids in many people's lives as religion does in others and they pursue it with the same degree of absorption. It's what gives their lives the kind of purpose and meaning we'd only otherwise expect to see in a religion. Here at PF, for instance, you'll see some people ask quetions about the nature of Einstein's genius with the same burning fervor that people ask quetions about the existence of free will in religious conversations.

I would agree, I read her remark as meaning a scientist could have the same passion and commitment to the pursuit of knowldege as a religious person would have to their beliefs.

 

[Moridin]

Individual scientists can certainly be dogmatic and choose to believe in string theory as absolute truth. However, I doubt that string theory is mainstream science and its degree of certainty (if it has one) is very low. Not only does it completely lack experimental evidence at this point, their theoretical structure is also not complete.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/astronomy/bigbang.html#misconceptions

He seems to have misrepresented the Big Bang Theory as well. The Universe did not begin with Big Bang. In fact, science does not claim to know how the Universe began. All science claims to know is that the Universe was smaller in the past and that there seems to have been a naked singularity at the very beginning. Big Bang is not about the beginning of the Universe, but about the development of it. If an individual scientist chooses to accept some of the misconceptions of the Big Bang on faith, that says nothing about how science deals with it.

Naturally, I agree that science can be like a religion for some individual scientists or people, just like a toaster or a spoon can be, but that demands a misrepresentation of science, the toaster and the spoon. Science is not intrinsically religious in its standard form.

I think that the way Evo and zoobyshoe argue does not show how science and religion are related in a meaningful way. If people who like potatoes eat them with the same passion and commitment as a scientist exploring the world with observation, logic and evidence, this does not really mean that science is a potato?

Monique, I apologize if I misinterpreted your initial remark.

 

[ank_gl]

Well, at a minimum, I'm now convinced there is no intelligent life among those who post comments on youtube videos.

- Warren

that is soooo not true

 

[zoobyshoe]

I think that the way Evo and zoobyshoe argue does not show how science and religion are related in a meaningful way.

The remark wasn't about science itself, but about the way people regard it, obviously.

 

[ank_gl]

well OP wasnt about any religion, neither about science, nor about way people regard them, it was just about 2 dumbheads

 

[jostpuur]

Is scientific community putting any effort into systematic study of how as much people as possible, could be converted from intelligent design to science?

 

[arildno]

Is scientific community putting any effort into systematic study of how as much people as possible, could be converted from intelligent design to science?

By hitting religion so hard with sarcasm and ridicule that people get ashamed from ever having believed in that nonsense.

 

[Cyrus]

Amen brother arildno. OooooooooooooooooWWWWWWWeeeeeeeeeOOOOOOOO HUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Actually, to a true believer, that will only make you look arrogant, narrow minded, and evil. It may make you feel better, but it does nothing to further your cause. It will insure that they won't listen to anything that you have to say.

 

[Evo]

Is scientific community putting any effort into systematic study of how as much people as possible, could be converted from intelligent design to science?

It's not really the aim of the scientific community to actively try to convert people. Missionaries for Science?

How much effort would it take to change the thinking of someone that either chooses to ignore or is unable to grasp basic scientific concepts? People that are fooled by the pretense that Intelligent Design is science are pretty far gone already.

 

[Evo]

Actually, to a true believer, that will only make you look arrogant, narrow minded, and evil. It may make you feel better, but it does nothing to further your cause. It will insure that they won't listen to anything that you have to say.

Ivan is correct, it's like telling people that watch American Idol that the show and the performers are cr@p.

 

[mgb_phys]

I don't know who first said it but:
"Don't argue with idiots, they bring you down to their level and they've had more practice"

 

[Evo]

I like "I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed man".

 

[Lisa!]

Very true! Honestly I don't think that arguing with some people(not all) work at all. It just waste your time and energy and might ruin your day.
I'm teaching myself to only laugh at stupid ideas!

 

[ank_gl]

"Don't argue with idiots, they bring you down to their level and they've had more practice"

very true