www.jeffthefish.com

I have stumbled upon a veritable goldmine of antilogic!  Not that anyone would actually want to, but here’s a person who has posted a whole bunch of Kent Hovind’s “educational” videos in which he attempts to show that evolution is stupid. There’s also a bunch of Way Of The Master stuff, if you’re feeling particularly self-loathing.

Kent Hovind with two fatties

I haven’t gotten very far into this video, so I don’t have any comments on the video itself yet, but I would like to point out a couple of items..

The description on the YouTube page reads:

hovind takes three different evolutionist at the same time from different fields so they can not use the “that is not in my field” excuses this time.

WTF??? That’s not an excuse, that’s good judgment! To illustrate this point, I have written a short play:

Patient: Why are you referring me to an OB/GYN? Are you stupid?
Doctor: Well, no, but I’m an optometrist…OB/GYN is really not my field…
Patient: Stop with the excuses!

Also, take a look at the perverted mouse tit stupidity in the comments:

Gravity is proven. That’s why it was considered a theory when first thought up, but is now considered a law.

Science is MEANT to prove things! It is defined as things we can prove by observing, studying, testing and repeating. It is therefore entirely possible for a theory to be proven.

The theory of evolution teaches that the first life came from a rock. By wording it similarly to Hovind, I do nothing to show that I have no mind of my own.
And no, speciation has never been observed.

O Holy Eff.

Because of Louisiana. I really have nothing to add to this. My sister probably thinks this is great news.  After watching the video, I srsly wanted to cry.  At least I got to see Dennis Woltering, a familiar face from my childhood.

Quick, someone cheer me up.

I went to jesus-is-savior.com and saw an article by that title. I wanted to find out what proof this nutcase thought he had. Here’s as much as I was able to read:

“Recently, a thought captivated my mind that proves that the theory of evolution is a big hoax.”

I should have stopped right there. But I was too curious. I had to know what this thought was.

“The thought is simple and yet profound … why is there no recorded history before approximately 4,000 B.C.? The answer is obvious … there was no history!”

I should have gone with my initial hunch. I’m getting too old for this.

It’s true, ladies. Last night, Jennifer, Ed, Bryan, and I went to see PZ Myers speak at the Pacific Science Center, where I quickly outbearded him.

Here’s the thing: It was a lot of fun. The talk was really entertaining. Anyone should know that. He warmed up the crowd by showing the argument from peanut butter video, which was even more hilarious when watched in a group setting. He talked about the general inanity of the correspondence he gets from Creationists, and what science writers can do to communicate science to as wide an audience as possible.

And then a bunch of attendees went to a noisy pub. Ed and I drank beer and talked about woo and realized that we couldn’t hear anything that anyone else was saying, so we left. On my way out I had the following exchange with PZ, reproduced here as a memorial to the ages:

Jason: This was not a very good Bible study.
PZ: Actually it was the best kind!
Jason: OK, but you ruined my joke.

And that’s what kind of people they are.

Phil Plait, aka The Bad Astronomer, has written a post about Ray Comfort’s latest stupidity and linked to my website in gratitude for sending him the link. I’ve hit the bigtime again!

If only Ray hadn’t been born without the gene for comprehension…

Here are some links so you can go learn yourself up.

Humans are getting less and less special as we learn more about the nature of life. Here’s an article that details six traits that were once thought to be uniquely human. One thing I think they could have added, though one could argue that this falls under morality, is altruism, like that found in vampire bats and (gasp!) E. coli(pdf).*

Also, no matter how hard certain Kentucky-based groups try to deny it, the transitional fossils keep rolling in. Here’s an amphibian that has salamander traits and frog traits. The predictive power of the Theory of Evolution!

*For more info on E. coli, check out Carl Zimmer’s new book, Microcosm, and listen to Carl’s interview on this week’s episode of The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe.

On Sunday, for the first time ever, I told my older sister that I am no longer a creationist. She did not seem pleased.

The reason it came up was that she was telling me about how she’d seen Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana, speak at a local church that morning. My sister loves him. Since I’d been looking for an opportunity to bring this up, I told her that the only thing I didn’t like about Bobby Jindal was that he was a creationist. At first she didn’t know what creationism was, so I explained to her that I didn’t take the Genesis story literally anymore, and that I accepted the theory of evolution.

I thought that she sounded mad, but she said she wasn’t. I was very nervous and kind of shaking a little bit. She said she was surprised. I was actually surprised that she was surprised, because my sister is Catholic, and the Catholic church famously accepts evolution. I said, “As much as I’m into science?” She responded, “Yes, but you were also into God.”

She asked me how long I’d “believed” this. I tried to explain that it’s just not possible for the Genesis story to be literally true, and that this was based on evidence, but I don’t think that really matters to her. She said, “So you don’t think that God had anything to do with it?” I tried to explain that that wasn’t really the case. I am not very good at explaining things.

Then she said, “Well, all I know is that we need politicians in office who believe in God.” I don’t agree with this, but I said “yeah” and let the conversation move on.

It was a difficult thing for me to do, because I really had no idea how she would react. When I first got my lungfish, I explained to her how lungfish are more closely related to humans than to most other fish, and even sent her some cladograms illustrating this. She did not seem to have a problem with that idea. I guess most people compartmentalize their knowledge like that. I know I did.

Now, I do not expect my sister ever to give me a hard time about this. She’s just not that kind of person. But, to be fair, if she did give me a hard time I would be totally deserving of it. She raised me from the time I was 13 until I got married. I was a know-it-all annoying fundamentalist teenager, and on several occasions gave her a hard time about her Catholicness.

I’m glad this has finally been done though. And I’m glad that I don’t have to reveal this to my grandmother. My mother still doesn’t know. My wife’s mother knows that I accept evolution, but I don’t think she knows that my wife does. We’ll cross that bridge when we get there, I guess.

Does anyone else have any coming out stories they’d be willing to share? They don’t have to involve creationism or religion.

“Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.” - Ben Stein

“Not long after our wedding, we were awakened in the middle of the night in our own bedroom by deputy sheriffs and actually arrested for the ‘crime’ of marrying the wrong kind of person. Our marriage certificate was hanging on the wall above the bed. The state prosecuted Richard and me, and after we were found guilty, the judge declared: ‘Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.’ He sentenced us to a year in prison, but offered to suspend the sentence if we left our home in Virginia for 25 years exile.” - Mildred Loving

“There’s no genetic basis for any kind of rigid ethnic or racial classification at all…I’m always asked is there Greek DNA or an Italian gene, but, of course, there isn’t. . . . We’re very closely related.” - Bryan Sikes

Go check out Iron Man: Exposed, a detailed look at the Robert Downey, Jr. movie Iron Man: No Intelligence Allowed. They’ll show you why this movie is not a documentary at all, but anti-science propaganda aimed at creating the appearance of controversy where there is none.

OK, not really.  But how cool would it be if I weren’t too lazy to build a parody of this site?