Creationist people are funny. I mean that literally. It’s only fair, they take everything literally too. Well, sort of. It’s a well-known fact and easily provable, that creationists only take what they like in the bible literally–the rest, they ignore.
I continue to post really great stuff on Facebook, most of it from scientists who happen to also be believers. I spread it around. There are Catholics, and Lutherans, and Presbyterians, you know, mainstream religious folks. And they all point out the silliness of trying to claim that the earth was formed in six days.
Normal people nod their heads and wonder what all the fuss is about, since logic is a part of daily life you know. I mean if evolution were not true, then when the human genome project was completed, there would have been a hue and cry of world-wide proportions had the DNA not supported our evolution from “lesser”beings. As it turns out, we learned something we had not thought true–some homo-sapiens today actually have DNA from Neanderthals in their bodies, proof that a more primitive humanoid actually mated with those who would ultimately become us.
All this is beyond the average creationist of course, since they are unable to wrap their compartmentalized minds around actual facts. Life is so much simpler when you simply decide what would make you happy and then “make it so” in your mind. There are dozens of shysters out there willing to take you money in return for a good sounding story that meets your needs.
Of course, such mindless ones are also prone to “doubt” anything else that they find troubling in their white-centric (and that is most always the case) world. They stout-fastly deny that the earth as portrayed in the bible is FLAT and that the “heavens” are a dome which keeps out the “waters” which surround everything. No, that doesn’t work for them, so literalism takes a flying leap off the edge on that one.
Since I was peppering the Facebook page with a lot of actual *gasp* science, one of our creationist types figured to “get enlightened” so on the advice of others of her myopic kind, she ordered her some books from a site that specializes in helping people remain god-awful ignorant of the truth.
And she read them. Or at least tried to.
And then she told the Facebook crowd all about what she had learnt. It had to do with “if the earth was so old then we would all be buried under tons of cosmic dust”, and something about you know crab nebula only occurring once every 100 years, so where are they all? And if you count people the right way, and not the scientific way, somehow, it comes down to just 2 people some 6,000 + years ago. General junk like that.
Which proved that not only did she not think of any of this stuff herself, she didn’t understand most of what she read in the first place.
After I had deciphered the “arguments” I went to the science. Most of the really good and big ones just have an archive of these silly assertions and a scientific proof to explain the errors. (Talk Origins is great for this by the by should you get asked one of these “yeah so, explain this” questions).
Some of you may recall that there was a thing that ran around Facebook a few weeks ago about a test given to grade schoolers about “science” and most thought it a joke, until the school system (a Christian school) fessed up and said it was theirs. Anyway, at the end, was a question which tells you that this is all about indoctrination and not about actual science. The question was “And what do we say when people tell us that the earth is millions of years old?”
The answer is “Were you there?” Yeah that’s what crazy fundie parents are teaching our children to say in response to a scientific fact. And lo and behold that question also exists on the Talk Origins “creationist arguments”.
I found every single one of the lady’s “arguments” on Talk Origins. They are simplistic and easily dispelled. The offerer of course doesn’t understand a thing about what they just regurgitated. They aren’t meant to. They are happy to find somebody who agrees with them, who writes in a way that sounds all scientific-y, and is not understandable by them certainly. (This makes it likely to be true).
I cited scientific responses and the appropriate links to read the truth in full. (By the way NCSE is another great site for scientific responses and information on evolution and climate change). Of course there was no response from the creation lady.
When I asked for her sources, since her arguments were not hers but something she admittedly read in a book, I got the stonewall. “You won’t read them anyway!” she whined. No of course I’m not going to line the pockets of a charlatan, but I will look up his name and read reviews of his book(s) and alert others where to go to read about his credentials.
But she won’t give them to me. Plagiarism is a darn sight less dangerous in her eyes than giving her sources up to scrutiny by others.
Truth is scary stuff to some.
I suppose next she will be telling me that Revelation is all about the Catholic Church being the beast. That seems to be the level where those of her kind end up.
What does all this mean?
Not much. It is just that willful ignorance of this sort is that voice that I hear that tells me that these folks shouldn’t be allowed to vote, and definitely not raise children. They should be set down on farms far away from normal people where they can engage in their fantasies without harming others.
But then that conflicts with the other voice that tells me that I don’t approve of limits to who can vote (heck given their level of duh, I figure we couldn’t go too wrong with letting chimps vote either), and I don’t think we want to go down the road of who can procreate either.
The nice thing is that the two voices conflict and I have to resolve the dilemma, something the fundie mind can avoid. So far I come down on the side of freedom, but if these people don’t stop annoying me with their nonsense, well, I might be persuaded to at least make chocolate unavailable to them. I mean it’s a treat they should be denied, just for being so darn goofy.
