Crocoduck

An introduction on how to retain your Christian faith in the face of 21st century scientific understanding

I. Do not read the Bible.

Christianity is based on the belief that the Bible is the inspired word of God. Whether you believe every word is inerrant or you hold a more liberal interpretation, it is very important that you read as little of your accepted holy book as possible.

II. If you do read the Bible, keep your mind in a firmly closed position!

If you simply must, whatever you do, do NOT maintain an open mind. It is much more difficult to accept the outlandish claims and the myriad contradictions laced throughout the Bible if you don’t hold fast to the belief that everything you read must be true so there is no purpose in questioning anything. [Read more...]

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Breaking News: Pastors Are Idiots

25 Jan By Josh Engen

I can’t say I’m surprised by this, but it’s depressing nonetheless; LifeWay Christian Resources recently conducted a survey of 1,000 American Protestant pastors and found that the overwhelming majority do not believe that god used evolution to create humans.

When asked to respond to the statement, “I believe God used evolution to create people,” 73 percent of pastors disagree, with 64 percent strongly disagreeing and 8 percent somewhat disagreeing. Twelve percent each somewhat agree and strongly agree. Four percent are not sure.

In response to the statement, “I believe Adam and Eve were literal people,” 74 percent strongly agree and 8 percent somewhat agree. Six percent somewhat disagree, 11 percent strongly disagree and 1 percent are not sure.

I think most of us can agree that LifeWay’s survey is painting a pretty terrifying picture here. In most of the world, pastors have a far more influential voice than scientists, teachers or politicians, and we’ve been stuck with a group of leaders who insist on speaking authoritatively about a subject that they know nothing about. [Read more...]

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Transitional Tuesday: Eoplectreurys

24 Jan By Josh Engen

Eoplectreurys is one of the oldest spiders fossils ever to be discovered. This terrifying little creature is a member of the Haplogynae series. Essentially, this means that Eoplectreurys had 8 eyes and the females lack a hardened genitalia.

Obviously I’m oversimplifying, because we’re skipping over all the interesting genetic facts, but I usually feel the need to include the word “genitalia” in my posts whenever possible. [Read more...]

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Music Monday: I Know That God Created Me

23 Jan By Josh Engen

Here are the things you need to know about this video:

Some of the cartoon monkeys know sign language
As far as I can tell, it’s a 1 minute and 31 second advertisement for johnzealey.com
It contains the lyric “If the enemy tells me that I got it wrong, I say ‘I ain’t got to listen to you’,” which is just a somewhat less childish way of saying “Facts scare me.”

Kid’s Song on Creationism by OnKneesforJesus

Enjoy.

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Tu quoque?

11 Jan By Patrick Julius

Ah, Eric Hovind. He’s like Duane Gish without the book-learning. At least he’s not Ken Ham, I suppose.

Here we have him picking a fight with The Thinking Atheist by garbling an already pretty silly argument invented by Plantinga. First of all, it’s spelled “Tu quoque”, because it’s Latin; “Too quote” doesn’t mean anything. Second of all, it’s not really a fallacy, or at worst it is an informal fallacy like ad hominem (which Hovind would probably mangle into “Add homonym” or something similar). If I pull a tu quoque, what I’m really saying is that I can’t answer your challenge, but you can’t answer it either, so there’s something unfair about the challenge. (Acceptable uses of the tu quoque are often found in epistemology, where we all ultimately have to admit that our epistemology is not absolutely 100% bullet-proof, but clearly some methods—e.g. science—are better than others—e.g. tea leaves.)

God’s Greenhouse is Better than Pauly Shore’s Bio-Dome

11 Jan By Josh Engen

If you like foundation-less conjecture, you’re going to love this story: Steve Anderson, a baptist pastor from Tempe, AZ, has decided that Jesus himself grew all the flowers, plants and trees in heaven before FedExing them to earth during the 6 days of creation.

“The Bible teaches that heaven is a place, not just a figment of somebody’s imagination or some kind of a spirit world, where people are floating around on puffs of air or something, but actually a physical, literal place. And if you remember when John was caught up into heaven, there were beasts, there were angels, there were thrones, there was gold, there was a sea of glass, there were people singing, there were people living there, they were eating and drinking. There are trees. There’s a Tree of Life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God. The paradise is in the third heaven.” [Read more...]

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Politics update: Mealy-mouthed waffler narrowly defeats fundamentalist wackjob in pointless non-binding travesty of democracy

4 Jan By Patrick Julius

Mitt Romney, the only Republican candidate (other than John Huntsman, who is polling at like 2% right now) who has an even vaguely respectable platform on evolution, defeated Rick Santorum, a dyed-in-the-wool Christian fundamentalist, by a mere EIGHT VOTES in the Iowa Caucus. In fact this is by no means binding, and Rick Santorum has virtually no chance of actually being nominated by the party, but it’s representative of much deeper problems in American democracy. Mitt Romney will win the nomination, Barack Obama will win the election, and you can bank on that. Honestly you’d be better off banking on this than you would the sort of stock that S&P calls “AAA” (but that’s a rant for another time). No, the problem here is not who won–but how he won, by how much, and who he was running against.

First of all, it should never be that close. There are 300 million people in this country, and it should never be the case that 8 of them get to decide who will be the ruler of the free world–nor even get to decide who will be in the top ten choices. If a fair vote election were that close, it would mean the candidates were basically identical. Since they obviously aren’t, this means that a small sector of the electorate (in this case, Iowans) is disproportionately powerful.

Secondly, nutjobs like Santorum should never even be in the running. People who honestly think that the Earth is 6000 years old and gays should be put in prison should never be allowed anywhere near the nuclear launch codes. Something is wrong with either the electoral system or the educational system (or both) when candidates this crazy has even a chance at serious political authority. Santorum is just the flavor of the week, as Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and Michelle Bachmann were before him; but that flavor is a very bitter one indeed.

It’s not exactly undemocratic, actually; after all, about 40% of Americans agree with Santorum’s bizarre views. They still shouldn’t win a plurality vote, but nor would they be completely out of the running. The problem is not so much that the American electoral system is unfair (though that’s part of it); it’s really something far worse than that: The American people are crazy.

We’re getting exactly the candidates we deserve. And what could be more terrifying than that?

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Music Monday: I Don’t Believe in Evolution

2 Jan By Josh Engen

Go get your coworkers. It’s time for a sing a long.

Filed Under: Education, Entertainment, Evolution, Music Monday, nonscience, Religion Leave a Comment

Happy depressing New Year

1 Jan By Josh Engen

Remember all of that kissing and high-fiving you did last night at midnight? Well, all of that celebration is over, because New Hampshire is already trying to ruin 2012.

New Hampshire House Bill 1148 would “require evolution to be taught in the public schools of this state as a theory, including the theorists’ political and ideological viewpoints and their position on the concept of atheism.”

Yup. Republicans in New Hampshire have introduced a bill that attempts to discredit evolution by associating it with atheism. And here’s another juicy little tidbit:

Jerry Bergevin, a Republican who introduced HB 1148, went further, telling the Concord Monitor that atheism was linked to Nazism and the 1999 Columbine school shooting.

“I want the full portrait of evolution and the people who came up with the idea to be presented,” Bergevin said. “It’s a worldview and it’s godless.”

I’m going to take a nap. Wake me in 2013.

Read the whole story here.

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