Comments on: Brace yourself for a barrel of laughs – PZ is all set to visit the Creation Museum

By: dave

dave — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 04:57:11 +0000

Well, there are the snake-handler sects in Appalachia who do handle snakes and drink arsenic. But these folk are rightly considered weird and most Christians are embarrassed by them. Yet the snake handlers do take that part of the Bible far more literally than do the alleged literalist Christians of the more mainstream churches.

By: jenlillith

jenlillith — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 01:08:47 +0000

I wrote up my visit here. Complete with point-by-point debunking, all with hits from the first page of Google search results!

By: Lyle

Lyle — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:22:44 +0000

It's interesting that people also believe the Bible's promises that God/Jesus will cure their illnesses nevertheless have family doctors, and Christian after Christian end up in the obituary columns having suffered long painful battles with cancer. The Bible also promises that poison won't have any affect on believers, but none of them ever agree to test the theory. Even if poisoned accidently, they scoot off to the hospital. The arguments they use to support their beliefs are the same that are used to convince children that Santa Claus exists. Organized mental illness.

By: barry_duke

barry_duke — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 20:08:56 +0000

Strong-ish, Barrie. It has been forced to go quarterly in its 50th year, and by all accounts is a pale shadow of its former self. I adored Mad too, and credit it for teaching me everything I know about irreverance!

By: barriejohn

barriejohn — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 19:35:46 +0000

I`m so glad to see that Mad magazine`s still going strong, Barry! Boy, did we laugh at that when I was at school!!

By: barriejohn

barriejohn — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 19:27:40 +0000

(Cont) Obviously, when you are committed to believing that every word of your "holy book" is divinely inspired, then you have to come up with increasingly bizarre ways of accommodating scientific facts (or "theories" as they prefer to call them – hahaha!). The phrase "painting yourself into a corner" springs to mind!!

By: barriejohn

barriejohn — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 19:24:32 +0000

A lot of the people with whom I used to associate seriously believed that God had created the Universe AS IF IT WERE BILLIONS OF YEARS OLD!! As in your first illustration above, everything on Earth came into being as though it had been there for millennia – rock strata, fossils, mineral deposits, and so on. I think this idea first saw the light of day when cosmology destroyed the last vestiges of respectability (if there were any in the first place) in the old explanation that everything that was observed could be explained by the effects of Noah`s Flood! (Why on earth God would want to play tricks like this I have no idea: it`s ludicrous.) The second theory you mention also had its parallel in the idea that the laying-down of deposits, soil erosion, and so on, have NOT occurred at a steady rate in the past, so that exptrapolations cannot be made from measurements made at the present time. There is no evidence for this, of course, but that`s no problem – it just must be so!!

By: Jason R

Jason R — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:18:36 +0000

" I think it’s very bad science and even worse theology – and the theology is far more offensive to me. I think there’s a lot of focus on fear, and I don’t think that’s a very Christian message… I find it a malicious manipulation of the public."

That quote is hilarious. The entire christian myth is predicated on fear. Believe in me or burn for all eternity.

By: rog

rog — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:54:49 +0000

Oh, I did eventually get to looking at the AiG site's take on cosmology, there seem to be two favoured 'theories' on why if the universe is only 6000-10000 years old you can see stars in the sky that are more than 6000-10000 light years away.

1: the "in transit" theory: god created the light on it's way from space to earth with no physical object as it's originating point – 'cause he's god and he can. is you subscribe to this idea then there is no special reason to believe that distant objects in the sky actually exist at all, it's just a painting created by god for our amusement and wonderment at night.

2. the "C-Decay" theory: when the universe was created 6-10 thousand years ago the speed of light was *much* faster than it is today and has been slowing down ever since. it is not stated but surely must be implied that every other physical constant must have been manipulated in concert with this change of speed in order for matter to exist (god must have been kept busy by doing this); if this was not the case lighting a fire would have been a very dangerous proposition for Adam & Eve as a single spark could have over come atomic bond energies and caused the earth to fission out of existence in a big flash…. Also if this decay keeps happening at some point in the future moving about will be a lot harder, as one would be able to travel backwards in time by walking faster than the speed of light.

having had a look at http://www.truthinscience.org.uk as suggested by Tim_Danaher earlier I think they should have a stab at 'intelligent design' in physics and chemistry as well as biology… it would be good for a laugh!

By: rog

rog — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:20:13 +0000

or if you don't go in for torrents you can watch it online here: http://fr.truveo.com/BBC-Horizon-God-on-the-Brain...