I've trapped my first, real live religgie.

[FBM]

I caught a creationist fundie by the e-mail. He's the author of this pile of garbage:

In defense of anti-evolution decision

By David Thiessen

I applaud the Ministry of Education’s (MOE) recent decision to remove evolution from Korean textbooks. Finally a government is standing up against the lie called evolution. A recent article was published attacking that decision and as usual it contained the typical evolutionist misconceptions. This article will look at those misconceptions.

First, the author of that piece wrote, ``The theory of evolution is the lynchpin of scientific study …” Yes, but that doesn’t make the theory true or correct. It just means that a majority of like-minded scientists have discarded the truth for their own ideas.

Second, he says that ``By removing evolution from our children’s science curriculum, they lose the perspective that they are part of a process that is much bigger than humans alone.” Evolutionists cannot verify one thing about this supposed process. Museums only display the assumptions, conjectures, wishful thinking of the evolutionist on how man originated. There is not one verifiable piece of evidence to support this idea of ``a process.”

Third, he talks about future employment and, yes, you can take that as a threat as evolutionists are well known to ruin people’s careers, education tracks, etc. when people disagree with them. It is well documented that the evolutionary crowd is very exclusionary and reactionary. If they had the truth, they would not be so insecure and resort to bullying.

Fourth, he then says, ``Removing facts about evolution from textbooks weakens our children’s ability to think critically and solve problems.” Evolutionists are under the mistaken impression that critical thinking takes place if you agree with them and accept their views. That is just not so. Critical thinking is not a monopoly or property of the evolutionist. People use it every day to reject the fanciful tales evolutionary scientists bring to the public.

In looking honestly at the ``science” of evolution one would find that evolutionists cheat in supporting their claims. They start at the end to prove the beginning and that just doesn’t work. They use fully genetically developed specimens to support their claims. They do not use the original one celled creature, transitional species nor do they use original conditions thus not one of their scientific experiments are actually evolutionary.

Also, evolutionists also rely upon fortune telling. They make ‘predictions’ an integral part of the process but one of the weaknesses of predictions is that they are not excluding other sources from producing the same results.

Then to make things worse for evolutionists, they just do not have the historical foundation they need to prove their theory correct. Not one ancient document supports their claims. The evolutionist will argue that the ancient people were not intelligent or aware enough to discover this process. That argument is nothing but an insult to people who built pyramids, ancient computers, cities, etc. without modern technology.

They were smart enough to know about their origins and they would have written about evolution if it were true. Its origin comes from a group of people where only three of them had any sort of science degree. Charles Darwin was not one of them. Talk about the irony.

If you want answers to man’s origins, science is not the place to go find them. Science cannot determine what you had for breakfast last week let alone tell anyone what happened thousands of years ago. Origins are beyond science’s scope and authority.

The MOE was correct in removing evolution from the textbooks because one does not lie to children and evolution is nothing but a lie. Creation doesn’t fit the secular scientific model simply because God did not use any scientific method to create. He used his supernatural power, made it a non-repeatable act to show his creation that he is God and there is none like him.

Secular scientists took over the field and redesigned it to exclude the truth and once you exclude the truth, you do not get any answers. If you want answers go to Genesis for evolution has nothing to offer anyone.

This is just a brief defense as this topic requires much more space than is allotted to fully expose the theory of evolution for what it is ― a lie. If you want the truth, do science God’s way.

The writer is an English teacher in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province. His email address is archaeologist@fastmail.fm.

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/op ... 13545.html

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"Secular scientists took over the field and redesigned it to exclude the truth and once you exclude the truth, you do not get any answers. If you want answers go to Genesis for evolution has nothing to offer anyone. "

How can that be anything but a POE?

[FBM]

Oh, darn me. Looks like I inadvertently copied his e-mail address in that. That's so unlike me.

Anyhoo, here's our latest exchange:

****Well problem, the Bible wasn't written solely in the Bronze Age nor was it written solely by goat herders. There were military commanders, judges, kings, prophets, tax collector, a doctor, fishermen and others all used by God to write the Bible. If it were a con, then false religions like Islam, Mormonism, JWism, and many others would not use the Bible to support their very bad ideologies.



If I recall correctly, I said "started" in the Bronze Age and "perpetuated" by the others.


And if you'll bother to read up on the history of the Bible, you'll see lots of doubts by theologians as to the actual authorship of the various books. I'm guessing you're familiar with "Q"?



And why wouldn't con artists modify previous successful versions of a con for their own profit? It happens all the time. Pyramid schemes, the Nigerian banker, thing, etc etc etc ad nauseum.

To fool people you need a lot of truth to make the lies believable and if the liars used all lies then their house of cards would not stand up. If evolution were true from the beginning you would have no religion today.



To fool people you only need an occasional kernel of something that is reasonably plausible to the ignorant and gullible masses who are unskilled in critical thinking. Charisma is crucial to religious propagation because gullibility and suspension of critical thinking is also crucial. Think about the act of preaching. It's overwhelmingly rhetoric, not logic. The preacher is there to incite the emotions, the dreams, the desires of the congregation, not so much the intellect.


But you make an interesting point. Religion evolved in societies in response to certain environmental stresses and the need to address them. In this case, humans evolved to a state in which they became aware of their own limits, particularly mortality and feared death, the cessation of their individual consciousness. Belief in an afterlife relieves the stress of the awareness that everthing that lives eventually dies.



And when one is very young, one's parents seem to be omniscient and omnipotent. As one gets older, one learns that they aren't. Adolescents are particularly vulnerable to religious thinking because they want to regain/retain an omniscient/omnipotent ally/guardian. Developmental/child psychology explains this quite well. No need for a fantastic, supernatural hypothesis to explain this phenomenon. Occam's razor, and all.



****Why not? Because a scar does not tell you HOW the wound was made or WHO made it. Here is the problem, that supposedly careful use of common sense cannot verify one thing it claims. That is more like the blind following you so despise and accuse religious people of doing. You are taking the words of a few men and women who do not verify one historical claim about evolution. They also change the theory every year or so. It doesn't make sense to follow something where groups of people do not agree on how it was done and feel the need to change it at a whim.



This is called shifting the goalposts, as well as circular reasoning. Shifting the goalposts because my example was never intended to determine the original wound was made, nor who - if anyone - made it. That is a new goal that you're inserting in order to avoid admitting the legitimacy of my example. It is circular reasoning because you're assuming from the beginning that someone made the wound. Not all wounds have a 'who' that made them.



The very strength of the scientific method is that it is updated in light of newly discovered empirical data. The very weakness of religious thinking is that it refuses to do so with regards to its core claims, particularly regarding the existence of something for which it can provide not the first scrap of evidence.



And most people who prefer reason over faith are not blindly following the words of anyone. Most of us have some education in the scientific method and critical thinking skills. I don't know calculus - the main tool of scienctists - well enough to do radio-carbon dating from scratch, but I learned enough to know that one cannot get away with publishing flawed mathematics. Peers don't hesitate to point out such errors, and this is for the good of all.



And if it doesn't make sense to "follow something where groups of people do not agree on how it was done and feel the need to change it at a whim," how on earth can you buy into a religion? Jeez. *facepalm* Scientists are so much more logically rigorous and demanding than religion that I don't even know how you can compare the two. Sectarian splits in religions so far outnumber the number of scientific controversies that it's an absurd comparison. I mean, please. Open your eyes and your mind.


The truth never changes yet evolution is constantly changing and it is a very cruel theory.



The theory of evolution evolves in minute details as new data is observed and correlated, but the process of natural selection (often confused with evolution by sloppy thinkers) has yet to meet a significant challenge.



It is not cruel; it is a realistic explanation of observed data. The fossil record requires it. Or do you believe that your god planted all those fossils there to trick/test us? What a cruel god you worship so slavishly. There is no room for optimism or pessimism in critical thinking. There is only room for realism, which is what religious thinking stives so hard to avoid. Reality. Get used to it. We're animals. We're going to die. Consciousness is going to end when the brain stops receiving oxygen from the blood, which gets it from the lungs, which gets it from the atmosphere, which got it through stellar evolution and historical accident. Reality. Strong-minded people can handle it. Weak-minded people need a placebo, like religion.

******I don't have to, God has laready done that.



More circular reasoning. Look it up.

You just want the message to be from a human source so you can dsismiss it and continue on accepting the theory of evolution without guilt.



Why on earth would I feel guilty about being familiar with one of the most advanced products of the human intellect? Why would I feel guilty about choosing it over an ancient Bronze Age superstition? If you have any evidence whatsoever for the existence of your supernatural source, please present it for examination. I promise to be fair in my evaluation of it. After all, it would be very, very nice if there was actually an invisible, omniscient, omnipotent sky-fairy ally who loves me and would take me to eternal bliss after I died. It would be nice. Problem is, I haven't found any reason to think that it's true. By all means, give me a reason to change my mind, ie, evidence.


You say you do not like blind following yet you blindly follow what peer reviewed articles state? I guess you dismiss the problems with that very poor system and ignore the manipulations that take place by editors etc. to be able to publish thoughts from scientists even though they know those reviewed thoughts were never duplicated by the peers? How do you know the reviewed scientist got it right? How do you know the reviewing peers got it right? Sounds to me like you put a lot of blind faith into a system run by men who are as corrupt as those preachers you do not like.



No blind faith required. Someone publishes the results of their experiments/observations. Specialists in that field review it. Sometimes they find errors that escaped the author's attention. Sometimes they find out that the author was being knowingly dishonest, but, unlike with religious charlatans, that's rare. When the error is exposed, either corrections are made or the whole thing is thrown out. Simple. No faith required. Instead, education is required. I've studied enough science and mathematics to know how the process works. You blow a partial differential equation and somebody will be quick to point it out.



Furthermore, peers not only review a published article, many of them get to work duplicating the original experiments. You set up the same apparatus according to the detailed descriptions provided by the author, run your own series of tests and compare the results. If you get an anomaly, you report it. If you don't, you report that, too.



Whereas in religion, you listen to the preacher and agree with what he says, because if you don't, you'll be ostracised. Where is the blind following? *cough*


So you cherry pick which preachers you will use to justify your rejection of God's word even though God only commanded His followers to give 10%? Seems to me that you are tossing God out and accusing him of things He did not do nor commanded to be done. It also sounds like you ignore a lot of the Bible so you will have excuses to dismiss and not believe it.



Even 10% is a handout. People are paying for a placebo. Give them real medicine. I'll bet they'll pay for it.



But please do tell me which parts of the Bible I'm ignoring. I've studied it in depth, you see. In university. That's the very thing that convinced me it was made up. Give me the best you've got.


*****Actually we don't. God has made the rules already and sorry but modern day scientists were not consulted. The rule is to use faith. Jesus mentioned this to doubting Thomas and it is mentioned all through the Bible. Not once do yo see God or jesus state that people are to use physical evidence. You can but in the end, it boils down to following God's rule---faith.



I can't help but notice that you conveniently skipped over the part about the all-loving god who sends most of humanity to eternal damnation and irremediable agony.



And precisely why is faith so central to religious thinking? Because there is absolutely no evidence that its outlandish claims are actually true. Why do Nigerian banking scams and pyramid schemes work? Because people have faith and therefore suspend rationality and critical thinking. They don't investigate. They go for the bait. For financial schemes it's money. For religions, it's eternal salvation. Both chimera.

You say He shows no evidence of His existence, yet you credit the evidence found to a non-existent process that possesses no attributes we find in existence today--wisdom, knowledge, creativity, thought, and so on--claim that it produce something it had no capibility to conceive of and has no ancient foundation to support it. Sounds to me like you use greater faith to accept evolution than it takes to believe in God.



We have all the evidence--look at the sun, moon and stars. The heavens declare the glory of God, yet secular man says--it was from a big bang. Sadly, they do not know where it came from, when it took place, how it produced what we see each night nor can they explain how everything in the universe operates so orderly and on it goes.

They can guess but they can never verify.



Erm. Hang on a second. You can't have both evidence and faith. They cancel each other out. You see, if you have evidence, you have knowledge, and faith is no longer required. It's only in the absence of evidence that faith is required. And faith is absolutely required by the Bible, no? So...is there evidence for the existence of a god or not? Do you know, or do you believe? Try not to send yourself to Hell with your answer...


****You fail to realize that Christians think these things through and study the evidence, the arguments etc. Then come to a decision once they see that the non-biblical alternatives just do not make sense. You also think you have a monopoly on reason and rationality--you don't because it takes a lot of reason, a lot of rational thinking to choose to follow Jesus knowing that we will be tortured, abused, maligned, threatened, persecuted, etc.



Heh heh. Thing is, you see, is that those who get mired in religious thinking start with their preferred answer and only accept evidence that supports it. On the other hand, a well-trained, well-disciplined scientist starts with a question and accepts whatever experimental results s/he discovers. Which is ass-backwards, do you think?



You see, theologians can argue endlessly about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin for the very reason that, without empirical evidence, it's just a word game. Once someone presents real evidence, it's shit-or-get-off-the-pot time. So, are you going to shit (produce some evidence in support of your religious claims) or get off the pot (obfuscate, mis-direct with more fallacious rhetoric).

if you read the comments under the article you will see an example of the minor abuse we receive for telling the truth.



You are the one who took the easy way which is rarely rational or full of reason.



If you think developing one's logic and critical thinking skills is the easy way, you're seriously under-educated. If I wanted the easy way, I'd have avoided reasoning things out for myself and blindly followed what my elders told me when I was an ignorant, gullible youth. I would just memorize bible verses and other people's ideas, then spout them according to the stimulus of the moment, without pausing to consider whether or not they're internally coherent, consistent or in accord with empirical reality.



Please. Grow up, intellectually speaking, and stop retarding human progress.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

tl;dr

[FBM]

No shit. Wish I hadn't, tbh.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

No shit. Wish I hadn't, tbh.

I liked the Bronze-age goat-herder bit.

[FBM]

The truth is often amusing.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The truth is often amusing.

I actually looked it up to confirm, and the Iron Age started ~1300 BC in the Middle East, so the oldest parts of the Torah were defo Bronze Age.

[FBM]

The truth is often amusing.

I actually looked it up to confirm, and the Iron Age started ~1300 BC in the Middle East, so the oldest parts of the Torah were defo Bronze Age.

Yup. Not to slight Bronze Age achievements, but...still...damn. I'd hope that we'd managed to work a few more things out since then, eh?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The truth is often amusing.

I actually looked it up to confirm, and the Iron Age started ~1300 BC in the Middle East, so the oldest parts of the Torah were defo Bronze Age.

Yup. Not to slight Bronze Age achievements, but...still...damn. I'd hope that we'd managed to work a few more things out since then, eh?

True. Looking at the Bible it's obvious that nothing in there was written except from the viewpoint of a person on camel-back, no greater vision to be found.

I'd like to find out exactly when the Hebrews first started doing their own iron work. It would have to be after their migratory stage, furnaces are not very portable. I'm thinking the Bronze Age lasted a lot long for them than some other peoples, like the Greeks and Persians.

[FBM]

I'd guess that they got their bronze by trading blowjobs and slaves, but I admit that I have no evidence to go on there...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'd guess that they got their bronze by trading blowjobs and slaves, but I admit that I have no evidence to go on there...

Stealing was an option, but trade was the most likely route, fencing of stuff lost in battle or pilfered from military stores.

[FBM]

Necessity being the mother of invention (of a history or religion)....

[Audley Strange]

If you wish you can send him this reply.

I applaud the Ministry of Education’s (MOE) recent decision to remove evolution from Korean textbooks.

Then you are a fool who wishes to retard education.

Finally a government is standing up against the lie called evolution.

Can you prove it is a lie?

A recent article was published attacking that decision and as usual it contained the typical evolutionist misconceptions. This article will look at those misconceptions.

First, the author of that piece wrote, ``The theory of evolution is the lynchpin of scientific study …” Yes, but that doesn’t make the theory true or correct. It just means that a majority of like-minded scientists have discarded the truth for their own ideas.

Science has no need for "truth", such is best left to idiots who think fairy stories about cosmic ghosts, talking snakes, giant boats filled with all the worlds animals, zombie hebrews have any relevance other than stories.

Science has models, if you wish to disprove that theory go right ahead, you will be lauded for it.

Second, he says that ``By removing evolution from our children’s science curriculum, they lose the perspective that they are part of a process that is much bigger than humans alone.” Evolutionists cannot verify one thing about this supposed process. Museums only display the assumptions, conjectures, wishful thinking of the evolutionist on how man originated. There is not one verifiable piece of evidence to support this idea of ``a process.”

You've got, at best, a single fucking book which consistently disproves even itself.

Tell you what though. Since you are quite happy for a scientific theory to be removed from science, you'll be equally as happy when I suggest that Christianity should be removed from religious studies as a trivial heretical jewish cult which bears little relation to the Torah and in fact is mostly just the insane ramblings of some of those cultists. No? No. I thought not.

Third, he talks about future employment and, yes, you can take that as a threat as evolutionists are well known to ruin people’s careers, education tracks, etc. when people disagree with them. It is well documented that the evolutionary crowd is very exclusionary and reactionary. If they had the truth, they would not be so insecure and resort to bullying.

Well yes. If you and your cultists demanded that Jehovah said the colour green was offensive to the eye and then demanded that no Christian use green paint, a lot of decorators are not going to get jobs, it's not that Evolution cannot be challenged, it is that you have nothing to challenge it with and thus just want to forbid it in discussion because it undermines than nonsensical book of yours. Again it is the demands of people like you that are causing people to ruin their careers. You are trying to legitimise a literary fantasy as reality. When you do this you open yourself up to criticism by those who don't share your enthusiasm for nonsense claimed as FACT.

Fourth, he then says, ``Removing facts about evolution from textbooks weakens our children’s ability to think critically and solve problems.” Evolutionists are under the mistaken impression that critical thinking takes place if you agree with them and accept their views. That is just not so. Critical thinking is not a monopoly or property of the evolutionist. People use it every day to reject the fanciful tales evolutionary scientists bring to the public.

He didn't say Critical Thinking is the monopoly of the evolutionist. He said that by removing facts from textbooks, it weakens our childrens ability to think critically. Can you not read?

You are under the impression that "Evolutionists are under the mistaken impression that critical thinking takes place if you agree with them and accept their views." Which is a mistaken impression, since Science progresses by disproving theories not by only allowing in an orthodoxy. If you could say Prove Jehovah exists. Prove that it was the prime mover and prove that it created all living things, not only would you be the greatest scientist in the world, but you would also be the greatest Jesus junkie, since you would have proved science is a scam and your book of dead names accurate.

So science is waiting for your "better" explanation, replete with evidence.

By removing facts, you weaken the ability for people to separate reality from fiction. I can see why you would be happy about that.

In looking honestly at the `science” of evolution one would find that evolutionists cheat in supporting their claims. They start at the end to prove the beginning and that just doesn’t work. They use fully genetically developed specimens to support their claims. They do not use the original one celled creature, transitional species nor do they use original conditions thus not one of their scientific experiments are actually evolutionary.

Erm... That's not accurate, but nevertheless, even that effort, even if it is erroneous, is still better than using a book of ancient folk myths to describe reality. At least they are trying and haven't been complacent enough to think wisdom ended with Saul of Tarsus.

Also, evolutionists also rely upon fortune telling. They make ‘predictions’ an integral part of the process but one of the weaknesses of predictions is that they are not excluding other sources from producing the same results.

Why not just use "sorcery" rather than fortune telling. It would have sounded more preposterous but been more accurate.

Then to make things worse for evolutionists, they just do not have the historical foundation they need to prove their theory correct. Not one ancient document supports their claims. The evolutionist will argue that the ancient people were not intelligent or aware enough to discover this process. That argument is nothing but an insult to people who built pyramids, ancient computers, cities, etc. without modern technology.

Well I can see why you think ancient cultures were smarter, its because they the same horseshit as you never grew out of. So let's look at the heroes of that stupid book Did Jesus perform the miracle of cheap central heating? No? How about Jacob, did he invent penicillin? No? Did Abraham perhaps receive the divine wisdom of the Cathode Ray? No? Okay how about King David, did he weaponise white phosphorus to take down Gath from his Black Hawk? No?

So they were pretty ignorant.

As I say I can see why you identify with that.

They were smart enough to know about their origins and they would have written about evolution if it were true. Its origin comes from a group of people where only three of them had any sort of science degree. Charles Darwin was not one of them. Talk about the irony.

Ahah. Now we get to it. People who agree with this book I like are smart. Okay smart guy... Talk about the irony. Go on...

If you want answers to man’s origins, science is not the place to go find them. Science cannot determine what you had for breakfast last week let alone tell anyone what happened thousands of years ago. Origins are beyond science’s scope and authority.

Fair enough, but your alternative is a single book? A book that claims our origins are that a sentient void created the universe from nothing, for no reason other than it felt like it, a book that claims that man is made out of mud and godbreath, that women is made out of ribs and that those two had two sons, one who was killed by another and the remaining three went on to populate the earth.

The MOE was correct in removing evolution from the textbooks because one does not lie to children and evolution is nothing but a lie. Creation doesn’t fit the secular scientific model simply because God did not use any scientific method to create. He used his supernatural power, made it a non-repeatable act to show his creation that he is God and there is none like him.

Bald assertion. You have no idea what Jehovah did, no evidence to support it other than a book. I'm sure it is to you a very compelling book, but it is just a book, nothing more.

Secular scientists took over the field and redesigned it to exclude the truth and once you exclude the truth, you do not get any answers. If you want answers go to Genesis for evolution has nothing to offer anyone.

Okay. Can you tell me where in Genesis it talks about the processes and mutations of the ebola virus? How about the bit where it explains about Jehovah stashing fake dino bones to trick people like his ruse with the tree and the snake. Explain to me where Nod came from, how it was inhabited and yet never mentioned in that whole creation nonsense.

this is just a brief defense as this topic requires much more space than is allotted to fully expose the theory of evolution for what it is ― a lie. If you want the truth, do science God’s way.

[/quote][/quote]

I know you literary academics often think the characters in your novels and plays are more real and valid than say the woman who cleans your staff room, but you've taken that way to far.

Stick to teaching English.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Necessity being the mother of invention (of a history or religion)....

It's called "diffusion" or "spreading from centers". Barbarians with no technology above the bridle could have iron weapons by obtaining them from any available source. The opening of "Conan" is suggestive of that. (The Arnold one.)