I’d Make Fun of Creationists, But They Don’t Need My Help

I found a rather amusing link to some ecards meant to mock the theory of evolution. They’re short, low quality animations that show creationist ignorance in the most stupidly hilarious light possible. All of the classic creationist arguments are there. Here’s a list of those thoughtful creationist claims:

1.) Evolution is a religon.
2.) Evolution is synonymous with the Big Bang theory.
3.) Evolution is synonymous with abiogenesis.
4.) The theory of evolution says that life came from a rock that had been rained on (wtf?!)
5.) Evolution supports the “hopeful monster theory“
6.) Because *some random unqualified person* can’t answer a very detailed question about evolution that only a specialist could know, surely the theory must be wrong!
7.) Believing in evolution is like believing in Santa Clause.
8.) Turtles evolved into monkeys.

Lovely. My favorite one is the last one, the Big Bang theory one where the narrator ridicules the BBT because the Big Bang came from “nothing” before throwing creation ex nihilo in your face right at the end. Somehow I doubt the guy that made the animation even caught the irony. I’ve never understood the Christian objection to the Big Bang Theory. The Bible specifically says that space, time and the raw materials of the physical universe originated instantaneously before expanding outward. I mean, put that beside the Big Bang Theory and what’s the difference? Does saying “in the beginning the heaven and the earth were created” contradict “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”? Not unless your a contentious prick with an axe to grind or an ignoramous that gets a kick out of feeling smarter than scientists by arguing against a theory that he doesn’t understand.

Anyway, I hope you get a chuckle out of those animations. Just don’t lose hope in humanity, even most creationists are smarter than the people that made this crap.

Humanism and Relativism: The World’s Greatest Evils?

When I browse blogs of a religious and/or politically conservative nature I often see two words flung around like a monkey flings poo at things it dislikes: humanism and relativism. After ages of reading I never actually seemed to get what they were talking about. It seems that any movement whether religious or political that the commentator dislikes is labelled as being “relativistic” or “humanistic.” And the fervor these people have while condemning these ideas is remarkable considering the nebulous nature of the concepts. Or, at least they make them seem nebulous because they almost never define what they’re talking about, nor do they compare the “other side’s” views with their own. It’s just condemn, condemn, condemn. I’d love to agree with them if I had any friggin’ clue what it was that these people hated so badly.

Which is why I’m posting. I want YOU to explain this crap to me and then convince me that humanism and relativism are the most vile, immoral ungodly things in the whole wide world.

And here I’m going to try to post what I’ve been thinking these ideas were, and you can shoot holes in them.

Humanism
Not sure about this one. Does it have to do with Renaissance humanism? I’ll admit to being a little unsure as to what that philosophy was. I think the basis was that human reason, not just divine revelation could be a source of truth, and that human ideas and creations were important. I don’t see how those ideas could be disturbing, though.

Then there’s “secular humanism,” the ethical brand of atheism, which seems to me to be a tad bit more likely. But, I’ve seen lots of religious movements been called “humanistic,” so I think it may be that they mean “human centered” teachings or something.

But is that even possible? I mean, when you’re talking about a religion (Christianity in this instance) when you’re talking about God, the subject basically revolves around God’s relationship with man, His expectations for us, etc. And when humans are the subject it’s always how they should worship, what their duties to God are, etc. So how is it even logically possible to have a humanistic style of Christianity when the subject of God revolves completely around humanity and the subject of humanity revolves completely around God.

And if it was possible for Christianity to be humanistic, is it a bad thing? I mean it’s humanity that needs to be taught, it’s humanity that needs to act, it’s humanity that needs to grow. God doesn’t need those things. God’s already perfect, so shouldn’t the focus be on humanity anyway?

Relativism
Relativism, I’m guessing is that there are no moral absolutes, and/or a type of situational ethics where the context of an event helps determine the course of action rather than rigid predetermined legalism. Is that on the right track? Is the idea related to the troublesome “what about the people who haven’t heard and people of other religions?” problem? Are they afraid of softening of Christian exclusivism? I think this is the one that I need the most help understanding.

‘Pod is Dead

You may or may not know that I had a very large collection of electronic music saved on my iPod. Well, now you do. I’ve had this iPod for years and had accumulated quite a large selection of music. This device had been very faithful to me and had survived all manner of torture. I wish that I could count how many times I dropped it onto gravel or knocked off the desk just to give tribute to my iPod’s endurance.

Sadly things don’t last forever.

Years of frequent use and endless abuse finally got to it. The downfall of the iPod began rather unassumingly. I was listening to its stored music via iTunes when a song glitched. iTunes froze. After I booted up iTunes again, I tried to play the same song. This time something even stranger happened. The song glitched again, but this time iTunes managed to avoid freezing; it just stopped playing the song. Figuring I had a glitched song file I decided to just recopy it to the iPod some other time and just continue my listening with other songs. After clicking the next song it didn’t play. A gray exclamation mark appeared next to the song name. I tried another song and got the same thing. And another. And another. Almost all of the songs just refused to play (it was about 1 in 25 that worked normally).

At this point I began freaking out. I couldn’t, just couldn’t lose my iPod now! None of my music had been backed up because my desktop computer doesn’t have a DVD burner. Backing nearly 30 G by CD would take an eternity. At that time it was two days before I was going to have to deal with the 8 hour drive to Michigan. I needed my music. I just couldn’t lose it. Not now.

I cross my fingers, unplug my iPod and re-plug it in to the PC. It seems to be working normal. I sigh with relief. Then it’s not long before another song brings the same glitches I had before. Now I’m getting frightened again. I realize that it’s not a few files that were bad on the iPod, the problem lay in the hard drive itself.

The next day my mother picked me up and we stayed the night at a cousin’s place. While I was there, I immediately began using iDump to copy my songs to my laptop. Problem was, whenever iDump would get to one of the screwed up songs it would freeze and I would have to start over. The process took hours, with me having to change the order of the songs I was copying in order to avoid the bad ones.

The good news was that for some reason the same songs weren’t always bad. So after the program would freeze, I would just have to unplug the iPod and put it back in. Eventually I got all of my songs on the computer except three of them. One was crap, one I knew where to find online, and the other wouldn’t be a challenge either.

And that was when the iPod died. It was less than a minute after I had gotten the last song copied. The harddrive began to make funny strained sounds, like it was in its final throes. Then the device reset itself and after the Apple logo disappeared, there was an error with a folder by an exclamation mark. My iPod was dead.

It was kind of sad losing my iPod, but I swear there must have been some divine providence in the timing, you know. It waited until right after I was finished to die. So I’m really grateful that I still have my techno. Hallelujah!

My Name has a Crazy Anagram…

So, I was at the Internet Anagram Server when I threw my name into it. Turns out that my name, if you spell out the pronunciation of the roman numeral, is an anagram for “Add rhythm to her ninja!” Lolz.

Turns out it’s also an anagram for “Handed martyr, hit John!” o_0

I’ve Cancelled My SSE Plans

Some of you may remember that a while back I expressed a desire to post a link to, and comments on every article that the Society for Scientific Exploration has made available online. Well, I’m going to have to cancel that.

For one thing, there are a lot more articles to go through than I actually have time to read, let alone write about, and there’s another problem; many of the articles are just plain boring. Okay, it’s a technical journal, I know. It’s not meant to be an engrossing read, but what I really meant was that most of the articles were outside my field of interest.

And so, I’ve decided that my coverage will be nearly wholly dedicated to my main areas of “paranormal” interest- UFOs and Cryptozoology. I’ll probably link to some of the other ones as a quickie thing just for those who are interested in the subject, but don’t expect any big reviews of them for me.

Right now I’m in the middle of a three way, er, what I mean to say was that one of the first articles I wanted to look at was called Roswell- Anatomy of a Myth. It’s a skeptical look at the alleged flying saucer crash in New Mexico by a disgruntled former believer. The same issue featured two articles that were written to be critical of Anatomy of a Myth’s conclusions. It’s taking forever to get the time to read and compare the documents and their claims side by side, I’ve been poking around with them off and on for a few months now. I have no clue when it will make it online. Sorry to any and all of you who may be disapointed by this. If there even is anyone.

Quick Thoughts on the New Nessie Footage

Thanks to CNN I heard about some new footage of the Loch Ness monster. I was able to locate a copy of the video online. Here’s the video clip being played on a Scottish news program showing off some footage of something in Loch Ness, allegedly one of the monsters that inhabit the lake.

I heard of this on CNN and was pretty excited, but after seeing the footage, I have to express my disapointment. Because of the zoom there’s nothing to compare the “monster” to, so getting a grasp of its speed and size is very difficult. This is also disapointing because of just how little you see. Just a vague silhouette under the water. It does appear to be alive, and not just some thing like, say, driftwood. But as for what the animal is is impossible to tell. Or even if its a single animal. A commenter at Cryptomundo has suggested it may be two regular animals like seal or otters courting each other. Sounds like as good an explanation as any for this vague and sadly unremarkable footage. Whatever it is, it doesn’t give any indication of it being a plesiosaur. Oh well. One can always hope.