Evolution-u Akbar!

This is my hypothesis: Bodie's mother inadvertently kept the afterbirth and gave it a thorough Christian upbringing. Bodie, if this is your baby picture, we have an answer!


Offensive? You bet. Ignorant? Without a doubt. But, then again, I'm not one to take the high road. Seriously. The high road of reason has not worked with the bonkers creationist movement. I am convinced that we must talk down to the level of the asshats at Answers in Genesis, and Bodie's latest literary abortion is the written equivalent the present in the above pan and should, similarly, be treated as a biohazard. I guess that the only difference is that the placenta was at one point useful.

It's called, "The Results of Evolution: Could It Be the Bloodiest Religion Ever?" And the answer is, "No." Good night, everybody!

I thought that went pretty we...what? There's more? Fuck.

Let's do this stupid thang.

Christians are often confronted with the claim that a humanistic worldview will help society become better. Even the first Humanist Manifesto, of which belief in evolution is a subset, declared, “The goal of humanism is a free and universal society in which people voluntarily and intelligently co-operate for the common good.” But can such a statement be true?

I don't know what it is that makes people think that the Humanist Manifesto has any authority among, well, most self-described humanists. I sure never read it. So, that assumption is actually unfounded. And it is preposterous, as well completely and perfectly mockable, to suggest that evolution is a subset of humanism. I can't even begin to see where they are supposed to intersect...evolution is not a belief system, but an observed fact of the world, whether you like it or not. Evolution is what seems to best account for millions of observations of phenomena that have nothing to do with human intention.

For starters, what do the authors mean by “good”? They have no legitimate foundation for such a concept, since one person’s “good” can be another’s “evil.” To have some objective standard, they must borrow from the teachings of God in the Bible.

Exhibit A: "Thou shall not kill."
Exhibit B: A recent tally of God's body count in the Bible equalled 2.3 million for God vs. 10 for Satan, and those are only the ones where there is a number specified. Let's take the estimated number of people around in 2000 BC when the world was drowned in a great big scary flood: 27,000,000. That gives us a tally of nearly 30 million people. Way to go, God! You are a complete psycho!

So, please do not be offended when I tell you to shove your Bible up your ass hard and high.

And, Bodie, notice that there are numerous texts that claim to be the standard for human behavior, and that your choice is not an objective one, merely one that correlates to the culture into which you happen to have been into.

Beyond that, does evolution really teach a future of prosperity?

Wait! Nobody said it did, you sack of severed donkey scrotums! Evolution "teaches" nothing. It allows us to make testable predictions. The humanist manifest may or may not try to teach something. I'll never know because I have other shit to do. But check this stupid shit out. He gives us a graph! Everyone bow down to the almighty table of Scrotie Hodge!

Who/What?	Specific Event and Estimated Dead
Pre-Hitler Germany/Hitler and the Nazis	WWI: 20,000,000 dead, 21,000,000 wounded1 WWII: 72,000,0002 Holocaust: 17,000,000? (estimates range from 7 to 26 million)3
Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin	Bolshevik revolution and Russian Civil War: 15,000,0004
Joseph Stalin	20,000,0005
Mao Zedong	14,000,000–20,000,0006
Pol Pot (Saloth Sar)	750,000–1,700,0007
Abortion*	China estimates 1971–2006: 300,000,0008 Russia estimates 1954–1991: 280,000,0009 U.S. estimates 1928–2007: 26,000,00010 France estimates 1936–2006: 5,749,73111 UK estimates 1958–2006: 6,090,738 12 Germany estimates 1968–2007: 3,699,62413

Wow. I am in almost every way unimpressed. OK, except for the ability to use footnotes in HTML. I never got the hang of that.

I like how he smears WWI and WWII into one big ball of evolution. What fucking historian has ever, fucking EVER asserted that evolution was a cause of the Great War? None. Well, nobody who had a reputation after saying that. Complex networks of alliances that triggered a cascade of declarations of war? Increased militarism and arming in the prewar years? Advances in military weaponry, transportation and mobilization capacity while failing to anticipate the tactical changes necessary to fight a global mechanized war? Fuck 'em. It war de ebilushuns!

Idiot.

I also like how all of the atrocities he uses are committed by filthy foreigners (except for their fetus fetish). There you have it, folks. The hidden nationalistic and racist foundation of American religious conservatism. Way to go, Bodie!


Hitler and the Nazis (sounds like a band: "That's Adolf Hitler looking very relaxed on the vibes..."). I mean, fuck. Again, Bodie, as is his compulsive habit, fails to be capable of distinguishing between the science of evolution and the pseudoscience of eugenics. For this, there is no excuse. Get an education or shut the fuck up.

Stalin, well, he doesn't kill as many people as GOD does. And a large part of that death count is because the RUSSIANS COULD NOT FARM. They ignored the powerful insights of evolution and Mendelian inheritance and embraced Lysenkoism and built their agricultural policy around it. This killed millions and millions of people. People who dissented and said that this was not good science, and "Here, read this Darwin guy" were killed! Stalin himself was the object of worship, not Darwin or evolution.

And I spit on your other numbers because they too are fucking ridiculous. How do you distinguish between "darwinian" atrocities and the everyday atrocities of the last several millenia? Only in our effectiveness in carrying them out, and that only has to do with the misuse of science. It is a fact that, in an age where science is embraced (a consequence of which includes that evolution becomes recognized for what it is, not a cause), vastly increased hordes of basically chimpanzees with heavy artillery kill the ever-living shit out of each other only more effectively than their violent jungle cousins. Wishing that it weren't true does not do a fucking thing for securing world peace. Of course, Bodie presumably prays. That doesn't work either.

I'm done. I have vastly more important things to do than deal with this payaso. Like flick silver dollars absentmindedly at my roommate's ass.

HJ

Good recent NPR broadcast...

A few days ago I downloaded an interview with Chip Berlet on Fresh Air, and then I forgot about it. But never you worry, for I rediscovered it on my iPod. Oh happy day!

Berlet is a professional conspiracy theory analyst. Way to go, guy! Some people get all the neat jobs. His take on recent events and growning conspiracism is quite revealing. He has broadened my perspective on the significance of that recent DOJ report on right-wing extremism, which I have mentioned a few times. Here are some links:

A link to the show.
Berlet's report, Toxic to Democracy, sounds really good. I will be reading it later today.

Gotta teach,

HJ

Damn you, laundry doers!!!

"Whatcha studying?"

The instant someone asks you that question, you know you are hearing from an idiot. To an academic, it's the equivalent of asking an otherwise busy bomb disposal technician, "Hey, you think that thing's gonna explode?"

Seriously, I got back up to my apartment and asked Animala to take off the sign that said, "Talk to me! I'm busy!" She informed me that I was an off-putting moron, leaving me craning my neck and spinning like a dog trying to toss a belligerent chipmunk from its back.

What part of not looking up don't people in my apartment building get? If I wanted to talk to you, I would be living with you. It's that simple. Assume that I hate you. I assume that you hate me. Don't go and spoil my day by proving me wrong!

I was also visited by my wandering schizophrenic neighbor. Ever since his dad told me that the son was schizophrenic, I have started to understand the guy a little better. And his brain is constantly racing, and he can't hear what I'm saying, and has to has to has to get out whatever damned thing pops into his head (and everything pops into his head all at once, it seems). He just makes no sense, and trying to talk to him is like...pissing into a running water hose. Don't try it, it's not as fun as you think.

Today, he was spinning stories about how people could coat water bottles with a substance that made them melt. And I couldn't tell the difference between his jokes and his genuine musings about the subject. I did not hear him enter and he said, "Hi," while I worked on tomorrow's reading. "Hi," I said, feeling my pockets for a cyanide capsule. "Did you like that? I was doing an impression of you saying hi. Did it sound like you?" "Honestly, no." "Hahaha," he said, enjoying the lark. He got his bottled water from the vending machine and that started the thing about bottles. With me he has a couple of topics that he seems to return to compulsively. He talks about his dad and him fighting, he talks about the good ol' days when I would say hi to him when he walked around and around and around the apartment building creeping us out (before he went on his crusade against nails in the parking lot). He talks about air filters. And today, he produced a whole list of things that he is not allowed to do, like go into water deeper than his knees and how he was not allowed to have friends come into the apartment building. "Didja ever notice that?"

"I'm too busy trying to hide from you," I did not say. "Really? I guess," I actually said.

And don't try to jump in. He just doesn't stop. It's a stream of consciousness only...less coherent. Things don't seem to really follow from one to the next like normal conversations trains of thought. His mind is episodic and repetitive. I really do feel sorry for the guy. It's a bad hand he's been dealt and it doesn't kill me not to snub him, though I often wish it would. I don't know if he is really relating to me somehow or...just associates me with someone who is not actively hostile to him (really, for all my posturing here, in real life I'm as kind as a kitten).

And then 10 minutes after my schizophrenic neighbor left, a new guy showed up and wanted to talk. Never saw him before, and before you knew it, I had spent 20 minutes pretending that I was enjoying the discussion of Mr. T. Also, for such a short conversation, he brought up Dungeons and Dragons a real whole lot. This was odd because he mentioned that he did not like Dungeons and Dragons. People confuse me.

Oh, well. Found another plagiarist. Am going to stomp brains tomorrow.

Go and sin no more.

HJ

Homeopathic ER

Again, a huzzah and a shout out to Animala, who wears a size 14 hat, eats loads of fish and moves in mysterious ways. (Pay attention to the signs on the wall.)



HJ

HJHOP Podcast 9

Yo! Bing here with the ninth edition of the HJHOP skeptical summer podcast series. It also happens to be the last of the pantless podcasts. This week, a psychic detective couldn't detect herself out of a wet paper bag, Ken Ham starts picking on the wildlife, and the rhetorical device of hanging up on someone.

Podcasts

• Brannon Howse's July 6th discussion of Masonry (the secret society, not the building material) with Ron Carlson: http://www.worldviewradio.com/episode.php/episodeid-12912/Brannon-Howse/Brannon-Howse
• California Haunts Radio interview with "psychic" "detective" Annette Martin
• Hot Ken Ham on echidna action! (Notice how Ken can't seem to work a chair.)

Musical Interludes

A special mention is due to the oddly appropriate songs that appear. Skeptic Magazine recently released a skeptic's mixed tape, hence songs about thinking and evolution.

• Coco Love Alcorn, "Thinking Cap"
• Alien Ant Farm, "Smooth Criminal"
• Overland, "Evolution Rocks"
• English Beat, "March of the Swivelheads"

Bonus illustrative link especially for Ken Ham

• All 3,000+ publications listed in Google Scholar about the echidna, an animal that we clearly know nothing about. Idiot. Do the minimum amount of work, tool.

HJ

A semester without plagiarism is like a honeymoon without seeping herpes lesions...

You know, I was warming to my students. My prematurely curmudgeonly ways were easing, and my heart expanded to encompass the promise and potential of the upcoming generation.

This, to students, is a sign of weakness.

When a probationary first-year uses the word "fey," I hit the Internet. I'm sorry, but this is not my first goat-fuck. Who do these little people think that they are? I no longer take it personally, but I make the students think that I do. ("If I catch you plagiarizing," I say at the beginning of the semester, "I will crucify you upside-down. Underwater.")

I have been online with my boss discussing this. The case is not so clear cut as it would be with a student already accepted. The problem is that a student who does not pass my class does not get to register for freshman year. So, whereas I can usually indulge my wrath knowing that the kid will suffer usually only minimal consequences (damn it), this time, there is no way around it. If I do what I say I will in my syllabus, college is over for this guy. Not pleasant. Not my problem.

Grr.

HJ

Animala strikes again!

Animala, from whom all things may be stolen because she does not have a website of her own, came across a helluva review of The Secret at Amazon.com, which is about the funniest thing that I have come across in a while. Heehee.

Enjoy it.

HJ