Just say NO kids…

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Noah’s Ark Sighted!

Noah's Ark Sighted

Finally, hard evidence of the Genesis Flood story!

Is “The Imminent Demise of Evolution” still imminent?

Ten years ago, in 2006, intelligent design creationist William Dembski predicted that in a decade evolution would be toast:

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) – To William Dembski, all the debate in this country over evolution won’t matter in a decade.

By then, he says, the theory of evolution put forth by Charles Darwin 150 years ago will be “dead.”

Yeah, well…

Meanwhile I stumbled upon this today (dated 11-17-2016) from young Earth creationist Richard William Nelson:

Despite a flood of challenges since the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859 by Charles Darwin and more than 150 years of unprecedented scientific efforts in the history of mankind to prove otherwise, the evidence examined in nature tooled with unprecedented technology continues to be compatible with the Genesis record written by Moses…

…Evolution, once a theory in crisis, is now in crisis without even a cohesive unifying theory.

Biological evolution exists only as a philosophy, not a science.

For a long list of creationists predicting the death of evolution see this following:

The Imminent Demise of Evolution: The Longest Running Falsehood in Creationism by Glen Morton

ICR blocked me on Facebook

boy-that-escalated-quickly

So, the Institute for Creation Research put up a link on their Facebook page to one of their latest Acts & Facts articles on the whole Ernst Haeckel/vertebrate embryos thing and since the sort of stuff creationists write about this subject is a pet peeve of mine (as readers of this blog will no doubt have gathered) I decided to post a quick comment on the following quote from the article:

Guliuzza: Shouldn’t students be skeptical when they’re told that evolutionists can simply look at folds in embryos and see gill slits? The truth is that these are only folds of tissue in the pharynx region of vertebrates during the pharyngula stage of development. For mammals, birds, and reptiles, they never develop into a structure that is in any way like fish gills.

I wrote that this statement was not true as would be known to anyone who had cracked an embryology textbook and asked if Dr. Guliuzza (the author of the article) was therefore incompetent in this area or if he was being deliberately misleading. Further I provided a link to my blog post on the subject of “gill slits” so that anyone interested could look at the evidence for themselves.

I also corrected one of their other commenters on what Thomas Huxley and Charles Lyell’s professions and religious perspectives were. I also noted to the commenter that all science, not just evolutionary biology, leaves God and other supernatural agents out of its explanations.

I used no harsh language, I did not call anyone any names and I engaged in no mockery (unless you count my pointed question about Guliuzza competency/honesty) and yet the end result was that my link and all my comments have been deleted and I am apparently now blocked from commenting on ICR’s FB page.

I’ll leave the reader to decide what this says about ICR and the robustness of their scholarship.

1dq363

Jack Chick is dead…

image_1477796812_44571917I can’t believe I hadn’t heard about this already but apparently the infamous Jack Chick, author of those vile little sooo bad they’re almost good cartoon religious tacts that you would sometimes find stucked under a windshield wiper on your car, or laying in a parking lot after someone pulled it out from under their windshield wiper and threw it on the ground… Yeah those, died last Sunday (10-23-2016) at the age of 92.

There were so many “great” tracts, like Dark Dungeons that attacked the game Dungeons and Dragons and in which Chick claimed that D&D could lead you to practicing actual, for reals, black magic.

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But of course for me the pièce de résistance was his antievolution tract, Big Daddy, wherein we read the story of an intrepid young creationist student who schools his teacher on how foolish and wrong evolution is, concluding with the teacher leaving head hung low in disgrace. Hilarious!prof-quits

Ah well, bye Jack, Big Daddy will always hold a special place in my… in my… ah, well, bye Jack and my condolences to his loved ones.

A happy Pi day to one and all!

3.1415…

A cheeky new Evo-T

Evolutionists Do It… With increasing complexity and diversity.

evolutionists_do_it

A brand new Evo-T inspired by an old National Center for Science Education bumper sticker, it comes in both men’s and women’s sizes and is sure to have creationists everywhere clutching their pearls in horror.

You know what comes next…

Buy now!

Bye now!

I knew I had become part of a meme but holy crap…

A new Facebook friend asked me if it was me in the meme picturing a bearded guy looking over his shoulder with a pigeon and chessboard in front of him. I told him that I am indeed that guy.

It can get messy

It can get messy

He then asked if it felt weird when I started seeing such things on the internet and in the process of composing my response to his question I did a Google image search based on my original picture and discovered that my likeness had been added to a meme generator. Now, I knew that my picture was “out there” and even blogged about the fact my mug had been stuck into a “demotivation” style meme but it is still a rather odd thing to find a picture of yourself repeated over and over dozens of times with all sorts of different words plastered over top of them.

Most are variations of the original quote, though they often substitute “creationists” with “liberals”, “Republicans”, or whatever political point of view the various meme authors find objectionable. Some replace “creationists” with Christians in general and at least one changes it to Muslims. Others exchange “creationists” for the names of specific people—no doubt the result of dimly remembered arguments taking place forgotten discussion boards—and some take shots at the fans of disfavored sports teams:

Some stray from the original form but seem to be improvising based on the general theme:

A few were taking shots at President Obama’s handling of the war in Iraq:

At least one seemed to take issue with the premise:

Still others are indecipherable by me:

So, yes, as I told my FB friend, it is kind of weird. Especially when I see it used in ways I am either ambivalent about or in ways I would probably rather it not be used. For example, some used homophobic slurs, or rude terms for the mentally disabled and a few even attacked political or philosophical views that I have sympathies with.

Still, I am “Zen” about it. The internet is the modern day Wild West, and once you put a picture of yourself out there you have lost control. It is just something you have to get used to if you want to play in the game.

Though, with all these bits of me (get it?) floating around the net, there aught to be a way for me to get my beak wet (get it?) on the deal…

Fibonacci Pigeons!

Since I must post any pigeon related humor I run across—especially if there is a science angle to it—I present the following, Fibonacci Pigeons:10306175_684865348292743_3363294143001162433_n

Some new Pigeonchess artwork

A modified version of my creationist pigeon mascot, the “Patreon Protesting Pigeon“. A little reverse psychology to woo patrons [Psst, don’t tell the other readers, it’ll give the trick away].

patreon_protest_pigeon

The Patreon Protesting Pigeon