Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Jake displays openly aggressive behavior on Rand Paul

Jake, a member of the species homo petulans (in more ways than one), has raised his tail and lowered his head over my comments about the reaction to Rand Paul's refusal to address a question about creationism in a speech to a home school audience last Friday.

I simply observed that the creationists in the audience responded in a more civilized and humanoid manner than the Darwinists, who, despite purporting to be members of a higher species, reacted with the aggressiveness that has come to characterize their behavior when faced with opinions differing from their own.

You would have thought I had poked a stick at them through the bars or something, their reaction was so frenzied.

Now I have been observing various liberal Darwinist societies for some time now, and can say with some authority that the subspecies inhabiting the Page One blog are among the loudest and most openly aggressive. This could possibly be the result of a vegetarian diet and their penchant for brie cheese and multi-grained bread.

The individual whom we call "Jake" seems to be the dominant male in the troop (although I am willing to listen to other theories as to gender), and he has taken the most aggressively hostile posture. When my comments were thrown into their cage, it was Jake who howled the loudest. I have taken the liberty, using various linguistic devices, to interpret his vocalizations and gestures and determined that he thinks we "hate" Darwinists "with great passion."

Now part of the problem with Page One society is the tendency of its members to jump to conclusions--conclusions which seldom logically follow. This provides additional evidence that their subspecies was an early deviation from the main human branch. This, of course, poses insurmountable difficulties when a group of them form together and try to run a blog.

I do not hate Darwinists. On the contrary, there are many of them of whom I am quite fond. In many cases they can be tamed and even housebroken, and make fine companions if they can be discouraged from their natural arrogance and dogmatism through stimulus and response training.

In Jake's case, that might involve the use of electric shock. But the benefits could be substantial.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Absolutely hilarious.

KyCobb said...

Martin,

I'm still curious about you lumping the age of the earth issue in with evolution, because the issue Paul dodged was not whether life evolved, but how old the earth is. There are creationists who nevertheless accept the fact that the earth is very old. So do you have an opinion about whether the earth is thousands of years old, or instead billions of years old, or is that another thing you don't know, like whether life evolved or not?

Martin Cothran said...

KyCobb,

I don't know why my views of how old the earth is would be important to anyone, and since I have no expertise in such scientific questions, I make it a habit not to address them, unlike a lot of other people I know on both sides of the issue who have no expertise either, but are perfectly willing to pontificate on the issue.

My guess is that the universe is very ancient, but I have no clue as to the exact age of it. For Darwinists to use particular figures like "4.5 billion" years old seems to me to be about as preposterous as Bishop Usher saying that man was created "on October 23, 4004 B.C., at nine o'clock in the morning."

KyCobb said...

Martin,

The figure of 4.5 billion years probably seems preposterous to you due to your lack of scientific expertise. Its based on dating dozens of meteorites using multiple radioactive materials, which all independently converge on roughly the same date.

Rob said...

Marty,

Calling this a "difference of opinion" is simply a fallacy. Evolution is real and is based on science. Creationism (except,perhaps, the currently untestable belief that God started the ball rolling) is a fable written by a far more ignorant people who used Gods and other explanations to talk about what they didn't understand.

I think scientists will advise that the age given is not an exact number with a margin of error. But it is based on best evidence.

Creationism is based on a book.

If you want to attack, Martin, then you need to understand what you're talking about. Your argument fails because you are simply wrong. Those who live in the real world and believe in evolution get upset because ignorance is championed in the name of religion.

How is it that creationists accept the scientific findings that benefit them, but reject those that go against their own incredibly literal view of the bible?

Thomas M. Cothran said...

I understand why people who accept evolution (among whom I generally count myself) don't want fundamentalist creationism taught in schools -- it's bad science and bad theology. What I don't get is why so many people are so desperate that those who are agnostic on the issue immediately agree and accept evolution on their say-so.

Biology is a complex science which almost requires formal training, and it can be very complicated. I know, because I was trained in it and seriously considered a double major in either biology or physical anthropology in college. If one accepts the theory (or at least accepts it enthusiastically) one ought to be familiar with the way the mechanism of natural selection works at the genetic level, have experience looking at the fossil record, and so on. One shouldn't have to accept it simply because that's what most scientists think, any more than one should accept Christianity because it's the largest world religion. That's just dogmatism.

When one demands that someone who is chooses not to take a position on the evolution question (or age of the earth question), too often it's along the lines of appeals to authority or simply an ipse dixit. It becomes a sort of fundamentalism where one is damned if they don't accept it.

It's one thing to point out that crude forms creationism are wrong, but it's quite another to demand that all those who don't have the formal training to be able to really examine have some kind of obligation to accept evolution. And in the grand scheme of things, it's not terribly important to have that kind of background -- looking back on it, I'm happy I chose to go the philosophy/theology route rather than into the physical sciences.

Lee said...

Thomas,

In your opinion, is Intelligent Design bad science? If so, why?

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