The Sensuous Curmudgeon

As is evident from the presence our traditional holiday graphic, this is the only time of the year that your Curmudgeon is in a jovial mood. We wish a Merry Christmas to one and all — or Hanukkah, if you prefer.

To enhance your holiday experience, we once again link to the Curmudgeon’s acclaimed poem, which is read to children all over the world: The Night Before Christmas Eve.

As expected, the Discoveroids have started posting about their Top Ten creationism events for the year. They began with #10 of Our Top Stories of 2016: Tyson Says Chances of Intelligently Designed Universe “May Be Very High”. Their title is absurd because the Discoveroids hate Tyson; he’s opposed to virtually everything they stand for.

The Discoveroids are referring to something they wrote on 26 April 2016, about which we posted Klinghoffer, Neil deGrasse Tyson, & Lisa Randall. Tyson was having fun by saying that because of a lack of evidence, we could never know if we were living in an alien computer simulation. The Discoveroids are claiming that as one of their Top Ten events because — they imagine — it shows he’s open to the idea of intelligent design. We think it shows the opposite — that such things are inherently outside the scope of science. If Tyson’s entertaining remark makes their list, it’s obviously been a bad year for the Discoveroids, and it enhances our merry mood.

Then they posted #9 of Our Top Stories of 2016: Feathers on a Bird or Dinosaur Tail? That’s very recent news, about which we wrote Feathered Dinosaur Tail Found in Amber. According to the Discoveroids, the fossil is likely to be a bird. They say:

But unfortunately we have so little material, and the bone is so difficult to distinguish from the soft tissue, that any strong claims about this tail should be greeted with skepticism. This paper will not be the last word on the nature of the animal that sported this wonderful tail.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA! If that’s how they start their Top Ten list, you can imagine how thrilling the next eight items will be.

That’s all we’ve got for you — at least so far. Because we’re starting a holiday weekend, we expect lower traffic than usual for the next couple of days. Also, because our kind of news rarely gets reported on Christmas, we may not post at all tomorrow. But your Curmudgeon is always on the job, so if we should find anything of interest, we’ll tell you about it.

Please use the comments as an Intellectual Free Fire Zone for the discussion of pretty much anything — science, politics, economics, whatever — as long as it’s interesting. Say what you will, but do so tastefully and beware of the profanity filters.

We now throw open the comments to you, dear reader. Have at it, and have a Merry Christmas!

Copyright © 2016. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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Like other creationists, the Discovery Institute is vigilant in insisting that we’re not related to monkeys — see Egnor Ain’t No Kin To No Monkey, and also Klinghoffer Still Ain’t No Kin to Monkeys.

Somehow they managed to scramble that creationist dogma in their latest post: An Ebola Vaccine — Thank Animal Testing. It’s written by Wesley J. Smith, a Discoveroid “Senior Fellow” and a lawyer. His specialty is “Human Exceptionalism,” which is Discoveroid code for “In His Image.” Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us for emphasis:

Ebola is a terrible disease that afflicts the poorest areas of our planet. Now, scientists have apparently created a vaccine that is 100 percent effective against one form of Ebola.

He quotes a bit from this story in the New York Times: New Ebola Vaccine Gives 100 Percent Protection, including this:

Tests in monkeys showed that one shot protected all of them when it was given at least a week before they were given a high dose of Ebola. The shot even protected a few monkeys who received it a day after being infected with Ebola.

Gasp! Why test on monkeys? What do they have in common with us? The Discoveroids have been steadfastly opposed to combining the theory of evolution and the practice of medicine. We discussed Casey’s attitude in one of this humble blog’s earliest posts: Want a Creationist Physician? They often say that “Darwinism” has no place in the practice of medicine — see Discovery Institute: Toad-Tested Medicine! Klinghoffer agrees — see Klinghoffer Defends Dr. Ben Carson.

So what does Smith say about the news that this Ebola vaccine — for humans — was tested on monkeys? To our great surprise, he doesn’t even touch on the evolutionary implications. Instead he finishes his brief post with this:

I am sure those prominent animal rights activists and others who call animal research ineffective — and researchers “sadists” — will be upset that the monkeys were so abused.

What? Oh, we see what happened. Testing on monkeys raises a completely separate Discoveroid issue — animal rights. Because animals are totally unrelated to us, they say it’s absurd to even think about animal suffering — see Discoveroids Oppose Frivolous Lawsuits. And somehow, that Discoveroid issue completely blinded Smith to the implied biological relationship that makes monkey testing so useful. It’s always fun to see a creationist be so utterly oblivious when one of his fact-free doctrines collides with another.

Copyright © 2016. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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Earlier this year we wrote Answers in Genesis and the Flat Earth, in which we described an attempt by Danny Faulkner to discredit the belief that the Earth is flat. Danny is one of the creation scientists at Answers in Genesis (AIG) — the creationist ministry of Ken Ham (ol’ Hambo), the Australian entrepreneur who has become the ayatollah of Appalachia. Here’s AIG’s biographical information about him. They say he taught physics and astronomy until he joined AIG. His undergraduate degree is from Bob Jones University.

It’s amusing to see AIG argue against a flat Earth, because both the Old Testament and the New have an ark-load of passages that unmistakably say otherwise. We gave several examples in The Earth Is Flat!, but as we’ve previously posted, at least since the time of Aristotle, educated people knew the world was a sphere. And a generation after Aristotle, in the third century BC (well before the time of the New Testament), Eratosthenes computed the earth’s size. But none of that information found its way into the bible.

Danny did a decent job of arguing that the Earth is a sphere, but he never addressed any of the bible passages declaring it to be flat. Today he’s writing about the same topic. His latest post at the AIG website is A Flat-Earth Prediction Falls Flat. We’ll give you some excerpts, with bold font added by us for emphasis.

He begins by mentioning his earlier article, and then says:

In this article, I will test a prediction based upon the flat-earth model and show that the results of the test clearly contradict the prediction.

Then he presents a bizarre flat-Earth model, one which may be popular among flat-Earthers, but we’ve never seen it before:

In the flat earth model, the sun is 32 miles in diameter and about 3,000 miles above the earth’s surface. According to this theory, this rather modest sun orbits the axis of the earth’s North Pole each day (Figure 1). The sun is a spotlight that illuminates a region of the earth under this spotlight. As the sun orbits, different parts of the earth are illuminated, producing day and night. This motion also would bring the sun alternately closer and farther from each and every location on the flat earth. The sun allegedly appears to rise and then set each day as a result of perspective.

Danny discredits that silly model, using lots of math and diagrams. Ignoring all that, which is most of his article, Danny concludes by telling us:

Once again, I urge Christians not to be taken in by flat-earth nonsense.

Okay — we’re convinced. But so what? Although flat-Earthism is scriptural, it’s not a serious problem these days. It hasn’t been since the time of Aristotle — in spite of what the bible says. One would think that a similar dedication to evidence would result in the fading away of creationism — but somehow that doesn’t happen. Why?

Danny never even gets close to that subject. For some inexplicable reason, AIG ignores scripture regarding the shape of the Earth, yet they fanatically insist that the bible is unerringly true about the 6,000 year age of the universe, the miraculous creation of all living things in a few days, and a global Flood a mere 4,000 years ago. As we said at the end of our earlier post:

There’s no way to get around it. If the bible is correct about Adam & Eve, Noah’s Ark, and all the rest, then it must also be true that the Earth is flat. Nevertheless, the Earth isn’t flat. Danny knows this. But he can’t face the consequences.

We’ll finish by telling Danny that we’re very impressed with his latest post. We haven’t bothered to study his spherical Earth arguments, but it appears that he can think rationally when he wants to. We agree with him — the evidence clearly shows that the Earth isn’t flat — despite what the bible says. But why, Danny, don’t you agree with the evidence that tells us the Earth isn’t young, and that life evolved over a period of hundreds of millions of years? Why, Danny?

Copyright © 2016. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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Each year at this time the Discovery Institute entertains us with a series of posts about their Top Ten stories for the year. Last year the Discoveroids began their pathetic list on 23 December. It’s what they call their “traditional recounting of our Top 10 evolution-related stories of the past year, as compiled in a rigorous, peer-reviewed, strictly scientific manner by Evolution News staff.”

We look forward to their list every year, because it’s so laughable. They have nothing to show for their legislative efforts. Other than Louisiana and Tennessee, their bizarre Academic Freedom bills have failed in every state that has considered them. They still have a number of drooling legislators who will continue trying to force creationism into the public schools, but further “successes” are likely to be few.

The same record of failure haunts their courtroom efforts and their attempts to penetrate the academic world (except for bible colleges where creationism has always been entrenched), and their “research” that allegedly supports their “theory” of intelligent design is never published in any respected, peer-reviewed science journal.

Despite all the books they write, the videos they produce, the noise they make on the internet, and the numerous conferences they conduct to promote their “theory” — mostly at churches, but sometimes at facilities they rent at universities — they’ve had no impact on science, industry, agriculture, medicine, academia, or any other rational endeavor. It’s fascinating to imagine how they’re scrambling around to find anything to brag about — other than their own writings and revival meetings.

That’s the background for our latest question. The form of today’s challenge is that you must tell us:

You know the rules: A successful entry should be self-explanatory. You may enter the contest as many times as you wish, but you must avoid profanity, vulgarity, childish anatomical analogies, etc. Also, avoid slanderous statements about individuals. Feel free to comment on the entries submitted by others — with praise, criticism, or whatever — but you must do so tastefully.

There may not be a winner of this contest, but if there is, your Curmudgeon will decide, and whenever we get around to it we’ll announce who the winner is. There is no tangible prize — as always in life’s great challenges, the accomplishment is its own reward. We now throw open the comments section, dear reader. Go for it!

Copyright © 2016. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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