The environmental movement is consumed with trying to preserve the planet forever. But we know that isn’t in God’s plan.

The earth we inhabit is not a permanent planet. It is, frankly, a disposable planet—it is going to have a very short life. It’s been around six thousand years or so—that’s all—and it may last a few thousand more. And then the Lord is going to destroy it.

I’ve told environmentalists that if they think humanity is wrecking the planet, wait until they see what Jesus does to it.

– John McArthur, Evangelicalism and the Environmental Movement

Scientists say evolution is true and the Earth is old, but they’re only human and fallible. Between them and God’s word (the Bible), I’d trust God any day.

But how do they know the Bible is God’s word?

An incredible large number of believers will say something like, “well, it says so right in there! Would God lie?”. Sorry to say this, but that is such a ridiculously stupid argument that I can have no respect for you as an human being afterwards. Do realize how idiotic it is to say that something must be true simply because it says so? Would you believe a murder suspect with a lot of evidence against him to be innocent, as long as he said “I didn’t do it, and I’m telling the truth“? If you believe that, then, well, (inspiring music) know henceforth that this blog is the very word of the High God, the more-supreme-than-supreme being who created all human gods, including yours (after all, nothing can exist without being created, so someone must have created Yahweh and so on, right? The High God did it. Ignore the obvious implication.). Therefore, you must believe everything written here, since these are not just my words, but the words of the High God himself. The High God wants you to send me a billion dollars. You doubt it? Are you calling the High God himself a liar?

A slightly smaller number of believers will reply with something much like “I feel in my heart that this is the word of God. When I read it, it touches my soul in a way that no mortal words ever could.”

Well, what if you’re mistaken?

What, you believe you can’t be? Do you consider yourself infallible? Perfect? Incapable of error about something like this? Are you claiming that, just because you “feel” something, those feelings must be true, with no possibility of your being just mistaken or deluded?

Then what about all the other people out there who feel things completely different than you? How do you know you’re right and they’re wrong? How can you be sure your feelings are 100% trustworthy, but those of other people are not?

Most people would agree that claiming “I can’t possibly be wrong; I am incapable of error” is the epitome of arrogance. Then why is it that nobody is called on it when the subject is the belief that a book (written thousands of years ago) must be the word of a god? Or that the feelings in your heart must be justified (even though that is not valid for other people’s feelings)?

Admit it: there’s no way to be sure that the Bible is divinely inspired, other than one of the two: dumb circular logic you wouldn’t accept for anything else, or the belief that you’re infallible about something.

More on this: The Aura of Infallibility, on Daylight Atheism

Source: Cectic

This shows perfectly what the theists’ beef is, IMO. No matter how much they deny it, their goal is to insert religion in science classes, nothing more… and they won’t be satisfied with a truly neutral position, where science classes only teach science. To them, not saying “goddidit” is “promoting atheism”… and they can’t have that.

1. God created the species as they are, less than 10,000 years ago (young earth creationism);
2. God created the species as they are, millions of years ago (old earth creationism);
3. God created life and directed evolution, starting millions of years ago (theistic evolution);
4. Life evolved without action from a god (natural evolution).

And it got me thinking…

We can think of the several hypotheses as a series of switches. God (as in “interfering”, not as in “existing”)? Yes or no. Old Earth? Yes or no. Evolution? Yes or no. With these switches, here are the 8 possible combinations (with 0 for “no” and 1 for “yes” — yes, I’m a computer geek. ):

This is the initial premise. But we can quickly remove a few contradictory combinations. For instance, no God and no evolution means that nothing accounts for the life we have in the world today. In other words, we can’t have a “0″ for both God and evolution. Evolution but no old earth is also impossible: nobody — scientists or creationists — claims that species could have evolved in just a couple of millennia, and both sides agree that man already existed 6,000 years ago. In binary terms, evolution requires an old earth (not the other way around, though).

So, the cut-down table (now with labels for each combination) amounts to this:

What more can we say about them? Well, for a start: evidence contradicts B and C, so they cannot be true. There is lots of evidence for both evolution and an old earth, and both are accepted by science — not dogmatically, not on authority, but because that’s where the evidence leads. The only reason people still claim B or C is this: it’s what the holy books claim. If you believe they are inerrant, then any evidence to the contrary must be ignored, like covering your ears with your hands and crying “la la la, I can’t hear you”. Of course, such a position is irrational, dishonest, and stupid. Creationism (old earth or young earth) is the denial of reality; it’s not a scientific hypothesis with any merit, because no evidence supports it, and a lot of evidence contradicts it. I can respect people who are honestly mistaken, but not those who lie to themselves, who deny reality, just because it’s somehow uncomfortable or contradicts dogma.

So, if we care the least bit about reality, we must remove any combination with Old Earth=0 or Evolution=0. Therefore, the only remaining combinations are these (keeping the labels from the previous table):

Now, D is obviously theistic evolution, that is, evolution directed by God. This is undisprovable, because it doesn’t contradict the evidence (but, then again, Last Thursdayism, the theory that the universe was created last Thursday, but with everyone having memories of a fictional time before that, and with the world having been created to appear much older, is also undisprovable). There is, however, no evidence for it, either.

A is not necessarily atheistic naturalism; as I said before, “God” here means intervention by God, not just existence. A can be naturalism, but it can also be Deism. Again, it can’t be disproved, and, again, there is no evidence of “no (intervening) God”. The main difference between A and D is that D adds another agent, which is not required, as A has the exact same evidence for and against it, and explains everything just as well. If both explanations are equally satisfactory and substantiated, but one of them has an extra entity, then Occam’s Razor tells us that the other one — with the least number of entities — is the most likely one. Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity, and the extra entity is unnecessary.

From this, we arrive at A as the most likely hypothesis. All available evidence agrees with it, and it is the simpler (in terms of number of entities) explanation.

Expelled

There.

I ask my readers (yes, you and that other one over there ) to please, please, spread this image (originally posted here) as much as possible.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and I think that this is a perfect example. A simple picture shows the utter, disgusting dishonesty of the creationists behind Expelled‘s attempt to rewrite history in order to blame evolution for Nazism.

Apparently, the Nazis themselves didn’t agree with Ben Stein…

If I was a religious person, I would consider creationism nothing less than blasphemy. Do its adherents imagine that God is a cosmic hoaxer who has created that whole vast fossil record for the sole purpose of misleading mankind?

– Arthur C. Clarke

(seen on Life Without Faith, in a post about Clarke’s recent death)

… I have, naturally, to invoke Monty Python.

Now, some people — even non-creationists (a.k.a. people who don’t ignore evidence just because it contradicts a book written by Bronze Age desert nomads who could only imagine supernatural explanations for anything they didn’t know, and who thought the world was just a few generations old) are saying that people will be electing a president, not a biologist, so the candidates’ stance on evolution doesn’t really matter.

In other words, they’re free to believe in something really absurd, ignoring all the evidence to the contrary, but “otherwise, they’re perfectly all right”.

Remember the classic mattress sketch?

Groom: Er yes. We’d like to buy a bed…a double bed…about fifty pounds?
Verity: Oh no, I’m afraid not, sir. Our cheapest bed is eight hundred pounds, sir.
Groom: Eight hundred pounds!
Lambert: Or, er, perhaps I should have explained. Mr Verity does tend to exaggerate, so every figure he gives you will be ten times too high. Otherwise he’s perfectly all right, perfectly ha, ha, ha.

and, later,

Verity: Lambert! Will you show these twenty good people the, er, dog kennels, please?
Lambert: Mm? Certainly.
Groom: Dog kennel? No, no, no, mattresses, mattresses!
Verity: Oh no, no you have to say dog kennel to Mr Lambert because if you say mattress he puts a bag over his head. I should have explained. Apart from that he’s really all right.

See what I mean? It’s not “really all right”. In at least one thing, they’re showing that they’re either a) completely nuts, or b) cowardly pandering to those who are. They’re unwilling to think critically, to consider the available evidence, and to ask the experts on the subject… or they’re dishonest, cowardly, and devoid of any integrity.

And you want those guys to run your country?

From the initial comment:

I’ve noticed that many slashdot articles about evolution seem to attract a sizeable number of creationists. Because of this, I’ve decided to address the serious (i.e. non-trolling) creationists that frequent slashdot in the hope that I can prevent you from making the same easily avoided mistakes that make so many of your brethren sound like ignorant cretins. Here are some common arguments that creationists use, and why I think that you shouldn’t use them… unless of course you want to be ridiculed. Note: this is by no means a comprehensive list.

(1) “Evolution is just a THEORY”

This is the most common (and the most disappointing) creationist argument I hear on a regular basis. While it’s true that evolution is a theory, this statement is made in an attempt to cast doubt on evolution by implying that evolution is akin to a wild guess that scientists came up with after a night of heavy drinking. Newsflash: it’s not going to work. Most educated people understand that you’re confusing the word “theory” (which means an explanation or model that is capable of predicting future events) with the word “hypothesis” (which means an educated guess). Calling evolution a “theory” isn’t an insult. For the millionth time, I will repeat this: gravity is also “just” a theory (for example, google the “General Theory of Relativity”). I might even add that most scientists would consider evolution to be a better-supported theory than gravity, because of the fact that gravity cannot (currently) be quantized, despite decades of attempts. If you want to debate evolution, fine- but don’t play these childish word games.

Of course, it goes on. Really, read it.

And from his reply, to another user who suggested he participate in a public debate about evolution / creationism:

(2) Creationists often make statements like “Evolution can’t produce new information in a genome” or “We don’t know how old the earth is because carbon dating isn’t useful on large timescales and we don’t know the initial amounts of isotopes and polonium halos disprove old ages anyway”. Answering each one of these statements would require hours of boring, dry lecturing- something that simply isn’t going to happen. And the problem is that creationists don’t just make one of these statements, they make DOZENS of them. Answering this kind of deluge of mis-information in such a way that it can be intelligible to the average person would take an unbelievably long amount of time. As such, even answering questions from the crowd can be a tricky business. How do you explain isochronology and radioactive dating methods in 2 minutes to a young earth creationist? I can barely explain it to a fellow scientist in less than 15 minutes. Now imagine someone standing up and asking two or three of these questions in rapid fire mode, and ridiculing you for not having a snappy answer. This kind of public failure would not look good.

Again, follow the two links and read the entire comments. The first one is “print out and give to friends and family” material, and the second explains the frustration of discussing science with non-scientists to whom “quick, easy answers” (such as “God did it”) often sound a lot better than the inevitably more complex truth.