There is so much stupid in this video that I don't even know where to begin tearing it apart. But the one point that I do want to make is that attacking the "Origin of Species" in order to tear down the theory of evolution is kind of like attacking modern aviation by pointing out that the Wright Brothers never flew more than 24 miles. Clearly the study of Evolution has, if you will, "evolved" through continued discovery and testing and has grown far beyond the initial hypothesis of Charles Darwin. Just like ALL sciences, it has been vastly improved by further investigation. If its initial premise had proven false it would have quickly been replaced by a competing scientific theory.
If you have never heard of Kirk Cameron, other than as the wisecracking older brother on "Growing Pains", and his buddy Ray Comfort then let this groundbreaking, "Atheist's Nightmare" video be your introduction.
So did you get that? Bananas, easy to open and shaped to fit the human hand, are proof positive that there is a God.
Of course following that same line of logic then doesn't the existence of the coconut, almost impossible to open and hard to hold onto, prove just the opposite? (Damn those Atheistic coconuts!)
But if that wasn't enough of a problem with Ray Comfort's ridiculous theory than his complete lack of knowledge concerning bananas proves his undoing.
Look here is the thing. Science is science, and religion is religion. One depends on verifiable facts and theories that are reinforced by newly discovered information, the other depends on faith. Period.
Science could not survive a faith based approach to research, and religion cannot stand up to scientific scrutiny.
So stop trying to defend your religion by pretending science supports it. It doesn't! Nor does it support Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Scientology, Zoroastrianism, or any other religious belief. If you are seeking a religion that is supported by scientific data then I do not see church attendance in your future.
If your religion makes you happy, and makes you feel connected to your community, and provides you with a sense of security, then go with God. Or Gods. Or animal totems. Or spirit guides. Or saints. Or whatever you identify as your connection to a world beyond your own. I do not fault you the beliefs that bring comfort to your life.
Just so long as you do not expect everybody else to agree with you. Or insist that your chosen religious views be taught in public schools. And if you keep your God off my science, I will keep my science off of your God. Sound fair?
P.S. I know this is not the topic that brings MOST people to this blog, however it is one of the topics that I started this site to discuss. For the last few years I have focused mostly on politics and current events, and even more recently on Alaskan politics and Sarah Palin, but you can expect a few forays into the topic of religion or philosophy occasionally.
If you, like me, are fascinated with the topic of Evolution vs Creationism then you may enjoy this debate that occurred back in 1997, and featured the powerful intellect of William F. Buckley on the side of Creationism/Intelligent Design. (The link takes you to the first of eight videos in the series, you will have to look to the right side of the screen to watch the remainder of the debate.)
About kirk and bananas. The ones he is talking about have been cultivated to be in the shape they are in. In the wild, I believe they fit a Chimpanzees hands better, i.e., we are evolved from chimps and apes.
ReplyDeleteI posted my first comment about the banana before watching the last video. The guy is a stupid jerk. I believe in God, but this guy has no idea who or what God is. That's obvious!
ReplyDeleteGryphen, this is why we love your blog! You go right for the kernel of truth and hold on tight.
ReplyDeleteYour view on religion and science is spot-on, in my opinion. How I wish more people thought as you do because there would be a lot less anger, frustration, and hatred in the world.
I simply do not understand the drive some people have to dominate others through their faith. What is it - misery loves company? I certainly don't buy that their God demands them to be obnoxious, overbearing and hateful.
Anyway, thanks for the posting. You summarize how many of us feel.
On the record:
ReplyDeleteWe have walked in Darwin's footsteps - in Patagonia. We cruised the Darwin passage - stepped onto Cape Horn and cruised through the Roaring 50's .... an amazing experience.
Darwin's Origin of the Species WILL survive anything the Repigs and moronic idiots toss at it. It has been a landmark treatise for longer than all of us have survived.
It is obvious that all the shrieking and shrill denying is just that - B>S> because the idiots disagree.
Having experience much of his voyage I can state (for myself) that he has much more smack, credibility and intellect than the current crop of idiots who are trying to deny his research.
I wish I had experienced all he did - it was truly amazing and awe inspiring.
For fun - google "ainsworth glacier" - my eyes and my brain were overwhelmed by the Megallanic experience.
(For Fun - google "magellanic penguins" ... WOW)
These subjects are so boring, no offense, but what happened with you Sarah sources?
ReplyDeleteGryphen. I love this subject.
ReplyDeleteI was driving an elder alaskan gentleman, not to many years ago, off the homer spit-i was a cabbie then-he asked me who i was. I said look out the window "that is what i am" he said "me too" No words were needed the rest of the way home.My fingers can pick berrys or fish. Bananas are not my realm.
HAHAHAHAHAHA! That's about the funniest thing I think I've ever seen!
ReplyDelete5:15 Anonymous: I certainly don't buy that their God demands them to be obnoxious, overbearing and hateful.
ReplyDeleteNo, their religion (or God) doesn't demand this of them. but it does give them an excuse for bad behavior. As long as that bad behavior is directed toward people "different" than them.
Having God make a perfect fruit where people eat the banana's seeds really helps to proliferate it, yea that makes sense. But, that is a moot point because the bananas we eat don't have seeds. They are clones and completely bred by man. Their logic is even crazier in light of the fact that the banana we all eat is becoming extinct due to lack of genetic diversity. That makes it more suseptible to disease. The first and better tasting variety of domesticated bananas, the Big Mike, was suseptible to fungus. Then they started selling the variety we have now(which tasted so much worse than the Big Mike a lot of people thought consumers wouldn't eat it), the Cavendish, which is having the same problems as the first one with Pananama disease. They are busily trying to develope a new strain for mass marketing,, but having problems because it has to ripen slowly, etc. To get it to survive the type of banana we all love will probably have to be bioengineered. I suspect the ones we eat now are full of fungicides.
ReplyDelete"Science could not survive a faith based approach to research, and religion cannot stand up to scientific scrutiny."
ReplyDeleteLike church and state the two should stay separate. Also If I rely on science proving my faith, I no longer have faith. If I belive faith is the answer to all, then why promote science as having the answer.
Just enligntening myself in writing.. I'm done.
Am I just horny, or did that banana video has serious sexual undertones to it?
ReplyDeleteThe Illiterate Minority says hello
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dribbleglass.com/Jokes/illiterate.htm
Dawn, you have it perfectly.
ReplyDeleteAs a very religious person, I find my faith much more threatened by Cameron than by Darwin.
gryphen == some of my first hours watching youtube videos was tracking down all the downright stupid intelligent design/creation videos -- cameron's is the BEST of the WORST.
ReplyDeletethe banana thing is classic "teh stoopid"
i have forgotten the name of the fellow who did dozens of youtube videos to counter the ID movement.......his videos always ended with
'is that legal'
anyway - well worth the search.
i love the rebuttal by Christina on youtube. what a smart little cookie.
link to Origin of Stupidity (christina's rebuttal to kirk cameron) peace up
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmHN3JtyUXg
Also funny:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.newsbiscuit.com/2009/04/13/evolution-cannot-explain-existence-of-creationists-concedes-dawkins/
OT: Twitter report from Palin's speech.
ReplyDeleteTwitter pic from speech.
I've heard for quite awhile that commercial bananas will be wiped out and not available to buy in my lifetime. Guess "God" can screw up too.
ReplyDeleteI like Cameron's argument that it's Just Crazy believing that the Universe was created out of nothing because it's just so amazing and complicated that it must have been created by an amazing and even more complex Creator. But how could such an amazing and complex being capable of creating a Universe just come out of nothing? Who exactly created God? Surely God is too complex to have Just Happened! Does God have a God? And does God's God have a God? On and on and on.....................
I had a crush on him when he was a teenager. What a dissappointment.
"Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?"
ReplyDeleteSorry. Your blurb about coconuts pulled me back to Monty Python's Holy Grail for a moment.
A sharp and educated rebuttal of a stupid washed up and oh so forgotten celeb. Well done, Gryphen. You get two opposable thumbs up from me!
Gryphen, I hope you and others did not miss
ReplyDeleteOld Greasy Gopher Guts' comment @9:40.
Reesie in VA
Well, a man's penis is perfectly shaped to fit inside a man's ass.
ReplyDeleteMen can also fall in love with other men.
Gee, I guess God loves gays and is for gay marriage after all!
The ignorance and stupidity of these flat-Earther Religious nuts is truly breathtaking.
The US education system should be made a priority.
If there is no God, then why do my shoes fit so well?
ReplyDeleteTHAT is the kind of "scientific" reasoning that is the underpinning of Cameron's "logic." They affect an insanely thin (and just plain insane) veneer of pseudo-science to try and "prove" the existence of a divine creator. "Five ridges on a banana; five ridges on a human hand - bango! There IS a God! These clods aren't smart enough to distinguish between natural selection and "unnatural" selection, a.k.a,, human domestication.
The willful ignorance of these folks is embarrassing to me simply because we are from the same species. This video should be considered proof positive that we definitely DID descend from apes - and that some of us are developmentally a bit closer to our ancestors than others!
Everybody who is truly faithful KNOWS that we are descended from the Great Radish In The Sky (GRITS). To know GRITS is to love GRITS. After all, have you noticed how perfectly radishes go with the rest or your tossed salad? That couldn't possibly be a "random" bit of chance, now could it? It is proof of divine intent. All hail the Great Radish! GRITS is good!
Hallelujah! Can I get an "Amen" from somebody!?
I can see why he disappeared after "Growing Pains".
ReplyDeleteThanks Gryphen! You very eloquently stated how I feel about religion as well. Whatever gives you comfort - good for you - as long as I don't have to go to war about it, or have my kids learn about it in school, etc. Perfectly worded.
ReplyDeleteHumans are so egocentric. I told my devote catholic mother if she was born in another country, she might be a decout Jew, or Buddhist or muslim, with just as much conviciton tat that was the one true way. Religion, i've come to feel, is the cause of most of the evil in the world, used to control and manipulate the populace who are too indoctrinated to think critically anymore. I'm 46. It took me 42 years to get to this point, but I'm here and it's freeing and I will never go back.
Just found your blog and I'm very impressed. Gasman (three comments up) however, has it all wrong. grits isn't god, the flying spaghetti monster is!
ReplyDeleteremember this idiot was in a TV show with a character named "Boner"...
ReplyDeleteBelieve it or not, it is possible to be a Christian AND have a fascination with science.
ReplyDeleteFor me personally, they go hand in hand.
On PBS recently, they said that the latest DNA mapping shows us that all humans are over 99% genetically identical and descended from ONE MAN and ONE WOMAN in Africa. And yes, they nicknamed them Adam and Eve.
If we are to believe that Man evolved from a creature in a swamp, doesn't it make sense to also believe that there were similar swamps located all over the world?
So why Africa? Why just one? What's so special about this ONE swamp in Africa?
I personally believe that God is capable of creating humans however He wanted to, and he made us smart enough to discover that it was Him all along.
Just my humble opinion!
My initial reaction to Mr. Cameron's claims have already been detailed. Even for Fundamentalists who insist that the creation myth in Genesis is the literal truth, they will have to concede that the "banana" in Mr. Cameron's hand was not in the Garden of Eden. Neither were goldfish, plutonium, or the Peace rose.
ReplyDeleteIn Voltaire's Candide, one character goes into great detail about the beauty of God's design of the universe, and how fortunate that noses were shaped perfectly so they could support spectacles. I mention that story for no particular reason.
For anyone who is genuinely interested in this "controversy," James Burke's The Day the Universe Changed has a excellent and very entertaining summary of how "Darwinism" came to be, and (sadly) how the exact same arguments being raised today were debated and discarded. For example, an early "criticism" of natural selection was the eye was "too complex" to have evolved, and therefore must be the product of god--or an "intelligent designer." Burke also traces three political tendencies that claim On the Origin of Species as their inspiration: racialism/fascism/National Socialism; Marxism (Marx and Engels dedicated Das Kapital to Charles Darwin, and used natural selection as a model/analogy to their views of societal evolution); and Herbert Spencer's "Social Darwinism," the inspiration/philosophy behind America's "boot strap" ideology.
The idea that the concept of natural selection or evolutionary biology would not exist today but for Charles Darwin is worse than childish.
Finally, in terms of natural selection being a "threat" to religious belief, as the Vatican priests pointed out to Bill Mahar in "Religulous," Pope John Paul II declared that evolutionary biology and natural selection could no longer be disputed. Of course, for simpletons like Mr. Cameron, that is just more proof that Catholics are not "real Christians."
Read it. Then make your judgement, buddy.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to see that I was not the only one who thought that Mr. Comfort was going to do something very naughty with that banana.
ReplyDeleteHave you paddled in Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub? He takes a keen interest in debunking.
ReplyDelete