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sydtocreation liked a video
(3 weeks ago)
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sydtocreation liked a video
(1 month ago)
One of the most fascinating things for me about the whole religion debate, is the quality of the arguments that come from the religious side in res...
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One of the most fascinating things for me about the whole religion debate, is the quality of the arguments that come from the religious side in response to the atheist/anti-theist kickback of recent years. Quality? It's too positive a word. The quality of the arguments is dreadful. It truly fascinates me to see these desperately bad arguments, so easily debunked and deflected, coming back at us time and time again. I dealt with one of them in a recent video called "Atheists Secretly Believe in Yahweh", and this video is a similar thing, about creationism's terrible arguments (if you can call them that).
I know next to nothing about science - really, only what I've learnt by being interested in this debate for the last few years. And what is fascinating for me, is that the anti-science (creationist) side have such amazingly bad arguments. Their arguments are rarely, if ever, any better than utterly wrong. They're either flat out wrong, or make things up, strawman style, and then when their errors are pointed out, - they NEVER admit their mistakes, and seem to go on arguing the same things. It is just too plain to see to be a mistake - it's clear that as long as theyve got a flock of believers to preach it to, they'll keep on going like this, even when they are knowingly lying.
So this is based on a debate I recently heard between Kent Hovind and a christian who accepted evolution. Hovind just bulldozed his way through, spouting things that EVEN I know are wrong, and that, I have no doubt whatsoever, he has been corrected on time after time after time.
Its also based on P.Z. Myers famous debate against Geoffrey Simmonds (early 2008) - a guy with doctoral qualifications who didnt know the scientific meaning of the word theory, and used it as a pejorative. Quite a few elements of the script came from that exchange (whales, ignorance... etc).
There are so many "arguments" or "tactics" that they use repeatedly that I just couldn't squeeze into 11 minutes.
This video also came about by me realising how easy it is to get educated about evolution. I cannot recommend Dawkins' The Greatest Show On Earth highly enough. It is full of jaw-dropping information. It is an unbelievable privelige to be alive at a time that allows us to know so much about our universe. If I believed in a god, I'd be thanking it for allowing me to be alive at such an incredible stage in history, where so many mysteries are being, or have been, solved. Only a few hundred years ago - people didnt even know what stars were! Let alone dating rocks with atomic precision. Amazing.
Creationists - get educated before you argue about these things. And when you're corrected, try to learn something. Can you imagine if Dr. Finch here refused to be corrected about Moses or Noah, and spouted the same mistakes the rest of his life, like Hovind is SURE to do once he gets out of prison?
Thanks to Waldheri for coming up with the surname of the scientist when I asked for suggestions on Twitter. Charles seemed a reasonable given name to put with it.
I also appealed to AronRa for help with the thing about the monkeys - but Im afraid, Aron, that your explanation went way over my head and I was too embarrassed to ask you to clarify further! I played around with it and am confident it isnt wrong.
The thing about creationists believing in evolution should a monkey give birth to a human is directly from Coughlan666.
"Whales don't live for millions of years" came from a Skype conversation with BornInAsphodelMeadow.
I had my doubts when I listened back to Dr. Finch's initial clarification about evolution not being about sudden random manifestations of complex things - it was re-worked about 20 times and I"m still not 100% comfortable with it, but I let it in rather than go for another take.
This was pretty much written by the time my PC died, back in October (?) and I have struggled to find a comparable graphics program on the Mac that I bought. These pictures, therefore, were drawn on my girlfriend's 5 year old PC over the New Year break. Actually, since only then, I've now found a suitable Mac application that will allow me to make pictures the way I want to in the future.
But it might be a while. This one was quite an effort. It took three recordings, and a very painful day of drawing. (Scoliosis and RSI dont make for happy long sessions on a computer.) I'd like to get another one up before the Global Atheist Convention in March, but with a speech to write, for an address to 700 people (!!!!) Im not promising anything.
I'll keep an eye on comments for this one for a while, but I've now turned off email notification of comments because I'm getting too many.
Thanks for your support.
NSC
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sydtocreation liked a video
(1 month ago)
Well, having just gone through the process of getting married, I thought I'd pull out an old idea that I've had for ages, and adapt it to a marriag...
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Well, having just gone through the process of getting married, I thought I'd pull out an old idea that I've had for ages, and adapt it to a marriage context. People were asking me if my wedding was going to be a traditional church wedding - well, no. :)
SCRIPT FOR THIS VIDEO: http://www.nonstampcollector.com/cori...
Many others linked from http://www.nonstampcollector.com/main
The point of the video - the bible is as good a source of information on the topic of LOVE, as any ancient desert scribblings. Sure, taken on its own, 1 Cor 13:4-7 is very nice, but not as nice as other descriptions of love that human beings have come up with. And anyway - would you take advice about love from someone whose biography revealed them to be an appallingly UNLOVING character in the first place?
The bible demolishes itself as a useful source for anything, other than an anthropological study in the history of metaphysical wonderings, superstition, ignorance, and delusion. When you read the words on the pages of the bible, what you actually see is horror, fear, violence, anger, rage, jealousy (fuck it, I think jealousy is a pretty low emotion/characteristic), pettiness, death, fear, - the very worst of human nature.
Just because there are a couple of nice sentences scattered throughout it to doesn't make up for the bulk of it being so revolting.
It's not as if nobody has ever come up with a better description of love than St. Paul. Anyone could. Many have. Let's leave the bible in the dustbox of history.
A few weak points in this video? Yeah, probably. eg, the fine line between envy and jealousy, whether or not god condones smashing babies to pieces on rocks. They're certainly worth bringing up, and it's not as if the bible isn't already an impossibly mistranslated, confused self-contradictory document. I'm not claiming my video is infallible, just making a point. And anyway - smearing shit on people's faces? WTF? Deuteronomy 28? WWWTTTFFFFFFF???
Once again, let me assure my critics that I know christian doctrine rather well, and that I've read the counter arguments, for ex this one regarding whether or not God keeps a record of wrongs:
http://www.gracecentered.com/does_God...
I know you can point to all sorts of examples of God being nice - but that's kind of the point, isn't it. There are examples of niceness, and also of the worst and most appalling cruelty. I'll happily admit the former, I have nothing to lose from it. Just please admit the latter, without making shit up out of thin air about how those traits of this god are less important. The old testament is fucking BRIMMING with them. God must have been very deliberate in seeing to it that those elements of his character were recorded and preserved in such VOLUME!
And yes, that's my clunky organ playing.
Sorry to those who very kindly and generously volunteer to translate and subtitle these into other languages - it's really not going to work with this one, I guess, given that there's text already all over the page.
There, that's your lot for now. Now leave me alone so I can go back to being busy with other things!
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sydtocreation liked a video
(1 month ago)
Are the biblical Ten Commandments REALLY responsible for our laws and morality, as many Christians claim? Do we owe anything to them at all?
Should ...
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Are the biblical Ten Commandments REALLY responsible for our laws and morality, as many Christians claim? Do we owe anything to them at all?
Should they be considered significant? Displayed in public buildings such as schools and courts?
Yahweh, the old testament god, looked into the future and discovered that the mighty western civilization was getting by without paying all that much attention to his commandments, so he thought about changing them a bit in order for them to be reflective of the actual laws and values we hold to.
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"Tablet", get it? Get it?
Remember -Noah threw his iPad (YahPad) at the wall and smashed it (in Noah's Ark Part 2), so Moses got a more durable one (just with less functionality). Could this be a sneak preview of the iPad 3?
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Some may argue that my claim of "three out of ten" is inaccurate, and that from a certain viewpoint it more be more like four. I can live with that. I did cross reference a number of articles on the net of people claiming it's three, others four. Either way - the purpose of the video is to show that it's closer ZERO than it is to TEN!
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sydtocreation liked a video
(1 month ago)
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