johnny9fingers | (no subject)

For some reason or other this makes me happy.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070526/sc_nm/usa_museum_dc_2;_ylt=Ai8RCQ2ge90mxOTtjIyqq8GEDvII

At least the lines are being drawn and now we all know where we stand.
The non-rational can no longer use Gödel's incompleteness I & II as an excuse.
There is just no way that in an universal flood, a representative breeding pair of every known species in the world could have fitted onto a small boat the dimensions of which are laid out in Genesis. (450ft long with a gross volume of some 1.5 million feet, considerably less than required to have repopulated the world with reasonable genetic diversity after the deluge.) One also wonders how the exotic species that exist only in locations hugely distant from the ark could have made a journey across oceans and continents. How do the wombats manage to travel to get into the Ark? Or the Koalas, or the Possums. Never mind. I'm not entirely certain that specimens of every land based arthropod could be fitted into such a small space, but...I'm sure someone will prove me wrong.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh gosh, this is embarrassing...

It's not as bad as some things, m'dear: like war or terrorism. It is, however, quite mad, and the people who believe it should not under any circumstances be allowed to participate in government - after all, being mad is one of the few legitimate disqualifiers from the universal franchise. I'm beginning to see a way around these imbeciles, mainly by using their own despicable tactics; but I'm not so proud I won't use the tools to hand, nor am I especially hogtied by scruples: I just want these people's madnesses removed from influencing policy. That they should choose to marginalise and denigrate themselves in this fashion is truly heartening. We have mad folk too. Some Islamic countries are run by madmen. I'd like to prevent such an occurrence happening again in America, which is, as you know, still the hope of the world.

I just don't get it. How old the world is, or the dinosaurs, or the Grand Canyon, is so irrelevant to real life (especially with all those other things you mentioned going on) that I don't even understand why people bother to form opinions on it. Of all the issues to choose from, people still want to debate this?

The debate is about the literal truth of the Bible, the belief in which informs many of these people's other opinions, often to the detriment of society in general, and sane political policy in particular.

*sigh* Too true...

It matters to them so much that they'll twist themselves into logical pretzels in order to deny anything that contradicts the literal truth of the bible, like for example: evolution, geology, plate techtonics, continental drift, the age of the universe, physics in general...etc etc.

(deleted comment)

Scary. Very Scary.

I have cool friends who have Bad Ideas.

Personally I liked the one about showing up in a foot-driven (Flintstones-style) car....
Either that or asking where Fred and Barney's skeletons are.
(okay that's perhaps culturally remote refs, but I think the comparison's funny *heh*)

That is still one of the most awesome displays of imagination on LJ.