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Stripey

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There's a load of great stories on the web about previews for Expelled. They went out of their way to exclude vocal internet bloggers from attending previews after attracting a bad review, but despite managing to keep PZ Meyers (from excellent web resource, Pharyangula) from entering the cinema they completely failed to recognise his friend, a one Richard Dawkins. Oops.

For those interested in how obscenely awful this move is, check out Expelled Exposed

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Isn’t it strange that creationists can't conceive that the earth is billions of years old , and that the origins of life is around 4.6 billion (that's 4.6 thousand million) years old... .a quantifiable and tangible number (although it's very large and hard to truly understand the immensity of that number)

Yet can happily sit thinking a large bearded man (white, of course) can zap things into existence over 7 days. (Forgetting to actually "build" a woman in the first place (Eve was a bit of an after thought, unlike all the animals "He'd" put here)) - and if that doesn't set patriarchal, misogynist alarm bells ringing....proving that man created all this mumbo jumbo to keep men in power and women subservient, i don't know what would!

PS, if you ever meet a creationist...ask them "hey, do you look a bit like your mum or dad?.....how is that?"

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Isnt it strange that creationists can't conceive that the earth is billions of years old , and that the origins of life is around 4.6 billion (that's 4.6 thousand million) years old... .a quantifiable and tangible number (although it's very large and hard to truly understand the immensity of that number)

Yet can happily sit thinking a large bearded man (white, of course) can zap things into existence over 7 days. (Forgetting to actually "build" a woman in the first place (Eve was a bit of an after thought, unlike all the animals "He'd" put here)) - and if that doesn't set patriarchal, misogynist alarm bells ringing....proving that man created all this mumbo jumbo to keep men in power and women subservient, i don't know what would!

PS, if you ever meet a creationist...ask them "hey, do you look a bit like your mum or dad?.....how is that?"

I quote Bill Hicks here but if you ever meet a creationist theres only one question to ask and its only one word.

Dinosaur.

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no, they have "answers" for dinousaurs...

but yes, a bit of hicks a directed to any right wing christian is always fun.

I'd estimated if I were to make a program to explore "evolution" (to a pixel - at a verrrrrrry basic level) - at 999 frames a second it would take 53+ days to "show" what 4.6 billion years is.

999 fps = 59,940 frames a minute

3,596,400 frames an hour

86,313,600 frames a day

4,574,620,800 frames in 53 days.

....

it's on the same level as trying to imagine the actual distances between the sun & planets.

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no, they have "answers" for dinousaurs...

but yes, a bit of hicks a directed to any right wing christian is always fun.

I'd estimated if I were to make a program to explore "evolution" (to a pixel - at a verrrrrrry basic level) - at 999 frames a second it would take 53+ days to "show" what 4.6 billion years is.

999 fps = 59,940 frames a minute

3,596,400 frames an hour

86,313,600 frames a day

4,574,620,800 frames in 53 days.

....

it's on the same level as trying to imagine the actual distances between the sun & planets.

If you use 53 days to represent the whole of geological history, then all of human history (approx. 2,000,000 yrs) would only be 33 minutes worth.

I find that pretty amazing.

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......wouldn't you know it...I look at it in IE and automatically think "and?..." ho ho

I'l fire up fireFox. (and did....that's a fantastic illustration - holding the "scroll" arrow for 10 mins gets you nowhere!)

PS...

it's still pretty hard to image the "reality" - and that's the moral of the story, surely...

for the things people can not truly conceive - we make stuff up to fit our imagination of it (some people would add "till we can prove it (or not)" - some are just happy to stop 2000 years ago in their thinking)

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Heh, it's quite satisfying to see Christianity becoming more of a crazy cult.

Funnily enough, you don't see many reports of Jewish figures getting chubbies over Darwin in the press. I don't get it.

It seems to be a peculiarly american thing. These people, like the israeli-flag-waving rapture-believing "christians united for israel" (

) should really be a lunatic fringe but it seems that in the usa there is a lot of money in manipulating these gullible people for political ends.

I caught part of an interview with a pakistani scientist on radio4 the other day, talking about musharraf and how when he came to power, the decision was taken to "islamicise" all the sciences being taught. He talked about how they would organise scientific conferences and debate how to calculate the temperature of hell etc.

America has it's own madrassas and they are breeding their own form of ideological bigotry, and just like in the east, people in power (or who want to be in power) are using that for their own political means.

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'It will be a halfway house for youngsters,' Jones said. 'Today all they do is binge drink. We will be able to offer them an alternative.'

Whats the alternative...Brainwashing?

do they really think all the kids hanging about on street corners drinking cheap cider r going to suddenly think 'wow who needs to get drunk when we can go to a christian theme park instead.thats so much cooler' o_O

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I think it's probably pretty easy to box in all Christians/Creationists on the evidence of a few stupid nutters who slap videos on to youtube. My dad is into Intelligent Design, which is generally and - in my opinion - somewhat lazily called 'creationism in all but name'. He's not a psychopath and he's an intelligent chap.

I study Earth Science at Uni and I find it interesting and pretty full-proof on the whole. I firmly believe the world is a lot older than a few thousand years, that much is pretty close to undeniable fact. But, there are certainly gaping holes in the logic of evolution. Personally, I don't think anyone has got it figured out and I'm pretty sure nobody ever will.

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I think it's probably pretty easy to box in all Christians/Creationists on the evidence of a few stupid nutters who slap videos on to youtube. My dad is into Intelligent Design, which is generally and - in my opinion - somewhat lazily called 'creationism in all but name'. He's not a psychopath and he's an intelligent chap.

Intelligent design *is* creationism, it's a mendacious, pseudoscientific excuse to teach creationism in schools that is peddled by religious bigots. Your dad and anyone else can believe what they like, but religious people have no business trying to impose their moral and ethical views on politics, law, education, medicine or science.

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I think it's probably pretty easy to box in all Christians/Creationists on the evidence of a few stupid nutters who slap videos on to youtube. My dad is into Intelligent Design, which is generally and - in my opinion - somewhat lazily called 'creationism in all but name'. He's not a psychopath and he's an intelligent chap.

.

Stripey's on the money, there's no lazy comparison going on - Intelligent Design is Creationism and likewise only accepts one "Intelligent Designer", and that's the Christian God. It's scientifically vacuous. ID deliberately misrepresents evolution in order to drive a wedge of doubt in to an established theory, but offers nothing of any credence in return.

If you have the time, I'd recommend searching out the full decision in the Kitzmiller Vs Dover Area School District trial from 2005, it's a fun read (Full text linked from bottom of Wikipedia entry - Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

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Bringing up the new scientist again,

I read a fantastic article on the propultion system (flagellum) of bacteria.

Creation..*cough* Intelligent Design fans cite the flagellum as a case study for an impossible structure to happen by chance - so it must have been "designed"...

"The best studied flagellum, of the E. coli bacterium, contains around 40 different kinds of proteins. Only 23 of these proteins, however, are common to all the other bacterial flagella studied so far. Either a "designer" created thousands of variants on the flagellum or, contrary to creationist claims, it is possible to make considerable changes to the machinery without mucking it up."

but, again, trying to explain science to an ID "believer" Is kind of pointless.

I like it when religious folks say that because science is never "finished" (the quest for knowledge, peer reviews, dissagreement and re-writing / editing findings because of new discoveries) "invalidates" it as "truth"....

unlike the bible - as it's not changed in 2000 years.....(well, apart fromt he mormon version, eventists version, baptists version, catholic version, protestant version, reformation version, orthodox version....)

you kind of get the point.

not to mention that christianity is only one of many religions - and "science" is science...

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I think it's probably pretty easy to box in all Christians/Creationists on the evidence of a few stupid nutters who slap videos on to youtube. My dad is into Intelligent Design, which is generally and - in my opinion - somewhat lazily called 'creationism in all but name'. He's not a psychopath and he's an intelligent chap.

I study Earth Science at Uni and I find it interesting and pretty full-proof on the whole. I firmly believe the world is a lot older than a few thousand years, that much is pretty close to undeniable fact. But, there are certainly gaping holes in the logic of evolution. Personally, I don't think anyone has got it figured out and I'm pretty sure nobody ever will.

Intelligent design *is* creationism, it's a mendacious, pseudoscientific excuse to teach creationism in schools that is peddled by religious bigots. Your dad and anyone else can believe what they like, but religious people have no business trying to impose their moral and ethical views on politics, law, education, medicine or science.

Thank you Stripey

Here's what Brookmyre thinks:

www.brookmyre.co.uk :: The Future by Christopher Brookmyre

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