Dramatic Readings from "Christian" Bulletin Boards

[Críostóir]

These three guys are not right-wing loony-toon "Christians,"* but every word they speak on this video is taken directly from the loony-toons' bulletin boards. They speak the text with such force and conviction that it would be easy to believe they believe this garbage.

How they got through some of this without laughing is beyond me.



___
*In quotes because they don't know shit about Christianity either.

 

[AsianDream]

These three guys are not right-wing loony-toon "Christians,"* but every word they speak on this video is taken directly from the loony-toons' bulletin boards. They speak the text with such force and conviction that it would be easy to believe they believe this garbage.

How they got through some of this without laughing is beyond me.

More a sign that they're totally oblivious to the central message of Christianity - GOD IS LOVE - all this sort of rubbish is just an example of how a powerful good message can be abused and distorted by people.

I'm not religious - but I do accept and recognise the good ideas of religion - but the malign influence of so called "Evangelical Christians" is not something any of us should be happy about.

 

[thermodynamics]

Wow...that's a new one...accusing scientists of using complex terminology...DNA.

Wow. They really are looney!

 

[Fire]

Not surprisingly, this video completely overlooks all the thoughtful, well-reasoned arguments against evolutionism.

If I cherry-picked from this bulletin board, I could make us out to be a bunch of retards too. So biased

 

[Críostóir]

Not surprisingly, this video completely overlooks all the thoughtful, well-reasoned arguments against evolutionism.

If I cherry-picked from this bulletin board, I could make us out to be a bunch of retards too. So biased

First of all, as far as I know there's no such thing as "evolutionism," except in the fevered brains of YECs and IDiots.

And I've heard a lot of people try to argue against the scientific fact of evolution, and not one has ever been thoughtful or well-reasoned. If you know any such arguments, present them. I doubt they're as well-reasoned as you think.

Also, feel free to cherry-pick from this site. Cite them with links to the threads where they were written so we know you didn't make them up; I'm sure you'll find plenty that will be worth a laugh, but I don't think you'll find anything as stupid as "I can sum it up in three words: evolution is a lie." And that isn't even as stupid as the grotesque fantasy with the atheists dressing in black hooded robes and burning Christians at the stake.

 

[Kulindahr]

I couldn't concentrate on the words 'cause two of those guys were scorching cute!


So I closed my eyes and listened a second time.


I've actually seen crap like that on boards, and it makes me sick that these people claim to be Christians. The people I really get pissed at are the pastors, though, who are responsible to teach their flock not just the truth, but how to analyze things and tell truth from falsehood.


Oh -- a comment on "evolutionism": I'd say the proper use of that term would be for those who believe it blindly without having a clue what it's about. Just as there are idiotic religious types who think evolution says we came from monkeys, so there are people who believe in evolution who think the same thing -- and others who take the anthropomorphic language used by far too many biologists literally, so that they believe that DNA reacts to a change in climate by altering itself so the next generation of critters are automatically adjusted to the new conditions, that animals choose to change themselves, i.e. adaptations, and the changes get inherited, that evolution is a force with a road map for where it's going, and other ridiculous crap. Those people are believers in evolutionism, because they come to it as a faith, and believe its (fairy) tales no matter how ridiculous.

 

[Críostóir]

I couldn't concentrate on the words 'cause two of those guys were scorching cute!


So I closed my eyes and listened a second time.


I've actually seen crap like that on boards, and it makes me sick that these people claim to be Christians. The people I really get pissed at are the pastors, though, who are responsible to teach their flock not just the truth, but how to analyze things and tell truth from falsehood.


Oh -- a comment on "evolutionism": I'd say the proper use of that term would be for those who believe it blindly without having a clue what it's about. Just as there are idiotic religious types who think evolution says we came from monkeys, so there are people who believe in evolution who think the same thing -- and others who take the anthropomorphic language used by far too many biologists literally, so that they believe that DNA reacts to a change in climate by altering itself so the next generation of critters are automatically adjusted to the new conditions, that animals choose to change themselves, i.e. adaptations, and the changes get inherited, that evolution is a force with a road map for where it's going, and other ridiculous crap. Those people are believers in evolutionism, because they come to it as a faith, and believe its (fairy) tales no matter how ridiculous.

I'm VERY happy to see you comment in this thread!

Are there really people (I mean, over the age of about 14) who believe in "evolutionism" the way you describe it? OMFSM! Well...I've never met one. And I must say I hope I never do.

 

[Kulindahr]

I'm VERY happy to see you comment in this thread!

Are there really people (I mean, over the age of about 14) who believe in "evolutionism" the way you describe it? OMFSM! Well...I've never met one. And I must say I hope I never do.

A few sorority gals at OSU come to mind.

And a couple at a swimming hole a few summers ago.

Actually I run into people who think evolution is some sort of driving, guiding force behind the universe -- kind of like a creator-god with no consciousness, driving the universe to develop to where it can be self-aware -- pretty commonly. I put a lot of the blame on all the"New Age" bogus spirituality out there, but also an awful lot of biology writers who use anthropomorphic writing without realizing it. Hardly two months go by without some article in DISCOVER magazine that I toss down in disgust, not because the science is bad but because writers use words like "adaptation" as though there were a guiding mind, and speak of the "purpose" of adaptations as though there'd been a plan behind it....

Even though at the time I was still extremely dubious about evolution, when I was student teaching I made sure that the kids darned well understood that evolution was very much akin to things like roulette -- or, one of my favorites, like playing dominoes, and every time it was your turn someone rolled a die, and if it came up a six and you had no play, you were dead! which made the point that there's no planning in evolution, only playing the hand you're dealt, and if you don't have the right cards... game over.
I even went through the chapter in their text that introduced them to evolution (with the agreement of the teacher) and had them all get bright red pens, and we crossed out word after word, and wrote in ones that took out any sense of guidance or planning or purpose.
Once I got through to them what evolution really means, some of them were actually scared to believe it. One girl flat out said she was going to believe in God, because this universe of evolution made it seem like the universe didn't care. I asked her where in the Bible it said that the universe cared, because what it says there is that the universe is malfunctioning because of sin, and not only doesn't it not care, it just may be out to get us. Almost crying, she said, "Well, God cares!" -- at which point I said that that was true whether evolution was true or not.
There were even parents mad at me for making evolution seem "uncaring"....

 

[Críostóir]

Wow. Just wow. Yeah, evolution is uncaring. Duh. So is math. So is physics; it doesn't care if your seatbelt was unbuckled for some noble reason or because you're an idiot, if you get in the rollover when it is, you die.

It's not quite as random as a dieroll, of course. Or rather it is, but the dice are weighted against the unfit (for their particular environment). Millions of years of rolling dice and killing off the least fit slightly more often makes a species more fit.

All of this is terrible and cruel and breathtakingly beautiful.

 

[Kulindahr]

Wow. Just wow. Yeah, evolution is uncaring. Duh. So is math. So is physics; it doesn't care if your seatbelt was unbuckled for some noble reason or because you're an idiot, if you get in the rollover when it is, you die.

It's not quite as random as a dieroll, of course. Or rather it is, but the dice are weighted against the unfit (for their particular environment). Millions of years of rolling dice and killing off the least fit slightly more often makes a species more fit.

All of this is terrible and cruel and breathtakingly beautiful.

Well, true, but math and physics aren't these great majestic processes that carry the biosphere along like some unopposable steamroller. It's the impression of some cold, powerful 'hand' treating all living creatures as toys that frightens people.

Of course if you start looking at astronomy and astrophysics, you can get the same image of an uncaring force, but it isn't quite so up close.


In my dice and dominoes illustration, the die represented sudden or drastic environmental changes; the ability of the player to fit in dominoes represented coping with the ecosystem and all.

It also kind of shows a point that, IIRC, Dawson once made, that "more fit" is a misleading label, since it applies only to the particular environmental change just survived, and may or may not have anything to do with the next one. That makes evolution seem more akin to Russian Roulette than to dice: you survive one pass with the gun, and next time there's that chance you'll get a bullet... and the next, and the next. I guess it's saying that any given adaptation doesn't mean you'll be more fit for any future challenges -- and since "adaptation" carries connotations, in lay terms, of working out adjustments to deal with things, this concept brings up images of doing lots of hard work for nothing.

Therein, I suppose, is perhaps the greatest point that people miss, to a great extent because popular science writers, even in magazines such as Science News or Discover, rarely make the effort to emphasize that individuals don't adapt, species do... and even when they do, they rarely take the effort to explain that an adaptation, if you want to be precise, occurs before the change it enables you to survive -- a point I used to make using decks of playing cards to illustrate inheritance of characteristics; when a challenge was announced, you either held the card that enabled you to survive, or you didn't.

 

[Críostóir]

That's why all the species (and there were some) that didn't age died out: lack of species adaptability. And why the most successful species on the planet have the shortest lifespans.

But humans ARE individually adaptable. I think we evolved that way because our environments changed so rapidly that species-level adaptation was too slow, and we learned to make clothing in the Ice Age instead of growing fur (can't do that; the IA came on too fast).

 

[Kulindahr]

That's why all the species (and there were some) that didn't age died out: lack of species adaptability. And why the most successful species on the planet have the shortest lifespans.

It wasn't so much aging as time into lifespan of reproductive years. A species with a lifespan of two hundred years which reproduced at five or ten years of age could adapt as well as one with a lifespan of fifteen years which reproduced at the same age as the first.

But humans ARE individually adaptable. I think we evolved that way because our environments changed so rapidly that species-level adaptation was too slow, and we learned to make clothing in the Ice Age instead of growing fur (can't do that; the IA came on too fast).

Humans had another, evolution-type/species-level adaptation: the ability to live in a broad range of climates. Most species are stuck in a particular sort of climate; yet while other creatures have tool-using abilities for dealing with some change, human tool-using was more innovative, adjusting to the different climates where they migrated by using whatever new materials came to hand -- a new sort of tool-using, not one that linked a specific item to a specific task, but one which categorized items, so that anything resembling something already used for some purpose would be tried for that purpose, or for a similar purpose.

 

[Críostóir]

It wasn't so much aging as time into lifespan of reproductive years. A species with a lifespan of two hundred years which reproduced at five or ten years of age could adapt as well as one with a lifespan of fifteen years which reproduced at the same age as the first.

That's a factor, but not the only factor. Ecological niches get crowded with adults if the adults live a long time; and the species that didn't age all grew throughout life, so the fry competing with them was pretty impossible.

 

[Kulindahr]

That's a factor, but not the only factor. Ecological niches get crowded with adults if the adults live a long time; and the species that didn't age all grew throughout life, so the fry competing with them was pretty impossible.

Hmm -- good point.

That's why the human race is doomed if we discover an antiagathic before we have a way to the stars.

 

[Críostóir]

Not if it also causes sterility and has to be taken early in life to be effective.

 

[Kulindahr]

Not if it also causes sterility and has to be taken early in life to be effective.

There'd still be all those adults around taking up space and using resources. If we were all stuck on the one planet... doom.



Actually, if I were designing an antiagathic and could make it do as I wished, it would be taken at age 6, and delay puberty till about 24, when people would have enough maturity to handle it better. Maybe we could avoid the "accidents cause people" phenomenon better then.

 

[Críostóir]

Actually, if I were designing an antiagathic and could make it do as I wished, it would be taken at age 6, and delay puberty till about 24, when people would have enough maturity to handle it better.

I don't think that would work. I don't think you can develop mental or emotional maturity before going through physical adolescence. This is partly because the brain changes dramatically during adolescence, and one of the biggest things that happens is that the part of the brain that controls judgment develops. The other part is that adult hormones affect your ability to think in ways that only practice lets you overcome.

Maybe we could avoid the "accidents cause people" phenomenon better then.

Better to detach fertility from adolescence. I'd say make it kick in at the end of adolescence instead of the beginning. That might be a little difficult to bioengineer too, but not as hard as letting maturity develop without the brain structures to support it.