POISONING THE MINDS OF OUR YOUTH - CREATIONISTS ARE PLAYING MIND GAMES (WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED?)

BANG! THERE WAS LIGHT
from HALLELUJAH EVOLUTION
Once there was nothing, no place and no time
No gravity and no primal slime.
Then suddenly, like a lightning storm at night,
Bang! went creation, then there was light.

(Chorus)
Bang there was light, like dynamite,
No more nothing, no more night.

After the Big Bang, the darkness took flight
Bang, went creation, then there was light.
Nobody knows who first lit the fuse.
Some credit Yahweh, God of the Jews,
But those agnostics who doubt the Bible’s right,
Just say, “S(tuff) happens. Bang there was light.”

(Chorus)
After the Big Bang, events happened fast,
All of the cosmos came from the blast.
Theories are complex, abstruse and recondite,
Which means we can’t say why there was light.

(Chorus)
We can’t say why, but Bang! there was light.
We can’t say how, but Bang! there was light.
We can’t say where, but Bang! there was light.
Fifteen billion years ago, Bang! there was light.

My thanks goes out to FundieWatch for this unmitigated crap.

It's a website titled 'Truth for Youth', and it's a composite of all the variegated lies the Religious Right spreads.

Besides the Flash video, that blames America's societal ills on the removal of school prayer, they even have a manga version of old Jack Chick's cheap tricks. It's mostly pseudo-intellectual wiffleball pretending to be mental rugby and failing ever so miserably. A bunch of pratts regurgitating PRATTs.

It's pathetic, it is. Everyone should be wary of ANYONE, religious or not, of laying dubious claim to having the 'truth'.

Presented are the cartoons on 'Evolution'. If you peer at the margins, you'll see just who has supplied this (dis)information. Yep, you guessed it: our old friends the Discovery Institute, the Creation Foundation Institute for Creation Research, and Answers In Genesis.

And it's the same old blah-de-blah, yada yada yada, worn out refrains of stupidity that we encounter in the blogosphere.

Panel one is a visit to the museum - the crap begins with the old 'man evolved from monkeys' trash. (I wonder if the museum setting is supposed to lend credibility?)

Panel two starts out with the 'evolution is racist' horse manure (hey, the black kid said it: must be true!) - it progressed into the usual discussion of 'frauds' (fancy this - all those were exposed by SCIENTISTS! Mistakes get made - they go right in the crapper). It then devolves into the 'argument from design'. Oh, and the evolutionists are the irrational ones. Go figure. Tu quoque, anybody?

The third panel starts in with the standard canard: "Oh, was anyone there to SEE it?" Apparently, logical induction is subtracted. It goes into detail (easily debunkable if one does the research) about the occasional mis-measurement found in standard datings, like C14, K-Ar (hey, if it's wrong so often, why is it STILL BEING USED?) It also mentions a mass spectrometer. I dug this paper up on talkorigins.org(which utterly thrashes this stupid argument), written by a fellow Christian no less! It (the cartoon) goes into much major Hovindian hoopla, all of which is easily deflated by a few visits to talkorigins. The 'lava flow dating' problem was resolved (excess argon in some of the lava flow), and of course, the creationists spun that one WAY outta control (what a surprise!). Hadn't heard the bit about the mosses before.

Panel four does a quick segue into the Deluge, which quickly becomes an appeal to incredulity, then swings full tilt into the Watchmaker analogy mixed 'liberally' with 'irreducible complexity' bullshit. Oh, did I mention they got the Second Law of Thermodynamics wrong - again?

Panel five is, as with the first four, replete with the same kind of errors - a brief reference to jumping from point A to point F (frogs into princes), the usual stupidity of 'atheistic religion', the weary horse shit about how two people come to two different conclusions viewing the same evidence (ever hear of scientific consensus, you jackasses?), and of course, the youngster being proselytized to converting to Christianity on panel six.

Here's the rub: I grew up in Pleasanton, CA, and you can't get a more white-bred conservative suburbia than that, trust you me. I never heard a peep about evolution - it was fully entrenched by then (I'm guessing here), there was no prayer in schools, nobody ever debated the 'two world views' (yes, there was a lotta drugs and a bit of hedonism here and there), but no one shot each other, no one ever committed suicide (that I know of: in retrospect, I'm betting a whole lot was kept under wraps), and there was the occasional teenage pregnancy, but by any stretch, it was hardly the wholesale anarchy the 'magic wanders' claim it should've been.
I was too busy with the grinding mish-mash of puberty to really give a flying fuck about it all, truth be told. Jebus didn't help me mature, nor did 'being descended from monkies' severely impact my teenage self-esteem.
I had better things to worry about. Other struggles. Peer pressure (I gave up on that fairly quickly, once I figured out how useless it really is), girls (there were those brief moments where I wondered about my sexuality, but a quick glance around the locker room, no arousal? Starting chasing tarts right quick), what I wanted to be when I grow up (still working on it: late bloomer, go figure, hehehehe), all the Sturm und Drang was strictly directed at the day-to-day struggles of my formative years.
The short version is: let the kids grow up first, and let them figure it out when they're adults. There's plenty of time in college for them to get their heads outta their asses, or to shove them up deeper.
I personally think it's a disgusting maneuver to drag children into the middle of an adult squabble, whether it's a divorce settlement or a religious dispute. It's underhanded, sneaky, and reprehensible. I could go on for a hundred more adjectives on this alone.
And if this isn't bad enough, the entire argument for 'intelligent design' is a ragged patchwork quilt composed of 'nuh-UH!' nay saying denial of scientific facts. It's not science: it's pseudo-intellectual junk religion, clad in a white smock, composed of circular rhetoric that can only convince the believer and the uninformed.
It's enough to make a peaceful man come out swinging, it is.
Freedom of speech and freedom of religion are one thing: freedom of stupidity is another entirely.
And that, dear reader, is my nickel's worth. Spend it wisely, and well.
Till the next post, then.