Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis
Creationists make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night – Isaac Asimov
For those of you who become irritated with blithering stupidity, here’s a real gem from that ranting radical republican, Glen Beck:
How many people believe in evolution in this country? I'd like to see. I mean, I don't know why it's unreasonable to say this.
Because, I dunno, reality isn’t subject to a consensus vote?
I'm not God so I don't know how God creates.
What this crazed loon doesn’t know could fill the shelves of the Smithsonian library. Oh, wait…there’s nobody up there anyways.
I don't think we came from monkeys.
The DNA evidence is in, and 98% are pretty damn good odds…
I think that's ridiculous.
The other evidence is in, Glenny boy, and it distinctly points to one thing: you don’t think. You parrot the party line and insert some shock-jock tactics for ratings.
I haven't seen a half-monkey, half-person yet.
Nor will he ever see one. Of course, having fallen off a turnip truck (on his head no less) is no help.
Did evolution just stop? Did we all of sudden -- there's no other species that's developing into half-human?
Here Beck just demonstrates the misconception of evolution, a ‘throwback’ to the 1950’s, if you like. Back then, it was conceived that evolution followed a straight line, and it appeared that it had a purpose: us. This is the 21st century, and anyone who can read doesn’t really have that excuse anymore.
It's like global warming.
Another reality.
So I don't know why it is so problematic for people to just so, I don't know how God creates.
Ill-defined fairy tales don’t define the real world, Glen.
I don't know how we got here. If I get to the other side and God's like, "You know what, you were a monkey once," I'll be shocked, but I'll be like, "Whatever."
And talking like a Valley Girl is unbecoming. Also, obnoxious.
They have to make you care.
Sad but true, number 2.
They have to force it down your throat.
Cranky children need their medicine.
When anybody has to force it, that's a problem.
I agree with that. However, the real world is cruel and cold, and it’ll force itself on you soon enough.
You didn't have to force that the world is round.
It comes as no shock that history, as well as biology, isn’t Beck’s strong point. As shown by the next appallingly ignorant statement:
Truth is truth. You don't have to force the truth.
Oh, no, because we didn’t have to fight a war over slavery, or that the Jews shouldn’t be slaughtered en masse, or argue that blacks and women deserved to vote equally with white males, or that human beings are equally deserving of proper ethical treatment…did we? Oh yes we did. It took a great many people to take arms against a sea of sorrows, to force the tides to recede.
Evolution isn’t a screed, a creed, a ‘belief system’, a ‘theory’ (see Asimov’s quote from above), or some ‘radical atheist/gay agenda’. It’s simply a cataloguing of observations and deductions made from induction. It’s fact, reality, the backbone of biology and more.
At this point, we the people of the United States of America need, are rational individuals who are also somewhat entertaining, without pandering to the lowest common denominator. Instead, we are besieged with simpletons who prance an epileptic dance on stage center, ranting whatever nonsense their ‘constituency’ wants to hear, and pontificating on topics with absolutely no research other than imaginary raconteuring.
It’s a sad state of affairs. We should toss the ‘all opinions are equal’ modality right out with the bathwater, and start holding our pundits and journos to a higher standard, and those that fall short, should have their feet held to the fire. Pedantry is a dying art, and fact-checking is swiftly going the way of the dodo bird.
Till the next post, then.
No comments:
Post a Comment