Archive for the ‘In the News’ Category
Creation Guys Episode #003: “Intellectual Honesty”
On May 02, 2008 in Atheism, In the News, Science Related
Unfortunately, many people involved feel it is acceptable to ridicule and demean the character of their colleagues over what their views regarding cosmogony and the origin and diversification of life are.
Richard Dawkins stated that “It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that).” Statements like this are not honest, and are rather immature.
Join us in this episode as we cover Intellectual Honesty, and the current state of the Origins Debate.
Creation Guys Episode #002: “Meet The TRUTH Group!”
On April 22, 2008 in In the News, Science Related, Uncategorized
Creation Guys Episode #002
In this episode, Jonathan Sampson sits down for a few minutes with Daniel Johnson (The TRUTH Group) to talk about his new DVD.
Subjects covered in this video include “What is the TRUTH Group?”, “Where do Dinosaurs fit into The Creation”, “Are Dinosaurs mentioned in the Bible?”, and “Were dinosaurs meat-eaters?”.
Post your video response from within the United States stating that you would “Like to ‘Reach Understanding Through Him About The Dinosaurs’” and get a free DVD.
First 10 responses qualify. Only YouTube qualifies.
To Learn more about Dan and his Ministry, visit the following pages:
www.thetruthgroup.com
www.youtube.com/theTRUTHgroup
www.myspace.com/planet316
Creation Guys Episode #001: “National Center for Stupid Excuses”
On April 17, 2008 in In the News, Uncategorized
Creation Guys Episode #001
This is our Pilot Episode of Creation Guys, hosted by Jonathan Sampson.
In our first episode we welcome Eric Hovind of GodQuest to discuss some of the latest controversy surrounding the Expelled (”No Intelligence Allowed”) movie coming out in theaters April 18, 2008.
Among our discussion we cover content found on digg, as well as silly statements made in Time Magazine.
Efforts of the National Center for Stupid Explanations (NCSE)
On April 16, 2008 in Atheism, In the News
Well, those idiots over at the NCSE in Berkeley are at it again. Seems like they’re pretty upset over all the attention Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is getting. If I’m not mistaken, their mascot Eugenie Scott was actually interviewed in the video showing how foolish her views are.
So what was Plan B for the NCSE? Make a ridiculous video, put it on the internets, and let the kiddies eat it up.
So I was on Digg yesterday and I came across a new video submission that was getting pretty popular pretty quickly, “Science Teacher Fired for Not Teaching Creationism.” I thought this title sounded awfully bizarre, considering the fact that NO TEACHER IN AMERICA is legally required to teach Creation. I mean, this isn’t 1925 is it? People get fired for refusing to teach Evolution today, not Creation.
So I watched the video. It singles a woman by the name of Chris Castillo-Comer, the ex Director of Science in Texas. She apparently feels like she was fired for “not remaining neutral over creationism.” So obviously she feels as though she’s been martyred for her commitment to Lord Darwin!
This still didn’t seem right to me, something else had to be at play in this. Once the video was over, It all made sense. The closing credits awarded all attention to the National Center for Science and Education - a small store-front building in Berkeley. Little presence, big name. By the way, my new name is King Jonathan the Greatness of All That Is Mighty and Awesome.
So I started doing a little more digging, and I finally came across the actual memorandum Comer’s Boss wrote requesting her termination. The memorandum, oddly enough, was hosted on NCSE’s server.
The memorandum states, “I [Monica Martinez through Sharon Jackson] propose to terminate the employment of Chris Castillo-Comer due to misconduct and insubordination. Ms. Comer has engaged in a series of incidents evidencing a serious lack of good judgment and failure to follow agency policies and supervisory directives.”
Whoa, wait a second, a “series of incidents” doesn’t seem to line-up with “Sniff, Sniff, I was fired, Sniff, for not loving Creationism.”
The Memorandum goes on to say, “As the Director of Science, Ms. Comer should understand that it is her job to explain law and rule regarding the science Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), but not cross the line into providing guidance or opinions about instructional methodology or any other matters about which we have no statutory authority.”
So this lady is in trouble for violating her contractual job description. Her job is to make sure TEKS adheres to what they are legally supposed to adhere to, but not to jump aside and promote/demote any type of ideology unless it conflicts with the relevant laws.
No we’re getting somewhere.
Continuing, “It is essential that Ms. Comer support the integrity of the upcoming TEKS development and revision process and ensure that it does not appear in any way that she is advocating for any given position or stance. Ms. Comer should be well aware of her role in the TEKS revision process and the need to maintain neutrality based on the guidance provided by agency management and division procedures as well as numerous meetings and discussions on this topic.”
So her job is to make sure the TEKS development adheres to the laws of Texas, and not her own personal agenda. Appears also that she had plenty of warning also about what she is to do, and not to do according to many meetings and discussions - she can’t plead ignorance…unless she’s just really ignorant.
If you read the Memorandum, you’ll see that it basically boils down to this. Comer isn’t allowed to do anything in her professional capacity that is:
A) Illegal, or contrary to her job description
B) Done without the prior approval of her agency/employer.
As I write this there are currently around 1,300 comments. And practically all of them resemble “bah, stupid creationists dummies! Science is fact and religion sucks.” Not a single one of these guys wanted to investigate a little further, or else they would have seen that the NCSE is full of crap, and this Ms. Comer is an idiot with an agenda.
What the heck is wrong with the world today? Why don’t people question their own beliefs, and investigate claims made by others? I mean, come on. Even if you’re a Christian, Muslim, or Jew investigate your own beliefs! If you’re an atheist or evolutionist, investigate your own beliefs!
I submit the solution to all of the world’s problems: seek truth, question everything, and don’t be lazy. If this model was enforced by every thinking mind on Earth, we would have far less comments on this digg-submission, and practically all would say “She was fired for insubordination and illegal activity. Not for ‘not teaching Creationism’.”
Link Summary
Sight to the Blind (Fish)
On February 04, 2008 in In the News, Science Related
Over the years, Evolutionists have offered example after example of poor-design in nature, and evidence that Creation is not really Creation, but merely the product of billions of years of trial-and-error.
One of the prides of Evolutionists have been Blind Cave fish. The story goes that a moderate population of fish swam down into a cave and got trapped. The fish might have often bumped their eyes on rocks, creating the opportunity for infection to rule, and kill them. Any mutation that halted, or completely did away with, the development of eyes would serve as a benefit in that environment, since no eyes could be bumped and torn in any way.
So in theory, millions of years passed, and the fish lost their eyes. They are still classified as the same species as their surface-dwelling kin. There’s absolutely no evidence that this transition took millions of years, but we are told to believe it anyway.
Eventually, the population switched from seeing-eyes, to visually-impaired. Or did it?
Today I strolled over to LiveScience where I found an article by the title “Blind Fish Still Able to ‘See’“. It’s a pretty interesting read, if anybody is bored. Basically, Scientists found that these fish were able to sense shadows (inadvertently demonstrating their ability to sense light). When a shadow passed over the top of the water, the fish instinctively swam up towards the surface.
Baffled by this, the Scientists began exploring the anatomy of the fish and found that they still contained their pineal gland. When this gland was removed from the fish, they failed to sense the shadows any longer. This gland is sensitive to light in amphibians and reptiles, but not in mammals - probably due to the fact that our skulls are thicker, and light couldn’t reach it anyway.
So the fish didn’t lose their sight altogether. The Scientists theorize that perhaps they retained the ability to sense light because caves are not always dark. But wasn’t it speculated that they lost their site because the caves were dark to begin with? Now they have it because the caves aren’t always dark? It could be that there wasn’t a large enough selective advantage to removing the pineal gland, and doing so may have been extremely detrimental seeing how melatonin (which is produced by the pineal gland) has possible ties to things like infertility, depression and cancer.
In another study by researchers at the University of Maryland, Scientists replaced the lenses of blind fish with their surface-dwelling kin. Eight days later the sightless-fish began developing eyes. The researchers go on to say, “After two months, the cave fish had grown a large restored eye with a distinct pupil, cornea and iris. In addition, the retina of the restored eye showed rod photoreceptor cells, which are rare in the degenerate cave fish eye.”
Dr. Carl Wieland of AnswersInGenesis concludes in ‘New eyes for blind cave fish?‘, “This indicates that the mutation by which the fish initially became ‘eyeless’ did not somehow ‘delete’ all of the ‘eye information’, but just interfered with the process leading to the eye’s development.”
To shed more light on the subject, Rachel Courtland wrote in Nature Magazine on January 7th, 2008 that “Two blind fish can make sighted offspring.” The paper, “Blind Cave Fish See The Light” goes on to describe research that demonstrated the ability to breed sighted-offspring from two distinct populations of blind fish. This indicates that the two populations lost their ability to see in different ways.
In the end, while this is a terrific demonstration of Natural Selection, it doesn’t however demonstrate a mechanism for microbes to become monkeys, mice, or magnolias.
Link Summary
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Cave_Fish
- http://www.livescience.com/animals/080128-blindfish-notblind.html
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineal_gland
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatonin
- http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/07/000728082041.htm
- http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2/4361news8-9-2000.asp
- http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080107/full/news.2008.414.html
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Selection
Can America be Saved?
On January 22, 2008 in In the News
Secure the future of your Children, and Grandchildren - Vote Ron Paul.
Link Summary
Are African Elephants Evolving Smaller Tusks?
On January 21, 2008 in In the News, Science Related
The Environmental News Network posted an article yesterday called “Elephants Evolve Smaller Tusks Due to Poaching.” The gist of it was this - people are killing the bigger more beautiful Elephants, so the smaller less-desired ones are breeding more as a result. Because of this, “Evolution” is happening at a break-neck speed and we are now seeing Elephants with smaller tusks in only 150 years!
I get so frustrated with these Evolutionists jumping to title everything in sight “Evolution”. By this reasoning, the Sampson Family has evolved to be shorter, since my Grandfather and Father are both above 6 feet, and I’m a mere 5ft 11in. Actually, the Sampson Family has Evolved to be more tech-savvy too, since my Grandfather never used computers, my Father never used them either, but I do on a daily basis! Wow, let’s attribute everything to Evolution.
This is ridiculous. The example of the Elephant is not Evolution, it’s Natural Selection. Actually, in this case it would be something more like Poacher Selection, since Nature isn’t to blame for this, the Poachers are.
The Genetic information for smaller tusks was already in the Population, it just wasn’t prominent since Females tend to breed with carriers of larger tusks. Now that those with larger tusks are being killed-off, the Females breed with those hulling smaller tusks - what’s the big deal?
In short, there is no big deal, yet the Evolutionists want to imagine that there is. Since they cannot provide reasonable evidence that Man descended from Apes, Reptiles, Amphibians, and Fish, they have to instead tread out these trivial changes in a population and call that Evolution in hopes that you will take the bait and accept the entire frivolous idea of fish-to-man evolution, with the amazing evidence of Big tusk to Little tusk.
I’ve got ten bucks that says if we kill off the poachers the larger tusks will return. Any takers? This whole situation is analogous to Darwin’s Finches. When the drought came, the finches with larger beaks lived. When the drought receded, the finches beaks returned to their normal size. Big friggin’ deal!
Flying Spaghetti Nonsense
On January 17, 2008 in In the News, Uncategorized
Humans are pretty amazing creatures. We’re capable of doing and achieving wonderfully amazing things, and at the same time we’re guilty of some of the dumbest ideas and actions ever witnessed on this ball of dirt we call Home.
I want to talk about one of our latest and greatest feats of stupidity, the concept of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM). This “Spaghedeity”, as it’s called by Atheists today, is the Creator of the Universe according to the religion of “Pastafarianism”. This “religion” was started in 2005, during the hot debates on whether or not children should be taught Godless Evolution, or allow for the interpretation that a Creator may have been involved. Atheists got upset because kids might actually believe that they were created, so they came up with the FSM to parody other Creation stories.
The thing that is so stupid about this idea is that it in no way resembles that which it attempts to parody. Some Evolutionists and Atheists actually attempt to debate intelligent Christians with this nonsense too. So let’s just clear up a few reasons why the Bible (I’ll use that as my example), and the FSM religion are not comparable:
- The collection of writings known as The Bible was authored by multiple convergent sources, spanning more than a thousand years, from varying geographical locations. The Pastafarian belief-system was conjured up by an Oregon State student named Bobby (The Prophet) Henderson.
- The Bible has survived the test of time, and has convinced highly intelligent people who have lived and died by the text. The FSM has converted absolutely no intelligent people who would die by the Pastafarian religion.
- The Bible makes legitimate claims that can be systematically tested with reliable Scientific methodology. The FSM makes no such claims that can be scientifically tested, and furthermore declares that it is impossible to trust Science.
- The writings contained in the Bible are original and not the work of plagiary. The “Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster” show clear signs of plagiary and mimicry of the Bible.
- The Bible commands people to “Study”, “speak to the Earth”, “Consider the ways of insects”, and “Seek Knowledge”. The Bible clearly commands people to use Science in order to gain a better understanding of the World around us. The Church of the FSM declares that Science cannot be trusted, as the FSM actively interferes with the data, thus fudging the results intentionally.
I feel like I’m wasting time even discussing it, but there are many very stupid people out there who sincerely feel that the FSM is on-par with Christianity, or any other Faith. In reality, it’s one of the most worthless attempts to defend Atheism I have ever witnessed. It has no logical defense, no testable claims, no internal consistency, no historical value, no effect on society, and no convergent sources. These are just a few things it lacks to even begin to be considered as an alternative to any religious system.
I could go on and on, but I feel like a complete idiot even taking this serious enough to write a blog-entry on it. The sad thing is that they take it even more serious than I could drugged-up and inebriated swimming in a cloud of Nitrous oxide.
TIME’s Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs - Evolution Not Included
On January 15, 2008 in In the News, Science Related
TIME Magazine released their list of the Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs of 2007, and as suspected Evolutionism had absolutely no guidance over any of them. So why would something so vital (sarcasm) as Evolutionism have absolutely no guidance what-so-ever over advancing our Medical knowledge, and helping mankind? Perhaps it’s becoming even more evident that funding the Monkey-Junkie’s Imagination and Story-telling is not the best way to spend tax-payer dollars.
Link Summary
Answers Research Journal
On January 10, 2008 in In the News, Science Related
If you’re like me, in that you like Science, then you should check out the Answers Research Journal over at http://answersingenesis.org/arj/. It’s an online resource for Advanced-Level Science articles giving an alternative to naturalistic origins and history. Too many Evolutionists are far too afraid to follow the evidence where it leads (for fear of losing their jobs, or other personal reasons), but that really don’t matter anymore, because we have fully-qualified men and woman of the Sciences that are more-than-willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
As I write this, you can currently read the following papers:
- Proceedings of the Microbe Forum, June 2007
- Microbes and the Days of Creation
- Catastrophic Granite Formation
