BLOGS OF THE BELIEVERS - KEN HAM

Australian born Ken Ham is one of the more famous of the Christian apologists who is on a mission teaching people to be apologists.  He is a very well spoken, charismatic preacher of Young Earth Creationism and his arguments are very convincing to those who are on the fence or lack the critical thinking to see through the BS.  He has a "preach to the quire" approach with an answer for everything; so much so that he is the CEO of Answers From Genesis and the author of many books around that subject.  Ken earned a degree in applied science, specifically environmental biology, but reading and listening to his explanations to the big questions he seems only to remember school-boy biology and extrapolates the dominant vs recessive genetics (that's the simplistic AA, BB, aa, bb explanation) into a factually and fundamentally wrong argument to show that mankind became all the races of the world from just four people that got off the Ark due to the information that was already in the genes.  He also uses the example of a poodle for the same result.  His explanations are a radical misunderstanding of evolution which results in misleading biologically ignorant people to believe that natural selection is not evolution and the only answer is god.

Ken has appeared many times on you tube with sermons and interviews and you don't have to go far to find out his method.  His arguments are full of logical fallacies and the dogmatic hammering of the bible.  In doing this he discredits the scientific method and tries to get people to suspend their disbelief and spoon feed them some of the most ridiculous answers and, like many other apologists, uses the bible to prove the bible.

The first YouTube video (below) shows how he uses those methods to convince us that the bible is empirically true.

I found it amusing that on one hand he can come out and say that the bible is gods word and everything in it is true (paraphrased) which is a dogmatic teaching and then tells of how our school teachers are dogmatically hammering the belief out of our kids which is why a growing percentage of youth do not believe in the bible.  Well, Ken, there is no other way to say this; you are wrong.  Kids are asking the questions and the scientific method is giving them the answers which end up contradicting the bible and with a massize amount of evidence it's easy to see which side of the argument will win out.

In other YouTube videos he takes down some of the supporters of Christianity as they have been BIOLOGOS for using scientific methods to try and prove the bible.  Isn't that what Ken is also doing in part... well, when it suits his faith.

"ALREADY COMPROMISED" as they don't believe what he believes so it's truly a case of "My belief is better than yours."  He takes down

Ken and his legion have put together a list of scientists which can be seen HERE, at first it seems like a long list but let's explore shall we?

  With the power of copy, paste and Google I did a quick search on the top five on the list and I found no Wiki link but I did see many, many creationist web sights (mostly joined in one way or another with Answers In Genesis) so I cannot credit these scientists as being renowned, not outside of creationist circles.  Taking a look down the list I see many fields which have next to nothing to do with evolution or genetics.  The list starts with 193 scientists that support creation.  If we take out all the scientists which have nothing to do with the field we are talking about we come to 83 scientists that are specifically or even very loosely attached to the subject at hand.  I'll raise your 193 scientists who support creationism with 97% of scientific consensus in support of evolution. 

If you want to ignore science (historical or observable) then don't ever go to the Dr, don't get in your car, don't live in a house and how the hell are you going to build a life sized ark?  Don't go on about mans historical science being wrong and then tell us that the bible is the word of god.  Science has evidence, the bible does not.  End of story.

I'm happy to say there is a blog who's only purpose is to debunk and bust Answers in Genesis, it's called Answers in Genesis Busted... fitting really.

In short, Ken Ham is full of it and I'm fairly certain he knows it.

I write this blog because it is a passion of mine to explore the myth of god and along the way I may even learn some cool stuff.  It takes a lot of time and energy to write so if you enjoy reading this blog please make a donation by clicking the DONATE button on the right or click on the image of my book KING: A Supernatural Twist Of Fate to buy a copy so I can put more time into creating a better blog.

Thank you all

Justin

LESSONS OF ZENITH #001

My daughter is one of four most precious things in the world to me; my partner Julz, my other daughter Piper and my own life of course.  Zen (for short) is my youngest daughter, she is a product of Julz and my love.  Piper is my eldest daughter from my first (and possibly last) marriage.  Julz, as you can surmise, is my loving and supporting partner who puts up with my most negative personality traits.

I was inspired to write this column (I suppose it's a column as it's going to be an ongoing post in my blog) by Joe Swam in his blog HIT AND MISS, specifically his post WHEN NO MEANS KILL.  This got me thinking more about how we were going to raise our daughter.  Julz is an atheist also.  When I met her she was kind of on the fence due to her very religious background.  It didn't take long for her to get off the fence when I introduced her to critical thinking many years ago.  She is the only outed atheist in her family and although they love her dearly they can't understand her choice.

Probably one of the greatest influences of my life when it came to being even minded was my grandmother.

 When I was a Christian she was happy for me, when I became a Bahai she was happy for me and when I discovered Wicca, she was tolerant of me.  I didn't really find out until she passed away that her external acceptance was mirrored only by her internal struggle from societies understanding on what we should believe in.  So what has that got to do with my daughter?  Everything really.  It doesn't matter what I believe or don't believe,  it's what my daughter gets exposed to in life.  From the day she came home from the hospital her life has been an education and what goes into her head at this time is what makes the person she will be in the future.  The education she gets at home is the most important education she will get so it is up to Julz and I to give her the critical thinking skills that she needs to get by in this world.  It is not our place to instill in her what we believe but to teach her how to think about the information she has been presented with.

As an example, if I am a smoker I have to understand that she will learn from this and potentially become a smoker herself.  It is up to me to show her that I may do some things that are not good for me but before you decide to do what daddy does, please investigate before you make a decision.

Over the last 2 Christmases she has had no idea about what is going on, just wanting to open the next present so the whole idea about Santa hasn't even come into the equation but when it does I'm wondering what I will tell her.  When it happens, not if, I think I'm just going encourage her to ask questions and come to her own conclusions.  I'm sure a lot of you are thinking to yourselves that this is a horrible way to raise kids, why take away the magic of Christmas.  My answer is short and sweet; I'm not going to lie to her when it comes to Santa, the Easter Bunny the Tooth Fairy and God.  Instead I will allow her to examine the stories and encourage her to ask questions.  It's a nice theory, I wonder if I can follow through when the time comes or will I be too lazy to teach her?  No question, I'm not going to let my daughter grown up in ignorance.  

I write this blog because it is a passion of mine to explore the myth of god and along the way I may even learn some cool stuff.  It takes a lot of time and energy to write so if you enjoy reading this blog please make a donation by clicking the DONATE button on the right or click on the image of my book KING: A Supernatural Twist Of Fate to buy a copy so I can put more time into creating a better blog.

Thank you all

Justin

BLOG PICKS - JOSEPH SWAM

It was the latter part of 2012 when I discovered a podcast called ARDENT ATHEIST which I thought may be a laugh to listen to.  I didn't know what to think other than, perhaps, a spitting contest.  I was wrong. When I first heard the voice of EMERY EMERY and HEATHER HENDERSON I knew I found a podcast I could relate to.  Strangely, this is not a plug for Ardent Atheist but for somebody I met on the WALL OF REASON, Joseph Swam.  Joe is the moderator of the Wall Of Reason and a respected member of the cast of Ardent Atheist.  I found out about his blog HIT OR MISS from that pod cast (now known as a vodcast when the cameras were introduced) and decided to have a look see.  I'm glad I did and I'm more than happy that he accepted my Facebook friend request.

In some of hist first posts on his blogs he stated, unequivocally, that what he writes is his own opinion and sometimes he will hit and sometimes he will miss.  In his blog he exhibits some of the best skepticism you could ask for and focuses his cross hairs on the political, religious and sociological problems of the USA and the world.  Some of my favorite posts are MUTANTS, IS AGNOSTIC NEUTRAL and AREN'T WE ALL BORN ATHEISTS and I recommend you read these posts.

The bad news is that Joe hasn't updated his blog since April, 2011.  I agree that life can get hectic but I, for one, would like to see more blog posts :)

GO JOE!

CREATION ADDENDUM

Over the last few months I have been exploring different creation stories from around the world.  I have delved into just a handful of them as there are far more than I have time to write about.  From the Christian account of creation in Genesis to the Maori story of Rangi and Papa I have noticed a vague similarity, some are striking and some are thin and some of these similarities seem to be influenced by the missionaries.  Others bare their resemblance to others due to the simple act of observation.  With the obvious exception of the scientific "story" which I clearly wrote as a tongue in cheek look at the facts, these stories, by our current understanding of how things work, are ridiculous just so stories if not entertaining.  There is not one of then that could hold up to any kind of critical thinking including common sense nor is there a shred of evidence to support any of it.  The best that the believers of creation myths can hope for are the apologists that stand up for their unshaking belief by making unsupported claims and adding made up scenarios to a book or story that never existed in the first place.  

  
It is true that believing in God(s) is a matter of faith and what is patently clear is that faith is dependent on where you were born if not where you were raised.  You may believe that a few gods fought with each other and made the earth out of dead god parts and that human kind was created to serve the gods as slaves.  You may have faith that the heavens and the earth were placed here by the hands of God himself about 6000 years ago.  If you are one of faith then you will have a deep seated belief that which ever of the myriad stories you feel is the truth you will undoubtedly be of the opinion that all the other creation myths are complete rubbish and nobody in their right mind could believe such bollocks. 

At the times these stories were made up the universe was only as big as one could observe and answers for how we got here were not readily available so the explanations our ancestors came up with were supernatural and that made sense to our uninformed minds.  A deity was the only logical explanation of the way things were and how we were created and such a deity deserved our warship.  I can just imagine the conversation between an ancient philosopher at the dawn of human intelligence and an innocent child finding out about the world.

Child:  "How did we get here, how did we become us?"
Philosopher:  "We'll, in the beginning... Um, god created the heavens and the earth.  Yeah, that's what happened."
Child:  "What is god?"
Philosopher:  "Don't ask so many questions."

As I have already said, there are many religions in the world but not enough time to go into them all so I'm going to concentrate on the biggest (by percentage) of these religions; Christianity.  There are, of course, just as many sects within Christianity as there are religions in the world but for this exploration I'll lump them all under the one umbrella religion of Christianity.

Through the millenia we developed the skills to collect more data which came together to form the basis of our knowledge.  Yes, this knowledge has changed over the years with the discovery of more evidence and by testing our understandings; this formed the back bone of the SCIENTIFIC METHOD.  As the centuries went by we found more natural answers and needed less supernatural answers but there is still a great number of people in this world that are holding tight to their traditions and faith. 
  The simple fact is this; Man invented God.  This invention is obviously an extraordinary claim and that requires extraordinary evidence which, after all this time, has not been forthcoming.  The burden of proof for God lies firmly on the shoulders of those that claim there is such an entity and not the job of science or atheists to disprove god.  

While looking carefully at the creation of the world according to god in the first 2 chapters of Genesis I asked some questions and pointed out some obvious problems.  I quickly found that there were too many problems to cover in the quick overview of those chapters and I like to address a couple of them now.

We have an increasingly comprehensive collection of fossils showing the progression of life of hundreds of millions of years showing that the hand of God was not needed for us to be here today.  This clearly contradicts the Genesis account of creation so how does it all fit together?   I have heard the argument that God placed them there to test our faith but as far as I can see, that is just post hoc rationalization because I saw nothing about God placing fossils anywhere in Genesis.  Another hypothesis was put forth that most of the dinosaurs died out because of the great flood and the fossil records come from this flood.  How does that explain the different fossil layers?  Well, according to the hypothesis, the animals that died were buried in layers according to size in the silt that was carried by the flood waters to which there is no evidence at all.  This apologetic myth is further explained by Ken Ham in WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO THE DINOSAURS which gives the vaguest of explanations with, again, no evidence to back him up but the bible which is a clear case of argument from authority.  The passages he quotes are really just grasping at straws and very much up to interpretation.

It appears to me that creation only lasts about a page and a half and says nothing more than "God created the heavens and the earth" and everything living thing that is on the earth.  That's it.  Full stop.  End of story.  Basically, if you were to pick up the bible today with no preconceived ideas about how we got here you would look at Genesis 1 and laugh your ass off.  Seriously.  Even if you are christian... if you had never been indoctrinated into the whole creation thing you would look at the first page of the bible and say "You expect me to believe that?"  OK, that is purely objective but that is exactly what the Catholic, Christian and a few other small religions are asking you to do.  I'm not joking.  Lets face it "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" is what we are meant to believe if we are to be saved... there is of course the Jesus thing but lets put that aside for now.

We are supposed to suspend our disbelief so we can accept that God created the earth in 6 days.  That begs the question, if God is omnipotent, omnipresent, all powerful and infallible why did it take God 6 days to create everything?  If he is who he says he is it should have been done in the blinking of an eye.  If he is who he says he is, then he need not rest as he does not get tired.  It just doesn't add up.  But back to what is actually written.  Creation just happened.  You want to know how it was done?  Yeah, sorry, you'd be questioning the god almighty and you're really not supposed to do that!  But wait, how about;

 Thessalonians 5:21 - test them all, hold on to what is good.

Arise the skeptic and the downfall of religion.

There are some recurring themes in the creation stories that you just can't ignore including the "something from nothing" and the "eternal god" subject.  The former is part of the argument creationists have with evolutionists which, by the way, has nothing to do with evolution in it self but it is part of the BIG question of how the universe came to be what it is.  This poses another question, where did God come from?  Ostensibly nothing, isn't that what the creationist argument is objecting to, something from nothing?    Understand, evolution is the mechanism from which we get all the species of the earth and, ultimately, us.  There is a whole other science dedicated to how life got started in the first place and yet another on how the universe started which I will cover in future posts.

I write this blog because it is a passion of mine to explore the myth of god and along the way I may even learn some cool stuff.  It takes a lot of time and energy to write so if you enjoy reading this blog please make a donation by clicking the DONATE button on the right or click on the image of my book KING: A Supernatural Twist Of Fate to buy a copy so I can put more time into creating a better blog.

Thank you all

Justin

THE BIG BANG, LIFE AND EVOLUTION - THE SCIENTIFIC CREATION STORY

This is the most accurate and sound story of creation I have come across.  It has been hypothesised and theorised from the dawn of the scientific method and with the help of many thousands of leading scientists preforming millions of experiments and collecting data this story has emerged.  Many models have been bantered around from observations of the natural world and finally a theory about the creation of the universe has been put forth called The Big Bang Theory.  This is the abridged version of that story which is followed by the, also abridged, Theory of Evolution which explains how we got here.

    

About 14 billion years ago there was no time or mass and the universe was in a hot, dense state and then it started to expand rapidly.  After a few thousand years when the universe had cooled sufficiently, energy was able to convert to sub-atomic particles and then into neutrons forming the first gas; Hydrogen.  Soon thereafter other elements formed and grouped into clouds through the force of gravity.  The clouds became more and more dense and formed stars and galaxies.

Spinning in the gases which were held in orbit by the stars' gravity were smaller, less dense masses that attracted other small masses and around 4.54 billion years ago one of those increasingly large masses orbiting around one particular star in one particular galaxy became what we now know as Earth.

Once the earth cooled enough to from a crust the expelled gasses from fissures and volcanoes created a toxic atmosphere.  The crusty ball of molten rock looked completely different to the beautiful Earth we see today.  The chemicals of the day formed the first basic building blocks for the emergence of organic life about 3.6 billion years ago.

  Organic life was very basic in the beginning composing of a tiny amount of amino acids which formed RNA and were self replicating.  These basic forms remained unchanged for millions of years when the RNA went through a mutation, this mutation created the first DNA.  Once DNA had formed the next few million years saw the development of a protective structure around the DNA and thus the first organic cell.  Fast forward to about 1 billion years ago and with a few billion generations

and mutations the first multicellular organisms emerge.

 
After many more millions of years, generations, mutations and environmental pressures the first multicellular organism which could be called an animal appears around 600 million years ago.  These simple animals continued to evolve generation after generation, year after year branching off into different forms and which later would be called families.  Plants, fish, birds, reptiles and mammals evolved very, very slowly over the next 500 million years, pausing only for the occasional near extinction due to global catastrophes and global climate changes, during which time we saw the dinosaurs rule the earth and then, 65 million years ago, they died out.

  With no megafauna to get in the way mammals were free to expand in population, complexity and size until around 2.5 million years ago when the genus Homo appeared.  The genus Homo became smarter, better adapted to walking upright and handling tools and 200,000 years ago they became, anatomically, man.  Around 90,000 years ago modern man emerged and quickly became the dominant species, Homo Sapiens, and shortly thereafter they created god.

I write this blog because it is a passion of mine to explore the myth of god and along the way I may even learn some cool stuff.  It takes a lot of time and energy to write so if you enjoy reading this blog please make a donation by clicking the DONATE button on the right or click on the image of my book KING: A Supernatural Twist Of Fate to buy a copy so I can put more time into creating a better blog.

Thank you all

Justin