This is a response to creationmuseum’s video,
‘Ken Ham Responds to Bill Nye “The Humanist
Guy”’.
This itself was a response to Bill Nye’s
Big Think video regarding the dangers of filling
children’s heads with nonsense that’s
too childish even for them.
But before we begin, I’d like to point out
that the organization that the individual
I’m addressing leads has, in the past, been
known to be somewhat less than ethical when
it comes to suppressing the speech of those
that dare to criticize the putrid vomit that
they themselves choose to hurl across the
arena of public discourse.
As a result I’d be grateful if you’d consider
downloading this video as a contingency measure
in case Mr. Ham needs to be introduced the
effect that Ms. Streisand probably wishes
she’d never experienced.
In fact, if you’re feeling particularly
proactive then please feel free to mirror
it at your leisure.
Now with that said, there’s a lot to get
through, so let’s dispense with the preliminaries
and get down business.
“Hi.
This is Ken Ham, President and CEO of Answers
in Genesis and the Creation Museum.”
Hello Ken!
My name’s TheLivingDinosaur.
We haven’t been introduced, but I’m one
of those people who thinks it worthwhile to
expend time and effort in stuffing creationist’s
ideas up their arses with as much gusto as
physically possible.
As luck would have it, of course, you happen
to be a creationist – and a rather prominent
one at that – so it looks like this fortuitous
encounter will be a match made in heaven!
“Recently, a Youtube video featuring a person
called Bill Nye the Science Guy received millions
of views.
Now, the video was called, ‘Creationism
is Inappropriate for Children’.
Well, I really believe we should call Bill
Nye the Science Guy ‘Bill Nye the Humanist
Guy.’”
Well considering the mind-bogglingly ludicrous
things you’ve dedicated your life to believing,
Ken, I hate to inform you that the hallucinations
you happen to be entertaining with regard
to what moniker to bestow upon Mr. Nye are
of little interest to those whose mental faculties
are… shall we say…present.
“You see, Bill Nye received the humanist
of the year award in 2010.
So even though Bill Nye had some wonderful
programs on PBS TV teaching exciting things
about science – you know, when he was experiment
and putting things together and so on.
And, you know, he did some real observational
science there.
Bill Nye also has an agenda to teach children
not to believe in God.
To teach them they’re the result of evolutionary
processes - that they came from slime over
millions of years.”
That’s pretty slimy, Ken, even by creationist
standards – but you are one of the top dogs,
so I suppose you know all the shitty old tricks,
eh?
Putting aside your transparent rhetorical
bullshit, it seems you’re either attributing
to Humanism a position it doesn’t hold and
then projecting that grotesque straw man onto
Bill Nye, or deliberately misinterpreting
what he said and dishonestly twisting it to
fit your agenda.
In reality, while Secular Humanism eschews
the supernatural, as far as I’m aware, it
has not and does not mandate that its adherents
preach to anybody, much less children, not
to believe in God.
You may not have noticed, Ken, but the insane
fuckers on soapboxes in towns everywhere are
almost exclusively of a religious persuasion,
bent on spreading their particular flavor
of fundamentalist disease, and seldom rational
atheists trying to cure it.
Furthermore, to my knowledge, Bill Nye doesn’t
actively encourage theistic disbelief in minors
either – and in the case of his Big Think
video he most certainly didn’t.
What he did do, though, is indirectly bring
into question the existence of your god.
More specifically, the one that created the
world in six days six-thousand years ago,
that murdered most of humanity in a global
flood and that created the languages of the
earth in an instant.
And while he didn’t say it explicitly, the
implication was obviously quite clear to you
– that reality has all but conclusively
demonstrated that your god doesn’t exist.
But that’s hardly the same thing as asserting
that no gods exist, is it Ken?
Because if you’re clever enough to ascribe
to your god properties that cannot be tested
then it cannot, by definition, ever be empirically
disproved.
If, on the other hand, you’re stupid enough
to insist that your god has properties that
sound like they were dreamt up thousands of
years ago by, oh I don’t know, let’s say
– ignorant and primitive camel humpers – then
that god can easily be dismissed as soon as
it’s determined that said properties are
incongruent with physical reality.
You know, Ken – like your god.
As it happens, though, the majority of Christians
and other theists aren’t as dumb as you
and your followers and don’t believe in
your god either.
So when you say Mr. Nye’s trying to teach
children not to believe in God, what you really
mean is that his promotion of reason and established
science runs contrary to your bronze-age beliefs,
and while I can understand that you find this
discomforting, all I can say to you in lieu
of solace is… tough shit.
Plenty of Christians have come to grips with
the reality of these discoveries and incorporated
them into their beliefs, and I’d strongly
suggest that you take time to find out how
to do the same rather than wasting it defending
the indefensible.
Because not doing the former leaves you looking
like a backward, doltish buffoon, and doing
the latter is compounding the problem by turning
you into a lying one.
Now with that said, I’m going to do something
that may seem a little strange to you – and
that’s keep an open mind.
You see, I’m willing to acknowledge that
I may have missed something, so if you can
provide some actual verifiable evidence that
Bill Nye has an agenda to actively dissuade
people from their spiritual beliefs I’d
be happy to consider it.
But if all you have is your word, which perhaps
unsurprisingly means absolutely jack-shit
to me, then as far as I’m concerned you
can take your filthy little lie and stick
up your wrinkled, saggy antipodean arse.
“In fact Bill Nye really doesn’t understand
science.
I mean, the word science means ‘knowledge’.
And… you can divide science into historical
science – that’s talking about the past
– or observational science – that’s
the science that builds our technology.”
Yes.
Well, it does appear that you went a little
OCD on this “historical/observational science”
bullshit Ken, because you mentioned it a number
of times in your video.
I’m not sure whether that’s the early
onset Alzheimer’s kicking in, or that you’re
convinced that it’s some form of argument,
but in either case I’m going to postpone
its rectal reinsertion for the time being.
That’s because I’ve a lot of ground to
cover as it is and so time is at a premium,
and also because a pair of cranially confused
monkeys from your R&D department also brought
it up in the companion video to this one,
and so have afforded me the opportunity to
address it at a later date.
But do rest assured that I fully intend to
do so, and will be mopping up the feces they’ve
been smearing over their enclosure as soon
as I’m done dealing with you.
“He says if you deny evolution to children
they’re going to have problems because we
need engineers.
Well wait a minute.
Engineering and evolution?
What has evolution got to do with engineering.
I mean, Bill Nye himself actually is not a
scientist – he studied mechanical engineering.”
It’s both interesting and bemusing that
you criticize him for not being a scientist,
Ken, when it appears that you’re not one
either.
I do realize that you hold a bachelors in
Applied Science, but if you think that qualifies
you for anything other than being a bench
technician then allow me to disenfranchise
you of your misconception.
I know this because I’ve run numerous laboratories
over the years and know from experience that
there’s a special word that people like
you reserve for scientists, and that’s – “Sir”.
So while neither of you are qualified scientists,
it’s interesting to compare what you’ve
done with your educations.
You see, Mr. Nye put his to good use and worked
as a successful engineer, becoming a productive
member of society.
You, on the other hand, turned your hand to
religion and worked diligently on separating
the gullible from their cash, becoming a parasite
clinging to society’s member.
Mr. Nye used his solid foundational knowledge
and coupled it to his talent as an entertainer
to educate the public about the quite spectacular
vistas that science has spread before us.
While you took that knowledge and coupled
it to a talent for enticing credulous simpletons
to open their wallets to gleefully defecate
on the achievements and memories of people
who’s boot’s you’re unfit to lick.
Spot the difference Ken?
You see, it takes one kind of person to use
a basic knowledge of a subject to inspire
others.
And it takes quite another to take the same
rudimentary knowledge, callously discard it,
and have the astounding arrogance to proclaim
that he knows better that countless thousands
of brilliant researchers who’ve dedicated
lifetimes to studying the same subjects.
Humility is just a collection of letters to
people like you, isn’t it Ken?
And as for what evolution has to do with engineering,
well, we’ll get on to that after we listen
to what you squeezed out next.
“And he worked for Boeing at one stage.
I hope he did not apply his evolutionary principles
to any of Boeing’s airplanes.
Because if he did, I wouldn’t want to be
flying in them!
I don’t want to fly in something that was
built by chance random processes.
What do you think all the parts, just lay
them out there on the runway and they come
together or something?
No.
Of course he didn’t apply his evolutionary
ideas to his engineering at Boeing, otherwise
we’d be in real trouble.”
I’m not going to spend much time going over
your grotesque straw man there Ken, because
I know you’re more than aware of why your
analogy is as flawed as a virgin after a gang-bang.
I’m sure that you’re aware that no one
apart from a lying creationist turd would
insist that evolution is a random process
because I’m sure that someone has at some
point explained natural selection to you.
And I’m also sure that you’re aware that
airliner parts don’t reproduce with variation
and so cannot evolve, and that no one has
ever suggested that evolution occurs via the
instantaneous assembly of disparate parts.
Yet despite all this, you continue to make
and attack this shoddy and deliberately inaccurate
parody of evolution, presumably as a surrogate
for all the legitimate arguments that you
simply don’t have.
As for evolutionary ideas in engineering,
Ken, well… here’s a prime example of how
being in possession of an ego that can be
measured in light years and a modesty that
can be measured in Planck lengths seldom results
in someone looking like an iconic visionary,
but instead like a supercilious, bumbling
fool.
That’s because it took less than a minute
for me to find these papers on evolutionary
algorithms in aeronautical engineering – algorithms
that owe their existence solely to, and are
a validation of, the theory of biological
evolution.
This leaves me pondering exactly how much
time you put into thinking about the shite
you spout, Ken, and whether you even bothered
to consult those R&D monkeys of yours on this
subject, assuming that they weren’t too
busy sniffing each others arses to answer.
“Bill Nye is really implying that if we’re
going to teach children creation that it’s
really a form of abuse.
That Creationism is inappropriate for children.”
Well, that’s entirely a matter of perspective,
isn’t it Ken?
Because I don’t think Mr. Nye was saying
that children shouldn’t be taught about
your fables as part of their upbringing, or
in a religious studies curriculum, but rather
that your myths have no place in science class
nor as an alternative to mainstream and essentially
universally accepted scientific thought.
Now, I’ll mention that you’re the one
who brought up the emotive word “abuse”,
not him, but since you used it, I will too.
I, personally, fully endorse the concept that
teaching children primitive and demonstrably
false myths as if they were fact, and then
encouraging, even ordering, them to discard
the knowledge that has raised us from the
filth of our ignorance to the acme of our
civilization, is abuse.
Unfortunately such mental abuse isn’t illegal,
so as much as it disgusts me I’m afraid
that you and your kind are free to inflict
it upon you own offspring.
But I would be eternally grateful if you and
your fellow demented dumb-fucks would stop
insisting on pushing it onto mine.
“I tell what is real abuse, and I tell you
what is inappropriate for children.
When you take generations of kids and you
teach them they’re just animals.
There’s no God.
You’re a result of millions of years of
evolutionary processes.
You just came from some slime over millions
of years.
Who determines right and wrong?
You do.
Who determines what’s good and bad?
You do.
What is marriage?
Whatever you want to make it to be.”
Unfortunately, Ken, the concept that your
Bible contains some kind of transcendent and
unalterable morality for the ages is somewhat
fucked up the arse by the words it contains.
And while I’m aware of the countless lame
and frankly laughable ad hoc rationalizations
as to why it’s no longer acceptable to own
and beat other human beings while at the same
time being able to pig out at Red Lobster,
the very fact that they need to be made means
that in your world view I would be forced
to delegate my moral choices to people who
claim to have direct line to the Big Guy upstairs.
Thus in lieu of not hearing voices inside
my own head and of not being unable to distinguish
between someone who’s actually hob-nobbing
with the His Ephemeralness and one who’s
merely trying to pick my pocket, the only
rational route as far as I can see is to do
what I’ve always done – and that’s use
my own conscience.
As for the psychological consequences of teaching
evolution, I’m afraid that your perceived
affront to our human dignity has no bearing
as to the nature of reality.
Because, Ken, as much as you might hate to
admit it, we eat like animals, breathe like
animals, defecate like animals and fornicate
like animals, and that alone should make it
fairly easy for all but the most profound
mental defectives to realize that we are animals.
In addition, millions upon millions of pieces
of evidence scream with deafening clarity
to all but the most dimwitted-dumbfucks that,
like all other animals, we evolved from a
common ancestor.
I understand that you find the idea distasteful,
Ken, but that’s no excuse for denying it.
I for example find it gut-churningly vile
to contemplate that you and I are members
of the same species, but am forced to accept
the possibility as being the most likely explanation
of the evidence before me.
The grown up thing to do in such a situation
is to swallow you pride, accept what is patently
true, and find some way to deal with it like
billions of others have before.
“You know, it’s really people like Bill
Nye that are damaging kids.
Creationists are teaching children that they’re
special – that they’re made in the image
of God.
And of course, giving them a basis for developing
technology.
That we can trust the laws of logic.
We can trust the laws of Nature.
We can trust how the uniformity of Nature.”
Teaching people to think wishfully and ignore
evidence is anything but harmless as evidenced,
for example, by the stunning success of abstinence
only programs.
Furthermore, are you serious?
Are people special just because they’re
made in the image of God?
Is that true for Jeffry Dahmer, Ken?
Or Ted Bundy?
Or John Wayne Gacy?
And what about conjoined twins, Ken?
Or Down’s Syndrome victims?
Or Ameliacs?
Are they somehow less special?
And what about anuses, Ken?
Does your god have one?
And if so why?
Or nipples?
Or genitals?
You see what happens when you make laughably
juvenile statements based on even more infantile
beliefs, Ken?
They’re easier to pick apart than the remains
of Ian Juby’s Christmas turkey.
As for your nod in the direction of pre-suppositional
apologetics and the transcendental argument,
well, I’m not going to go there because
my goal is to rectally wrap anti-science claims
and not argue against the existence of gods.
Many excellent Youtubers are far better equipped
than I have handled these and other philosophical
topics, and if anyone would like to learn
more they could do a lot worse than watching
and subscribing to the user KnownNoMore.
With that said, I should point out that regardless
of the validity of these arguments and whether
such a being or beings exist, the unassailable
bastion of evidence for evolution and an ancient
universe overwhelming indicates that your’s
does not.
Finally, I did find your affirmation of the
uniformity of Nature quite a pleasant surprise
because it provides me with an exquisite opportunity
to use it to beat the living shit out of you.
But first let’s take a break for a little
light entertainment and listen to the hilarious
thing you said next.
“And you know.
Bill Nye really doesn’t understand science.
He’s called Bill Nye the Science Guy – he
doesn’t understand science.”
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Ha ha ha ha ha.Haaaaaa…[sigh].
Sorry Ken.
I realize that was a bit of a cheap shot,
but I maintain it was fully warranted because
what I just witnessed was tantamount to an
light-grey kettle being bad-mouthed by an
ebony pot that just drifted past the event
horizon of a black fucking hole.
He doesn’t understand the difference between
observational science and historical science.
I mean, he talks about the fact that, oh,
‘we’ve got these ancient bones’, ‘we’ve
got radioactivity’.
Wait a minute of course we can observe radioactivity
and we can experiment with it.
But when it comes to bones – like dinosaur
bones – you don’t dig them up with labels
telling you how old they are, or dig them
up with photographs telling when they lived.”
Once again, I’ll take a rain check on your
little “historical science” fantasy and
stuff it up the arses of one, or perhaps both,
of your pet primates in a later video.
Instead, let’s get back to that point you
made about the uniformity of Nature and how
I’m going to use it to be not particularly
pleasant to you.
You see Ken, not only can we “see” and
“experiment with” radioactivity – because
of the uniformity of Nature that you admitted
to, we can be certain to a high degree of
confidence that radio-nuclides behaved in
the same way in the past as they do now.
And in case you try and wheedle out of it
by claiming you meant the past few millennia,
centuries, decades, or whatever other timescale
best suits your goalpost shifting, I’ll
point out that, unlike your kind of assertions,
this tenet of modern science hasn’t been
conveniently pulled out of someone’s back
passage but is supported by empirical evidence.
If you wish to retract your earlier statement
and posit that the behavior of physical laws
has changed over time then kindly supply evidence
of when and to what degree this occurred,
and a theoretical framework to explain how,
without invoking preternatural and unverifiable
ju-ju.
Or just fuck right off.
So, with this established, Ken, it’s an
almost trivially simple task to accurately
date fossils my measuring the appropriate
isotope ratios in surrounding igneous layers
and in some cases in igneous grains in the
sedimentary strata themselves.
Of course, this isn’t quite the same as
requiring the presence of a hand-written label
or photograph, but quite frankly only someone
who’s spent his adult life walking around
with what appears to be a pussy clinging tenaciously
to his chin whilst presumably thinking it
looked cool would be stupid enough demand
one.
Instead, for people with even the tiniest
soupcon of common sense (not to mention fashion
sense), the current ocean of cross-confirmatory
data using multiple isotope signatures is
more than enough to reasonably conclude that
these dates are reliable.
“He doesn’t teach children how to think
critically.
He doesn’t teach them how to think about
science.
He wants to teach them that to think, and
he confuses historical science – beliefs
about the past – and observational science
– that develops your technology – he puts
those together and doesn’t distinguish between
the two.”
Again, you’ll have to wait for me to rape
your assertions on “historical” science
at a later date, but right now I’ll address
your equally outrageous comments on Mr. Nye’s
educational goals.
I must say that I found this to be one of
the most disingenuous parts of what is by
anyone’s standards one of the most insincere
and duplicitous pieces videography that’s
been flushed into Youtube’s servers since
Kent Hovind was taken offline after discovering
that not being entirely honest with the IRS
is not the wisest rectal preservation strategy.
You see, Ken, this is kind of rich coming
from the man who’s infamous for brainwashing
little children with the following example
of outrageous and nauseatingly repugnant shit-baggery:
“One of the problems we have today is that
people tend to stay outside the Bible, listen
to what Man is saying, and take those ideas
to the Bible and say “how do we fit with
this the Bible”?
How do we fit it with the Bible?
But we shouldn’t do it that way.
We shouldn’t start from Man’s ideas.
We should start from the Bible, should put
on our biblical glasses, and when we understand
what the bible says about the history of the
Universe it gives us a whole way of thinking
to explain…er… the things of this world.”
So for you to then criticize a nationally
recognized educator for teaching children
what to think rather than how to think, perhaps
represents the scaling of the ultimate pinnacle
of creationist hypocrisy, the zenith of the
disregard for truth and decency to which you
bastards can aspire.
Not only did you take the cake on this one,
but you scarfed it down like a gluttonous
pig at a trough and then shat it out in the
expectation that everyone would accept it
as shinola.
Well, unfortunately for you, Ken, I don’t
and I’m here to point out where that repulsive
stench is coming from.
“If evolution were true – I mean, it would
be so obvious to the kids it is true… but
it’s not.
The way to convince kids about evolution is
you have to do what Bill Nye the Humanist
Guy wants.
You protect them from hearing anything about
creation, you totally indoctrinate them, you
brainwash them, you don’t teach them to
think critically at all.
Don’t teach them the difference between
historical science and observation science.
You just want to make sure they only hear
about evolution… and that’s it.”
Once again ignoring your almost morbid fascination
with “historical” science, allow me to
point out another sign of your tenuous, if
not non-existent, grasp on reality – that
is, your inability to recognize the utter
banality of your assertion that evolution
can’t be true because it’s not intuitively
obvious to children.
Perhaps you haven’t noticed, Ken, but quantum
mechanics isn’t intuitive to trained physicists,
let alone kids and yet we’ve used it to
build the computer systems that you use to
spread the contents of your sickly, stunted
mind all over the world.
I could of course mention countless other
concepts, but I think I made my point.
If I didn’t know any better I’d have to
conclude that this apparent attempt at an
argument was a joke, but since I do know better
I realize that the only joke involved is you.
As for your subsequent brazenly projective
polemic about indoctrination, well, at this
point I’m going to share with you what my
friend wisdominnature7, a professional philosopher
and educator that anybody who values truth
and honest free thought should, in my opinion,
be subscribed to, had to say about it in a
recent PM exchange with me – because he
enunciated it far, far more eloquently than
I ever could:
“You may also want to mention that Humanist
pedagogy is historically rooted in the reaction,
during the renaissance and enlightenment,
against wrote religious instruction.
Indeed, the humanist educational tradition
can be characterized by its rejection of the
preaching of orthodoxy, and its adoption of
discursive rather than didactic methods.
The upshot is that the role of critical thinking
education, of the sort that Ham pays lip service
to, should by rights be credited to the humanists.
Put another way, free-thought (as in free
from dogmatic preaching) and Secular Humanist
educational theory share a very recent intellectual
ancestor; and what Ham accuses Nye of doing
is almost precisely what humanist educators
strive to avoid.
Evidently, Ken wouldn't know the difference
between a Humanist education and a Pterodactyls'
anus.”
“Creationists, of course, are very happy
to teach their children about evolution.
And teach the problems with it.
And teach their children how to think critically.
And the difference between historical science
and observational science.
Isn’t it interesting how Christians are
not frightened to teach their children about
evolution.”
I have to say, Ken, that your obsession with
this “historical” boondoggle of yours
if verging on the psychotic because you seem
to be as enamored of it as Kirk Cameron is
of Ray Comfort’s banana.
If you think that anybody outside your insular,
blinkered and spectacularly backward mindset
believes that the education you’re referring
to amounts to any more than “evolution says
we all came from rocks… that’s dumb”,
then you’re sorely mistaken.
Because your own use of the phrase “came
from slime” right here and countless other
absurdities elsewhere, your ubiquitous exhortation
of the use of “biblical glasses”, your
smug insistence on the validity of the profoundly
inane question “were you there?”, all
scream to the fact that what you claim you
teach as evolution is in fact nothing but
the hideously malformed parody of it that
you’ve conjured up with your retarded imagination.
And while you and your misguided sheep might
think that you’re doing them a favor, Ken,
the sad fact is that all you’re doing is
hiding from them the true magnificence of
creation; the vastness of the cosmic deep
and the majestic sweep of countless eons during
which all that we see, and hear and touch
evolved from nothing but pure and unadulterated
energy; the exquisitely simple behaviors of
unimaginably infinitesimal particles that
combine in countless combinations, and from
which emerge the most astonishingly complex
phenomena, from the intricacy of a single
snowflake to the wonders of the human brain;
a brain that has coalesced over countless
eons to a point where it has unraveled the
secrets of Nature and can now look back in
awe at the long and twisted path it took to
get here and know that it is a part of the
Universe as much as the Universe is a part
of it.
This is what you’re denying your children,
Ken.
And I feel like weeping for them.
Unlike you I don’t claim to know for certain
whether a god does or does not exist, but
if one does the fact remains that modern science
has shown us that its creative power and foresight
are infinitely more extraordinary than those
of the fictitious petty-conjurer whose robes
you insist on clinging to.
And if one does exist, all you’re doing
is shielding your poor children’s minds
from its true grandeur, and while you continue
to do so I very much doubt that it’s going
to be particularly impressed with you.
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