I just finished reading PZ Myers’ breakdown of #creozerg 2, an organized trip of nonbelievers to a Creation “Museum” in Springfield, Missouri.
You can read the entire post here. You might be able to see the Creation Museum’s web site here, but at the time of this post, it appears PZ Myers’ has shut the site down via traffic from his site.
Tina and I were “lucky” enough to go to #creozerg 1, which is where I met many of my readers after tweeting and posting photos of the event.
I would like to post a good portion of the conversation PZ reportedly had with the head of the place. I need to emphasize the part about Noah’s Ark and that God killed all but 8 people, including babies and children.
Babies and children.
Worshipping baby killers is not on my todo list.
Be sure to let me know in the comments how I have taken god out of context. Here’s the conversation:
They generally seemed like very nice people, who were pleased to have this crowd packing their little place. They offered us cookies and juice. I think we made their month.
I was dismayed at one bit of conversation with Dr Rod Butterworth, head of the place. He was trying to explain how the bloody god of the Old Testament really wasn’t such a bad fellow after all.
“You don’t understand: all those people he had to kill, were horrible people. They deserved to be killed!”
To which I replied, “But that’s exactly the excuse Hitler used to murder the Jews!”
“No…” He seemed slightly nonplussed.
One of Mattir’s spawn was there, and she explained to him that it was true, that Jews were accused of blood libel, and the Nazis claimed they used Jesus’ blood in evil rituals.
“Oh, well, there probably were Jews who did that, who hated Christianity, and those Jews would have deserved it.”
You could have knocked me flat with a feather.
I pointed out that his god, according to his myth, exterminated the entire population of the planet, except for 8 people. Was he really arguing that all of those people, even the babies, were all so wretchedly evil that they deserved death?
He replied that yes, they did, because they refused to worship god, and god as their creator had every right to do with them as he will.
Yesterday I was driving with my brother-in-law and Tina. We passed a bus with the judgement day warning on the side. I flipped out.
“In Chicago! Really! How fucking awful!”
And then I had to tell Tina and Michael the story, because they don’t give a rat’s ass about the end of the world, and have seen very little on the subject.
“There’s a guy who spent $140,000 of his life savings on advertising the May 21 rapture,” I told them. Did you know about that? Here’s the story.
This morning, I woke up at 5:15 and thought, “I don’t know if I know why they think this is rapture week.”
So I googled it on my phone, and found this web site. What I found was that I was bored by its rationale. And by bored, I mean critical, judgmental and outright frightened by this group’s stupidity.
I’m not going to write too much detail. People have been talking about this to the point of cliché. I probably don’t have any great additional contributory ideas.
In case you don’t know (which I didn’t until this morning), May 21, 2011 is — according to this group of imbeciles — is exactly 7,000 years since the date of Noah’s flood. Well, not exactly. It’s a year off. But you know, they didn’t have zeros in bible times so you have to subtract one year from the equation. So 4,990 + 2011 – 1 = 7,000. And in biblespeak, 1 day is to 1,000 years. And there’s some bullshit about 7 days until the end.
So forget the fact that GOD should have known that zero existed back then because he supposed to be all knowing. And forget that the Bible … if it’s true … says no one knows the date of the end. And forget the fact that there is absolutely no scientific proof for a global flood in the first place. And forget the absolutely ludicrous concept that the entire population arose from 500 year old Noah and his three 480 year old sons … and you have a group of people going broke over the stupidest idea you have ever heard.
And I’m the moron writing about it and losing sleep over it.
Sunday is going to be a hilarious day barring these morons don’t all commit suicide before we get a chance to talk to them on camera.
Average ages which certain animals may be expected to reach, based on reports of zoos and estimates of biologists. Individuals have been reported far older. (Data from Field Museum of Natural History).
I don’t see Noah on this chart. They must not have had room.
We started today with a great quote from a believer. Now it’s time for a delightfully dim bulb quote from another believer.
WhiskeyRiver commented on this very popular post about Noah’s Ark and wrote (misspellings and bad grammar are Whiskey’s):
“When Clams are found at 13,000 ft on Mt.Arrarat,that are from the right time period,how can you stick to that theory of yours.Hmm,…”
Clever, right?
WhiskeyRiver screwed up a Young Earth Creationist (YEC) argument. The discovery of clams that YEC’ers use so often was on Mt. Everest. Mt. Ararat is the mythological place where Noah’s Ark supposedly landed.
How were fossilized clams found on top of any mountain? Simple science explains that mountains are formed through the movement of tectonic plates. At one time, areas that were below the water are pushed up into the atmosphere. That’s right, places that were once below water were pushed up, way up. That’s why you find fish fossils in Wyoming (Julie).
Why do I post WhiskeyRiver’s dirty underwear on Le Café Witteveen’s flagpole and hoist it up?
It’s a waste of time, right?
The Noah’s Ark post above gets between 20 and 40 hits a day. It gets that many hits, because believers are constantly searching for terms like “proof of Noah’s Ark.” I happened to tag the post with those exact words. I hate to break it to you kids, but you’re never going to find proof, because
Noah’s
Ark
never
happened.
Even if Moses really wrote the first five books of the bible (the pentateuch), he wrote down a story that was passed down through an oral history that predated his time by several hundred years (if you believe the bible is true). He, or whoever wrote Genesis, picked up the story from the Babylonians. And the Babylonians probably picked it up from yo mamma.
I don’t “believe” in science. I accept it. Belief implies faith. You can show me how tectonic plates work. We can feel how they work (just ask any Haitian or Christchurchian). You can show me how we’re genetically connected to animals through evolution.
But you cannot EVER show me a talking snake. You will never be able to show me walking dead people. You cannot show me any number of biblical miracles because they
NEVER
happened.
That’s a bold statement only because I emboldened it. It’s really not that big of a deal. Life will go on if the bible isn’t 100% true.
Besides, the bible teaches you to expect disbelief from non-believers. It teaches to expect scoffing and disrespect. So chalk this criticism up to a biblical teaching and accept that I can’t believe your beliefs
I saw the graphic (above) on reddit. It goes along with some of the conversation we’ve been having about Noah’s Ark and how logically absurd it is to think humanity descended from incestuous relationships, not once, but twice.
I mean, if a person really thinks at one time inbreeding was fine, but eventually changed into something harmful to the species, what does that mean to the way that person views the world? What if you believe that in one of the most scientifically illiterate places on earth, people lived to outrageous ages contrary to what we know from science? I guess anything is possible. ‘
But what does it say about you if you want to be the product of incest or inbreeding? I mean, do you want a common ancestor who happens to show the progress of evolution or a common ancestor that shows your ancestors probably looked like this:
For a little more information on inbreeding, do a google search. Or start here (where many great images are collected).
Do you believe that the story of Noah’s Ark is literally true?
Over the weekend, Julie Ferwerda siren songed me into responding to a facebook update about the existence of hell. She used a quote that I have made in the past that “hell is the easiest Christian concept to disprove.” She hoped that it would start a conversation. It did.
There were the standard responses ranging from, “Interesting” to “I’m sorry Julie, but that’s just too far outside of my comfort zone.”
There were a number of reasoned discussion points regarding hell, and I stayed on board for a little while. That was until the discussion turned to questioning whether or not there was a literal global flood in which a guy named Noah built a boat, filled it with all the world’s animals, and manned it himself, with his wife and his kids for over 40 days and nights until the global flood waters subsided.
People believe that a literal story of Noah and an ark actually happened.
Let’s start with the biblical facts in the form of a bullet list.
Noah was in his 500s when he built the boat.
Noah is your direct ancestor. From Noah, you get every black person, Chinese person, and Native American. From Noah, you get every culture in the world.
All the animals that existed at that time traveled 100s of 1000s of miles to arrive at the boat to travel in safety.
Fruit and vegetables that go badly in your refrigerator within one week stayed edible for over 40 days.
Carnivorous animals lived on the boat in harmony with vegetarian animals.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, there was a global flood that killed every living human and animal except for those on the boat within the last 10,000 to 6,000 years.
If those biblical facts do not cause you to rethink your position on whether or not the story of Noah is literally true, you have a problem.
First, a 90 year old man can’t lift a hammer with out filling a diaper. When someone says, “Yeah, so I was hanging with my gramps — he’s 500 — and after the 18 holes of golf, we painted the town red.” You know they’re lying. If a 500 year old had kids, they would be at least in their 470s. And if they had kids, they’d be in their 450s. But we’re to believe that Noah and his kids had more kids after they dismounted the beloved ark.
Do you still believe in a literal reading of Noah’s Ark?
Noah is your direct ancestor. He also is related to every African, Chinese, Japanese, Native American, Indian, Russian, Hawaiian, Jewish, Muslim, and South American person you’ve ever met. And if you think you are the result of the incestuous sex fest of Noah the 500 year old and his 470 year old children, you’re as mentally handicapped as the in-bred, six-fingered children popping out of Noah’s wife’s 500 year old uterus.
Do you still believe in a literal reading of Noah’s ark?
ALL the animals traveled the world to be on the boat. All the Koala bears. All the Madagascar-based Lemurs. All the Kangaroos. And all the dinosaurs (if you’re a creationist). All the Polar Bears and all the reptiles and monkeys. Penguins, don’t forget the penguins! Not only did they travel all that way to be there, but they traveled back!
Do you still believe in a literal reading of Noah’s ark?
I don’t have the strength to go through the rest of these bullet points. And these are only the quick bullet points I pulled out of my ass.
There are tons more reasons why the first three bullet points are complete rubbish. Not to mention, the Jews stole the story from other cultures anyway (see Gilgamesh).
The greatest reason to discontinue thinking that the story is literally true would be that it would paint your god as the most destructive, childish god to ever exist. If it were I, I would edit that story right out of my holy book.
And people teach their kids this story. The same people who won’t show a child an R-rated movie because of violence will tell their children that God murdered every human being, every child, every mother, every brother and sister, every form of animal that he ever created, because he had a little temper tantrum over whether or not people loved him.
But a cute little 500 year old building a boat and stuffing cute little animals into it is SOOOOOOOOOO worth it!
If that’s not enough reason to stop worshipping god, I don’t know what is.
I can’t believe that even though Bill O’Reilly doesn’t support literal readings of the bible, the faithful who watch his show will continue watching it. He implies that it would be silly to believe that there literally was a Noah’s Ark story.
At least Billy boy is man enough to admit one silly truth. Where are his followers on this one?
And why aren’t people appalled that Bill knows so little about the bible?
In a recent post, I mentioned that I had reread Josh McDowell’s “The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict.” I was flipping through some of my notes, and I wanted to give an example of just how ridiculous McDowell’s research is.
Let me mention that when I was in middle school, I spent many hours watching a video series McDowell sold to churches. I imagine it was something my youth pastor showed us to give himself a little vacation from coming up with “original” material.
This is all to say that my church leaders thought highly enough of McDowell’s academic prowess to use his material in our church.
The Reliability of the Old Testament
In the chapter titled, “Is the Old Testament Historically Reliable,” McDowell explains that, yes, there were creation myths of Babylonia and Sumeria that seem very similar to the biblical story. Only the biblical story is more accurate than those other stories. This ideology falls in line with the Christian idea that the devil tried to confuse believers by having similar creation myths that predate the bible by 1000s of years.
McDowell discredits the gods in those other myths, because they are “evil” and freakishly different than the god of the bible. You know, the different gods … the weird ones … the foreign ones … they are bunk. The regular, run-of-the-mill god in the bible is the much more believable god. He created the heavens and the earth in six days (Genesis 1). He advised his followers to throw babies against rocks to kill them (Psalm 137), and the same one who forced his followers to rape women (Judges 21: 11-12) or rip open the pregnant ones (Hosea 13:16) in villages that they pillaged.
Hello all of you diligent searchers for information regarding Noah’s Ark. You have arrived here likely because you searched for the words, “Noah’s Ark Found,” or something similar.
The blog post below details a round about way of saying, “The Noah’s Ark will never be found, because Noah didn’t exist. There is no evidence of a worldwide flood, and the impossibility factor of every animal and insect crawling, walking, slithering its way to the ark is completely through the roof.
Noah’s ark will never be found, because it didn’t happen.
Don’t you feel better now?
Below is the original post that brought you to this blog today.
Enjoy!
***END UPDATE***
.
Not that he was the only person to expose the hypocrisy regarding the recent Noah’s Ark discovery and the radio carbon dating “proof”, but Tim Cooley was definitely one of the first people I noticed who picked up on it.
You see, one of the reasons Noah’s ark discovery has been given any legs is those who found it aged it with carbon dating to 4,800 years ago … falling in line with biblical dating and young earth creationism.
Cooley wrote this post, saying, “Creationists believe in carbon dating too.” And he pointed out what a bunch of hypocrites they’re being, because they frequently lambast carbon dating.
During my Christian upbringing, I was taught to “expose” the weaknesses of carbon dating, too. American Christian culture is so anti-science, they think everything in science is bogus.
To put this into perspective, my ignorance of science embarrassed me at a conservative Christian college. I was poorly served by classes I took in middle school and high school. It’s something I resent, but I have had to let go. I have to let it go, but of course it’s going to bother me.
Remember the veritable retards dimwits over at Pullman WAs when I challenged Mark Tetzlaff to read the entirety of Richard Dawkins’ “The Greatest Show on Earth,” which Tetzlaff never read; He “looked through the whole book and read parts” (his words). He simply read the chapter titles and responded with stock Christian claptrap. Funny how smart he thought he looked … to himself.
In exchange for Tetzlaff reading one book, I asked Tetzlaff to recommend two books to me. Tetzlaff recommended one book called “Evolution, The Grand Experiment,” which turned out to be a coloring book for Christian parents to impose on their children to keep them ignorant and far from successful at academic pursuits.
The problem is that Tetzlaff — while reading “The Greatest Show” — had fallen for the very propaganda that I was taught during my Christian upbringing — all while accusing me of falling for propaganda of my … my own discovery long after I had been “conditioned” with the same mumbo jumbo that he had.
He acted so brainwashed that he said (in this post), “All dating methods are based upon assumptions. Therefore, they are open to gross error because we weren’t keeping records thousands or millions of years ago. These assumptions are just guesses and thus we need something more reliable than these dating methods if we are to know how old the universe is.”
Tetzlaff represents most Christians who think carbon dating is bunk … until it works for their purposes.
I included Tetzlaff’s entire quote, because he said that they weren’t keeping other records millions of years ago. He might say, or boy wonder Justin might say, “But we brought up ‘millions of years’ … the bible was written only a few thousand years ago, therefore it coincides with the literal word of god.”
To which I must remind them, there were no contemporary writers documenting Noah’s ark. It was an oral history put on animal skins much later. Noah didn’t write his story. Supposedly Moses wrote it, but that’s up for grabs based on scholarly work. Go read Genesis and see how long it takes you to get to Moses. Moses wrote stories generations after, long after the Jews were enslaved by the Egyptians … after the Egyptians had built a GREAT empire. Surely it was a thousand years (bible time) after Noah and god destroyed all of humanity.
I can’t write about yesterday without embellishment or screwing something up, let alone what I did on Tuesday morning of last week. How were people, who were way more ignorant than they are now, writing in languages most people don’t understand, expected to be understood today?
No one who has played the game of “telephone” disagrees that this is a problem for the story of Noah, or almost all of the bible … well except for believers … who must take everything on faith despite every ounce of information that’s been documented since then. Take these verses for example:
“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
“By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.” Hebrews 11: 6-7.
Believers are taught through culture and scripture to believe without evidence. Faith is not only a precept but a standard. Without it, the foundation crumbles.
God, who cannot be seen, heard or understood, is not pleased unless you have faith in that which you can’t see. This is what’s frustrating for people like me. You have this supposedly amazing lord of the universe who expects you to spend all your years “knowing” he’s there without any thing greater than faith.
I say, great, have faith. But please don’t reach into disciplines of knowledge that use evidence as a basis. Don’t impose faith on science. Keep faith faith and science science. Otherwise, I can’t help but think you’re as ignorant as I was imposing the bullshit I learned in high school on the science I learned in college and after.
Believe me, you’re not helping your cause.
As for the Noah’s ark discovery, it is most certainly a hoax. It seems that anything religious in nature is hoax ridden these days.
Posted by Jeremy 
