Mother Hubbard's Cupboard

A look into the mind of one of the most random, crazy people in all the land.

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Location: East Peoria, Illinois, United States

A Lutheran seminarian eagerly awaiting the return of Our Lord. Soli Deo Gloria!

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

......I HAVE THE POWER!

Consider this part II of the epic that was yesterday's post. Believe it or not I received several comments regarding the post and I'll address them because they weren't just back patting and actually said some things that interested me.

First of all: Mike Melnikoff-You're right when you claim that I can't pick extremists and then use them as staw men. I did not mean to and I was hoping the fact that I mentioned the gay bashing minister first and eviscerated him as evidence that that was not my intention. I have never heard of anyone in "liberal America" as voicing my opinion on the origin issue and public education....you certainly haven't. When I hear someone say something more moderate I might change my point.

Second: Matt-Thanks for the comment. I have heard the reason I gave mentioned, I just wasn't as sure that Miller said it. I've deffinately heard yours too. Even with that I still don't think a blanket statement of poor design could be really argued for depending on all the biological variables involved in ontogeny of humans/vertebrates and their developing pattern through embryogenesis.

Third: Tagge-alright, yours was backpatting :-D.

Finally: My intention was not to misconstrue anyone's opinion, nor to really piss people off. I just have a feeling that when I mention things like this people get all pissy and shit. My intention was to share my view on it and if I misrepresented someone than I'm sorry.....that's what the comment section is for.

Anything new since yesterday? Not really. I wanted to take a two hour nap, wake up and then go work out, but I think my body was kicking my ass and made me sleep for 12 whole freakin hours! AND I'M STILL TIRED! I guess I'll never actually have the power.....I'm a pretty crappy He-Man. Oh, I did go to IUB and grab some books. I got a ten dollar very short introduction to evolution (they're actually a pretty good series, even some of the wierd topics like 20th century Britain. I've got ones on theology, Darwin, cosmology, philosophy, atheism, and philosophy of science), a little card that has the periodic table in it cause I'm a freakin dork, and a ten dollar used book from Cambridge press on the Principles of Paleontology....actually for ten dollars from that publisher I almost shat myself.

I was really kinda looking for a polysci book that I may or may not have agreed with, but was just new. I didn't want Anne Am I Hot or Not Coulter's same old stuff......maybe crap, I don't know, I've never read her, nor O'Reilly et Hannity. I also didn't want the opposite extreme of Michael Supersize That Moore or Gore Let's Fabricate Shit Vidal. But I saw the same old shit.....almost no conservative books by other authors, and only liberal books that said the same old stuff about how Bush is leading us to hell, or the other really wtf books that talk about how he's leading us down a moral sewer........um, I recall you lost the last election partly because your (major) party couldn't formulate a coherent thought on morality! Anyway....could SOMEONE write something NEW!? Even the history section was poor, and they didn't have very many good cheap books from Dover about History of science. Anyway, I'm ranting about decidedly stupid shit, sorry.

Well, I'm going to go now. This was partly to address the points in the comments and whatnot. Later.

Monday, October 10, 2005

This Post Will Obviously Inflame Many Readers....Soooo...."BY THE POWER OF GRAYSKULL!!!!!!"

Before the musings of this ridiculously innate psychopath, some brief news about what has been happening in the last month. Oh and yes....I AM He-Man :-/!
1. Female issues are still at a crappy level of suck. Since I promised not to bitch about um....women on this blog I'll instead simply say that I put in that info for the curious.
2. Last week was the week from Hell. Lucifer himself made me work from midnight to 3am on Thursday morning, miss my lab exam review for anatomy (which I REALLY needed), work from 3-8pm on Thursday, become pissy by the end of work for reasons that are obvious to me alone, take a test on Friday that I didn't get the book for yet (2-4 business days my ass Amazon.com), work over the weekend, take two exams on Monday (one in religious studies and one in anatomy) where both classes were a shade of shitloads of information, then on Tuesday I took the GRE and got a 570 on my verbal and 640 on my quantitative. After all that I fell asleep for the longest 10 hours I've ever gotten. In fact the most sleep I got that week was 3.75 hours. How I was even functioning much less wide awake I'll never know. Then the last week was a blur and I have some memory holes, and I didn't even have more than 3 beers all weekend!
3. Andy and some EIU crew came up and spent Saturday night here....it was a freakin blast!
4. I took an anatomy lecture exam today and turned in a religious studies paper as well. I take a polysci exam on the 17th. I work this weekend. I've become a boring old man.

Now, onward to victory....er, I mean the good stuff. First of all, has anyone heard that nutjob Baptist preacher from Godhatesfags.com?! Seriously, he has a funny way of interpreting "For God so loved the world..." and other verses in the Hebrew law that proclaim homosexuality as an abomination together. I take that to mean God loves the sinner but hates the sin.....but apparently the five point Calvinist knows better (cause you know, John 3:16 is so obviously in favor of a Limited Atonement.....:-/). Plus, there's no better way to show the love of Christ by telling people God hates them. Jesus told unrepentant sinners that they were not of the kingdom of God, but he asked others who were willing to listen to turn away from sin. However, apparently this "prophet" of God would rather tell them the consequences of sin, which they already are most likely aware of (or at least they know he thinks that of them) rather than coming to them in love. That type of stuff really irritates me because it shows the side of Christian thought that brought us persecution of unbelievers rather than loving approachment of them. And of course rather than decry the murder of Matthew Shepherd they feel that God ordained it and that he's in hell.....which of course they know for sure. If Shepherd was a Christian, regardless of his sinning state, he's in Heaven guys! I'm not speaking in defense of homosexuality, I'm morally against it and I have no problem saying so. I dont' think Christ approves of it, I don't think gay marriage should be legalized (for reasons made clear in an earlier post). But I'm not going to decry the one (homosexuality) and not say shit about the other (murder)! Sin is the same in God's eyes.....it damns us, so homosexuality is no more abomination to God than stealing is you dipshits! Read the Book more often in context and try the original languages, you might get a better grasp of what is going on.

Sorry, I just ran into some stuff about Phelps and I got REALLY mad by it. So one of my latest pet peeves has been scientists of late....no really, pay attention. Much has been in the paper and magazines of late about evolution vs. creationism (Intelligent Design) in public schools (referring to high schools) and even private ones. What I'm going to do now is to tell you some (most assuredly not all since I wish to get into graduate school :-)) of my thoughts on the issue:
1. Young Earth/Old Earth Creationism should not be taught in public schools because a specific God is going to be named (that of the Abrahamic religions).
2. Intelligent Design should not be taught as it currently is. It is not built up enough to stand up on its own. Given time though I feel it would be completely acceptible to teach it in biology classrooms.
3. Evidence against evolution should be taught regardless of what brought on the desire to research it IF IT IS PURELY NATURAL. To say that evidence against evolution includes intelligent design all the time or is going to lead to God being brought into the argument means that you are against true scientific discussion. Evidence exists and I'll prove it later on by addressing several instances where evolution completely fails. Alternative ideas to explain the data also exist. Stop being such damn hypocrites!
4. Evolution should be taught due to its high acceptance in the scientific community and its many different and perfectly acceptable applications. Trying to block evolution being taught or not teaching it at all in the biology curriculum (Concordia Colleges and Wheaton, IL...I'm lookin in your direction) is completely ridiculous. I'm surprised that the Missouri Synod does not want evolution to be taught because they feel it goes against the Biblical story in Genesis. Well I believe the Synod's final decision regarding the truth of Genesis but if you don't teach your students anything about evolution they aren't going to be ready to go out into the world and accurately teach about Christ or even work for that matter. So much of modern biology rests upon the idea of evolution.
Now, for my discussion of the points above.
Young Earth: Believe it or not there is evidence that the earth is young (there is also an extremely large amount of evidence that it is old though this could also be due to the long amounts of time that have been devoted to this paradigm). Red blood cells in dinosaurs that are older than 65 million years is a good example. Magnetic pole changes while accounted for in old earth models do not have an explanation, whereas in a young earth model large amounts of water are suppossed to have come up from below the ground which would have massively messed up isostatic equilibrium of the continents.
Old Earth: There are vast libraries of data on this and evidence is garnered from radioactive breakdown of isotopes in rock. Evidence is gained from an actualist view of extrapolation of earth history and sedimentation. Evidence is gained by the ordered sequence of fossils which many experts say they never see out of place (actually this is false, since the stratigraphic ranges of fossils couldn't be extended if this were true). Evidence is gained by looking at geologic structures on other planets which match those on earth but which would not have had the Noachian flood to assist in their creation.
Intelligent Design: Um, really there is a lot of evidence for this. People who usually say something is poorly designed usually don't know all there is to know about something. The eye would not be able to form in the way that Ken Miller might like if the optic nerve went in front of the eye (which I believe is one of his complaints since he says you have a blind spot in the eye because the nerve goes through the back of the eye which is vastly imperfect). Also, by having the nerve going that way, you can avoid damage to it from frontal blows to the face. Even if the eyelids covered the eye the nerve could be hit thus doing damage to it. What many people who complain about this need to understand is that their alternative models need to be functional as well. Also, imagine what they would view as the perfect organism.....one species would have overtaken the globe and you would have one global population. That would make biology pretty boring and if you want to look into the argument about the designer than yeah, God will probably come up. Believe it or not, reality isn't all natural, it DOES include supernatural things and if the armchair skeptics might try to actually get out and experience the world they might learn that....but hey, I deffinately understand that field workers are a dying breed....how many chemists and physicists do we have in our geology department....damn lab rats.
Evidence against evolution: Ah evidence for evolution without argument from design....I told you it existed and I will hopefully not disappoint. For starters, evolution is supposed to be purposeless and while natural selection isn't random, the mutations that natural selection works on are (not including selfish genes which are becoming popular, though in all cases shown have been negative and not positive). Yet when one looks at all of evolutionary history there is a large move from primitive to advanced in animal structure. We are by FAR more advanced than bacteria, and with so few positive mutations popping up the move from primitive chordates to modern humans seems to fast (if even possible) in only 550 million years. Another is getting a mutation in one individual to crop up even as a rare allele in a population of a few hundred. The chances of even a beneficial mutation being bred out are extremely high due to the chance breeding. Third, embryology supposedly is used to determine some evolutionary relationships...but why not all? How is it that Haekel was wrong but his idea is still being used because "it works?" Wouldn't it make more sense that since animals start from one cell and are in similar embryonic environments they undergo similar appearances at the earliest stages? I think so. Fourth, we have seen speciation within our lifetime, but this has been things such as the handedness of the feeding ability of cichild fish in Africa, or we see color changes in insects for example to better hide themselves from predators. However, new limbs or even polydactyly are rarely if ever beneficial because they interfere with a habit already existing within the organism. For evolution to work as it must, some mutations would have to increase the survivability of an organism to an extreme degree as well as change its behavior in accord with a large amount of structural changes in a few generations. Also, some organisms would need to undergo hopeful monster style mutations in order to operate best. An example of this would be vivaperous birth methods of marine reptiles (and some sharks) when the precursor on land was an egg layer with no real equipment for live birth! There are also disconnects, for example the presence or absence of a baculum (penis bone) in some mammals is sporadic throughout their evolution. In some species its there, and others it isn't. A final example in this brief and deffinately not well thouht out argument is that sometimes the proposed evolutionary method doesn't match the paleoecology that the organism lived in. Pterosaurs are supposed to have evolved by gliding from trees with thin membranous folds, yet the earliest pterosaurs fed on marine fish! There aren't very many trees out there for powered flight to be an option.....oh, and did the first powered flight one just somehow get lucky? And what about the evolution of magnetic detection for migration in both bird and butterfly species? How in GOD'S NAME DID THEY EVOLVE?! I'm willing to research it and think critically but I'm also willing to do this in reverse and young children need to be taught from an early age to think critically, which modern biology under the dogma of evolution without problems does not do.
Evolution has been shown to be an accurate way of explaining the data. I have no quarrel with much of modern population biology, genetics, and evolutionary ecology, but I do have a problem with some of the longterm extrapolation that scientists are doing (they say interpolation with fossils but this is incorrect as it assumes that evolution happened in history in order to actually do the interpolation). Using modern methods and processes of evolution and applying them to the fossil record is extrapolation, think about it. To apply evolution as the exclusive means of doing science is a VERY BAD THING TO DO. I honestly feel that evolution will get a wakeup call soon similar to Newtonian physics....it's good for the short term, but fails at extremes. The real problem with this is that it becomes scientific dogma similar to Ptolemaic astronomy during Gallileo's time. The intelligentsia of today have a skewed view of how science works. They blatantly lie in public debate and conversation with laypeople (I know this can be very truthfully said of creationists sometimes as well). Kenneth Miller for example said at a Kansas school board meeting that if Intelligent Design were a good idea it would appear in peer reviewed jouranls. He of course understands that many of the works which changed science were books, even when journal existed. Darwin and Wallace presented a joint paper before the Origin was published, but it took a book of evidence to convince people, not one measly paper (and papers do practice blackballing. When continetal drift was young, papers covering it were blackballed from journals). He also is using the more Popperian view of science (interestingly Popper had some real trouble classifying evolution as science due to its inability to be falsified) in this context, but I guarantee you when he talks to his class about Darwinian evolution he presents Darwin as a man who brought a brand new idea into the public view. Of course that is the Kuhnian view which shows science as moving in paradigms. Darwin and Wallace did make a huge paradigm shift, but still these two facts show that there is dishonesty and I believe fear in the voices of the evolutionary apologists. Also, you have dishonesty from the National Center for Science Education (www.ncseweb.org) which has an article that claims that most Lutheran denominations accept evolution in america.......that is complete BULLSHIT! Both the Wisconsin and Missouri Synods are opposed to evolution and adhere to strict 6-day/24 hour creation interpretations of Genesis, and the ELCA have no official position.....where is he getting that crap?! I called them out on it once via email and I heard no response, I also did not see the article amended so of course that leads me to believe they are liars! They say evolution is a theory like any other yet piss themselves and rant like madmen/women when it is challenged....CHILL THE FUCK OUT! Comparing it to gravity and other theories showing that it can't be doubted (and of course, the general theory of relativity has some things to say about gravity) yet turn around and say it isn't monolithic and can't be doubted is dishonest. You can't doubt it in modern academia because it has so much bearing on the philosophy of scientists towards life. It is behind the radical environmental movement. It has been used as justification for abortion (eliminating the unfit weeds of humankind by proactive eugenics was one of Margaret Sanger's main sticking points....she really was a fucking psychopath! Oh, and Roe no longer wants abortion to be legal, but you rarely hear that). It has been used as justification to put aborigines into zoos and treat them as inferiors. I think it will be used to foster in an era of active population control......I really hope I'm wrong though :-(. My main point is that evolution is a scientific idea subject to testing like any other. When you flip out over just that or have an organization that is led primarily by rabid atheists who wish to impose their views on children, you have no room to talk about what is right and wrong in my book. Your a minority pushing your views on the majority with their money. I don't see the NCSE decrying the shitty chemistry texts or the substandard math scores of high schools, but that isn't what they're concerned about....which is obviously not science education.

Oh, and a quick word about graduate schools preventing "fundamentalist" Christians from being accepted simply due to their religion. If it is truly that they don't understand evolution at all or their education is poor, than by all means reject them. But to fucking dicks like Michael Dini who originally wouldn't pass someone if they didn't believe in human evolution, someone's personal belief does not have to enter your precious lab, and if your sooooo worried about what other people believe about human origins, then get a real fucking job. Of course the courts made him change his extremely discriminatory view to one of more moderation which was he would pass you if you could explain the biological theory of human origins....which is completely acceptable. But if he could originally do the prior to those who disagree with my previous statement, then the "darkie" in the corner can't come into my lab because I'm afraid he might not be able to do a good job because of his race....or maybe the fag can't join my lab cause I'm afraid he'll sodomize me when I'm not looking....yeah, these sound bad but you're effectively doing the same thing here....but then again, discrimination of Christians has never been a problem for liberal america.

With that bit of rabid dog work, I"m ready for dinner, which is of course still a half hour away. I can't believe this took almost two hours to write....it's the longest post ever timewise, and might even be the longest post wordwise....we'll see.

So in conclusion, I don't agree with evolution, I think it will run into very obvious problems soon if it doesn't already have problems with it, and yeah, I'm not a psychopath in reality.....but as Levar Burton would say, "Don't take....my word for it."......ba-da-DA! Reading Rainbow.........