This just astounds me. It really does. One of the people in the running to be vice president of the United States of America believes that the earth is only 6,000 years old and dinosaurs and man co-existed. I’m sorry, but this is the person who is only “one 70 year old man’s heartbeat” from getting her hands on the nuclear codes and the reigns of the worlds most important, and already faltering, economy. I can’t quite put into words how scary this is.
Thankfully this is being covered by some prominent news outlets like the Huffington Post, but really this needs to get out into the mainstream media. People need to know. Unfortunately, this won’t happen because of the fear within the mainstream media outlets of alienating some viewers. In the words of Matt Damon (yes, that Matt Damon):
“Do the actuary tables and there’s a one out of three chance, if not more, that McCain doesn’t survive his first term and it’ll be President Palin… It’s like a really bad Disney movie. The hockey mom, you know, ‘oh, I’m just a hockey mom’… and she’s facing down President Putin… It’s totally absurd… it’s a really terrifying possibility… I need to know if she really think that dinosaurs were here 4,000 years ago. I want to know that, I really do. Because she’s gonna have the nuclear codes.” From HP. Video here.
The source of this story is a teacher who spoke to Palin just after she was elected Mayor of Wasilla in 1998. The really worrying part of the discussion Palin had with Philip Munger, the teacher in question, was this:
“…she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks…”
This was in response to Munger pushing her in the clear empirical evidence available, specifically prehistoric fossils and tracks that can be dated back far further than 6,000 years.
The question we need to ask is this. Is Palin dellusional, an idiot or both? And that really shouldn’t be a question you’re asking about anyone in politics, let alone someone vying for one of the most powerful positions in the world.
Tags: Creationism, politics
This is a truly remarkable story, and really puts into context the absolute fire-breathing idiots, the misinformed imbeciles that we have to put up with. Quote from the BBC:
The most senior judge in Saudi Arabia has said it is permissible to kill the owners of satellite TV channels which broadcast immoral programmes.
Yes, you read that right. The MOST SENIOR JUDGE in Saudi Arabia has given permission, endorsement if you will, for the killing of broadcasters for broadcasting what he deems to be immoral programmes. Let’s break this down.
Firstly, people will now attempt to kill the station owners, and no doubt their employees, because of this statement made by an absolute bigoted idiot. People may very well die. Secondly, what on earth is immoral? Who judges? Him? The prospective murderers? Their holy book? Let’s be honest, every holy book is unspecific when it comes to morality, there are grey areas. Language is ambiguous. So even of you do believe in a holy book, can you really truly understand it’s intentions? Quite frankly, if I was a Muslim and I saw this statement being made, I’d really start to reconsider the company I keep. Do I really want to be part of a movement where one of it’s more senior and influential members believes that murder is a less serious crime than broadcasting provocative television shows? Does that make sense to ANYONE?
This is what we’re up against. Biggotry, fear and idiocy.
Tags: Islam, Law
When I was growing up, the biggest debate around relating to video games was whether Ms Pac-Man was attractive or not (yes she is). Turns out, video games have moved on some way since then and are now causing the sort of theological debate once reserved for books, films and rap songs.
The hot button topic at the moment is a game called Spore. Essentially it allows you to create an organism and guide it from single cell to galaxy conquering race. It’s been a controversial title on both sides of the evolution / intelligent design debate, with evolutionists deriding the intelligent design aspects and id-ers deriding the evolutionary aspects. Stomping into this debate like the proverbial chimpanzee into an intelligent debate is the AntiSpore website. As pointed out by gaming blog Kotaku, this is one of those sites that’s so badly written, researched and conceived that it’s initially difficult to know whether it’s a parody or not.
Our first thought was “Ha! A clever satire on religious censorship and the intelligent design debate!” quickly followed by, “hang on, it’s quite deadpan for satire, isn’t it?”
Kotaku
The problem here is two fold. Firstly, the game isn’t really about evolution. In fact, it very much falls into the “Intelligent Design” side of things. Otherwise, it would be quite boring. You put into place the basic elements of your species, you design them. Secondly, the website is just like the 100s of other creationist/ID websites out there. It’s badly written, misinformed, and sets out the deceive and mislead. The current newest post is claiming that you have to present ID to see sex in the cinema, but not in Spore! Well, for starters the game is rated for people 10 years and over. Secondly, you can watch a documentary about animals having sex at pretty much any time of the day on Discovery. That, if anything, is what the copulation in Spore should be compared to. This isn’t pornography, and only someone with a truly distorted view of sex and sexuality would believe it is (my previous comments about Ms Pac-Man not withstanding!).
Update: Thankfully, the site has been revealed as a hoax. Although it does raise the very serious point that we all know, and have met, people with views this extreme. The site, while extreme, was not so extreme as to be unbelieveable. Which is scary when you think about it.
Tags: Evolution, Intelligent Design, media
