Sunday 17 August 2014

Scientific world in shock! Evolution proved false.

The scientific world went into shock as tweets and YouTube videos once and for all disproved evolution. 


In a revelation that has the scientific world in shock, people on Twitter and YouTube have disproved evolution. It's news that will have repercussions for decades if not centuries. And not just for the scientific world, but for the larger population as well. 

You may be asking, and rightly so, how they have disproved evolution? Well in no uncertain terms, they've simply declared it to be false. 

A spokesperson for All Scientists, Professor Victoria Scott, said: "We are amazed. It's been 155 years since Charles Darwin published his ground breaking work 'On the Origin of Species' and we've been working in this field ever since. We've found millions of fossils and studied DNA, observed genetic changes, done countless hours of lab and field research and everything we've found points to evolution being true." 

Even the existence of monkeys? The professor laughs, "Yes, even the existence of monkeys." 

So given the mountains of evidence supporting evolution and the fact that no evidence points away from evolution one must ask, what happened? 

"Well, there were these tweets..." She stops here. A thoughtful and perhaps sad look on her face before continuing, "People were tweeting that evolution was, in fact, false. It was out of nowhere. Totally unexpected." I can imagine. I, like many of you reading this, was taught that evolution was true. 

Needing to know more, I asked Professor Scott what qualifications the authors of said tweets actually had.  

"None! None at all. This is what shocked us the most. Not only did these people have no relevant qualification, they actually knew very little about evolution at all. And what they did know, or thought they did, they misunderstood completely." 

I asked for some examples. "Well they think evolution means a monkey giving birth to a human, that individuals change species, such as a gorilla turning into a human in older age, and they expect to see a transitional fossil such as a crocoduck!"

Exactly how could tweets on their own could bring down over 150 years of scientific research? "Oh, it wasn't just tweets, it's YouTube videos as well. Many YouTube videos in fact." Like with the above mentioned tweets, Professor Scott pointed out that the qualifications and understanding held by the authors of the videos were non-existent. "As I said earlier, this is the most staggering part of this shocking revelation. These people are just not qualified! At all. But there it is, sometimes in tweets, sometimes in poorly put together 4 minute YouTube videos...evolution is simply false. Of course, I know you might be sceptical, and rightly so, but it's there for you to see just as well as I can."

Taking the professor up on this challenge I hit the internet and sure enough, she was right - a seemingly unending supply of tweets and videos declaring evolution to be false. It was right before my very own eyes. 

The must ask question at this moment - What happens now? "Well, there have been several meetings hurriedly convened, obviously. We're going to have to shut down biology courses at all the universities, research labs all over the world are going to have to be de-funded, just think about medicine" she says this apparently distracting herself. "We used to build influenza vaccines based on the idea that the virus evolves. Not any more. Back to square one on that one." She gives a chuckle at this though it seems more nervous than amused. 

Not wanting to get just one side of the story I went to some of the people declaring evolution to be false. The first thing I wanted to do was confirm that this amazing declaration was made without relevant qualification. Upon requesting the credentials of a number of these people I was told I was appealing to authority, that qualifications were just pieces of paper and that I was using an ad hominem attack. These people are rock solid. 

When asked for the reasoning behind the declaration that evolution is false I was told to look around me, that evolution is a mathematical impossibility and quizzed as to whether a rock could randomly turn into a person. I was in awe that while these people lacked any kind of expertise, they could know their subject so very well. I was getting out of my depth and knew that I would be able to find no chink in this armour. 

I asked Professor Scott how the scientific community could have missed this. "Well we don't deem to know everything, of course, we leave that to the faith community. We simply work on what we know, what we can demonstrate, and what we can verify. We have hypotheses that we test and get others to review our work. We operate within the realm of reality and stick to the scientific method. Simply declaring something false without reason is not really what we do so you'll have to forgive us for not ever thinking that might happen." It's a reasonable point. 

As we finished up our interview I asked Professor Scott if she was now worried about things like gravity and germ theory being declared false on the internet. "Yes, definitely. The internet is very powerful. There's no limit to what people will say on there. If a group of people suddenly declare gravity to be false...well we might all float off to space before we know what's happening!"  We share a laugh at her joke and I thank her for her time. As she leaves her phone rings, "I know!" she declared to the caller, "It's truly amazing."

I'm not sure what the final outcome of this ground breaking declaration will be but one thing we can all know for sure, the scientific world will never be the same again. 








Wednesday 13 August 2014

I told you so

I get told that I should start believing now. I need to believe in order to avoid hell. I need to believe before it's too late! 

Not all, but a lot of people who tell me this tell me that their version of the god myth has sent them to me (of course they call their version of the god myth God). It reminds me a little of a story I once heard. I've found it called the Parable of the Flood, the Drowning Man, The Parable of the Three Boats and a few other names. 

It goes like this:
A man was trapped in his house during a flood. He began praying to God to rescue him. He had a vision in his head of God’s hand reaching down from heaven and lifting him to safety. The water started to rise in his house. His neighbour urged him to leave and offered him a ride to safety. The man yelled back, “I am waiting for God to save me.” The neighbour drove off in his pick-up truck.

The man continued to pray and hold on to his vision. As the water began rising in his house, he had to climb up to the roof. A boat came by with some people heading for safe ground. They yelled at the man to grab a rope they were ready to throw and take him to safety. He told them that he was waiting for God to save him. They shook their heads and moved on.

The man continued to pray, believing with all his heart that he would be saved by God. The flood waters continued to rise. A helicopter flew by and a voice came over a loudspeaker offering to lower a ladder and take him off the roof. The man waved the helicopter away, shouting back that he was waiting for God to save him. The helicopter left. The flooding water came over the roof and caught him up and swept him away. He drowned.


When he reached heaven and asked, “God, why did you not save me? I believed in you with all my heart. Why did you let me drown?” God replied, “I sent you a pick-up truck, a boat and a helicopter and you refused all of them. What else could I possibly do for you?”

There are a few versions of this on the web. I found this one here and left a comment here.

What my comment says is that an omniscient god would have known that the man would refuse help from the pick-up truck, the boat, and the helicopter. 

Why would an omniscient god send methods of rescue he knew in advance would be rejected?

The god of this parable would have known what form of rescue the trapped man would require to believe that the rescuer was god or a representative of. But he chooses to not send that form of rescue and to send three rescuers he knows will be rejected. 

This is how I feel when people on twitter tell me they've been sent by their god to convince me their god is real. He must know in advance that they will fail just as he knew the attempted rescuers would fail. 

So if this god is real and is really sending these people why does he choose people he knows, in advance, I won't find convincing? 

I said in my comment to the above story, it seems the god of this story had no intention of saving the trapped man. Likewise, if he is real and sending these people to me as they claim, it seems he has no real intention of having me believe. 

Sending rescuers that will be ignored or people that I won't find convincing is not the way one would expect an omniscient god to act. 

Am I really expected to believe an omniscient being capable of literally anything would behave in such a manner? Would an omniscient god really waste the time of the devout by having them talk to me when he knows they will not convince me of his existence whilst knowing what is required to actually convince me he's real? 

To me the only reason to do it like this is so if I actually do get to heaven and face god he can say "I told you so" which is, of course, a ludicrous proposition. The conclusion, obviously, is that just like the trapped man, the pick-up truck driver, the people in the boat and the pilot of the helicopter, the god behind these claims is fictional.