Abbr. Enth.

Today I’d like to present you with the first (and perhaps only) strip of The Good Word.  The Good Word is a comic I whipped up to illustrate a point I see happening all too often, the Trump card of “Yeah well you’re going to hell” whenever you stump a creationist/fundie.  But I’m getting ahead of myself… (click for the full sized image).

1 Peter 3:15 actually reads:

But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,

It doesn’t actually demand you have an answer ready for the questions presented in the comic, just for “the hope you have”. I thought it would be safe to use anyway, because I see and hear a lot of Christians preach the verse as it is presented in the comic.

As for the three questions presented, I’ve heard a couple answers for them that I’ll go over to give you all an example of the standards set by Christian apologists. The first one questions how Judas died. According to the book of Matthew he hanged himself, but according to Acts he fell head first and split himself open spilling his guts out. Now let me pull a quote from the Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry:

There is no contradiction here at all because both are true. A contradiction occurs when one statement excludes the possibility of another. In fact, what happened here is that Judas went and hung himself and then his body later fell down and split open. In other words, the rope or branch of the tree probably broke due to the weight and his body fell down and his bowels spilled out.

And if you believe that then I have a boat full of non-contradicting holy books to sell you. Besides, even if the rope did break he’d fall on his feet, not on his head.

The second point asks about Jesus’ last words. While Matthew and Mark both say that he “Cried out and breathed his last”, in Luke and John we find contradicting verses:

Luke 23:46
Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.

John 19:30
When he had recieved the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

CARM also has an order they put these verses in so that he says both of them before he dies, but I couldn’t find an explanation as to how they chose the ordering. It seems to be a bunch of BS trying to explain away an obvious contradiction.

The last question refers to different genealogies of Joseph, Jesus’ step father. Similar to the others above, in two books we have completely different lineages extending from Abraham through King David and to Joseph, in an attempt to fulfill the prophecy that Jesus was the heir of King David. This is a silly way to complete that prophecy anyway, since Jesus and Joseph share no blood, so even if Joseph was King David himself it wouldn’t mean Jesus would be his heir. Here’s a look at the verses in question.

Matthew 1:15-16
Eliud the father of Eleazar,
Eleazar the father of Matthan,
Matthan the father of Jacob,
and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

Luke 3:23-24
Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph,
the son of Heli, the son of Matthat,
the son of Levi, the son of Melki,
the son of Jannai, the son of Joseph,

Again, this seems like an obvious contradiction. Apologist arguments try to say that the verses in Luke are actually the lineage of Mary, but that’s obviously not what the author was trying to present.

The underlying problem here is not the inconsistencies or the contradictions, it’s the method of thought that’s required to hold the Bible as the inerrant word of God. In order to make up such ridiculous explanations for these contradictions you have to already have the mindset that everything in the Bible is true, and that no facts or problems will convince you otherwise. In other words, it requires a completely closed mind. Where the scientific method would have you analyze data and see what we could resolve from that, religion starts off with what they think is the resolution and works backwards to try to find facts that fit in with their beliefs.

Anyway, I kinda enjoyed making the comic, so I may try a couple more and see how it goes. If any of you graphic design goons want to give me color/drawing tips go for it, I’m all ears.

Are we living in the end times? This question may seem like complete gibberish to you, but let me delve into it a bit more. The concept of the “end times” usually refers to the prophetic end of the world, the second coming of Jesus, and a seven year span of death and destruction. Many Christians are eagerly awaiting this, and fully expect to see it happen in their life times. Why, you ask? Well I’m glad you did. Allow me to present the case of those who believe they are “Rapture Ready”.

The Claim:
Jesus claims that he is coming again! The gospels of Matthew and Luke talk of great terror and war heralding the the triumphant return of Jesus in the clouds, concluding with Jesus saying of these events:

“Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all things take place.”
Matthew 24:34

Well that generation passed away a long time ago, but people are still waiting. Apparently the claim itself doesn’t hold much water, but let’s keep looking anyway.

The Event:
Recently popularized by the release of the best-selling Left Behind book series, the idea of The Rapture has picked up a lot of momentum in church circles. It’s not hard to find information about what the Bible says about these events, but I’ll highlight some of the key points so you don’t have to do any outside work:

1. BAM! Loud trumpet sounds and Christians around the world are teleported to the clouds and start a big dance party with Jesus.
   

   “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive [and] remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words”
   1 Thes 4:16-18

   It’ll look something like this:
   

2. The Seven Seals are opened (I’m not sure if they’re the kissed-by-a-rose kind or the balance-a-ball-on-my-nose kind). The opening of the first four seals are accompanied by horses of the apocalypse, representing conquest, division, famine, and death. The fifth seal speaks of the martyrs and future martyrs. The sixth seal gets pretty interesting and, well…physically unsound, if you will.
   

   “I saw when he opened the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake.
   The sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became as blood.
   The stars of the sky fell to the earth,
   like a fig tree dropping its unripe figs when it is shaken by a great wind.
   The sky was removed like a scroll when it is rolled up.
   Every mountain and island were moved out of their places.
   The kings of the earth, the princes, the commanding officers, the rich, the strong, and every slave and free person, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains.
   They told the mountains and the rocks,
   ‘Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne,
   and from the wrath of the Lamb,
   for the great day of his wrath has come; and who is able to stand?’”
   Revelations 6:12-17

   Phew, quite a bit of chaos there, eh? Stars falling down to Earth? The sky being removed? I sure don’t want to be around for that! Not that it would matter, because the whole solar system would be ripped apart by the gravity of the hundreds of billions of stars from each of the hundreds of billions of galaxies all heading for little ol’ Earth. Maybe they’ll burn up in the atmosphere, before we lose the sky and all our air floats away.

3. Seal number seven is a big one, it is broken up into seven parts (noticing a theme yet?), each part sounded off by a trumpet. In these seven trumpets a third of the Earth is burned up, a third of the sea is turned to blood, some meteors fall from the sky turning a third of the fresh water all icky tasting, a third of the sun, moon, and stars (which already fell on our heads mind you) are blotted out, some locusts kill people, some angels kill a third of mankind, and loud voices are heard from heaven.

There’s also a bunch of stuff about the antichrist, the mark of the beast, seven (more) plagues, and all that fun stuff, but I think you get my point that it’s gonna suck. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a fear tactic to get people to convert to Christianity though, that would be…logical.

The Evidence:
Ok, now we’re on to the silly stuff. While the Bible seems to be saying was already supposed to have happened almost 2000 years ago, people are still waiting. Even more profound than that are the things people come up with to justify their belief that the end times are happening right now (or soon).

I was on my way to work today, and I drove by a pasture full of cows. One of the cows was looking up in the sky, like she heard or saw something. I automatically looked up…thinking…this might be the day that Jesus comes.

Harry Potter books are even showing up in your supermarket, the drugstore anywhere a few dollars can be made. The occult is becoming the accepted norm these days. Another sign of the last days? I think so.

[Regarding the suspicion that Obama is Muslim]Maybe if we get a muslim president the Lord Jesus will call his Christian children home and we’ll be out of this sinful world.

That’s right folks. Cows, Harry Potter, and Barack Obama. Together they have the power to bring about the Jesus Disco Party. You know what I think is a sign of the end times? This:

I had an epiphany today and I’ve gotta say it felt good. Words are tricky. Seriously, listen to Brian Regan and you’ll know what I mean. This wasn’t my entire epiphany, but I’m leading up to a point, so bear with me.

In my senior year of college I took a course called Computational Linguistics. The class was basically about how to get computers to interpret language algorithmically. In the roughly 40% of the classes I went to (hey, it was at 8:00AM, did you expect me to go?) I fell in love with the English language. Not in spite if its flaws, but because of its flaws. Sentences can be incredibly ambiguous in English, and although it is usually very easy to figure out what people are saying by inflection, tone, etc., these elements aren’t present in written sentences. I find great joy in taking what somebody says and pretending they meant a very different interpretation of the same sentence, then watching the ensuing befuddlement. It’s a hobby, and probably a contributing factor to why I have no friends.

One would think that our language would evolve out of these sort of things, but from my (admittedly limited) perspective it seems that just the opposite is happening. It’s almost shocking to me how few people know when to use the correct there/their/they’re, then/than, etc. On English papers you will expect to see these things corrected, but on the internet, which is becoming a huge social outlet, you actually get berated and deemed a ‘Grammar Nazi’ for bringing these things up. We all know English is evolving like any other languages (pick up a copy of Seamus Heaney’s version of Beowolf some time, he has the olde English and the modern translation side-by-side), but I would expect it to be evolving to be MORE specific, not less.

This brings me back to my epiphany. In a lot of debates over Creationism vs. Evolution you can observe a fundamental lack of understanding of Evolution which makes it easy to see why people wouldn’t want to believe in it. First off, let’s take the idea of the Theory of Evolution. In regular English the word theory is thrown around as being synonymous to guess, which has a very different meaning than is used in science (as anyone who has read my former posts already knows). Now we can easily shoot down someone as ignorant for not knowing the difference, but whose fault is it? If scientists wanted a word to describe a hypothesis supported by multiple tests and facts, then they should have picked a better word. This way creationists automatically lose the argument that evolution is “just a theory”.

Or how about the whole idea of Creation vs. Evolution. Now this is not ambiguous, but it implies more than it seems at first. Let’s look at the two ideas:

Creation (as depicted by the Abrahamic religions):
1) God created light.
2) God created the sky.
3) God created the ground, seas, and vegetation.
4) God created the sun, moon, and stars.
5) God created the water animals.
6) God created the land animals (including man).

Evolution:
1) The diversity of species is a result of natural selection and descent with modification over time, with all species sharing a common ancestor.

When you look at it that way it hardly seems like a match-up does it? When we say Creation vs. Evolution it’s implying that evolution covers all the topics of creation and has opposing explanations for all of the elements thereof. You can see how this is fundamentally flawed, and why Evolution is often laughed at by fundamental creationists. Evolution doesn’t explain where the universe came from or how life started, and we know it doesn’t make any claims either way, but when we compare the two in that context we’re implying that it should.

So what do we do about it? We boycott! It’s never a bad time for a good boycott as far as I’m concerned. We know that social trends can change our language, just grab a recent copy of Webster’s Dictionary and you’ll find the words bootylicious and gaydar. By this law of the universe, I propose we end the confusion once and for all, and henceforth refer to scientific theories as Smarken (plural and singular). Think about it! The Smarken of Gravity, the Germ Smarken of Disease, Einstein’s General Smarken of Relativity, and String Smarken.

Unite behind me Obscurians, and together we can re-shape the English language, one Smarken at a time!

Somebody posted the video of Ben Stein’s CNN interview that I wrote this post about. If you’re going to watch this video please read my post either before or after it.

Keep in mind that the Theory of Evolution does not explain how matter, energy, gravity, or even life started, because that is not part of what Darwin was trying to explain. Evolution starts with a single celled organism and shows how that could develop into all the species we see today. Saying that the Theory of Evolution is incomplete because it does not address these things is like saying that the Theory of Gravity is incomplete because while it does tell you how the planets revolve around the sun, it doesn’t tell you where the matter for the sun came from.

I don’t know how many of you have been following the Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed movie, a “documentary” featuring Ben Stein spouting conspiracy theories that would make the Area 51 nuts blush. I’ve been following the whole thing pretty closely for the past couple of months, but apparently it has been news for almost a year now. In the movie Stein, who we all grew up loving as the monotone teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, makes the claim that the “scientific intelligentsia” has been expelling and persecuting anyone who so much as mentions the idea of Intelligent Design. He goes on to attack Darwin, going so far as to blame him for the holocaust.

The movie is supposedly coming out today, opening in 1000 theaters, which is pretty big for a documentary; compare it to the less than 900 that Fahrenheit 911 opened in. While I have been following the whole thing pretty closely there is no way I’m going to see the movie until I can see it without helping to fund such a despicable organization. The makers of Expelled went out of their way to deceive some of today’s leading scientists and Intelligent Design skeptics (such as Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers) to appear in the film and then selectively cut from their interviews to make them sound as bad as possible. The makers even ironically expelled PZ Myers from a screening of the movie while he was waiting in line to get in, even though he followed the same online ticket application as everyone else, then claimed PZ had tried to sneak in uninvited. Somehow they missed Richard Dawkins who was standing right next to him, and were quite surprised when Dawkins started asking questions at the Q & A session at the end of the screening.

There are several other silly things done by the makers, such as using music from The Killers and John Lennon without getting permission and copying an animation produced at Harvard without permission; as well as the normal things you’d expect from any conspiracy theory makers, like planting people in the audiences of screenings to make sure they asked the right questions. Some of the people who got blindsided by the film makers have compiled a website, Expelled Exposed, dedicated to showing the truth on the subject. There you can see the real stories about the people claiming that they’ve been thrown out of science, and read about some of the other stupid things the filmmakers did.

Now, I know I’ve made many claims about how ridiculous this whole thing is, but let me just tell you why. The spark that ignited the flame of this post came from a Ben Stein interview on CNN that I saw while I was at the gym. I was on the stair maste… punching bag, minding my own business, and I look up on the TV and see Ben Stein’s beautiful mug staring at me.

I had headphones on, and the volume on the TV was turned off, but CNN was providing us with closed captioning, so I turned my attention to the TV for a bit. CNN played a little snippet of the movie, showing someone who claims to have gotten thrown out of science for believing in Intelligent Design, and then the interviewer started asking Stein the normal questions about the movie. Stein referred to the movie as promoting free thought in science, and said that it brought light to all the gaps present in the Theory of Evolution. Some of these gaps he mentioned were how life began, where matter came from, thermodynamics, and other forces of the universe. He claims that these can’t be explained by evolution but they can be explained through Intelligent Design.

Well…at least that’s what I think he said. I’d prefer to think the people in charge of providing the closed captioning were on acid or something, because Stein is supposed to be an intelligent person who would know that evolution doesn’t explain these things because they HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH EVOLUTION! The beginning of life is abiogenesis, the origin of matter can be explained through quantum mechanics, thermodynamics has to do with heat, and other forces in the universe can be explained through other scientific explanations. Evolution is the theory of plant and animal life all being descendants of a common ancestor, getting to where we are now by natural selection and mutation. This is SIMPLE stuff Ben, c’mon now.

Furthermore, the science is not organized into a group of people who make all the big decisions. We don’t have an agenda against Christians, we don’t have group atheist meetings where we plot how to plant more fossils into the Earth to make it look like Jesus was a zombie raptor, we don’t worship Satan, and we’re not angry at God. The truth is anyone who could provide enough evidence against any scientific theory (including the Theory of Evolution) would be awarded with a huge medal and would go down in history as someone who changed science forever. This applies to Intelligent Design too. If you can provide substantial evidence for it, awesome! If not, stop wasting my time. The reason Intelligent Design isn’t and shouldn’t be taught in school science classes around the world is that it’s not science! In order for it to be science it has to follow the Scientific Method, as seen here:

1) Ask a Question
2) Do Background Research
3) Construct a Hypothesis
4) Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment
5) Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion
6) Communicate Your Results

Now kids, can we apply the idea that an “Intelligent Designer” (aka God) created the world and species as we see them today to all six steps here? No? THEN IT’S NOT SCIENCE. It is not a testable or falsifiable idea, so no matter how much evidence there is against it proponents of Intelligent Design can just claim that “the designer made it that way” or “the designer is hiding from us and he’s so much more powerful than us we could never find him.” I really don’t see why there’s any more of an argument than that. To bring Intelligent Design into the science class is to teach pseudo-science, to accept data even with a lack of empirical evidence, and to promote even more dumbing down of the culture.

Also, while we’re on the subject, for any of you who are thinking “But Evolution is just a theory isn’t it?” let me give you some insight as to what a scientific theory is. A scientific theory is a hypothesis that has a substantial set of facts and data based on empirical evidence supporting it. The Theory of Evolution isn’t questioned in science any more than Atomic Theory, the Theory of Gravity, or the Germ Theory of Disease. These are as close to fact as you can get in science. We can’t just create evolution in a test tube from single-celled organisms all the way up to humans. Creationists have been claiming that it’s “just a theory” and that there are “too many gaps” since Darwin first published his book, but the fact is that in the past 150 years all of Darwin’s predictions have come true, and there hasn’t been a single scientific discovery that goes against evolution. Scientists have had to make some changes to certain aspects of evolution, but that doesn’t mean the theory as a whole is wrong. The things that have been changed are things like which route a butterfly’s wings took to evolve. Other than the small things like that scientists do not disagree with the Theory of Evolution. The idea that evolution has too many gaps may have been valid 100 years ago, but today we have filled in most of those gaps with transitional fossils, as well as research in new fields of science such as genetics. The truth of it is fundamentalists will claim there are too many gaps until we’ve found a fossil from each generation from the first protein to humans. Even then there are some fundies who claim that the fossils were put there by Satan to confuse us.

Intelligent Design is not science. It is a scapegoat for religious people who refuse to think we evolved from monkeys and are desperately trying to cling to the notion that their 2000 year old book is still valid and that anyone who has wronged them will pay in the fiery depths of hell. I’m still hoping Ben Stein will pop up any day now and go “Just kidding!” Although, with all the terrible publicity they’re getting from all over for all their deception, this might do more to hinder the Intelligent Design movement than to help it. At least we can hope.