FreeThinkerNZ Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 I guess this is my fundie sister's way of wishing me a Happy Easter: http://gbam.tv/question-asked-to-atheist-which-they-could-not-answer/ What would be a good oneliner to comment on her facebook post with? The video seems to imply just because some geology, chemistry and physics undergraduates couldn't answer some particularly loaded and inane questions, that Darwinian evolution is an unscientific belief based on blind faith, and therefore athiesm is unsupportable. I did enjoy seeing the incredulous you-are-an-idiot look in the eyes of the grey bearded biologist, however. Fundie sister does not yet know I have deconverted. I had been moving towards thinking that coming out to her would be a good idea. I'm not so sure now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator TrueFreedom Posted April 18, 2014 Moderator Share Posted April 18, 2014 Cute. If Ray Comfort gives her confidence, I'm not sure that there's any reasoning with her. I might, however, encourage her to watch the Bill Nye and Ken Ham debate: 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mymistake Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 Observable evidence that evolution is true- Flu shots. Why do we have to get them every year? Because, of course, the flue continues to evolve and new strains develop every day. These new strains can bypass defenses that killed their ancestors. That is why humans play catch up and put out a new flu vaccine every year. Today there are bacteria that have evolved to eat pollution and materials that did not exist prior to the 20th century. The guy in that video had it wrong. If we can't use evidence to observe evolution in the past then we can't use evidence to figure out what happened a few minutes ago. We wouldn't be able to convict any criminal. Also note that since the video is edited we have no idea how many atheists gave a good answer. The editor could have removed them all in an effort to make it look like the Christians stumped the evil scientists. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FreeThinkerNZ Posted April 18, 2014 Author Share Posted April 18, 2014 Cute. If Ray Comfort gives her confidence, I'm not sure that there's any reasoning with her. I might, however, encourage her to watch the Bill Nye and Ken Ham debate: Oh, was that Ray Comfort? Makes sense now, not him of course, but the stupidity of the video. I have heard of him and I know he is from NZ, like me and my sister, so she must have heard of him too. It just hurts to know someone you love is so gullible and deluded. Well, I wasn't much better, I admit. She is so much more fundie than I was as a xian. I know I can't change her but it still hurts to see her wasting her life. Her husband is emotionally abusive and she believes in pampering him and catering to his needs. She doesn't actually have space in her life for defending creationism. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
par4dcourse Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 Atheism, absence of belief in a deity, and evolution, the biological concept of genetic mutations over time are totally unrelated. We value logic and evolution is a logical principle so more atheists accept it than YEC retards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FreeThinkerNZ Posted April 18, 2014 Author Share Posted April 18, 2014 Atheism, absence of belief in a deity, and evolution, the biological concept of genetic mutations over time are totally unrelated. We value logic and evolution is a logical principle so more atheists accept it than YEC retards. They are unrelated, which is why it baffles me that creationists conflate acceptance of the theory of evolution with non-acceptance of claims of the existence of a deity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thurisaz Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 You're all approaching morontheism from a rational perspective. Big mistake To a hardcore authoritarian thinker (this usually, though not always, includes conservatives and morontheists) not the truth or fallacy of an argument, but its origin matters. Did the right führer say it? Then it's true. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DoubtingNate Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 I'm one minute in and so far they are answering lots of questions. I'd also like to see the deleted footage. The editing is too fast and seems disingenuous. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scitsofreaky Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 I'm one minute in and so far they are answering lots of questions. I'd also like to see the deleted footage. The editing is too fast and seems disingenuous. Oh, you can trust Banana Man, he wouldn't be dishonest 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thurisaz Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 Yeah man, creationists have never NEVVAH lied to promote their shit. NEVVAH. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mymistake Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 I'm one minute in and so far they are answering lots of questions. I'd also like to see the deleted footage. The editing is too fast and seems disingenuous. I'll just save you the time so you don't have to waste it watching the rest. Later on the interviewer asserts that we can't observe anything that happened in the past. 65 million years ago? You were not there so we can't observe it. Two millennia ago on Calvary? You were not there so we can't know what happened. Oh wait, somehow the Bible stories don't count. It's only science that doesn't work if we were not physically present in the past. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FreeThinkerNZ Posted April 18, 2014 Author Share Posted April 18, 2014 The main question in the video that Comfort didn't get an answer to because he asked the wrong people was the straw man argument that "you can't provide evidence of a change in kind, ie one species changing into another in a direct way so evolution is wrong". Am I right in assuming that the response that would have been given, and shown, if the question had been asked of qualified persons by an ethical reporter, was (better expressed by others) along the lines that evolution is such an extremely gradual process that we recognise that changes in kind occurred, gradually, and the evidence is there in the fossil record but it is not as simple as just saying one species turned into another overnight. Hopefully someone can express it more succinctly than me... my excuses are (a) I'm not a biologist and (b ) it's nearly 2am. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Overcame Faith Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 He never stumped the professors. They all gave good answers though Comfort did not like those answers. The only ones he seemed to stump, at least based on his highly edited video, were college students whom he approached apparently while they walked on campus. The way he approached them was unfair. He basically ambushed them and asked for something he knew could not be provided using his rules. No one can provide observable evidence of a change in kind because the process of evolution takes too long to observe it. So his trick was to ask a question that by it's very nature required the answer he wanted. The proper question would be, "What evidence is there that proves Darwinian evolution is true?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mymistake Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 Christians get their idea of "kind" out of the Bible. We've all been there so I'm sure you remember. Evolution is like the way a tree grows. The trunk comes out of the ground and then as it goes up it splits. As each section goes up after the split it branches out and splits again and again. There is no Biblical sense of "kind" in evolution. Instead you can see how many splits one group of animals are from another group. You don't have cats one day and the next day they morph into fish. But you can start with a general mammal creature and watch it split into other mammas that split and diverge and split and diverge over millions of years until we see all the different mammals that survived today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sdelsolray Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 Good responses so far. Underlying it all is that most theists, NZ's sister included, are tribal and xenophobia is the vehicle that compels them to reject non-members of the tribe as well as ideas, facts and reality which contradict the tribe's dogma. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Moderator florduh Posted April 18, 2014 Super Moderator Share Posted April 18, 2014 You're all approaching morontheism from a rational perspective. Big mistake To a hardcore authoritarian thinker (this usually, though not always, includes conservatives and morontheists) not the truth or fallacy of an argument, but its origin matters. Did the right führer say it? Then it's true. Bingo. It's something we all tend to forget at times. This is why I don't ever argue or discuss unless I'm just bored and feeling puckish. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DoubtingNate Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 Christians get their idea of "kind" out of the Bible. We've all been there so I'm sure you remember. Evolution is like the way a tree grows. The trunk comes out of the ground and then as it goes up it splits. As each section goes up after the split it branches out and splits again and again. There is no Biblical sense of "kind" in evolution. Instead you can see how many splits one group of animals are from another group. You don't have cats one day and the next day they morph into fish. But you can start with a general mammal creature and watch it split into other mammas that split and diverge and split and diverge over millions of years until we see all the different mammals that survived today. There is a good chance that any number of people interviewed were able to give that exact answer and then cut from the video. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJG Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 He never stumped the professors. They all gave good answers though Comfort did not like those answers. The only ones he seemed to stump, at least based on his highly edited video, were college students whom he approached apparently while they walked on campus. The way he approached them was unfair. He basically ambushed them and asked for something he knew could not be provided using his rules. No one can provide observable evidence of a change in kind because the process of evolution takes too long to observe it. So his trick was to ask a question that by it's very nature required the answer he wanted. The proper question would be, "What evidence is there that proves Darwinian evolution is true?" Yes, and he edited out all the ones that gave good answers to his questions or told him to fuck off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJG Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 What would be a good oneliner to comment on her facebook post with? How about "Ambushing people on the street with loaded questions so you can play 'Gotcha!' is a shitty way of determining the validity of something." 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FreeThinkerNZ Posted April 19, 2014 Author Share Posted April 19, 2014 What would be a good oneliner to comment on her facebook post with? How about "Ambushing people on the street with loaded questions so you can play 'Gotcha!' is a shitty way of determining the validity of something." I like it! I'm gonna let it go though. It's not the right time or way for me to come out to her. Even discussing evolution (which is not related to atheism) will likely take us to athiesm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skepticalme Posted April 19, 2014 Share Posted April 19, 2014 Evolution is observable through the fossil record. The fact that morphology has matched predictions made by evolution over eons is observable evidense. We don't discount evidense of stellar evolution simply because it happens over thousands of times a human lifespan. This whole viseo is based on the premise of "Did you see it first hand? No. Then it didn't happen." By the same metric, you can dismiss the Revolution, the Civil War or WWI. No one alive personally served in them so clearly they didn't happen. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thurisaz Posted April 19, 2014 Share Posted April 19, 2014 Who was it again who recently proposed that nice comeback? Can't remember... Morontheist "Were you there?" (usually to "debunk" evolutionary claims) You "Of course I was." Morontheist "Liar! You weren't there!" You "Oh really? How do you know? Were you there?" 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DoubtingNate Posted April 21, 2014 Share Posted April 21, 2014 Show them this. The way they keep asking for 'just one' piece of evidence shows that they have a profound misunderstanding of what evolution is, as well as impossibly arbitrary criteria for what can be considered 'evidence.' disclaimer: I made this image for reddit once but it never really took off. If you ever play on reddit, I'd love to see more activity on this if you are so inclined. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darklady Posted April 21, 2014 Share Posted April 21, 2014 Cute. If Ray Comfort gives her confidence, I'm not sure that there's any reasoning with her. I might, however, encourage her to watch the Bill Nye and Ken Ham debate: Oh, was that Ray Comfort? Makes sense now, not him of course, but the stupidity of the video. I have heard of him and I know he is from NZ, like me and my sister, so she must have heard of him too. It just hurts to know someone you love is so gullible and deluded. Well, I wasn't much better, I admit. She is so much more fundie than I was as a xian. I know I can't change her but it still hurts to see her wasting her life. Her husband is emotionally abusive and she believes in pampering him and catering to his needs. She doesn't actually have space in her life for defending creationism. Abuse and fundism go hand in hand... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mymistake Posted April 21, 2014 Share Posted April 21, 2014 Who was it again who recently proposed that nice comeback? Can't remember... Morontheist "Were you there?" (usually to "debunk" evolutionary claims) You "Of course I was." Morontheist "Liar! You weren't there!" You "Oh really? How do you know? Were you there?" That is brilliant. Thank you so much for sharing it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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