Transcript: Why do people laugh at creationists? (Part 32)

Many thanks to Linda for supplying this transcript!

[0:00] Eric Hovind: “Now understand, evolution is NOT a science. It is a world view, just like Christianity is a world view. So how is somebody that looks at the world through the lens of evolution going to view life? How are they gonna answer the basic questions of life?”

“Who am I?”

Hovind: “Evolution tells us we’re just an accident, the result of random chance.”

[0:25] Thunderf00t: (Haha) The product of random chance, you say? Heh, yeah, sure the same way it’s random chance that day follows night.

[0:34] Well, for certain, both I and you are unique. But what is it that makes you unique? Is it your property, your technology, your spouse, or your siblings, your children? Or is it something more intrinsic like your DNA?

[0:50] Well it turns out your genome will fit, uncompressed, on about a gigabyte. But that’s not the part of the genome that’s unique to you. Virtually all of this is identical to that of your neighbors. The bit of the genome that’s unique to you is only about 10 megabytes. That means that your typical iPod with maybe 30GB of memory can store the genetic uniqueness of about 3,000 people on something that will fit in the palm of your hand.

[1:17] Now let’s follow that thought for a moment and say that the potency of a system is related, in a loose way, to the information within that system. Well, to be honest, the genome is basically only the instructions, if you like, for the ‘make-human’ process. And part of that make-human process includes the brain.

[1:36] Now, it’s kind of fuzzy to work out how much memory the brain has. But it’s typically estimated on the order of terabytes. Now the design of an informational storage device that can hold more information than that design itself is, not exactly an earth-shattering concept.

[1:51] For instance, the blueprints and design specs for the make-hard drive function are probably only on the order of a few gigabytes or so, and that’s massively smaller than the storage that these devices have.

[2:04] So is it your brain that makes you special? Well, it’s certainly a big part of it. But as individuals, humans are unimpressive creatures. They really only come into their own when they start to work in groups.

[2:18] For instance, one man versus a tiger is: one well-fed tiger, 100% probability. 10 coordinated people versus one tiger, is one nice tiger skin rug, 100% probability.

[2:33] This change in group behavior is doubtless due to tiny changes in the genome that promotes communal behavior. But this has a very large effect on the survivability of the individuals.

[2:44] For instance, 10 specialists, you know—the farmer, the farrier, the blacksmiths—that sort of thing, will carry significantly more knowledge than 10 individuals who do not work as a coordinated group. That is, they have better informational potential as 10 people all trying to remember specialized information than 10 people all trying to learn 10 times as much as will fit into their soft, squidgy human brains. You know, it’s that you do better with 10 specialists than you do with 10 jack of all trades, master of none types.

[3:19] But there’s more to it than working in teams. People die. And when they do, their knowledge is lost, via what’s taught to the next generation. However, when one of those individual’s immense stored media—you know: writing, disk drives, the internet, that sort of thing—everything changes. Knowledge from that point on is essentially accumulative AND exponential in nature. Knowledge enables large groups to coordinate and work together, and it enables machines that can do the work of thousands of men. It enables health care, clean water, understanding disease, and so on. So you see from these miniscule tweaks in the DNA, massive effects can ensue.

[4:02] Those relatively modest changes that promote group formation can greatly increase the potency of a community. After this genetic selection plays a diminished role, its selection criteria that determines who dies and who doesn’t is essentially down to the stored knowledge of societies. Communities that can treat small pox will survive better than those that cannot. Communities that can treat water survive better than those that cannot. Societies with WWII era weaponry simply cannot challenge modern military equipment on the battle field.

[4:35] But it’s the pace that this knowledge can be gathered at that’s the real knee-weakening factor. I mean, merely over the last few decades I’ve seen vast changes in our civilization. When I was young, there was no such thing as a personal computer. And now, just over one generation further on, it’s difficult to find ANY aspect of our lives that does not benefit from this technology.

[4:59] Our genetics are now essentially in a state of stasis when one considers the growth of the knowledge of mankind. Looked at in such terms, the potency of mankind is a product of several factors which contain elements that could be described both as genetic and group survival terms.

[5:17] However, one thing is overwhelmingly clear. And that’s for mankind, knowledge is the principle factor. Knowledge is the enabler of both society’s and the species. Knowledge is now the prime factor in deciding the survivability of individuals. Knowledge is the future, and intentionally, intellectually corrosive muppets like this:

[5:40] Kent Hovind: “I believe the Bible is the infallible, inspired, inerrant word of the living God. I believe it from cover to cover. Amen. And I believe the evolution theory that’s being taught in our schools is one of the dumbest and most dangerous religions in the history of humanity.”

[6:00] Thunderf00t: -just cannot be ignored.

[6:03] Presented with such arguments, it’s baffling that so many politicians do not have education; that’s the propagation of knowledge. And research, that’s the acquisition of new knowledge. And countering the disinformation sewn by pseudoscientists, that’s the top items on their agenda.

[6:22] Now let’s compare this previously presented perspective to that of a creationist:

[6:27] clip: “Who am I?”

Hovind: “Evolution tells us we’re just an accident, the result of random chance. But the Bible says we’re fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of our Creator.”

[6:40] Thunderf00t: (chuckles) Well, fundamentally, no. We are a hierarchical, social, species. Something an individual god can never be. It’s tautological that a single individual cannot form a hierarchical social structure.

[6:56] clip: “Why am I here?”

Hovind: “Evolution leaves us without an answer. There IS NO purpose to life.”

[7:03] Thunderf00t: Well, again—no. You HAVE a purpose AND a vested interest; and the benefit of the society that raised your living standards and life expectancy beyond any ramblings from any Bronze Age myth book.

[7:18] I mean, really it’s a direct challenge. Present anything in the Bible or similar that conveys what we are and how our species functions better than I have shown in this video. But again, it shows this harsh contrast.

[7:34] I could concisely and comprehensively convey complex concepts, clear of the confusion of convolutional clouding. But the Bible bombastically and bitterly bombs, as belied by its bleakly bad bungling. [Extra points for alliteration!]

[7:50] clip: “Where am I going when I die?”

Hovind: “Well, if evolution is true, don’t worry about it. You got nothing to lose. But if creation is true, you have everything to lose by not considering this fundamental question of life.”

[8:03] Thunderf00t: Well all this seems a pretty shallow and manipulative play on the sense of self-preservation that we must necessarily have. Well, at least why it’s those who don’t have one are unlikely to have lived long enough to watch this video.

[8:16] However, everyone watching this video does have a brain, and now that brain has been introduced to an overview of mankind and your position in it.

[8:26] Immortality is an elusive concept for volatile genes, organisms, organs, and ideas. Self-preservation is merely the introspective fear of the termination of an organ. But for those who perceive they’re part of an individual in the grand scheme of things, they gain an enhanced potential to shape the thoughts and behaviors of things long after their brain ceases to function.

[8:51] In this sense, for the lesser, as for the greater, the footprints of the individual in the sands of time will echo into the future. But ultimately, for reasons that should be explicitly clear in this video, Bronze Age religion is an inhibiting influence on the progression of mankind.

[9:08] Thankfully, in the open and free global forum of ideas this intellectually erosive concept is progressively more unviable, and I believe we serve the coming man, society and ourselves, in challenging it by decree of open contest.

God Loves you enough to BURN YOU WITH FIRE!: Transcript

Many thanks to Linda for providing this transcript!

[0:00] Thunderf00t: You know, I can put up with A LOT of fiction in a good story. Like blue god-like quantum men, or hundred year old girls fighting werewolves in subways. Or, people in computer games who can stop bullets if they believe it, and so on. However what I can’t take, even in a fantasy, is internal inconsistency. Like say, for instance when these agents—they can punch through walls—and they wanna kill everyone in this car, and this is what happens when he jumps on the first car; he utterly destroys it. And of course, that’s what happens when he jumps on the car with everyone in it he’s trying to kill, right? Nah, he just nimbly lands on the hood, merely making a mess of the paintwork, and so on.

[0:42] Or the time where the car he wasn’t trying to kill the people in is a mangled, bullet time wreck. In films, these are just kind of annoying and they’re called plot holes—it’s an internal inconsistency, and it’s the hallmark of bullshit. And people who can hold these internal inconsistencies in their mind in the real world—and even justify them—are idiots.

[1:05] So, let me just give you an example like: ‘my boyfriend only beats me because he loves me so much.’ Actually, no that’s a bad example because that’s pretty emotionally driven. Let me give you another example, that ‘God loves me so much, that he will torture me for eternity if I don’t do what he says.

[1:24] Huh, now that’s exactly the same thing just for the fictional character. Now it’s just come to me. I’ve got a famous example of this. Like when John Paul II claimed that it was a miracle that saved him from dying when he was shot, and that it was the Lady of Fatima who diverted the bullet away from a critical artery. To which Richard Dawkins famously retorted in The God Delusion that:

[1:48] clip from “Richard Dawkins Reads The God Delusion”: “When he suffered an assassination attempt in Rome, and attributed his survival to intervention by Lady of Fatima, “her maternal hand guided the bullet”. One cannot help wondering why she didn’t guide it to miss him altogether. Others might think the team of surgeons who operated on him for six hours deserve at least a share of credit.”

[2:19] Thunderf00t: Hell, if he wanted a miracle thing, why didn’t he just make like Neo? I mean believe me, if the Pope could do this, there would be a hell of a lot more Catholics in the wide world. But the reason I bring all this up is ‘cos this YouTube video I saw the other day.

[2:35] The creationist Kent Hovind is currently in jail after being convicted on a host of federal offenses mostly related to not paying his taxes. In fact, he’s been in jail for the best part of the last ten years. So some of the religious folks were discussing this:

[2:50] clip from “New 911 EMERGENCY! Dr. Kent Hovind 07/10/2014 Truth Serum Talk Radio Show Club Creation”: “And if you’re not everyone, priest [?] please lift him up in prayer. God has kept his hand of protection on Kent. Kent has been with some of the most violent offenders in this nation, and he’s not been harmed.”
“Mmhmm. Yes, exactly. And that just shows you the power of the Holy Spirit and the power of God at work here.”

[3:13] Thunderf00t: So did you get that? The fact that Kent has not been harmed in jail—just like tens of thousands of other prisoners who haven’t been harmed in jail—is actually the work of god. However, it would seem that even though god is powerful enough to keep Kent safe in prison, he’s not quite powerful enough to free him from prison.

[3:33] clip from “New 911 EMERGENCY! Dr. Kent Hovind 07/10/2014 Truth Serum Talk Radio Show Club Creation”: “But then again, you know, we do have an enemy and it’s not flesh and blood. Our adversary is the Devil and it’s his objective, um, to clearly to shut Dr. Hovind up and lock him away from the world so he can’t continue winning souls.”

[3:50] Thuderf00t: I mean, really, an all-powerful being who you think has personally intervened to keep you safe in jail, can’t get one man out of jail. I mean DAMN, the sheer self-centeredness of it all. If you’re gonna pray for something, DAMN pray for an end to childhood cancer! Not to get Kent Hovind out of jail. Or even better—get off your knees and actually DO something. ‘Cos as the old saying goes, a single pair of hands at work achieves more than a billion clasped in prayer.

Eric Hovind Confesses to being an Atheist!!!!

I greeted the materialization of pre-suppositional apologetics with glee. Creationists might as well have shouted it from the roof tops that they have been routed on every argument they have put forward to date, and so they are now reduced to this grotesquely unconvincing and childish argument that if they start with the presumption that god exists, then god exists.

Yup, pre-suppositional apologetics is an ‘argument’ that whatever you suppose exists, exists! I mean damn, it’s not like we can test those suppositions for validity against anything, like their value in reality or some shit.

So I had this PAINFUL discussion with Eric Hovind, in which I told him I assumed the universe exists. Why assume this? well how would you distinguish a ‘matrix style reality’ from reality? Well Eric, how would you?

After you have assumed the universe to exist, you then need to assume that you can create models about it, and that models with predictive capability are better than those that are not. These are self selecting criteria for beings that want to survive in such a universe, that is organisms that don’t assume they can learn something about the universe don’t survive long in an environment with those that do! (Yup, evolution FTW!)

One of the first models you establish is logic, and the utility of boolean operators like ‘true’ and ‘false’. These are all things Eric MUST have done to even pose his ‘killer’ question ‘is there such a thing as absolute truth?’

Merely asking the question implies a model forming approach to reality (implicit assumption), and indeed the very inclusion of the word true means that he has accepted models such as logic are an adequate way of describing the universe.

I guess it’s to be expected of the dogmatic that they will behave dogmatically, but Eric simply couldn’t handle the fact that this is how his brain worked, and how he models reality and thus his response to everything became ‘but you can’t be sure about it’, even after this has been explained to him a dozen time. In the end he made it up to FORTY EIGHT TIMES. Compulsive obsessives, this man is your GOD!

Even better, is if I adopt Erics ‘pre-suppositional’ position, that is whatever I presume is true, then I come to the startling knowledge that ERIC HOVIND IS AN ATHEIST.  Indeed if I start with the pre-supposition that Eric has confessed to being an atheist, then you KNOW that Eric Hovind has confessed to being an atheist! I know this is absolutely true because the Ghost that never lies told me it was absolutely true, further this was confirmed by title that is always accurate! hmmmm, yup, that’s Check-mate Eric!