Aron Ra

"If there really was one true god, it should be a singular composite of every religion’s gods, an uber-galactic super-genius, and the ultimate entity of the entire cosmos. If a being of that magnitude ever wrote a book, then there would only be one such document; one book of God. It would be dominant everywhere in the world with no predecessors or parallels or alternatives in any language, because mere human authors couldn’t possibly compete with it. And you wouldn’t need faith to believe it, because it would be consistent with all evidence and demonstrably true, revealing profound morality and wisdom far beyond contemporary human capacity. It would invariably inspire a unity of common belief for every reader. If God wrote it, we could expect no less. But what we see instead is the very opposite of that. Instead of only one religion leading to one ultimate truth, we have many different religions with no common origin, all constantly sharding into ever more deeply-divided denominations, seeking conflicting truths, and each somehow claiming divine guidance despite their ongoing divergence in every direction."

"The Bible was very definitely written by men, and not superior men either; far from it! This is why so much of it can be shown to be historically and scientifically dead wrong about damned-near everything back-to-front. We’re talking about people who believe snakes and donkeys can talk, who believe in incantations, blood sacrifice, ritual spells, enchanted artifacts, pyrotechnic potions, astrology, and the five elements of witchcraft. They thought that if you use a magic wand to sprinkle blood all over someone, it will cure them of leprosy. We’re talking about people who think that rabbits chew cud, and that bats are birds, and whales are fish, and that π is a round number. These folks believed that if you display striped patterns to a pregnant cow, it would bare striped calves. How could anyone say that who knows anything about genetics? Obviously the authors of this book didn’t."

"As a moral guide, [the Bible] utterly fails, because much of the original Hebrew scriptures were written by ignorant and bigoted savages who condoned and promoted animal cruelty, incest, slavery, abuse of slaves, spousal abuse, child abuse, child molestation, abortion, pillage, murder, cannibalism, genocide, and prejudice against race, nationality, religion, sex, and sexual orientation."

"Creationist Christians think that if the Bible is wrong, then God lied. They cannot accept that God could exist but the Bible be wrong because they can’t distinguish doctrine from deity. So it is a form of idolatry wherein the believers worship man-made compilations as though those books were God himself -because they think it is His word. But God never wrote or dictated any of the scriptures of any religion. Everything men chose to reject from or include in their supposedly “unalterable word” of whatever god was conceived, composed, compiled, translated, interpreted, edited, and often deliberately altered and enhanced by mere fallible men."

"Every religion boasts their own miracles and prophecies proving theirs is the truest faith. So its no surprise that Christians say the same things about their versions of God too. No religion is significantly different from any other in this respect. But whatever else may be going on, when men claim revelation from God, it usually means is that they’ve decided to promote their own biased and unsubstantiated opinions as if they were divinely inspired."

"If any god exists, and it happens that there’s only one of them, then surely every spiritually enlightened and visionary holy man from any nation or tribe should be able to sense it, if men can sense such things at all. And their scribes would write the scrolls seeking to make sense of it –however feeble an attempt that may be. Perhaps that’s why there are so many different religions; because no man can know the true state of God. There can only be one truth, and only one version of it. But rather than coming together, as everyone’s search for the one truth should, religions continuously shard further and further apart into more divided factions with mutually-exclusive beliefs, -and there are as many wrong interpretations as there people claiming theirs as the “absolute truth”."

"In reality, there is no such thing as “absolute truth”. Everything within the capacity of human understanding contains a degree of error, and everything men know to be true is only true to a degree. Everyone is inevitably wrong about something somewhere. We don’t know everything about everything. We don’t know everything about anything! And what we do know, we don’t know accurately on all points nor completely in every detail. Honest men admit this. Anyone claiming to know the absolute truth is not being honest, especially not when they claim to know anything about things which can only be believed on faith. Even if men were given genuine revelations by truly omniscient beings, they must still be filtered and interpreted by weaker minds influenced by our limitations, biases, and misimpressions, as well as linguistic and cultural barriers."

"Some argue that the Bible doesn’t really say some of the things we can prove that it does, while others are convinced that it clearly does say things that it doesn’t really even hint at anywhere. For example, the idea that there was no death before “the fall”. The Bible doesn’t say that. In fact, it says there was death before the fall, because Adam and Eve had to ingest and digest living cells in order to survive, the very definition of what it means to be an animal. The only way around that was to eat of the fruit of the tree of eternal life, which directly contradicts the creationist’s interpretation, because it wouldn’t need to be there if they already had eternal life. It is an obvious metaphor representing a choice, perhaps between innocence and responsibility. That too is an interpretation. But it was obviously not an actual deciduous plant!"

"If the Bible is interpreted literally, then it is clear that its authors believed that the world was a flat disc, which was originally said to be covered by a giant crystal dome. It was a common belief at the time in all the neighboring regions. But it was still wrong. The Biblical authors obviously knew nothing about the real state of this world nor the worlds beyond this one either. But we know what lies outside our atmosphere. And that proves that there is no water above where the firmament isn't, and no windows to let it drain in -if there was either water or firmament there."

"Many creationists say that it is impossible to understand or believe the Bible unless it is read “in the spirit of the holy ghost”. In other words, you must already assume its truth before you read it, and you have to read it through filters of faith because it certainly isn’t compelling on its own without those blinders on. If it doesn’t make sense, then you’ve got to convince yourself that you must not understand it properly, and you’ve just got to try to make yourself believe it anyway somehow. That is precisely why creationist faith is deemed ‘dogmatic’. But that’s also proof by admission that even a literal reading must be “interpreted”. So its very design is such that the Bible can not be either inerrant or “absolute truth”."

"Every religion claims to believe as they do because of reason, education, or intelligence given by their god in revelation. But whether they admit it or not, all of them are assuming their preferred conclusions on faith, and this would still be true even if all of their gods exist. Believe as hard as you want to. But convincing yourself however firmly still can’t change the reality of things. Seeing is believing. But seeing isn’t knowing. Believing isn’t knowing. Subjective convictions are meaningless in science, and eyewitness testimony is the least reliable form of evidence."

"Normally, anyone disreputable enough to flatly affirm such positive proclamations without adequate support would lose the respect of his peers and be accused of outright fraud; anyone but a religious advocate that is. When allegedly holy men do the exact same thing, then its not called fraud anymore. Its called “revealed truth” instead. That’s quite a double-standard, innit? Like when some minister gets on stage at one of those stadium-sized churches -to state as fact who God is and what God is, and what he wants, hates, needs, won’t tolerate, or will do -for whom, how, and under what conditions; they don’t have any data to show they’re correct about any of it, yet they speak so matter-of-factly. Even when they contradict each other they’re all still completely confident in their own empty assertions! So why do none of these tens of thousands of head-bobbing, mouth-breathing, glassy-eyed wanna-believers have the presence of mind to ask, “how do you know that?” Well, for all those who never asked the question, here’s the answer; they don’t know that! There’s no way anyone could know these things. They’re making it up as they go along. These sermons are the best possible example of blind speculation; asserted as though it were truth and sold for tithe. If anyone or everyone else would be called liars for claiming such things without any evidentiary basis then why make exceptions for evangelists? For these charlatans are obviously liars too! The clergy are in the same category of questionable credibility as are commissioned salesmen, politicians, and military recruiters."

"Belief may be either rational, or assumed on faith. But in either case, it doesn’t matter how convinced you are; belief does not equal knowledge. The difference is that knowledge can always be tested for accuracy where mere beliefs often can not be. No matter how positively you think you know it, if you can’t show it, then you don’t know it, and you shouldn’t say that you do. Nor would you if you really cared about the truth. Knowledge is demonstrable, measurable. But faith is often a matter of pretending to know what you know you really don't know, and that no one even can know, and which you merely believe -often for no good reason at all."

"... the fact is that while we have become the most religious of any of the predominantly Christian first world nations, (due to repeated surges in rural revivalism) the US in its infancy was once the most secular government in history. The original colonies were primarily peopled by refugees fleeing religious persecution in other countries. But almost upon arrival, the Puritans only continued that practice against native Shaman, then against Quakers, and even each other –over religious differences. Catholics to the South were even worse! The founding fathers however were largely Deists, the least devout form of theism. They were brilliant men who knew better than to let religion rule over law because theocracy has in all instances almost automatically violated human rights and it inevitably always does. Consequently, the irreligious and non-Christian framers of the American Constitution produced the first government ever to grant all its citizens the right to religious freedom, and they did so by forbidding the government from sponsoring or promoting one religion over any other. Because it is not possible to have freedom of religion without having freedom from religion."

"While scientists themselves may be religious men of many different faiths, their methodology was designed to be the antithesis of faith because it requires that all assumptions be questioned, that all proposed explanations be based on demonstrable evidence, and that all hypotheses be must be testable and potentially falsifiable. Blaming magic is never acceptable because miracles aren’t explanations of any kind, and there has never been a single instance in history when assuming the supernatural has ever improved our understanding of anything. In fact such excuses have only ever impeded our attempts at discovery. This is one of many reasons why science depends on methodological naturalism; because unlike religion, science demands some way to determine who’s explanations are the more accurate, and which changes would actually be corrections. Science is a self-correcting process which changes constantly because its always improving. Only accurate information has practical application. So it doesn’t matter what you wanna believe. All that matters is why we should believe it too, and how accurate your perception can be shown to be. So you can’t just make up stuff in science (like you can in religion) because you have to substantiate everything, and be able to defend it even against peers who may not want to believe as you do. Be prepared to convince them anyway. Its possible to do that in science because science is based on reason. That means you must be ready to reject or correct whatever you hold true should you discover evidence against it."

"The problem creationists have with evolution is not that it challenges belief in God, because it doesn’t. Their problem is that evolution, -like every other field of science- challenges the accuracy and authority of the storybooks which creationists equate to God. Consequently, they tend to reject science almost entirely, and will often take all the sciences they perceive as threatening, and lump them all together under one heading, which they then refer to as “evolution-ism”. It’s an attempt to minimize the sheer volume of sciences allied against them. This is also part of their intentionally-erected illusion of equality; a false dichotomy that if their legendary folklore isn’t the absolute authority -being both literally and completely true, then God couldn’t create or even exist any other way."

"Creationists do deliberately misrepresent evolution many different ways in all their arguments. Even when they know better, they still say that evolution necessarily requires the godless origin of life from inorganic matter. But it doesn’t mean that, and never did. For one thing, all the building blocks of life were already organic long before the first organism, before anything could be considered alive. We’ve even detected vast amounts of organic matter in deep space. But creationists claim space evolved too, and that the big bang is part of the same evolutionary process as that which leads to new species on earth. So they often say that evolution requires “something coming from nothing”, which is ironic since creationists believe that themselves while strict scientists do not."

"Creationists habitually misdefine their terms, and commonly insist that evolution means “life from non-life”. But of course that’s not right either. Evolution explains how life diversifies, not how it began. Since evolution at every level is -by definition- limited to the variation of allele frequencies inherited over generations of living organisms, then it obviously can’t operate where no genomes yet exist. The evolutionary process starts with genetics and can’t start before it."

"Creationists often cite the laws of Thermodynamics as if they could somehow apply to the diversification of life on earth. They don’t. Lord Kelvin, the scientist who discovered those laws was a creationist himself. He was definitely opposed to evolution. But even he said that thermodynamics demands that the earth would still have to be on the order of twenty to forty million years old at least, even if the bowels of the world didn’t continue to heat themselves radioactively, which of course they do, and that pushes the age back much further."

"Abiogenesis has a decent amount of evidence behind it, but nowhere near as much as evolution does. So far we still don’t know which (if any) of the explanations posed for the origin of life is the most accurate one. But if there’s one thing the wisdom of the ages has taught us, it is that simply not yet knowing the real explanation is no reason to go and blame anything on magic. Besides, even if a god did appear and summon the first life into being billions of years ago, there is no question but that life has certainly evolved since then, and is still evolving now."

"Evolution does depend on mutations, and these do appear to be random. But each cumulative mutation may become significant factors for that organism once pitted against the dynamics of the environment in which they are introduced. Thus natural selection isn’t random; it’s deterministic. Many creationists will even admit this. And as some computer models have already shown, natural selection can actually even exceed the skills of human designers. In fact, natural selection can be so deterministic that it often leads to innovations which some perceive as evidence of intelligent design, and which even rationalists describe as though modified for intended benefit. Whether it is deliberately guided or not, there is definitely a system of design. But there doesn’t actually have to be any apparent intent or intelligence involved."

"Even before computers existed, we already knew that natural selection can, -and often will- produce results which look like trial-and-error experiments, including elements of seemingly-intentional fine tuning. But for all the implications of apparent design, there is never any indication of any intended goal or final product, nor any hint of infallibility on the part of the designer. In fact, so many errors of so many types are known that even if there was an unnatural architect using miraculous means instead of natural ones, then it seems that entity must either be blind and barely competent, or there are whole teams of designers working on separate lines competing against each other."

"Most Christians would say that evolution is one of God’s creative methods. But creationists reject that possibility outright, because the issue for them is not whether their God is true; but whether their dogma is true. It can’t be in any case. Even if current concepts of evolution were proven wrong tomorrow, Biblical creationism still couldn’t be true either, because it has already been disproved many times, many ways, and collapses on its own lack of merit. But of course believers can never admit that."

"Creationists insist that mutations are very rare and are usually, if not always harmful. But the fact is that the vast majority of mutations are completely neutral. They’d have to be because, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, there is an overall average of 128 mutations per human zygote! So apparently, in creationist terms, “very rare” means “more than a hundred per person right from the point of conception”. Because those are just the mutations we start out with. Our cells will mutate again 30 more times over the course of our lives, and some of these subsequent mutations can be passed on to our children too –usually with no more effect than those we recognize as family traits."

"The evolution of life is analogous to the evolution of language. For example, there are several languages based on the Roman alphabet of only 26 letters. Yet by arranging these in different orders, we’ve added several hundred thousand words to English since the 5th century, and many of them were completely new. The principle is the same in genetics. There are millions of named and classified species of life, all of them based on a variable arrangement of only four chemical components. For another example, we know that Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese all evolved from Latin, a vernacular which is now extinct. Each of these newer tongues emerged via a slow accumulation of their own unique slang lingo –thus diverging into new dialects, and eventually distinct forms of gibberish such that the new Romans could no longer communicate with either Parisians or Spaniards. Similarly, if we took an original Latin speaking population and divided them sequestered in complete isolation over several centuries, they might still be able to understand each other, or their jargon may have become unintelligible to foreigners. But they won’t start speaking Italian or Romanian because identical vocabularies aren’t going to occur twice."

"When something dies, it is usually disassembled, digested, and decomposed. Only rarely is anything ever fossilized, and even fewer things are very well-preserved. Because the conditions required for that process are so particular, the fossil record can only represent a tiny fraction of everything that has ever lived. Darwin provided many environmental dynamics explaining why no single quarry could ever provide a continuous record of biological events, and why it would be impossible to find all the fossilized ancestors of every lineage. But despite this, he predicted that future generations, -having the benefit of better understanding- would discover a substantial number of fossil species which he called “intermediate” or “transitional” between what we see alive today and their taxonomic ancestors at successive levels in paleontological history. In fact, in the century-and-a-half since then, we’ve found millions of evolutionary intermediaries in the fossil record, much more than Darwin said he could reasonably hope for. There are three different types of transitional forms and we have ample examples of each. But creationists still insist that we’ve never found a single one, because what they usually ask us to present are impossible parodies which evolution would neither produce nor permit."

"No matter what, creationists will not admit that anything we ever find can fulfill Darwin’s prediction of transitional intermediates. This is why creationists demand only monstrous absurdities or issue challenges they know still couldn’t be satisfied no matter how true evolution may be; because they know already that whatever they insist on seeing today we may show them tomorrow, and if that happens, they’ll have to make up new excuses for why it still doesn’t count. So they won’t request to see anything evolution actually requires, and they usually won’t define any criteria they would accept either, because they already know they won’t accept anything even if we show them everything they ever ask for."

"Many people think there are no transitional species because the only fossil forms they’re aware of at all are a handful of plastic pieces in a prehistoric play set. They’ve no idea how rich the fossil record is! We know of several hundred species just within dinosaurs, to say nothing of the thousands of examples of each of hundreds more taxa apart from that. Experts estimate that all the collective genera still roaming around now only amount to about 1% of all the species that have ever lived. Practically everything there ever was ain’t no more. Every species living today has definite relatives both extant and extinct, and evident in the fossil record. And in one sense, all of them, even the things still alive, count as transitional species."

"Demanding an “ape-man” is actually just as silly as asking to see a mammal-man, or a half-human, half-vertebrate. How about a half dachshund, half dog? It’s the same thing. One may as well insist on seeing a town half way between Los Angeles and California. Because the problem with bridging the gap between humans and apes is that there is no gap because humans are apes –definitely and definitively. The word, “ape” doesn’t refer to a species, but to a parent category of collective species, and we’re included. This is no arbitrary classification like the creationists use. It was first determined via meticulous physical analysis by Christian scientists a century before Darwin, and has been confirmed in recent years with new revelations in genetics. Furthermore, it is impossible to define all the characters exclusively indicative of every known member of the family of apes without describing our own genera as one among them. Consequently, we can and have proven that humans are apes in exactly the same way that lions are cats, and iguanas are lizards, and whales are mammals. So where is the proof that humans descend from apes? How about the fact that we’re still apes right now!"

"We don’t believe this because we want to! And why would we want to? We believe it because we can prove it really is true, and that applies to everyone whether you want to believe it or not. We’re not just saying you’ve descended from primates either; we’re saying you are a primate! Humans have been classified as primates since the 1700s when a Christian creationist scientist figured out what a primate was –and prompted other scientists to figure out why that applied to us. It wouldn’t be this way if different “kinds” of life had been magically-created unrelated to anything else; not unless God wanted to trick us into believing everything had evolved. Because the phylogenetic tree of life is plainly evident from the bottom up to any objective observer who dares compare the anatomy of different sets of collective life forms. But it can be just as objectively confirmed from the top down when re-examined genetically. This is why it is referred to as a “twin-nested hierarchy”. But there’s still more than that because the evident development of physiology and morphology can be confirmed biochemically as well as chronologically in geology and developmentally in embryology. Why should that be? And how do creationists explain why it is that every living thing fits into all of these daughter sets within parent groups, each being derived according to apparently inherited traits? They don’t even try to explain any of that, or anything else. They won’t because they can’t, because evolution is the only explanation that accounts for any of this, and it explains it all."

"Creationists insist that macroevolution has never been observed, and the excuse they use to deny that it has requires the addition of a bogus condition that simply does not apply. Creationists argue that evolution can only occur within “definite limits”, and then only to subtle variance within their “kind”. They say new diversity is limited to rare and unviable hybrids between those “kinds”, and they usually say that the emergence of new species is impossible. No “Darwinist” would ever say any of these things."

"Creationists may refuse to acknowledge geologic time scales, and cannot admit that any new organism might be unable to interbreed with the stock from whence it came because their sacred fables say they were “created each after their own kind”. But of course they can’t say what a “kind’ is either, because it’s impossible to identify any point in taxonomy where everything that ever lived isn’t evidently related to everything else. So they largely ignore phylogenetics altogether. Creationists have to deny macroevolution for the same reason they have to deny transitional species, not because these combined realities can only indicate an animal ancestry, but because either one alone proves that such is at least possible, and creationists are not permitted to admit even that."

"If it is possible to walk twenty feet, it’s possible to walk twenty miles. So creationists insist there must be some “definite boundary” blocking the evolution of new “kinds”. But they won’t say where or what that boundary is. Creationists habitually misdefine their terms –if they can be forced to use definitions at all, because they will not be accountable. They can’t be, because they’ve decided in advance never to change their minds even if they’re proven wrong. If they were to find out that macroevolution was ever actually seen and proven to have happened for certain, their cultish faith would still forbid them to admit it. Instead they’d have to redefine their terms, to “move the goalposts” to some higher taxonomic level –but not so high as to have to admit where humans belong in the families of apes."

"Macroevolution is properly defined as the emergence of new taxa at or above the species level. The only time creationists will use the proper definition is when they are as-yet unaware of the fact that speciation has already been directly-observed and documented dozens of times –both in the lab and in naturally-controlled conditions in the field. In fact, we’ve seen it so many times we’ve had to categorize recurrent types of macroevolution we’ve seen so often repeated. Once creationists find out about all this, their first reaction is to use the excuse that some newly evolved species of fruit fly or fish somehow still doesn’t count because it’s “still” a fly or it’s “still” a fish. Well of course it is! Evolution couldn’t permit them to be anything else. Creationists demand that the new species be so different from their parents that one can’t even tell they’re related. The irony there is that evolutionary theory never suggests that one “kind” of thing ever turned into another, fundamentally-different “kind” of anything, not unless you ignore all the intermediate stages –which of course creationists do."

"To comprehend evolutionary Theory, one must first understand that it’s only ever a matter of changing proportions –altering or enhancing existing features to build on what is already there. Developmental biology, genetics, and comparative morphology combine to confirm many of these taxonomic stages such that organs do not seem to have appeared abruptly or fully-formed as if out of nowhere, because there is an implied evolutionary origin evident in every case. Even the transition of fish-to-tetrapods, dinosaurs-to-birds, or apes-to-men are each are just a matter of incremental, superficial changes being slowly compiled atop successive tiers of fundamental similarities. These represent monophyletic clades which will forever encompass all the descendants of that clade. This is why birds are still dinosaurs, and humans are still apes, and both are still stegocephalian chordates."

"Throughout history, there have been many scientists who believed the universe was “created” in the same sense that Christian proponents of natural sciences still believe today. But those men who believed in God and made historic contributions to science still relied on necessarily natural methodology because that is the only way science can progress. In many cases, they found natural explanations for things previously believed to be miraculous, and they only succeeded when they did not allow religious convictions to subvert or inhibit their inquiry. None of them were able to vindicate the Bible stories, and their efforts to do so only ever indicated another origin. Thus these men wouldn’t have supported creationism as we know it today, and many of them wouldn’t have been creationists if they’d understood evolution."

"Owen believed in common archetypes rather than a common ancestor, and his conduct presents an archetype of the modern creation scientists, except that they submit to peer review rarely, (if ever) and none of them are experts in anything. They’ve never produced any research indicative of their position. They cannot substantiate any of their assertions, and they’ve never successfully refuted anyone else’s hypotheses either. But every argument of evidence they’ve ever made in favor of creation has been refuted immediately and repeatedly. All they’ve ever been able to do was criticize real science, and even then the absolute best arguments they’ve ever come up with were all disproved in a court of law with mountains of research standing against their every allegation. Yet creationists still use those same ridiculous rationalizations because they will never accept where their beliefs are in error! Their only notable strength is how anyone can be so consistently proven to be absolutely wrong about absolutely everything, 100% of the time, for such a long time, and still make-believe theirs is the absolute truth. More amazing still is how often they will actually lie in defense of their alleged truth. Every publication promoting creation over any avenue of actual science contains misquotes, misdefinitions, and misrepresented misinformation, while their every appeal to reason is based entirely on erroneous assumptions and logical fallacies. There is a madness to their method, but it is naught but propaganda."

"Creationists contend that they don’t believe in magic. But “speaking” anything into existence is an incantation, and the Bible is full of spells of one sort or another. Animating golems, or conjuring interdependent systems, and causing complex organisms to appear out of thin air -are each logically implausible and physically impossible according to everything we know about anything at all, yet this is exactly what religiously-motivated pseudoscientists actually promote! How do we test these ideas? How can we tell them apart from any of the thousands of fables men have concocted for the ghosts and gods of other religions? How can we tell whether any of this is even real, and not something someone just made up? Because despite anyone’s assertions of personal conviction, it is impossible to distinguish miracles from subjective impressions imagined out of nothing. In the realm of fantasy, it’s easy to demonstrate psionic talents, astral entities, and magical manifestations. Until they do that in reality too, then science has nothing but nature to work with."

"Fraudulent evangelical charlatans often say that creationism is scientific, but there’s utterly no verifiably accurate evidence behind any of their assertions, and no way to construct any hypotheses to explain any of their claims because no experiments could possibly support them, and faith prohibits believers from ever admitting when their notions would be falsified. Creationists are therefore unable to add to the sum of knowledge and instead only offer excuses trying to actually reduce what we already know. They’ve no way to recognize their own flaws and won’t correct them, so they can neither confirm nor improve their accuracy. But that’s all real science is or does. Consequently, since the dawn of rational thought, the advancement of science has been retarded by the minions of mysticism, and profound revelations have often been opposed or suppressed by the greater part of the dominant religion, because dogmatic faith is not based on reason and zealots will not be reasoned with."

"Science is a search for truth –whatever the truth may turn out to be, even if it’s evidently not what we wanted to believe it was. In science, it doesn’t matter what you believe; all that matters is why you believe it. This is why real science disallows faith, promising instead to remain objective, to follow wherever the evidence leads, and either correct or reject any and all errors along the way even if it challenges whatever we think we know now. But creationist organizations post written declarations of their unwavering obligation to uphold and defend their preconceived notions, declaring in advance their refusal to ever to let their minds be changed by any amount of evidence that is ever revealed. Anti-science evangelists display their statement of faith proudly on their own forums, as if admitting to a closed and dishonest mind wasn’t something to ashamed of or beg forgiveness for. They don’t want to do science. They want to un-do science! They try to segregate experimental science from historical science, ignoring the fact that both are based on empirical observations and both can be checked with testable hypotheses. Worse, they want to redefine science in general so that astrology, subjective convictions of faith, and excuses of magic can supplant the scientific method whenever necessary in defense of their beliefs. They’re only open to critical inquiry so long as that is not permitted to challenge the sacred scriptures nor vindicate any of the fields of study to which they’re already opposed. In short, everything science stands for, -or hopes to achieve- is threatened by the political agenda of these superstitious subversives."

"You can believe whatever you like. As long as you admit that it is a belief, you don’t have to defend it. But if you assert your belief as a statement of fact, then you do have to defend it! Stating anything as definitely true when there is insufficient evidence to back it –is dishonest. Making such positive proclamations without any evidence at all is a matter of faith. And promising in advance to forever defend an unsupportable a priori preference even against an avalanche of evidence against it -is apologetics, which is all creation “science” really is."

"It is no hoax that mammalian embryos temporarily have pharyngeal pouches, which are morphologically indistinguishable from the gill slits in modern fish embryos, and that the divergence of development from there matches what is indicated in the fossil record. This is fact, not fraud. And none of these facts should be true unless evolution were true also."

"The scientific process of peer-review seeks out and exposes fraud by design. But antievolutionist arguments are withheld from peer-review because they are driven entirely by frauds including misstatements, out-of-context quote-mining, and contrived or distorted falsehoods, and terms erroneously redefined into instigative reactionary nonsense unintelligible as anything other than propaganda. In short, if creationists knew how to expose a fraud, they wouldn’t be creationists anymore."

"Convicted fraud and pseudoscience charlatan, Mister Kent Hovind argues that what has already been directly-observed and shown to be certainly true is (in his opinion) impossible, and the only option he thinks is possible is that an imperceptible (and possibly imaginary) mystical being poofed everything out of nothing by magic. The irony is that what he proposes is physically impossible because it defies all natural laws, and it’s logically implausible since it has neither precedent nor parallel anywhere in reality to imply that it could still be true anyway. Where is there evidence anywhere that such a thing actually exists, or that anything even could have any of these abilities?"

"The evidence of evolution, and even the event of evolution itself, –the proof of it- are both directly observed, and testable, and demonstrably factual. But religious beliefs are none of the above and never have been; they’re assumed on faith. Whether or not these beliefs turn out to be correct, they are asserted as true without justification in the form of evidence."

"It is also important to remember that evolution works like any other aspect of real life, in that not everything progresses or progresses at the same speed. It's just like at work: some employees may suddenly excel, soaring through the corporate ranks while others may be in the same position doing the same old thing as long as they're there. Some even get demoted. Not everything moves in the same pace or in the same direction, and some don't seem to change much at all."

"Lizards don't look anything like dinosaurs. Why doesn't anyone understand this?... Ignore what you've seen in the cheesy old movies made by those who don't know anything; there's not even one dinosaur that looks anything like a lizard. It's so obvious it bothers me that no one can see this."

"Every feature that is known to exist in every bird universally accepted as such is also found on dinosaurs: four-chambered heart, fused caudal vertebrae, gastroliths, even the avian respiratory system have all been found on fossil theropods, especially dromaeosaurs and maniraptors. You can distinguish birds among dinosaurs, but it is no longer possible to distinguish birds from dinosaurs."

"Once upon a time, the founder of Protestant Christianity, said that doctors were fools, for treating diseases, as if they came from material causes. Then, Louis Pasteur disproved that, and came up with something, gonna love this, he called it "Germ Theory." Germs are still a theory! Atomic Theory is still a theory. Theory of gravity has never been proved."

"A theory, is a body of knowledge, that is supportive of, and explanative of facts. Scientific laws are included within a theory, facts are included within a theory, that's why you have the theory of evolution, the theory of gravity, the theory of relativity. There is no concept in creationism, which meets any of the qualifications of a scientific theory, none. You have no facts, you have no laws, you have no evidence, you have no explanative power. All you have, is whatever science can't explain, you pretend you can."