IDoNotGetIt

I just read this article on foxnews.com. Texas Teen Basketball Player Dies During Tourney

Here is a quote from that article.

“Robert was a great, great human being,” Escobar told The Monitor. “I’m very, very sad. The Lord asked for an angel to come to Him today. He took care of his body. He ate all the right things. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

Then don’t explain it! Most likely it was caused by an undiagnosed preexisting condition but this repulsive person admits that he doesn’t know what he is talking about immediately following his idiotic explanation for why it happened.

Read this and tell me what is wrong with it: “I do not have an explanation for what caused this event, so let me offer this explanation for what caused this event” As far as reasoning goes, it’s a logical fallacy called Argument from Ignorance. When put that way, isn’t it clearly nonsense?

It never fails, if you want a taste of stupid just go to Ray Comfort, he has an all-you-can-eat buffet.

I decided to take a peek at his blog today to see what kind of lies he is telling and not surprisingly he has some related to the earthquake in Japan.

“But atheism says that there is a good reason for the 8.9 earthquake killer quake and the horrific Tsunami that followed. It is nature making improvements. Everything is getting better. People being crushed to death or drowned in a Tsunami is just part of the work of nature.”

It is unbelievable how religious nuts have the ability to project their own stupid beliefs onto others so they can dismiss it and completely miss the irony of doing so. Assuming that there is an “atheist movement” that can collectively “say” anything, it certainly would not say anything in the preceding paragraph. As a matter of fact, replace nature with God and it sounds exactly like what a Christian might say. I can’t count the number of times I’ve read or heard “It’s all part of God’s plan” in reference to the earthquake.

His point, however, is merely to get to talk about a subject that he knows absolutely nothing about – despite having it explained ad nauseam – but which he loves to talk about as if he has a deep understanding of the subject. It’s a common misconception that ignorant people (willfully in this guys case) have about evolution. Neither evolution nor nature have a goal of making anything better in the sense that he is using the word better. If I were to describe evolution as the process of making living organisms better – and I wouldn’t, but for the sake of argument if I did – better would not necessarily mean smarter, stronger, tougher, longer life, etc. (i.e. the things that we humans think would be better). Evolution simply makes the changes necessary to make a population more likely to survive, it may be the case that a smaller, weaker and dumber version of humans have a better chance of surviving in a million years on Earth and if that is the case, that is what will evolve. “Better” to evolution is not necessarily what we would consider better.

At any rate, rest assured that the earthquake in Japan has nothing to do with evolution. Earthquakes are an unfortunate but inevitable consequence of living on a planet that is itself quite alive and active. Atheists, like most decent people, are horrified by the effects that the earthquake and tsunami have had in Japan.

Ray would know this if he weren’t the stupidest person I’ve ever witnessed. That isn’t hyperbole either. Discounting people who are literally mentally handicapped in some manner, I’ve never heard of anyone so incredibly willfully ignorant, he is un-teachable. His mind is a solid block of “God did it” that can’t be reasoned with.

I’m paraphrasing this so I don’t have to post the whole paragraph. This is from a one star review of Carl Sagan’s Demon Haunted World on Amazon. The commenter was trying to make the point that Sagan puts forth invalid comparisons and gives this as an example.

“The story about Mary appearing in Lourdes, France is based solely on faith, whereas the tabloid headline about NASA hearing voices in space is based on nothing.”

It’s just so damn sad that he doesn’t realize that faith is the same as nothing!

I was approached by a Christian proselytizer this weekend.  I was at a car show and saw him coming toward me with his hand full of pamphlets.  I thought to myself, if this man ask me about Jesus, I’m not going to just take his paper and move on. 

So I didn’t, and I’m so glad I didn’t  because he offered me the most rock solid evidence that Jesus was not only a real person but that he is a god as well.  Are you ready for this proof?  Hold on to your britches folks.  He, excitedly, reached in his pocket and pulled out… [drum roll]… a dollar bill. 

That’s right, he is so deluded that he thinks the year printed on that dollar bill proves that Jesus existed and was a god.  I didn’t need to talk to him for many more seconds to realize that he was a nutty as they come so I told him to move on and tell his lies to someone else.

I am not an unemotional person.  But I do balance my emotions with pragmatism.  Yesterday I read a news article about a horrible situation involving exchange students being mistreated by their host families.  At the end of the article, I had to choke back tears when it wrote that one of the teens, who had been malnourished and neglected in the home he was staying in, was still thankful to the US for the opportunity to come to our country and get a good education.  Now keep in mind that the conditions that he had to endure here were so bad that criminal charges are being brought against people.  I had a pretty strong emotional reaction to that.

Now today, I’m reading an article about the Sears Tower getting renamed the Willis Tower.  The absurdity of being outraged over this renaming is mindboggling.  Here are a few quotes from the hyperemotional over reactors.

“You don’t mess with a landmark. It would be like trying to change the name of the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s a reference point. I think it’s disorienting to try to change the name.”

“Chicago is going to lose a big part of what is its identity and I don’t know what’s going to fill that space.”

Listening to that last one, you’d think they’re tearing the building down.  Why do people overreact to their emotions like this? 

Death is another one that people overreact to way too much.  You’d think that people just started dying a few years ago.  Everyone who has ever lived has died or will die.  This isn’t a surprise, yet people act surprised by it everyday.  People say things like “children shouldn’t die”.  Ok, it’s sad when a child dies but it happens.  Whether it’s accidents or disease or whatever, children and adults die.  I don’t understand why people can’t just be sad that it happened, outraged when necessary (if it was preventable or murder, etc.) and move on.  It’s not the end of the world, check your emotions, they are useful as long as you don’t overreact to them.

Foxnews headline…

Girl in Fatal Wreck Sent Text Message Moments Before Crash

So this 16 year old girl crashed her car and died of head injuries.  Her mother “hopes the accident will make other people think before texting and driving”.  That’s good advice, not paying attention to what you’re doing while driving is dangerous and texting requires a significant amount of attention so you shouldn’t do it while driving right?  Right.

Oh WAIT a minute, how bout this little insignificant detail…

Authorities say Preuss had been driving drunk and was speeding.

Well, what do you think had more of an important role in this crash, the texting or the inebriated, speeding teenager?  The police say that the texting “may have contributed to the crash” but when you are drunk and speeding, having to pee real bad could contribute to a crash.  It doesn’t matter what else she was doing, the drunk speeding is, most likely, the reason she is dead, not the texting!

I hate the news media.