This first site is a veritable
goldmine of interesting quotes and observations and serves as an antidote to
the huge number of sites that blindly accept every single word of the
christian bible. The
Skeptic's Annotated Bible sets out its stall thus:
"For nearly two billion
people, the Bible is a holy book containing the revealed word of God. It is
the source of their religious beliefs. Yet few of those who believe in the
Bible have actually read it."
and furthermore;
"The SAB will help those who believe in the Bible to
honestly reconsider that belief. It will help those who are unfamiliar with
the Bible to resist the temptation to believe. And it will help those who have
already rejected the Bible defend their position. It is time for us all to
stop believing in, or pretending to believe in, a book that is so unworthy of
belief."
Having stated the goal so straightforwardly does the SAB deliver? On the whole
yes, but the framed interface is not particularly user friendly, although to
be true it is hard, at least for 80, to think of
a better method of representation. In order to "be a
self defense manual against biblical fundamentalism" the SAB has
resorted to a series of icons representing the subjects it wishes to
highlight. Some of the topics covered are
Absurdities,
Cruelty,
Insults to
Women,
Family Values
and
Intolerance.Those
readers who have trawled through the "good book", and not just the well-known
and heavily quoted passages, will realize that there is a mass of material
that belongs in these categories. There is also an icon for what is termed
Good Stuff,
in the writer's opinion. A click on this icon will lead to a long list of
biblical references on toleration, love, kindness and justice and other
admirable qualities. The sad fact is that this list is dwarfed by the entries
in the other categories. The unsuitability of the bible, when not
cherry-picked for the "good stuff", as a source of moral guidance and
instruction has been pointed out by 80 before, (Past View -
Baneful Biblical
Basis?) but, given the rise of christian fundamentalism and various
governments' kindly view of "faith-based" schooling, it is a point that needs
making over and over again. With this in mind
The Skeptic's Annotated Bible
is to be recommended as a useful and witty reaction to bible thumpers
everywhere and the
Science and
History section to creationists in particular.
Creation Cretinism
On a related note is the page entitled
Cretinism or
Evilution? from the Talk.Origins
Archive. This takes a detailed look at some creationist "tall tales" which
have been refuted convincingly yet continue to surface again and again in
creationist literature. Such old chestnuts as
Men over Ten Feet
Tall are given close and withering attention as is also the misquoting of
evolutionists in order to further irrational arguments. Talk.Origins itself is
"a Usenet newsgroup devoted to the discussion and debate
of biological and physical origins. Most discussions in the newsgroup center
on the creation/evolution controversy, but other topics of discussion include
the origin of life, geology, biology, catastrophism, cosmology and theology."
The Archive is fascinating - one for bookmarking.
Still with the creationist debate, here is the
Christian Geology Ministry performing semantic and other acrobatics to
reconcile an ancient planet Earth and creationism. The very fact they have to
push a specifically "christian" geology is weird - and what of "hindu" and
"islamic" geology - do they deserve a voice? The answer is of course no -
interpreting scientific evidence through the distorting mirror of any faith
immediately means you have left the world of science and reality behind and
anything goes. "God did it" as an explanation for natural phenomena is useless
for explaining anything. If you have a being (and a capricious and jealous
being at that) which can just make things happen by wishing them then
attempting to learn about our beautiful and dangerous Universe is just a waste
of time. The Christian Geology Ministry page has obviously taken a lot of work
to put together - sadly all of it pointless. Instead of trying to match
borrowed Mesopotamian creation myths, as reflected in Genesis, with the
findings of the science of geology and biology 80
feels the writer could have been doing something useful. ( Past View -
Dinosaur Hell Ark.)
To paraphrase Carl Sagan why should biblical claims be assessed with any less
plain common sense than that applied to say, the purchase of a used car?
"Creationists have often been criticized for failing to
present original research and evidence that would overthrow our contemporary
view of human origins in favor of another. However, this is not an entirely
fair accusation. The creation "science" field known as OOPARTS, or "Out Of
Place ARTifactS" is a lively area of study with numerous examples. This paper
will examine the most popular and least understood specimen, the Coso
Artifact."
The story goes that some collectors were looking for geological specimens, in
particular
geodes.
Later, upon examining their finds, an apparent geode. when sawn in two,
revealed what could only be an artifact. To be more specific inside they -
"did not find a cavity as so many geodes have, but a
perfectly circular section of very hard, white material that appeared to be
porcelain. In the center of the porcelain cylinder, was a 2-millimeter shaft
of bright metal. The metal shaft responded to a magnet. There were still other
odd qualities about the specimen. The outer layer of the specimen was
encrusted with fossil shells and their fragments. In addition to shells, the
discoverers noticed two nonmagnetic metallic metal objects in the crust,
resembling a nail and a washer. Stranger still, the inner layer was hexagonal
and seemed to form a casing around the hard porcelain cylinder. Within the
inner layer, a layer of decomposing copper surrounded the porcelain cylinder."
Mysterious indeed - especially when one of the discoverers quoted an unnamed
geologist as stating the outer crust of the "geode" had taken 500,000 years to
form! The current whereabouts of the Coso Artifact are unknown, and the only
extant member of the finders is not talking. Apart from an x-ray taken by
creationist Ron Calais which showed a little more detail that would appear to
be that - well it might anywhere other than the world of creationist anomaly
hunters. The Coso Artifact is often dragged out to bolster the wacky ideas of
those out to challenge what they term to be scientific orthodoxy - much like
the creationist "tall tales" mentioned above. Such fabrications are peddled
over and over again by folk such as
Dr
Donald Chittick who is up there with other peddlers of
unsubstantiated fantasies as Duane Gish (Past View -
Gong Design Promise).
Oh, and the best and most likely answer for what the mysterious Coso Artifact
really is? The answer is, at least to 80,
hysterically funny, and can be found by scrolling down to the bottom of
Stromberg and Heinrich's essay - but please don't do so without reading
through the preceding paragraphs. A page to treasure..............
Jurassic Art
On the subject of so-called OOPARTS try using
a good search engine (Google springs to mind) to turn up a staggering 3000
plus pages, sadly most not worth more than a glance. Suffice it to say there
is not one OOPART that has stood up to any kind of scrutiny - in the few cases
where the "artifact" is still available for examination. They seem as hard to
pin down as "alien
implants". The verdict on OOPARTS has to be one part gullibility, one part
wishful thinking, one part a sheer lack of information (and one part
con-trick?). For a credulous look at some OOPARTS do take a look at
anomalies-unlimited.com's
archaeology
page( which manages to refer to a Mayan carving as Aztec). Not really the best of evidence for technically advanced ancient
civilizations, biblical stories or visiting aliens or whatever is flavor of
the month right now.
Whilst looking for information on the above topics 80 came across a couple of sites that merit a knowing smile, a snort of
derision or a despairing sigh depending on your mood. The first seems to be
named for the NBC show mentioned earlier The
Mysterious Origins of Man . The opening statement seems to say it all -
"Join us as we examine controversial theories about
man's origins and evolution, new findings about Egypt, the pyramids and the
Sphinx, archaeological cover-ups involving ancient maps, dinosaurs and
megalithic structures in Peru.
Is the Sphinx thousands of years older than history tells us? Will the answer
be found by a similar Sphinx-like face photographed by NASA on Mars? Does the
essence of a simple flower have the ability to help cancer patients heal?
Curious minds can explore these and other sujects (sic)
that are reshaping our world."
The most original thing on the page are the Ica Stones
(Jurassic Art) which purport to show humans and dinosaurs cavorting together
and which many associate with the "Nazca
Lines Spaceport". For one view of the whole unlikely mish-mash do take a
look here for the work of
one Kathy Doore - but set your gobbledegook
filter on high - and look out for the
gliptoliths!
David and Edgar
Equally unintentionally amusing is
Top Ten Ancient
Civilizations With Advanced Technology by
David
Hatcher Childress. You know where you are when Childress is described as " Like a real life Indiana Jones, maverick archeologist"
- oh dear 80 feels a trip to fantasy land coming
on........ Childress' view of what constitutes interesting testimony is
instructive, when in a paragraph about the lost oceanic Uiger civilization
beneath the Gobi Desert (the what!) he calmly states "Edgar
Cayce once said that elevators would be discovered in a lost city in the Gobi
Desert, and while this has not happened yet, it is not out of the question."
Aah - 80 was waiting for someone to resurrect dear old
Edgar "Sleeping Prophet" Cayce -
here is what the Skeptic's Dictionary has to say about this "authority".
On inspection of of his short Ancient Civilizations piece 80 feels that Childress, whilst far from being
ANY sort of archaeologist, maverick or not, is definitely the perfect customer
for the used car that 80 has sitting on cinder
blocks outside.
Frightening Factoid
latest - (courtesy of the fine
NewsScan ) in an article on "for fee expert" web searching:
"Keen.com, the most popular person-to-person advice site
drew more than 2.6 million visitors in March, according to Nielsen, with many
of them looking for horoscope-related advice." (CNet
News.com 19 Apr 2002)
Quotes
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." Napoleon Bonaparte
"Tell that to Gregor Mendel, Shorty." Ross W Sargent
"Some people believe that uncritical thinking and false claims hurt no one but
the believer, but if the believer has the lives of many people under his
control, such nonsense can be disastrous." James Randi
"Plants are made on the third day before there was a sun to drive their
photosynthetic processes." (Genesis creation myth) from The Skeptic's
Annotated Bible
"If scientists can fool themselves, how much easier is it to craft arguments
deliberately intended to befuddle jurists or lawmakers with little or no
scientific background? This is junk science. It typically consists of tortured
theories of what could be so, with little supporting evidence to prove that it
is so. " Robert L. Park, Professor of Physics, University of Maryland and
writer of What's New sign up for his mailing
list - recommended
