Attacking Darwin Doesn't Actually Accomplish Squat

You might not have heard much about Evolution Sunday. That's probably because 'Sane People Gather; Don't Say Crazy Things' isn't much of a headline. Evolution Sunday is a event where churches across the nation affirm their belief in the theory of evolution as a lead up to Darwin Day, the theory's author's birthday.

Which makes this bunch of horsecrap extremely funny:

National Review:

February 12 used to be known in classrooms across the nation as Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. But over the last decade, an increasing number of schools and community groups have decided to celebrate the birthday of the father of evolution instead.

The movement to establish February 12 as "Darwin Day" seems to be spreading, promoted by a evangelistic non-profit group with its own website (www.darwinday.org) and an ambitious agenda to create a "global celebration in 2009, the bicentennial of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origins of Species."

Darwin Day celebrations provide an eye-opening glimpse into the world of grassroots Darwinian fundamentalism, an alternate reality where atheism is the conventional wisdom and where traditional religious believers are viewed with suspicion if not paranoia.

Wait a second, if 'traditional religious believers are viewed with suspicion if not paranoia,' then how do you explain Evolution Sunday? The Evolution Sunday website tells us, "612 Congregations from all 50 States, the District of Columbia, the US Virgin Islands and five nations are currently scheduled to participate in Evolution Sunday 2007."

The key is the term 'traditional religious believers.' The National Review piece was written by John G. West, a senior fellow at Discovery Institute. DI is a fringe nut group of creationists who believe that the Bible is literally true, the great flood created the Grand Canyon, and the Earth is no more than 10,000 years old. So 'traditional religious believers' means crazies like Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and Ted Haggard. It means people who found the movie Jesus Camp hopeful and inspiring and not a frightening glimpse of the right wing robot factory. It means that rich tradition of religious fanaticism that can be traced back to Girolamo Savonarola and others who tried to put the brakes on the italian renaissance. Needless to say, this 'Discovery Institute' has never actually discovered anything.

So we're warned that Darwin Day was founded by -- eek -- atheists:

Perhaps in an effort to revise the image of Darwin Day as merely a holiday for atheists, last year a professor from Wisconsin urged churches to celebrate “Evolution Sunday” on or near Darwin Day. But the fact that some liberal churches have now been enlisted to spread the Darwinist gospel cannot cover up the anti-religious fervor that pervades the Darwinist subculture.

Darwin Day celebrations are fascinating because they expose a side of the controversy over evolution in America that is rarely covered by the mainstream media. Although journalists routinely write about the presumed religious motives of anyone critical of unguided evolution, they almost never discuss the anti-religious mindset that motivates many of evolution’s staunchest defenders.

See how that works? If a church supports evolution, it's a 'liberal church.' Why? Because he says so, I guess. He doesn't really offer any evidence of it, but that's probably habit -- DI spends most of its time nitpicking at the edges of evolution theory and never actually proves a damned thing themselves.

Which brings up an interesting point. Even if groups like DI could prove conclusively that evolution is false, it wouldn't do a damned thing to prove that creationism is true. It's like saying that if you proved conclusively that one plus one doesn't actually equal two, it proves beyond a doubt it equals three. There's still the huge logical leap that you've done absolutely nothing to close.

The reason for this is simple; when creationists do try to prove something, they put out gibberish.

WorldNetDaily:

A science student in Kentucky says when the Bible records God spoke, and things were created, that's just what happened, and he can support that with scientific experiments.

"If God spoke everything into existence as the Genesis record proposes, then we should be able to scientifically prove that the construction of everything in the universe begins with a) the Holy Spirit (magnetic field); b) Light (an electric field); and c) that Light can be created by a sonic influence or sound," Samuel J. Hunt writes on his website.

The only way they can get this stuff to work is to make one hell of a lot of unfounded assumptions -- why is the Holy Spirit a magnetic field, for example? Where's that in the Bible? And, if the Bible is literal truth, then light is light, not an electric field. In fact, if you really are interested in proving the Bible's literal truth, this guy's 'theory' is more than a little blasphemous. It's basically saying that there are things the Bible says that aren't true.

These people never practice intellectual honesty -- never. In dismissing Darwin Day, they have to gloss over Evolution Sunday and accuse the churches involved in it of the horrible crime of -- gasp -- liberalism. I've said it before, but it'd be one hell of a lot easier to take these morons seriously if they'd actually accomplish something.

There aren't any creation geologists working in the field, discovering oil and ore and other resources. These people aren't discovering cures for diseases. They aren't developing agricultural advances to help feed the hungry. Why?

Because none of their crap works.

So this is what they do instead. They smear people who don't believe exactly the same things they do. They attack established science with real world applications and smugly believe that this accomplishes something. They throw mud at Darwin and call it 'science.' They don't discover a damned thing and they name their BS think tanks things like 'The Discovery Institute.' They don't develop anything, they don't add anything to our library of knowledge, and they don't help one damned person in the world. They are useless.

While they're dicking around sniping at evolution, people who accept evolution are developing new treatments for disease. It'd be one hell of a lot easier to take morons like John G. West seriously if they'd actually do something.

But, of course, they won't. Because, again, none of this creation stuff works in the field. They'll scream at school boards, express outrage at judges, freak out when a museum puts up a Darwin exhibit, and try to paint churches who participate in Evolution Sunday as something other than 'real' christians. But they'll never, ever actually do anything with their so-called 'science.'

Mostly because there's no way they possibly could.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; science; evolution; Charles Darwin; Darwin Day; Evolution Sunday; The Discovery Institute is a BS public relations think tank that's never actually discovered a damned thing