Creationist Hides Behind Boy Genius

First, a cutesy news story appears about an autistic boy genius named Jacob Barnett, who possesses a precocious knowledge of mathematics and who disagrees with aspects of the Big Bang Theory.  Then, Glenn Beck latched on to him like he’s a sign from god. In turn, a website — The New American— parasitically clings to the story in a way only a conservative rag could –it declares that Jacob’s work is somehow going to prove Biblical creation by disproving the Big Bang. And apparently, there’s no need for writer Raven Clabough to check her facts as to who first proposed the idea for an expanding universe. She just likes to shoot from the hip.

Christians worldwide should applaud Jacob’s intent to disprove one of the many theories put forth by atheists to explain away the Biblical creation. According to astronomer Paul Steidl, “The big bang was invented specifically for the purpose of doing away with the creation event. An astronomer would laugh at the naivety of anyone who chose to equate the two events.” [my emphasis]

I think Monsignor George Lemaitre, the Catholic priest and astrophysicist who first put forth the “hypothesis of the primeval atom”, which became the Big Bang Theory, would disagree about atheism’s contribution. And Fred Hoyle, the astronomer who gave the Big Bang its pejorative name, would also have to object on the grounds that one of the reasons he and some of his colleagues disliked the Big Bang Theory was because it sounded too much like a creation myth.

(And I was unable to find any source for an astronomer named Paul Steidl. I did, however, find the name linked with The Creation Research Society and its numerous, pseudo-scientific booklets on why astrophysics “supports” Biblical creation.)

A creationist like Raven Clabough pinning her hopes on a child by twisting his words and misinterpreting his intentions is pretty pathetic. A creationist having to rewrite history to do it makes it doubly so. And she shouldn’t bank on Jacob disproving the Big Bang just yet. In his own words he makes an obvious error:

“Otherwise, the carbon would have to be coming out of the stars and hence the Earth, made mostly of carbon, we wouldn’t be here. So I calculated, the time it would take to create 2 percent of the carbon in the universe, it would actually have to be several micro-seconds. Or a couple of nano-seconds, or something like that. An extremely small period of time. Like faster than a snap. That isn’t gonna happen.” [my emphasis]

If I remember correctly, less than one tenth of a percent of the Earth’s crust is carbon. Sorry, but as brainy as Jacob is, his parents should know better than to place this kind of pressure on him or to let him be around creeps like Glenn Beck.  They should take a lesson from Fleischmann and Pons, the two chemists who prematurely announced to the world in 1989 their “discovery of cold fusion.” Boasting before the evidence is in equals colossal embarrassment.

Welcome To The Kirk Cameron Zoo

In Kirk Cameron’s stunted imagination, “if evolution were true”, we ought to see “one animal transitioning into another”; for example, an individual crocodile literally transforming into a bird, with the intermediate being a Crocoduck, a perfect half-and-half creature, like a decimal half way between two integers. Well, tucked away in my childhood, toy depository, I have just such a creature. No, I have three such creatures. Welcome to the Kirk Cameron Zoo.

Behold, the magnificent Chickow

Recoil before the teetering Giraffant

Gaze upon the creepy Catogator.

The tragedy of Kirk Cameron is that he’s fixated on a definition of evolution that doesn’t exist in the real world, the adult world. Kirk, here’s a bit of advice from your own medicine cabinet –the Bible.

Corinthians 13:11 — “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

Religious Freedom By Popular Vote

Polls from Fox News and CNN indicate that around 60% to 70% of Americans disapprove of an Islamic community center being built in New York, blocks from Ground Zero.  A followup Gallup poll, though, shows 65% of Americans have only heard a fair amount, a little, or nothing at all about the issue.

Either way, I find it disturbing. The majority of Americans either think their petty sense of emotional outrage is more valuable than an unambiguous right of religious freedom, or they are opinionated on an issue they are not completely familiar with. The media has gleefully fanned the flames without clarifying the facts.

“Yes,” I hear the critics of the Islamic community center say, “we all have religious freedom.”

“But,” they add, “you should be polite enough not to use it when it offends us.”

Secular Time Travelers

My Vision Of Hell

Christians regularly tell me I’m headed for hell for being a freethinker. But when I try to imagine this fiery underworld, my mind falls short, and all I see is spending an eternity with them  –an army of pious brain-dead conservative robots, dressed in matching polyester outfits, oafishly shuffling about under twinkling chandeliers and gaudy lighting, to the most insidious, elevator music ever conceived. It’s an intellectually barren world where the only shape is a square. I’m afraid even considering its existence. Now, peer into my hell, if you dare.

Health Care CEO Misleads Using Numbers

Many opponents of health care reform are throwing numbers around, making it sound like the health care industry is barely profitable. They claim a 2-3% profit margin. It’s a half-truth –that 2-3% is, in fact, the percentage of total revenue, which is different from net return on investment. For example, CNN Business lists fortune 500 industries by profit margin of total revenue.

If I make $2 for every $100 I collect in revenue that’s 2%. But if I make $2 million for every $100 million I collect that also 2%.  If my operating costs are 20% of my gross profit (the insurance company average is about 17%), then in the former example my net profit is $1.60, a 400% return on my $0.40 investment. In the latter example it would be $1.6 million, also a 400% return. In both I keep 80% of the gross. In other words, the health care industry’s revenue is ginormous, and its operating costs are low. There’s tons of wiggle room for profit even with having to pay out medical claims.

No one would stay in any business with a 2-3% net return on investment when CD bank rates are 2.85% for a 5 year certificate. With those numbers a business might as well invest its money and do nothing. The real numbers show that the health care industry’s return on share holder equity is 16%. Not a bad return at all. But if you accept the profit margin lie, then the health care companies must be operating at a major loss, which we know isn’t true.

Ken Ham: The Cartoon – Part 1

The rugged gentleman on the left is Captain Ahab (as played by actor Gregory Peck), the obsessed whaler who hunts down Moby-Dick, the great white symbolic whale. The individual on the right is Australian-born conservative Christian, Ken Ham, the crazed founder of the infamous, Kentucky creation ‘museum’. Is it just me or is there a slight similarity between the two –in appearance and obsession level? If you don’t see it, then just pretend for the sake of the cartoon.

CNN Fails, Yet Again

CNN has put up a poll asking readers if they think time travel will one day be possible. And they qualify the results by stating that “this is not a scientific poll.” And here I was thinking the interns at CNN were all part-time physicists. Boy, do I feel ignorant. For tomorrow’s poll, I suggest the question – Will broadcast news ever recruit talent directly from high-school newspapers? But I’m also left wondering what would have happened if the readers had mistaken it for a ‘real’ scientific poll. Pandemonium, perhaps? I guess we’ll never know.

Will time travel be possible some day?

This is not a scientific poll

No 70% 21922

Yes 30% 9214

Total votes: 31136

This is not a scientific poll

//

Obama’s An Illegal Alien – His Real Birth Certificate Finally Revealed

(Click Picture To Enlarge)

Here we go. Obama’s real birth certificate is finally revealed. He was born in a foreign land in a galaxy far, far, far, far away. That’s why he’s of superior intelligence –and why his uber-detractors appear moronic in comparison. But not even Obama is perfect; he was born to parents who were only moderately telepathic. See, it’s right there on the form, plain as day, near the top -01001001001. And check out his given, middle name -011101101010. Ha, ha, ha! It’s the same as the last name of an infamous inter-galactic gangster who’s wanted in three systems for spice smuggling. And it’s all certified by an android registrar, there at the bottom. And androids don’t lie.

Obama Kenyan Birth Certificate Forgery

The hard-core birthers –the ones who are mulishly clinging to the belief that Obama was born in Kenya– are now waving  about an obvious forgery of a Kenyan, birth certificate, as proof of their conspiracy theory. Take a look at the so-called document. This is perhaps the first birth certificate I’ve seen that fails to mention any details of the baby –no weight, or race, or time of birth.  Obama’s mother was Caucasian and his father was black, and that certainly would have been recorded, especially in the 1960’s. Thousands of white Europeans were living in Kenya  –a British colony back then. A birth to a mixed-racial couple surely would not have gone unrecorded. But no section for entering race is even provided on the form. And no section is provided for the doctor’s name, signature, or office address. What’s most suspicious is the size of the paper and all the wasted space. Would a birth certificate from that time period would be printed on a full 8.5″ x 11″ sheet? –the document in question is clearly of those dimensions. My own birth certificate is a third that size. The whole point of using small paper is that printed records are traditionally stored in filing cabinets, or boxes, or large books, which take up space. So, the smaller the better. In a single lifetime, or beyond, how many times is an official, government copy of  a birth certificate going to be accessed — once or twice, or never? Searching through a filing cabinet full of 8.5″ x 11″ papers –which are generally stored horizontally –is highly inefficient, unless Kenya’s civil servants are trained to hold their heads tilted to one side for extended periods of time.

P.S.  Every popular conspiracy theory appears to contain the same contradiction. According to the theorists, the powerful conspirators are resourceful enough to orchestrate a grand lie, but not so much when it comes to keeping it a secret. They always leave a trail for the amateurs to follow. Not a very likely scenario.

All the other flaws in this forgery are listed here.