This is not from The Onion

Bryan Fischer proves rather conclusively that there are plenty of ways to be more stupid than previously thought possible.  I've seen plenty of clips of him on Right Wing Watch wherein he tries to make the claims that bigotry and misogyny are all good things because Jesus.  Or that gay marriage is actually a socialist conspiracy.  Or that birth control causes tiny micro-babies to collect inside the womb...  seriously, this guy is for real.  And then I see this gem, and I'm just speechless.

Unfortunately, the video is apparently blocked from embedding, but here's the direct link --
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP8bM87awiY

I...  what on Earth...?  Seriously?  I don't even think a word can be invented to sufficiently describe the stupidity I see here.

First of all, even if we didn't already have gluons in the standard model,  and have experimental observations of their existence...  let's just say that this is an unsolved problem.  So he's using the god of the gaps fallacy, no surprise there...  but then there's the little point of "now we know".  Now?  People looked into the atomic nucleus and only now found Jesus?  Boy, that guy's pretty tiny if they had to look down there to find him.

Now Jesus is an elementary particle?  Gluons died for my sins?

Lo, is it not written?
That the lord so loved his baryons that he sent down his own vector gauge boson to the nucleus to save all matter!  Right.  Sure.

In Where I Throw My Hat in the Ring...

I'd largely been avoiding this whole drama with Thunderf00t and his recent outlashes against feminists, most of which got him kicked off of Freethoughtblogs.  Main reason I was avoiding it is because it's something of a childish battle with both sides being partially right, and neither side having the maturity to own up to that reality.  Recently, however, one of the fields in which it had taken a turn was in regards to video games.  As a former game developer myself, I've seen all sorts, and it's hard for me to say I have never had any skin in that game.

Well, there's little doubt that the gaming community is filled with its abject lack of maturity, or at least it seems that way.  It's more accurate that the "mature" gamers are also the ones who tend to keep their mouths shut, so of course, it seems like the crowd is made up almost entirely of idiots.  But I think you can say the same thing about almost any online community,  so you've got a bit of a serious sampling bias here.  And the problem with all the people who have a problem with it is simply that they don't acknowledge that bias or look any deeper...  making them ultimately come off every bit as stupid as the communities they impugn.

Worst of All

A recent question was posed to a group of atheists on a forum about the worst bits of the Bible.  Among the common counterarguments that any nonbeliever has against the "objective morality" argument is that the Bible espouses some pretty darn vile moral lessons.  Rarely do we ever get into the topic of whether or not objective morality even exists, because that is a topic that can trail off on a wide variety of tangents that can't really be resolved that easily.  The reason the "Biblical morality is reprehensible" argument is used is because it at least points out that even if there is such a thing as objective morality, the Bible certainly isn't the source of it.  The other thing is that it's patently obvious to anyone who has bothered to read the darn thing that it has some pretty deplorable attitudes about just about everything from slavery to misogyny and rape.  That, and it is lacking sorely in even offering a position on several moral question that we know ought be addressed, such as pedophilia or domestic violence.

So the question that was posed partly split the case two ways between Old and New Testament.  Presumably, this is because of the argument about how the Old Testament was a lot meaner and harsher than the New Testament...  despite the fact that the New Testament is where the concept of Hell and eternal torment enters the picture.  It was to ask what people thought were the worst moral precepts of two sections of the Bible.

Review : Richard Swinburne's Existence of God

Often times, it is easy to criticize the religious for not being fully abreast of the knowledge on a subject that they so easily reject.  Pretty much all creationists who reject evolution reject some caricature of it.  When those who are more knowledgeable about a subject try to explain these sorts of things to the ultra-dense monuments of ineffable stupidity like Ray Comfort, they will simply have no clue what you're talking about, and take their ignorance as the correct attitude...  because apparently, ignorance is a good thing in their world.

Still, there are always times when the apologist tries to lead you down a path of looking up various sources in favor of their position.  Now, most of the time, it's someone I'm actually already familiar with like Lee Strobel, Dinesh D'Souza, Ravi Zacharias, or William Lane Craig.  When someone points me to a source I haven't actually read, though, it would be hypocritical not to actually follow through while simultaneously demanding the same of others.  And if there's a halfway decent argument (which there typically is not), or at the very least, if it takes some effort to find the flaws, then I'll at least look for it.

So I was suggested to read one of the works of Richard Swinburne which I actually hadn't read before -- The Existence of God (2010).  At least insofar as Swinburne's antics in the public eye, I've not been impressed, but supposedly he applies more rigor when he's writing.  Fine, here's my review.

More On the Dishonesty of WLC

William Lane Craig never seems to appear in any venue without demonstrating his inordinate intellectual dishonesty.  Even when given an relatively short amount of time to work in, he still shows he can be as dishonest in a moment as he is throughout an hours-long debate.  This is nothing really new per se.  Apologists everywhere constantly change the rules of discourse just in order to give room to their propositions because they know they have no capacity to stand up to a strict rigor.  Of course, in any instance that the bullshit is exposed, they always change their story, and without exception, they distort the position of their opposition.

WLC does enough of this in the course of a debate that were he Pinocchio, his nose would grow long enough to circle the Earth.  But he's deft enough in doing so, that most of the time, his lies are difficult to refute on the spot, though they are easy to refute when you have unlimited time to look up sources.  When he does lie about the opposition, he does it somewhat more brazenly, and it is in an effort to goad a response so that his opponent spends more time defining his own position than in arguing back (since a debate has limited time for each side, this leaves less available time to really form an argument).

Nonetheless, it's always funny to see him go and just keep on demonstrating that he has no concept of intellectual honesty, and basically never will.  It's a wonder that he ever got anybody to debate him given his track record.