Bad Arguments

Creationists start from a faulty premise, but putting that aside, here are some arguments they should avoid:

"NASA computers, in calculating the positions of planets, found a missing day and 40 minutes, proving Joshua's "long day" and Hezekiah's sundial movement of Joshua 10 and 2 Kings 20." Not promoted by major creationist organizations, but an hoax in wide circulation, especially on the Internet.

Essentially the same story, now widely circulated on the Internet, appeared in the somewhat unreliable 1936 book The Harmony of Science and Scripture by Harry Rimmer. Evidently an unknown person embellished it with modern organization names and modern calculating devices.

Also, the whole story is mathematically impossible. It requires a fixed reference point before Joshua's long day. In fact we would need to cross-check between both astronomical and historical records to detect any missing day. And to detect a missing 40 minutes requires that these reference points be known to within an accuracy of a few minutes. It is certainly true that the timing of solar eclipses observable from a certain location can be known precisely. But the ancient records did not record time that precisely, so the required cross-check is simply not possible. Anyway, the earliest historically recorded eclipse occurred in 1217 BC, nearly two centuries after Joshua. So there is no way the missing day could be detected by any computer.

Note that discrediting this myth doesn't mean that the events of Joshua 10 didn't happen. Features in the account support its reliability, e.g. the moon was also slowed down. This was not necessary to prolong the day, but this would be observed from Earth's reference frame if God had accomplished this miracle by slowing Earth's rotation."

They do, however, still try to propagate other junk ideas:

"There are gaps in the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 so the Earth may be 10,000 years old or even more." This is not so. The language is clear that they are strict chronologies, especially because they give the age of the father at the birth of the next name in line. So the Earth is only about 6,000 years old.

AnswersinGenesis.org:
Arguments we think creationists should NOT use

Homeland Security Innocent

Remember the story about the kid who wanted to read Mao's little red book and was visted by the Feds?
It wasn't true.

"In Thursday's retelling of the story, the student added several new twists, ones that the professors and journalist had not heard before. The biggest new piece of information was an alleged second visit of Homeland Security agents the previous night, where two agents waited in his living room for two hours with his parents and brother while he drove back from a retreat in western Massachusetts. He said he, the agents, his parents and his uncle all signed confidentiality agreements that the story would never be told.

He revealed the agents' names: one was Nicolai Brushaev or Broshaev, and the other was simply Agent Roberts. He said they were dressed in black suits with thin black ties, "just like the guys in Men in Black."

He had dates and times and places, things he had signed and sent back in order to receive the book. The tale involved his twin brother, who allegedly requested the book for him at UMass Amherst; his uncle, a former FBI attorney who took care of all the paperwork; and his parents, who signed those confidentiality agreements.
But by now, the story had too many holes. Every time there was a fact to be had that would verify the story -- providing a copy of the confidentiality agreements the student and agent signed, for example -- there would be a convenient excuse. The uncle took all the documents home to Puerto Rico, he said.

What was the address of the Homeland Security building in Boston where he and his uncle visited the agency and actually received a copy of the book? It was a brick building, he said, but he couldn't remember where it was, or what was around it.
He said he met a former professor at the mysterious Homeland Security building who had requested a book on bomb-making, along with two Ph.D. students and a one pursuing a master's degree who had also been stopped from accessing books. The student couldn't remember their names, but the former professor had appeared on the Bill O'Reilly show on Fox News recently, he said.

The former professor's appearance on The O'Reilly Factor did not check out.

Other proof was sought.

Were there any copies of the inter-library loan request? No.

Did the agents leave their cards, or any paperwork at your home? No.

His brother, a student at Amherst, told Dr. Williams that he had never made the inter-library loan request on behalf of his brother.

While The Standard-Times had tape recorded the entire tale on Thursday, the reporter could not reach the student for comment after he admitted making up the story. Phone calls and a note on the door were not returned."

SouthCoastToday.com 12/24
and
SouthCoastToday.com 12/30

Liars and gody liars

The bible was written by bloggers who copied each other and then added material to prove their own points.

"Bart Ehrman says the modern Bible was shaped by mistakes and intentional alterations that were made by early scribes who copied the texts. In the introduction to Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman writes that when he came to understand this process 30 years ago, it shifted his way of thinking about the Bible. He had been raised as an Evangelical Christian."

Listen to Terry Gross at this site:

Bart Ehrman's 'Misquoting Jesus'

Take that Mel Gibson

The God Who Wasn't There

In this provocative, critically acclaimed documentary, you will discover:

• The early founders of Christianity seem wholly unaware of the idea of a human Jesus
  
  
• The Jesus of the Gospels bears a striking resemblance to other ancient heroes and the figureheads of pagan savior cults
  
  
• Contemporary Christians are largely ignorant of the origins of their religion
  
  
• Fundamentalism is as strong today as it ever has been, with an alarming 44% of Americans believing Jesus will return to earth in their lifetimes

And God simply isn't there

Dazzling motion graphics and a sweeping soundtrack propel this uncompromising and taboo-shattering documentary that Newsweek says "irreverently lays out the case that Jesus Christ never existed."

The Rapture

Kids say the stupidest things

It's terrible when children go off the deep end.

Luckily people can see that a drug addicted, mass murder, or just plain idiot kids are not the necessarily the fault of parents.

Offspring often just fall in with the wrong gangs or work for anti-American news organizations..

"He's lost it. The man has lost it. What can I say," the younger Wallace lamented to WRKO Boston radio host Howie Carr on Friday.

"He's 87-years old and things have set in," the Fox anchor continued. "I mean, we're going to have a competence hearing pretty soon."

Wallace Jr. quickly dispelled any notion that he was joking. When Carr suggested that his comments were likely to be covered by NewsMax, he responded: "You know what? Fine. Go ahead. Call them. That's fine. I'll stand by that."

Returning to the topic of his father's competence, Wallace Jr. explained: "He's checked out. I don't understand it," beyond the fact that Wallace Sr. has "problems with the war."
"I don't know why he said what he said," he added.

On Thursday, the elder Wallace told the Boston Globe that if he had the chance to interview President Bush, he'd ask:

"What in the world prepared you to be the commander in chief of the largest superpower in the world? In your background, Mr. President, you apparently were incurious. You didn't want to travel. You knew very little about the military. . . . The governor of Texas doesn't have the kind of power that some governors have. . . . Why do you think they nominated you? . . . Do you think that has anything to do with the fact that the country is so [expletive] up?"

Chris Wallace: Mike Wallace Has 'Lost It'

10 Commandments parsed

George Carlin

About 5,000 years ago a bunch of religious and political hustlers got together to try to figure out how to control people and keep them in line. They knew people were basically stupid and would believe anything they were told, so they announced that God had given them some commandments, up on a mountain, when no one was around.

Well let me ask you this- when they were making this shit up, why did they pick 10? Why not 9 or 11? I'll tell you why- because 10 sound official. Ten sounds important! Ten is the basis for the decimal system, it's a decade, it's a psychologically satisfying number (the top ten, the ten most wanted, the ten best dressed). So having ten commandments was really a marketing decision! It is clearly a bullshit list. It's a political document artificially inflated to sell better. I will now show you how you can reduce the number of commandments and come up with a list that's a little more workable and logical. I am going to use the Roman Catholic version because those were the ones I was taught as a little boy.

Let's start with the first three:

I AM THE LORD THY GOD
THOU SHALT NOT HAVE STRANGE GODS BEFORE ME

THOU SHALT NOT TAKE THE NAME OF THE LORD THY GOD IN VAIN

THOU SHALT KEEP HOLY THE SABBATH

Right off the bat the first three are pure bullshit. Sabbath day? Lord's name? strange gods? Spooky language! Designed to scare and control primitive people. In no way does superstitious nonsense like this apply to the lives of intelligent civilized humans in the 21st century.

More:
The Ten Commandments

Volunteer Idiots

Just when you thought the evil right evangelicals couldn't get more silly!
Horror and Pity

"What do the interns do?

The main goal of the JHOP internship is to expose interested persons to the unique worship and intercession model of JHOP. During this time, we fully expect that each intern will experience personal growth in areas of devotion to the Lord as well as discovering and using their gifts in the context of community and the house of prayer. The interns will also be intricately involved in the operation and experience of the prayer room as they receive continuous teaching and guidance from Lou Engle and other national and local leaders.

They dance. They chant. They pray. They scream. They bob back and forth, they jump up and down. They're like a mob of dervishes, hysterical, freakish, ineffectual, deluded."