Jacob's story

Our favorite fundamentalist scumbag nut job, Eric Hovind wrote this post.  It's good to note that in this post, Hovind mentions donations four times, three are explicitly asking for donations.  This is just one ~9 paragraph post.  

The fun begins in the first paragraph though.  Young Jacob had lived a life of ignorance er...  Solid Christian teaching, such that he "had never questioned God’s existence. He had no reason to do so."  No reason besides general intellectual honesty that is...  

Couldn't the story just end there?  Well if it wasn't for the evil indoctrination of the PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM, yes.  Unfortunately, we want a society of well informed people, not creationists.  (Did I say that?)  

In Jacob's first year in middle school, he learned science.  How awful!  His teacher had the audacity to teach evolution as scientific fact (which of course it is, but how dare they teach it that way).  The post here says the teacher ridiculed the children who asked about creationism, and if that's true, that's poor teaching.  But more often than not in these cases, the 'ridicule' is not that of the teacher but that of science.  

On a side note, Jacob is quoted here as saying "My teacher told the whole class evolution was logical and true so we believed her."  That's pathetic on so many levels.  The quote has an implicit and unwarranted disdain for evolutionary theory, Jacob is pretty much just ready to believe whatever he's told is true (thank that Christian education I mentioned earlier).

That was just the first paragraph guys.

I need to quote this, so my apologies...

“A few months later, I realized I’d peeled away from Christ so I began searching for truth online. And that’s when I saw the Creation Today video on YouTube. As I watched, I learned my teacher’s ‘facts’ did not prove her theory. Thank you so much! I am now a strong believer in Christ!”

This is a whole load of fail, and here's why.  When Jacob "peeled away from Christ", he started "searching for truth online".  That implies an assumption that Christ is true/truth.  It would be acceptable if he said that he was seeking answers to get a more accurate understanding of the world, but he exposes an intellectually dishonest position in that line.

If one is searching for truth on the internet, anything to do with Creation Today is probably something that should be avoided.  The word 'truth' is loaded, but when discussing scientific matters like evolution, accuracy is a valid term.  So if one is looking for accurate information on the internet, it is readily available.  It's available in the form of papers and scientific articles by credible people.  Hovind is not credible.

Jacob says that as he watched Creation Today's video, he learned that his "teacher's 'facts'" didn't 'prove' 'her' theory.  

1. Creation Today is not a credible source.
2. Those facts are well evidenced.
3. The facts are part of the theory, not an intended proof of it.
4. Calling evolution "her theory" is incorrect.

The next paragraph discusses the SYSTEMATIC INDOCTRINATION OF CHILDREN with evolution and that it supposedly causes people to slip away from Jayzus. 

Hovind writes a line in this that betrays his ignorance very plainly.  I quote "When you and I were in school, evolution was presented as theory but now this falsehood is taught as fact."  As so many people have pointed out (including directly to Hovind), a theory is a set of facts that explains those facts.  As such, a demonstrable theory can be factual.  Evolution is both a theory and a fact.  It is a theory because it is a compilation of facts that has explanatory and predictive power and it is a fact because it is demonstrable.

That's shortly followed by something like;

PLEEZ GIMME MUNEE, I RILLY NEED MUNEE

Some inspiration on how if you just keep your faith strong, you can maintain your ignorance indefinitely...

Followed again by;

PLEEZ GIMME MUNEE, I RILLY NEED MUNEE

Hovind puts his signature and title on the post, followed by;

PLEEZ GIMME MUNEE, I RILLY NEED MUNEE

Thank you, Eric Hovind, for this Gem.

Coming in at the bottom...

You have a dirty mind.  That sentence was supposed to end with 'of the IQ spectrum.'  So, coming in at the bottom if the IQ spectrum is...  YouTube's MegaSage007!  A self-proclaimed geocentrist, young-earth creationist and intellectual.  None of those claims are true.  In a discussion I was having with him, he dropped this gem.

You were born into Bible morality for the obvious reason your Creator has written his Moral Book, and if you insist on deciding what your morals will be from day to day, from situation to situation subjectively - you will serve the Devil and his doctrines including psychology, feminism, heliocentrism, sodomy, abortion on demand, the big bang, abiogenesis, evolution, cosmology, etc and your God given conscience will be ruined by your violating it til you could have no morals at all.

You just can't make this stuff up!
From the top...

• What is it to be born into Bible morality?
• The 'Creator' never put a pen to papyrus.
• Having reasoned morality is different from having no morality.
• Psychology is an area of study, not a doctrine.
• Feminism is a doctrinal worldview in a way.  It's more an out-out-control rights group.  I'm a secular humanist egalitarian, feminism isn't one of the flags I fly.
• Heliocentism...  Reality, not a doctrine  If you can out-of-hand deny physics, astronomy and your kindergarten education, I guess geocentrism could seem valid.
• Sodomy?  Who cares how people like to stimulate that nerve?
• Abortion on Demand...Actually an issue, but not a doctrine.  Before the fetus has developed into a viable organism and is a mere cell mass, I see no problem with disassembling it.
• The big bang...  Not a doctrine.  If you don't take science seriously enough to recognize how the solar system works at an elementary level how do you expect to understand quantum mechanics?
• Abiogenesis, a hypothesis, not a doctrine.
• Evolution, a theory, not a doctrine.
• Cosmology, an area of study, not a doctrine.
• etc, probably not doctrines either.

My God-given conscience?  Do we really want to get into conscience numbing events?  If we do, the Bible is right there...

"your God given conscience will be ruined by your violating it til you could have no morals at all."
WHAT...THE...FUCK!
Sure, conscience can be suppressed by certain actions are habits, but that's not a loss of morality.  It's a loss of empathy perhaps.

The persecution of Christians

I went to church and other Christian events.  The idea that Christians are persecuted in America is alive and well.  Look at how right they are too.

It's illegal for a Christian to hold public office in 6 states.
Even where it is legal, declaring one's self a Christian is political suicide.
There are no/extremely few overtly Christian television or radio channels/programs.
Being a Christian can ostracize an individual from the other 90+% of society.
People are calling for all Christians to leave America.
There has never been an overtly Christian president.
Christians regularly get kicked out of their homes for their religion.
Christians get death threats regularly for nothing but their belief.
Christians are the least trusted group in America.
There are people out to blacklist all Christian-owned companies.
"Christians...should not be considered citizens"

See all that persecution?   Actually...replace Christian with secularist/atheist in each of those.

We live in a society where being a theist and more specifically a Christian is the norm and accepted default.  I'm sorry that your end times pity party doesn't really play out, but this is reality.  Religious privilege is alive and well.  A legislation can make it to the house which would revoke the rights of any group on a theistic basis.  This isn't a new thing.  For as long as history can remember, people have been killing, torturing and invading each other based on differences of religion.  If humans are to progress as a race, we must abolish this nonsense.  Not abolish it with the sword, but with science, reason and evidence.  There will always be some people too into their beliefs to let go of them even long enough to take a critical look at them.  These people must be tolerated willingly, but eventually we can hope that their influence will diminish.

Cultural idiots

I only partly feel comfortable with calling the religious stupid.  That in turn is only partly due to the fact that I was religious.  I prefer not to walk around insulting myself in any sincerity, and I know I didn't get smarter as I became more secular.  Religiosity in America and other parts of the world is cultural.  A lot (I'd be alright with saying a majority) of people believe without properly understanding the foundation of their faith.  That can be demonstrated by most religious individuals one is likely to encounter on a day-to-day basis.  Many of the religious are also properly ignorant of basic science and replace an argument against a scientific principle with a remark based on their personal incredulity.  Philosophy isn't a strong suit with the typical theist or spiritualist, this also can be observed easily when idiotic questions about the evolutionary origin of morality come up.
I do feel comfortable with calling some individual theists idiots if they fit the criteria (and a disproportionate number do), but not simply on account of their religiosity.  I feel comfortable calling the theist ignorant, perhaps willfully so.  As the title implies however, there are many who fall into either of the significant categories I've mentioned.  These are the people who are taught from day one that a belief in some god is the pinnacle of their advancement as a human.  I object strongly to that, as the reader may or may not have discovered.  Frequently in such cases, critical thought is discouraged*.  The individual may be brainwashed all too literally into their belief**.  I hazard anyone who is eager to call the believer an idiot merely for their belief to think about everything that goes into keeping a religion alive.
Here's how it worked for me.  I was born into a predominantly Christian family.  From the time I exited the birth canal (if they waited that long), I was barraged with the baptist and young-earth mantra.  I soon picked up on it and got saved when I was 3 years old at a VBS.  I evidently don't remember much between then and when I was baptized at 5, a mistake which I may undo for personal and statistical reasons.  For some reason my parents saw fit to teach critical thinking along with religion, perhaps in their naivety suspecting that I'd forever hold religion above criticism.  I did the exact opposite, holding the opinion that keeping an idea from criticism is an insult to it's integrity.  Of course I did so with the express preconception that my particular brand of theism would stand where others so reliably fell.  I was ignorant...maybe a bit idiotic.  At any rate, I took on the track of 2 years to dismantle the wall of brainwash-fueled ignorance.  I'm now 17, going on 18 and an anti-theist.  I was very ignorant, but intellect is the capacity rather than the knowledge.