18 comments to “The Banana Man and his trained monkey go too far…”

1. Stardust:
   23 September 2009, on 3:38 pm

   It’s such bullshit when monkey boy says in the video that people can’t pray in public and kids can’t open a Babble in schools….I see people pray obnoxiously in restaurants often, and shouting their preaching on street corners. And kids can open Bibles in school when it doesn’t distract from what the teacher is teaching. Dumbass monkey boy!

2. J.H. Bowden:
   23 September 2009, on 5:21 pm

   If rationalists have no faith others will not act rationally — in the middle of the socialist-dominated university system, no less — one might as well give up.

   I just read Ray Comfort’s poorly conceived introduction. The cursory factual parts do not indicate how Darwin changed previous biology and opened new vistas of research– already, we have an introductory failure. Comfort then rambled on about abiogenesis, which has nothing to do with species differentiation, the subject matter of The Origin of Species. The disorganized presentation then takes a permanent detour, ranting about the supposed paucity of transitional forms, Darwin’s character, the relationship between deity and morality, and amateur efforts at comparative religion. Almost none of this makes any contact with descent through modification, which is the meat of Darwin’s theory.

   If students at Ivy League universities can’t figure out what’s wrong with Comfort’s attempted argument, then perhaps we should spend time teaching young people *how* to think, instead of *what* to think. I find it amusing how the left falls victim to its own romantic anti-rationalism, seeing all argument as propaganda, as if conclusions are more important than premises and the inferences drawn from them. This demonstrates a breakdown of both our Greek and Christian traditions. Few want to follow evidence, no matter where it may lead. Fewer want to extend charity to the opposite side of a dispute. That, perhaps, is Comfort’s greatest sin.

3. J.H. Bowden:
   23 September 2009, on 5:22 pm

   first sentence should be “If rationalists have no faith others will act rationally….

4. Bill the Splut:
   23 September 2009, on 6:17 pm

   I will also make it clear that Hitler abused his theory, and is also irrelevant to whether or not it’s true.

   I myself will also make it clear that the Bible says that you should go to Hell if you eat a grape that fell on the ground or be a man who shaves, and that daughters should get daddy drunk and get pregnant by him, and that if your kids make fun of some guy’s bald spot, G*D will send she-bears to eat two dozen of them! It is also irrelevant to whether or not it’s true!

   Oh, wait, it IS true! It’s right there in the Bible!

   Sorry for the interruption. Please go back to stoning the adulterers.

5. KA:
   23 September 2009, on 6:54 pm

   I find it amusing how the left falls victim to its own romantic anti-rationalism, seeing all argument as propaganda, as if conclusions are more important than premises and the inferences drawn from them.

   Oh goodie, here’s good ole Jason, here to rattle our ‘cages’.
   Conclusions are important. Otherwise, all we have is the ‘it’s not the destination, it’s the journey’, which is a fine platitude for living, but not so great for working hypotheses. Conclusions are what we arrive @ via the inferences we make from premises. & if the conclusions negate the inferences AND the premises, then it becomes a simple matter of drawing new ones.
   Unless you’d like to scotch the whole scientific method?

6. JJR:
   23 September 2009, on 8:18 pm

   I found it hilarious that they believe that just because a high percentage of well educated faculty are nonbelievers, this means that their hapless students are being “indoctrinated with atheism”, whatever that means.

   Maybe a little university education got students to think critically for once and they rejected religion all by their lonesome. Just sayin’ it’s possible…give the students a little credit for independent thought, eh?

7. J.H. Bowden:
   23 September 2009, on 8:31 pm

   KA–

   Starting with a conclusion, and then shopping around for evidence is always a sign of a train of thought derailed from the tracks of logic. This starts early in school, when kids are taught in a way such as “global warming is killing the polar bears. How does this make you feel?”

   I agree that scientists make hypotheses. Observations, however, confirm hypotheses. Hypotheses do not confirm observations. In terms of probability, a theory with more observations and fewer hypotheses is more likely to be true than a theory with few observations and many hypotheses. This is why baroque conspiracy theories are very likely to be false.

   My scientific traditionalism isn’t a trivial issue, since modern and postmodern philosophers argue something very different. Popper held that we don’t know more than we did in 1580– theories are supposedly never confirmed, just falsified, so the duty of a scientist is to think up incredibly improbable scenarios. Kuhn showed this is not how science works in practice– the presence of anomalies shows that theories are not falsified, but replaced. Feyerabend was able to see that Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shifts swallows up Kuhn’s own theory, but Popper’s duty of thinking up incredibly improbable scenarios remains. So we’re left with this stupid prejudice of being non-judgmental and openminded– good science is supposedly coming up with the most wild counter-inductions possible.

   In this environment, it is no wonder people, both for and against science, believe science is a head count. But just as there is no crying in baseball, there is no consensus in science. Only proof.

   The goal of scientific education is to make us closed-minded, not open-minded. Don’t get me wrong — with respect to justification, we ought to follow evidence. With respect to the doxastic, belief aspect, keeping false beliefs out of one’s cognitive set is perhaps even more important than discovering new ones.

   Empirical propositions are justified inductively. Our main error comes in when people wrongly believe inductive justifications are irrational because they are fallible. A secondary error is this goofy notion of theory-laden evidence, which confuses temporal considerations with those of an epistemic nature. A more innocuous error more common to those in academic culture creeps in when people sneerquote what Ryle called success words, such as know and confirm.

8. FSM_Ed:
   23 September 2009, on 8:44 pm

   That is an excellent political cartoon accompanying the article. I hadn’t seen it before.

9. KA:
   23 September 2009, on 9:55 pm

   Starting with a conclusion, and then shopping around for evidence is always a sign of a train of thought derailed from the tracks of logic.

   That’s not necessarily true. Usually basic induction starts w/a conclusion. “Why does this do that?” Conclusion being a foregone…something or other.

   Popper held that we don’t know more than we did in 1580– theories are supposedly never confirmed, just falsified, so the duty of a scientist is to think up incredibly improbable scenarios.

   That sounds wildly unlikely – since we didn’t have relativity or quantum mechanics (or even a combustion engine) back then.

   But just as there is no crying in baseball, there is no consensus in science. Only proof.

   Say what? Of course there’s a consensus – otherwise the classrooms would be littered w/all sorts of baroque meritocracies. Being that the human mind loves to be tricked, sees what it wants to see, objectivity is hard to come by. So there’s some objectivity in numbers.
   Proof can be re-interpreted. Otherwise we wouldn’t have all these creationist doofs like Ray (Dis)comfort & Chaplain Poof.

10. ChuckA:
    23 September 2009, on 11:20 pm

    What an intellectual name dropper you are, Jason.
    You really seem to relish dragging unsuspecting people into rather obscure…even if, tangential…areas of almost arcane, somewhat snobbish, epistemological conflicts. I’m guessing you kind of get your “jollies” off on that little, possibly long practiced, sneaky and habitual intellectual trick…No?
    Something left over from your more active college days, perhaps?
    Actually, you kind of remind me of a gal who writes a column in my Local Musician’s Union magazine; who always, and amply,sprinkles various famous name breadcrumbs (on the way to Granny’s?) throughout her articles. Which I’ve always thought, sorta says:
    “See what a nobody shlub YOU are; you marginally successful fucktard, who never made it big-time? If you don’t recognize these famous fucking assholes, you don’t know shit!…or maybe…you eat shit?”
    I digress?…
    So, everyone, like “yours truly”, who studied ANY Philosophy back in the Flintstone ‘Dinosaur (with saddles?) Era’ are saying to themselves (after reading your little name dropping excursions)…
    “Say what?…who dat?…erm…like…WTF?…I never hoid of THAT fucktard!…where AM I?…WHO am I?…why the fuck am I reading (and writing) this shit?…
    did I put on clean underwear today…Wait!…who the fuck even cares?”
    And then…after brushing away a massive amount of cobwebs(?)…scamper, like fool, over (up?) to Google; in order to attempt to update their highly questionable interest in what you unexpectedly dragged us all into.

    “Sooooo…today’s ‘droppings’…dear kiddies…include:”
    Kuhn, Thomas:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions
    Popper, Karl (Nice name!):
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popperian_cosmology
    Feyerabend, Paul Karl (an almost descriptive name?):
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend
    Ryle, Gilbert (I presume? THAT name DOES ring a thud.):
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Ryle
    [Pardon the rather pedestrian...(hey...it's quick & easy?)..use of Wikipedia on those!]
    Just a suggestion…
    “Be sure to clean up after yourselves, folks, if you somehow managed to get your jollies off following all dat! My, what sticky stuff!”
    That’s as far as I go, incidentally, with this tangential ride. I’m just not interested enough in getting into another endless, futile, debate…?
    I’ll leave that, as well, to much more competent people…like…erm…KA?
    Yeah…laugh it up, Jason. You did, so far, manage to tempt a few of us; as KA termed it…rattling our cages?

    Ummm…would somebody, please, pass the bananas?
    (What!…so…just for fun…I can stick one up my ass?)

11. The Free Thinker:
    25 September 2009, on 2:43 am

    I wrote Mr. Comfort about a month back when the story first broke. I was disgusted. He actually wrote back though. What an ass.

    I told him that I would donate every penny I have to any project seeking to release the bible with an introduction detailing how full of shit it was.

    His response “I dare you”. What an asshat.

12. Stardust:
    25 September 2009, on 9:33 am

    Free Thinker, we should call his bluff and do it.

    I am leaving for a trip today and when in hotels my husband and I are going to be making some “additions” to the bibles in the rooms.

13. ChuckA:
    25 September 2009, on 11:28 am

    Whoa…Stardust?…
    Just an off the wall comment RE your travelling (if you still haven’t left?); be sure to wash any of those hotel glasses you encounter…yourself. After hearing, quite awhile back, about the totally shoddy maintenance RE that aspect…ala “Strep” infection, etc…I, personally, wouldn’t trust the “cleanliness”; no matter HOW famous the Hotel chain.
    One of my 50th reunion classmates, back in May 2007, died in the following Sept. due to an all invasive Strep infection.
    I don’t think anyone knew where he actually contacted it; but he came into Chicago from Ohio…you get the picture.
    Not to be paranoid (”Say what?”; but even going to a hospital, these days, is somewhat dangerous RE that kind of shtick. Too many people don’t wash their hands after a washroom visit, I’m guessing.
    What!…”EEOOooh!”? ?
    On that (disturbing) note…remember this story?:
    http://www.snotr.com/video/662

    As to your bible project…
    “You go, gal!…heh, heh!”

14. Greg Reich:
    26 September 2009, on 10:51 am

    Ray Comfort wants the sort of attention you’re encouraging here. He will never, ever listen to us, but he will play the victim. He will point out how atheists insult him and persecute him, as if he’s not doing that to us. The best thing we could all do is ignore his blog and pay more attention to his actions in schools.

    I suspect the only people who will pay attention to him on campus will be the Campus Crusade for Christ, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and other fundamentalist student organizations. That’s how it was when I was in college–the fundies like him were relegated to the fringe, where they belong.

15. ChuckA:
    26 September 2009, on 12:01 pm

    Ummm…since Star’s out of town (?)…and nobody seems to be around today…
    “YOO-HOO!?…ANYBODY?”…(cue echo effect?)
    OK…I guess it’s OK to sneak this in?…
    Remember that old Xmas tune: “Good King Wenceslas”?…
    Yeah…Czech Republic’’s patron Saint…”St. Wenceslas”; which, in the day, I never quite made that association. Like…I’m not Czech?
    Aside from that little musical reference, I DID, however, ALMOST join an American-Czech-majority-populated, Benedictine Monastery located in Lisle, Illinois, way back in 1964. Yeah…I was running away, totally disillusioned with the ‘Woild’; after JFK’s assassination. I soon, after just one semester, as a future monk-priest-prep student, recovered SOME sanity, and went back to my previous College-based agnosticism (and frequently inebriated & extremely sexually horny-hungry) ways.
    Yeah…LONG, convoluted story, of course! (like the rest of my fucking life!)
    What’s that?..
    “Get on with it, Chuck…skip all your usual uninteresting, tangential bullshit!”…?
    “Roit!”…
    Anyway, one of today’s Yahoo News items MIGHT interest you guys; as it points out the rather big decline, since the Communist days, in any respect for the Poop, and, for that matter, ANY god belief. Of course, the RCC is trying, desperately, to retrieve it’s former stance…and, more importantly(?)..religious property (read: very large Churches).

    ’snip’
    “…In 1991, 4.5 million of the country’s 10 million people said they belonged to a church. In 2001, a census showed that number had plunged to 3.3 million.

    Recent surveys suggest the freewheeling drop continues. About one in two respondents to a poll conducted by the agency STEM said they don’t believe in God. Another 28 percent said they considered themselves believers, and 24 percent were undecided. The poll had a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.

    Moreover, the Czech Republic is one of the few nations in the world that has not ratified a standard treaty with the Vatican that spells out church-state relations.

    “Czechs are getting less religious every year,” said Klara Kucerova, a resident of the southern city of Brno, where the pope will celebrate an open-air Mass on Sunday.

    “They are more interested in horoscopes or other kinds of magical predictions,” she said.

    [HUH? Say what?...You mean...they've just switched their delusions?]

    (’snip continues’):
    “Underscoring the hostility toward the church, a group calling itself Condom Positive planned to distribute condoms bearing a likeness of the pope wearing one on his head and the words: “Papa said no! And you?”

    [Ooooh!...a really nifty, "totally swollen head" addition to the Poop's "Ministry of Silly Hats"?]

    “Another group, Condoms for the Pope, said it would inflate prophylactics to condemn Benedict’s assertion earlier this year that condoms are not the answer to Africa’s severe AIDS problem.

    The pope’s position “clearly shows us that he is more interested in preserving dogma than saving the lives of African women, men and children,” it said in a statement…”

    OK…for anyone remotely interested, here’s the Yahoo article link:
    “Pope decries Czech communist-era persecution”:
    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090926/ap_on_re_eu/eu_czech_pope

16. Tommykey:
    28 September 2009, on 11:44 pm

    Empirical propositions are justified inductively. Our main error comes in when people wrongly believe inductive justifications are irrational because they are fallible. A secondary error is this goofy notion of theory-laden evidence, which confuses temporal considerations with those of an epistemic nature. A more innocuous error more common to those in academic culture creeps in when people sneerquote what Ryle called success words, such as know and confirm.

    Now that’s bizarre!

17. Dave:
    29 September 2009, on 9:10 am

    I think I want to throw up now after watching that. However, I doubt someone in their right mind will try to logically use that “introduction” in an argument…

    “Oh, your claims are based on those writings? Who wrote that, by the way? Is that person an actual scientist or someone merely using the words of science? Are they also a scholarly historian and biographer with academic recognition?”

    Busted.

18. ChuckA:
    29 September 2009, on 1:21 pm

    After scanning through the incredible collection of bullshit in that, humongously long, introduction…ending, of course, with that typical, and amazingly stupid, preachy notion that only the Bible…”D’uh!”…contains the true account of the ‘creation’ of the Universe…AND…the typical, lame-ass, “born-again” prayer…truly IS, IMO, a “barf-in-your-mouth moment”.

    It reminds me of that rather well known story regarding Francis Collins (who WAS referred to in that intro), immediately after seeing a frozen waterfall, sort of falling on his knees (at least mentally?) proclaiming something like:
    “Yes, there IS a god, and Jeebus died for our sins…and…and…like the Babble says…after you die you either go to an endless, voyeuristic, and mindbogglingly tyrannical “Heaven” where you’ll spend all your time in endless praising of the one true Divine psychopathic monster…OR…to a totally out-of-whack, completely unjust, ENDLESS punishment in a Hell originally designed for “God’s” favorite naughty boy, and angelic buddy, Satan…all that…just for being born so fucking dumb and ignorant as to not believe all the incredibly insane mythological bullshit!
    Thank you, thank you, Jeebus!”
    [OK..'he' took some poetic, interpretive license?]

    Now, if I…just happened to have been there (hiking by?)…I would probably, tentatively, have said to him, something like:
    “Now go sell everything you own…is it…erm…Francis?…just as Jeebus said, TWICE, in the gospels…and that means EVERYTHING…even your hiking boots and…erm…underwear (& jock strap?), and then, give ALL the money…YES, ALL of it… to the poor. Also…start hating your parents, your wife, etc…and of course, additionally…you must…(wait for it?):
    “Eat Jeebus…AND…drink his blood!” (and that ain’t all?).”
    :Shock:

    Yeah…you guys know the insane New Testicle drill..? If, perchance, you’ve forgotten…
    I suggest you make a devout (albeit atheistic) visit to…erm…
    http://godisimaginary.com/video1.htm

    After all that shit; I need an antacid!