God Makes Waves and Space Potatoes

January 7, 2010

This… this is why we need better teachers and schools. We can debate. Yes, we can. I may have an opinion vastly different from yours, but I’m willing to listen to your side of the argument, and, if you present good evidence, I’ll probably change my mind.

I’m sure that Bill O’Reilly has a bet with Beck to see who can break the most logical fallacies in one segment. Behold. The entire “Is God real?” question is about to be solved by O’Reilly at the 1:51 mark. Be prepared to be amazed.

Did you catch all that? God is real because the tides go in and out all the time, without fail, and we can’t explain it.

God is real because we have tides and we can’t explain it.

God exists because the water rises and falls and no one knows why.

I’m tempted to write it one more time just to hear how stupid that sounds. Yes, we know why the tide works, and if Bill here spent more time in science class as opposed to reading on why it’s wrong to be charitable, he’d know it’s because of the gravitational pull of the sun and moon. We’ve known this for, I don’t know. A long time? A really long time? This is basic science you learn in middle school and just because Bill doesn’t get it, he thinks God is the only explanation?

Creationism Cartooned by ~Vampiraldi on deviantART

I spend a few classes in my writing courses going over logical fallacies with my students, so let me break this down in case you don’t know exactly why that statement actually makes your neurons die as you hear it.

If something is not explainable, that doesn’t mean that one explanation has to be right. For example, if a man is killed in his home and we don’t know who did it, we don’t assume it’s the neighbor just because we don’t like the neighbor. Likewise, if you are Christian, you can’t assume, “God did it,” just because you don’t understand something.

We could go on forever. I say gravity causes the tide, and Bill could say, “But where does gravity come from?”

Gravity comes from mass, Bill. Current models say that mass bends space-time, sort of how a bowling ball would warp a trampoline.

“But why does it do that? Why not bend up? This is proof of design!”

Teach the Controversy by !Ex-Leper on deviantART

And right there is where we get into intelligent design, which is really what Bill-O is getting to. No, we don’t understand every mechanism in the universe. No, we don’t fully comprehend matter at the quantum level. No, we cannot account for the existence of sentience or explain what we would call human life as it exists…

But guess what? To say, “God did it,” makes as much sense as saying, “We live in a simulation within a giant computer,” or “The universe exists because Tork, the space bunny, demands it.”

Look, science is not your enemy. Yes, science changes its mind, but that’s because new information becomes available. Science DESCRIBES. That is it. When we see more of the tapestry of creation, we need to describe it was well, and it may show that what we knew previously is not as accurate as we described it. But that’s the nature of science. We get a more and more accurate picture each time.

Just because you can’t understand the explanation, it does not make it supernatural. Simply because you can’t grasp size and astronomy, it does not make the asteroid belt “God’s potato bar.”

God Hands by ~neier on deviantART

Let’s forge ahead with some links, shall we?

• Ellen may just have the ultimate party in a bottle. Personally, I’m shocked it took someone so long to come up with this.

• Speaking of science gone wrong, it turns out that SHOCK! Vaccines do not cause autism. The report many have been using as proof was fraudulent. Go figure…

• The Tea Party made a big deal out of going back to the Constitution… as if we somehow forgot about it. But, lo and behold, when the Tea Party-owned Republican Party read the Constitution aloud in the new session of Congress in a costly publicity stunt… they left out certain parts. As in the three-fourths compromise. As in a section of the Constitution that shows that, while a mighty document, it is not perfect and can be made better. As in evidence that destroys their conservative arguments.

• Have you ever been so excited you forgot was was going on around you? Well, so did this kid, but at least he bounces.

• Id’ never thought of totally redesigning the keyboard for a new generation of technology like hand-held devices, but it looks like someone’s  taken a crack at it.

• Ashton Kutcher apparently gets not just Demi Moore… but women Moore brings home for the two of them. Bruce Willis must want to kill the little punk.

• Think you’re cool? Maybe, but you’re not grandmother cool!

• And finally, in what I can only describe as extreme parenting, watch what happens when a kid makes claims of being a thug and a gangster online and is caught by his uncle. Someone give that man a trophy! See you Monday, and don’t forget to link back!