Videos of the day -- a voice of reason
I discovered AronRa's YouTube channel over the weekend and have been spending a fair bit of my internet time there since then. I find him refreshingly knowledgeable and blunt in taking on the fundie nonsense which has held us back for so long and which has been threatening to tighten its grip on the US since the current minority-rule regime came to power half a year ago.
AronRa was baptized Mormon, though he never considered himself a true believer. He now lives in Texas, where he is the State Director of American Atheists.
Here he debunks a fundie "university" video on the Ten Commandments and the supposed divine origin of morality:
He has a whole series of videos on Noah's flood, discussing how various fields of science and history show that it could not have happened. This one is about mythology across cultures, a field sometimes cited by fundies in support of their myth:
One of the striking things about this is the statistics he cites at the beginning, that strong majorities of US elected officials are creationists and believe the flood myth, but among the general population, only one-third to one-half do. Is the government really more ignorant than the masses? I hope a lot of those elected officials are just feigning belief for the sake of re-election. But it's shocking that a third to a half of the people in an advanced nation still think mythology is literally true.
Check out the rest of the series too (playlist and dicussion here) -- especially on evolutionary biology and related fields, AronRa really knows his stuff.
Finally, he takes down Mike Pence (this was made before the 2016 election):
Remember that Pence will more than likely be President within a year or so.
AronRa also has a blog and a general website.
AronRa was baptized Mormon, though he never considered himself a true believer. He now lives in Texas, where he is the State Director of American Atheists.
Here he debunks a fundie "university" video on the Ten Commandments and the supposed divine origin of morality:
He has a whole series of videos on Noah's flood, discussing how various fields of science and history show that it could not have happened. This one is about mythology across cultures, a field sometimes cited by fundies in support of their myth:
One of the striking things about this is the statistics he cites at the beginning, that strong majorities of US elected officials are creationists and believe the flood myth, but among the general population, only one-third to one-half do. Is the government really more ignorant than the masses? I hope a lot of those elected officials are just feigning belief for the sake of re-election. But it's shocking that a third to a half of the people in an advanced nation still think mythology is literally true.
Check out the rest of the series too (playlist and dicussion here) -- especially on evolutionary biology and related fields, AronRa really knows his stuff.
Finally, he takes down Mike Pence (this was made before the 2016 election):
Remember that Pence will more than likely be President within a year or so.
AronRa also has a blog and a general website.
posted by Infidel753 at 4:24 AM
4 Comments:
Thank You for the link on this guy, I already went to his blog/ site and YouTube Channel, never heard of him before, just goes to show you too, how much good stuff is out there, even on YouTube ... it would take years to find it all. I'm glad to see him in Texas and his wife involved in education for our young, to me that is a plus, I mean ... you know the challenges we are up against here in the Lone Star State, sad, but reality ... we'll just have to deal with it and try to fix stuff ... and get the job done ourselves.
I just heard corporate commie fundi Abbott toss his hat in to say he is running for re- election ... and of course I will be voting against him too ... he dont have any challengers yet according to the local news. Dont matter who runs against him, I will vote for his opposition, period. I cant even seem to find Texans that actually like this SOB. I heard this morning that the so called "bathroom bill" is back in session today on the news here, and that already there is already a group of about 20 major companies that are bucking it together. It's not just the bathroom or fundi thing with Abbott, this SOB actually overturned the peoples vote in Denton a couple years back (which I posted on) who voted not have fracking on their land and around their homes and small businesses ... long story. I was at a RaceTrac store (a large gas and convenient store chain) on Northwest Hwy the other day using the restroom and had some conversation with a young lady (transgender), Katie, who was applying her makeup in the mens room ... she of course was disgusted with this as well. Sweet girl/ trans ... I also left her a card for my blog.
As far as the comment you left me on the last link round up concerning my car, yeah, I remember your wreck too. No, even though I didnt get injured (almost unbelievable) etc ... it's a lousy deal for me. I know that they will only pay whatever the blue book value is on the car, maybe a couple/ few thousand ... so I'll have to get a cash car, or perhaps put some money with that to get anything decent. Incredibly this lady driver told me that she wasnt watching the traffic and she was having her passenger (I think it was her daughter) do the navigating, etc (they were from some small po- dunk town down on Mexican border) ... I was so in shock with her answer it left me speechless and my mouth hanging open! I mean like ... she's driving yet letting the passenger do all of it?, actually the passenger I noticed was on her phone for that matter when I hit them, plus I just noticed there was a "no U-turn" sign in front of them. Why this is lousy, is because my vehicle is in immaculate condition, and get this ... I actually had free oil changes and car washes on each one from the dealership for the life of the car, just got a new head gasket and new brake pads, tune up ... the A/C worked like a freezer, etc ... it had a couple hundred thousand miles on it, but I kept it up and running excellent. No, Dallas PD had a policy for several years, that they cant stop for non injury/ fatality wrecks like fender benders (because of their heavy call load on actual crime), but just looking at my car in the middle of the intersection with the front completely totalled like that, I though they would at least stop. Oh well ... just another thing I will have to deal with like everyone else ... shit happens.
I have relatives who believe without a freaking doubt everything Ken Ham says and that Answers In Genesis reflects the one TWUE word of God. I did some surfing and found a name - Dominionists and their Seven Mountain strategy to recreate the USA in their own End Times fashion. I don't recommend reading up on these folks if you want to sleep well that night. They are not a new thing, they've been around for a long time and they are very well funded (Sinclair media anyone?).
It is useless to wish for Dominionists to believe in logic. They are lost. You can see it in their eyes - the burning fever of a true believer. I see it in Jihadists too. There is no logic, there is only the Word Of God as they interpret it and anyone not with them is against them.
Dominionists refuse to share with us sinners, in fact in their eyes it's acceptable to lie and cheat when dealing with sinners for we won't be in heaven anyway. What's a sinner? Broad strokes it's anyone who doesn't accept their version of Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. Even within that lofty circle sin still exists, circling the weak and tempting the corruptible. When looking in from the outside it appears more to be about control and power than faith or spirituality. Perhaps remembering history has provided me with some perspective.
Thank you for the link to AronRa. I found his blog a while ago, just before my computer crashed along with all my bookmarks.
The reason I provided a Dominionist primer is because those elected officials who profess to be Christian to the power of infinity are not faking it. Well, maybe one or two but the majority have been groomed in their churches and schools to turn the USA into a theocracy. I listened to the televangelists back in the 90's and what was in the works back then is manifesting now. Only there is a fly in the ointment - a terrible-two child president who is crashing into well laid plays and leaving them awry. I'd be laughing more if it wasn't all so very scary.
Do they believe? Look into their eyes and you will know (example in my mind - Michele Bachman and Louie Gohmert)
I had a brief look over at Ken Ham. Wow! He conflates cosmological with biological evolution. He has a question to answer (which he can't). You see there is a big thing in the sky which I'd call a class G2V yellow dwarf (but then I have an MSc in astrophysics from The University of London so don't ask me!). OK. What does that mean? Sol is a Pop I star which means it is not first gen and is therefore metal-rich. This is beyond doubt. Where did Ken get his Haemoglobin from? What about spectroscopy? Or the Blue Dot Festival (which I went to very recently) just down the road which is held around The University of Manchester's 76m Jodrell Bank radio telescope (third largest steerable array on this planet). The point is the metals are because of the age of our star and to doubt that is not just to doubt cosmology (which is quite doubtable) but pretty much all of physics - solar system dynamics, fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, nuclear and particle physics... To doubt all of that is what scientists do all the time. You overturn a core theory in physics and you get a very special invite to Stockholm. But that is doing science not saying, "It was God what done it, nothing to look at here, move on". I said much of cosmology is "doubtful". Yes, it is. We are well within a lifetime of Sputnik and I am sure much shall change in terms of our understanding of the Universe in my lifetime (the change is most of the fun). The fluidity of science is the strength of science. What gets me about the Answers in Genesis types is the sheer paucity of imagination. I recall sitting in a lecture theatre and a guy ran in a right tither to announce they'd found the T quark. I don't think that very important particle is even mentioned in Genesis. We cheered. We did that because we'd been brainwashed into looking into things scientifically.
Ranch: It surprises me too that I hadn't been aware of AronRa before now. Still, better late than never.
Damn shame about the car. I'd hope the insurance company would at least take the recent work into account in valuing it, but I'm sure you've looked into that.
Grey One: I've posted about the Dominionists from time to time. They're the hard-core genuine fascists of the fundie movement. They'd make the US into another Saudi Arabia if they could. They themselves can't be reasoned with -- all we can do is chip away at their potential power base by "deconverting" the more reachable Christians. Hence the dramatic rise in numbers of self-identified non-religious people since the "New Atheism" emerged.
Nick: Ken Ham has always verged on self-parody. He's an ignorant man who thinks his ignorance is special knowledge that others don't have. I'm sure he couldn't be persuaded by scientific evidence of whatever kind, partly because he wouldn't be able to understand it.
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