Why Do People Laugh at Creationists?

Why Do People Laugh at Creationists?

2007, Society  -    -  Playlist 1,641 Comments
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In this amateur documentary creationists are tackled at every level from the scientific illiterates who want to play in the scientific arena but don't even understand the words they use, to convicted fraudsters like Kent Hovind who abuse the scientific illiteracy of people to dupe them out of money.

An enterprise which is clearly very successful as merely the tax Hovind didn't pay was about a million dollars. Hovind himself has no discernible academic education, and gets by solely on using his confident delivery of scientific terms to convince his audiences that he knows what hes talking about.

Then of course there are the professionals such as the Discovery Institute, the hub and founders of the Intelligent design movement. After the humiliating rout of ID in court where it was found that ID is not science, and that ID is only a relabeling of creationism the Discovery Institute do not utter the word once in their latest promotional video.

Instead they now have decided to teach the controversy which is an irony as they are the only people who disagree with evolution. What they are really asking is not to teach the controversy, but to teach their views, which are supported by neither research or evidence, in schools.

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Hollis Evon Ramsey
Hollis Evon Ramsey
11 years ago

at first, i thought of this as a plain and simple peer review. after a while, though, i realized that it was the adult equivalent of giving The Talk -- you know, birds and bees and all that jazz. if i had children, they would be watching this, despite some rather colourful language. i haven't seen controlled savagery like this since Tyson bit off Holyfield's ear! but this polemic was civil, for the most part -- i can understand the frustration when confronted by a confederacy of dunces -- and so well put together that i felt like i was getting a really wise bedtime story; it complemented my knitting exceedingly well.

Benjamin Gingrich
Benjamin Gingrich
11 years ago

So creationists are idiots? Yea, sorry, but this is why science and atheism are dying out. No respect

Renevonn
Renevonn
11 years ago

I really wonder how Creationists grapple with the chaotic world of Quantum Mechanics and what arguments they could present to show that the properties and behaviors of subatomic particles follow the plan of some mythical divine being who supposedly controls all things in the known Universe...

Rickylaming
Rickylaming
11 years ago

"creationist" lol,why dont they pay attention in school?I have absolutely nothing wrong with jewish people or their culture at all,but just one of my points ive thought of recently is;wouldnt god be a racist if he "made" his...(her...ITS?) son of only one race?!? earth made in 6 days and rest on the 7th??? was that jupiter days,saturn...ERRR???lol

Duncan King
Duncan King
11 years ago

The poor sound work on this film is just too distracting for the film to be enjoyable.

L C
L C
11 years ago

I really appreciate this documentary and I would like to suggest a bit of elaboration be included in the 7th program for the sake of explaining all the evidence. There are in fact many kinds of tools that were made on the spot/as-needed and then discarded that are evident in the archaeological record. This category is referred to as "tools of expedience", meaning they are made quickly and often disposable. The disposability of tools of expedience is directly related to the fact that they are often a simple sharp flake of flint with minimal effort required to create. These tools include blades, scrapers and other sharp objects used to cut meat and treat skins by removing hair and fat, among other uses. The critical distinction to understand is that tools of expedience are NOT the same thing as projectile points (such as arrowheads, spearheads, and any other kind of aerodynamic point that has been made through the process of extensive flintknapping) which were used to actually kill animals. Projectile points were highly valued and not purposely abandoned unless they were broken or left in hidden caches for future use. There is ample evidence of projectile point making within the boundaries of camps and residential areas, this evidence being massive amounts the debris from shaping the stone tools, visible time and time again. There are a very limited number of materials that can be used for making stone tools and these often have to be heat treated by fire and cooled to prepare the stone for shaping into the desired forms. The archaeological record simply does not support the idea that tools as sophisticated as projectile points were created as-needed upon spotting a herd of animals while out on the hunt. In fact the archaeological record shows that this idea is complete nonsense.

Lauren Wooddell
Lauren Wooddell
11 years ago

Here's another point:
Who would doubt artificial selection? It is very clear that we can select for certain traits, and impose our own selective pressures to obtain the desired characteristics we wish. Look at our dogs. We have taken wolves and through selective breeding, based on selective pressures, we have created 400+ breeds of dogs. These dogs are all under the same species of canis familiaris, however, they are of a different species than the ancestor of the wolf, canis lupis. It is obvious dogs were not here from the time of God, as they are a species created by humans. So to say natural selection, and thereby evolution is nonexistant, is ignorant. Artificial selection is natural selection, except imposed by humans. This is the whole concept of speciation. When species accumulate changes most likely by allopatric speciation, these two species (which diverged from one) are now incompatible in terms of reproduction. When two cannot reproduce, they are different species. While dogs and wolves can mate, they are not the same species when you look at the biological species concept. It has to do with the viability of the offspring. (Ligers can be formed from tigers and lions, but lions and tigers are not the same species)There are current studies with foxes and selective breeding that are changing the characteristics of the foxes, making them more dog-like. So if you agree that micro-evolution can occur (changes in allelic frequencies), you thereby have to agree with macroevolution, as macro is an accumulation of microevolution. Nobody can disagree with artificial selection, as we have even created corn, from the ancestor teosinte. We have created food, animals, etc by artificial selection. And artificial selection is essentially the same as natural selection (add the human aspect), and we all know what natural selection leads to....evolution.

Nasser
Nasser
11 years ago

In reference to part 15. Yes, the Cambrian Explosion is simple to understand: it is the transformation of quantity in to quality. It is that simple.
long live Philosophy of Hegel and those who perfected it.

Travis Torres
Travis Torres
11 years ago

so what if there's water on other planets. it's frozen. no life can form. where's the people on these planets? why is it earth is the only planet that has people?

Donald Edward Goodman
Donald Edward Goodman
11 years ago

N o sh*t sherlock. DUMBASS. It is self-evident this KID doesn't know the difference bewteen his a** and a hole in the ground! No wonder he gets "laughed at" because he is UNEDUCATED

Nasser
Nasser
11 years ago

Dear thunderboot, Sorry I don't know your name. Your masterpiece is part 29. If Frederick Engels had a chance to hear what you so beautifully say in this episode he would have been proud of you. In fact because of your previledge and access to science of today you are even more powerful than Engels.
Cheers.

urban deadite
urban deadite
11 years ago

oh this is awesome.

One point a lot of Creation Myths i have read about bring in ' animals were larger in the past'.

Hmmm. Reality check i think.

The Longest and the heaviest and Largest in every way Animal to have ever to have existed on Earth that even makes the largest dinosaur not so 'giant' is alive today and is swimming in our seas, thats right the majestic Blue Whale which have been recorded at 100' (maybe larger) in length and weighing 180+ tons.

The largest plants ever to have lived in History exist today. etc etc.

If the bible is true God is one truely gifted Alien Scientist.

AUWR
AUWR
11 years ago

Couldn't even watch the first video. Soo painfull...

eireannach666
eireannach666
11 years ago

Sorry for typos
New keyboard.

eireannach666
eireannach666
11 years ago

Fact is, religion has been cornered. They rely on the god of the gaps or on the other option...the god mustve done that to. Like saying god is responsable for evolution. Nice. So hes lazy eh? Deus Otiosus. Lazy and suerfulous god indeed! Hows about just nonexsistant.

eireannach666
eireannach666
11 years ago

Hey Achems..Epicurus...Vlatko etc.

eireannach666
eireannach666
11 years ago

Well well well, i see the religees are still active on this thread. Of course they havent gotten any wiser to the facts. Like evolution being more established than gravity. Perhaps we should rewrite the books as to how it is our feet stay on the ground? Tell me, which religee can tell me how it is we get this iireducible complexity in natire and how it is that 99% of all species ever exisisted are extinct? Or how if theyre myths are true why are there only penguins on the south pole or kangaroos only in Australia? Start there please.

everlaid
everlaid
11 years ago

This documentary is the best. Me and my friends crack a few beers and have a good laugh. Thanks for posting this one.
You should have a comedy section!!!

robertallen1
robertallen1
12 years ago

TO EVERYONE:

Happy pi day. How should we celebrate this most famous of the irrational numbers? How about this anecdote:

In 1897, Edwin J. Goodwin, a notorious circle squarer, introduced a bill in the Indiana House of Representatives mandating the value of pi at 3.2. Believe it or not, this bill might have passed were it not for C.A. Waldo, a professor of mathematics at Purdue University who happened to be visiting the house on an unrelated matter. When a representative approached him with the bill and offered to introduce him to the genius who wrote it, he declined stating that he knew as many crazy people as he needed to. Well, so much for the bill and crank mathematics.

This just goes to show you that no god can square a circle or transsubstantiate pi into a rational number.

Does anyone else have any suggestions as to how to celebrate one of the most imoprtant days on the mathematical calendar?

michaelv
michaelv
12 years ago

maybe the only reason that anyone would laugh at creationists is because they themselves have not been honest enough and forthright enough to have done some simple homework and gone to some reputable sight like wikipedia and done a search for "atomic orbatals" or "atoms" and reveiwed the info there so that they may possibly (and i do qualify the word possibly) begin to understand just how extensively underinformed they are when it comes to the extreme, extreme, extreme, (did i say extreme) and unfathomable complexity of atomic physics-funny how one ignorami calls someone who is just as unable to know it all-an ignorant believer when at least the believer in THE CREATOR is willing to be honest enough to admit that they comprehend this simple fact-that all matter is so - no way in a hundred zillion hells did it just happen as a result of a big bang - impossible unless designed, created and spoken into existance instantly and perfectly with THE WORD OF ABSOLUTE AUTHORITY !!!

Jeffrey Reichert
Jeffrey Reichert
12 years ago

Finding an id**t with almost any belief is easy. I am a creationist and don't agree with anything said by the "creationists" in the video. My guess is that finding an id**t in almost any group is easy, this I believe you have proved and I agree with unequivocally.

Salih Kosan
Salih Kosan
12 years ago

Please kindly remove the offending comment about Jesus, freedom of thought should not be taken as freedom of disrespect and insult. One day you might be on the receiving end of the insults if you dont learn to respect other ideas.

the555hit
the555hit
12 years ago

The late and mourned Hitchens and his friends Dorkin, Rushdie et al pushing on the open door -- you have to chuckle. Strangely the sledgehammer & nut presentation, the use of insult and so on here doesn't square with the narrator's stunning lucidity. Is ther some fear we could get to where fundamentalists and creationists of all religions have chipped in together all their pathologically sentimental belligerence of the loser disguised as 'argument' and plunged us into some new dark age? No worries i say --- if we ever get to where these self deceived specimens (quoting their pidgen 'science' at scientists like they hadn't renounced their right to quote anything at all outside of their hapclappy hallucination) got fully and globally into power then that would be no less than what we merited as a species, whereupon frankly we'd all be better off as potato fertiliser.

Justin Lesniewski
Justin Lesniewski
12 years ago

it doesn't matter what we say on here because, these people aren't enlightening themselves. They aren't thinking anymore they're "believing". They are so narrowminded that they wont filter down to this great documentary site. In fact this my friends, is the last place you should ever expect to find anyone that is devoutly religious: a place of learning.

thenesteamonster
thenesteamonster
12 years ago

i'm a christian and i speak to my fellow christians on this site: why can't you be more like buddhists? why can't you STFU?
the most discussed docs are those where fanatics stick fingers in keyboards

CeilingCat
CeilingCat
12 years ago

So creationist Walter Brown thinks that about 7000 years ago the earth’s crust cracked and spurted water to the Moon thereby causing the craters and water content on said astral body.

I cannot seem to find the mathematical peer review of this ‘theory’ or even *any* supporting evidence to validate such claims.

I think that Walter Brown is suffering from a very severe form of mental illness and should be sectioned immediately.

Payne Hooper
Payne Hooper
12 years ago

wow.....I made it to part 3....

harry nutzack
harry nutzack
12 years ago

why do people laugh at creationists? because it's socially unacceptable to throw stones...

andrewmcgarvey
andrewmcgarvey
12 years ago

Why Do People Laugh at Creationists? Probably as it really is the only reasonable response. What surprises me is that there is so much debate on the issue. I'm not saying the subject of God isn't worth debating but that there are so many other more prescient subjects to discus.

ron lussier
ron lussier
12 years ago

My only criticism is the preachy paranoia about the threat of fundamentalism to science.......it is almost as far-fetched as the fundamentalist claiming that gay marriage is a threat to heterosexual marriage.

ron lussier
ron lussier
12 years ago

Fundamentalist, Protestant Christians are only 150 years old.

ron lussier
ron lussier
12 years ago

I enjoyed the Redneck voice with the hint of British accent! I took a class from Steven Meyer when he was teaching Philosophy in Spokane. I wish he remained honest about his scholarship in Philosophy rather than masquerading as a scientist......
I am a Christian and I loved your video - thanks!

noaliasneeded1
noaliasneeded1
12 years ago

Sorry for saying something off topic but the dignity in what I say right now can give your subject positive energy... There are some actions in society that cause deception, for example: the new popular movie Sherlock Holmes negligently misuses Biblical Hebrew letters in a scene where in the movie they act as a cult was doing black magic with the Hebrew letters, the problem is now for some people when they see Hebrew letters and dont know what they are they might think that the letters are part of a bad cult language for black magic, the movie in that scene participates in creating a definite lie that is harmful in some ways to those who are unaware. We need to protect society by bringing the truth forward and suppress deception by making truth a daily habit.

Simple Simon says
Simple Simon says
12 years ago

If space and time are a singularity then there is no start or end, or limits to space, you just think there is because you are in that singularity, i dont think any of you understand that, never mind it is not important, but it does limit you and your ability to discover what is really there.

TheRealMax
TheRealMax
12 years ago

As any lunatic knows, "invisible friends never lie".

norlavine
norlavine
12 years ago

@robertallen1
..and payday has arrived! You have never once revealed the core of your objections to my comments, just continuous heckling of the syntax. The method in which you twist others words and meanings isn't clever, it only temporarily hides the fact that you have no original thoughts of your own. You also believe anything that authority decrees is absolute, therefore you are a conformist.
Your last comment revealed all as you jumped in a little too quickly, just as I presumed you would. Sorry, couldn't help myself..xx

norlavine
norlavine
12 years ago

The consciousness of the mind is the builder and we humans are a most sophisticated structure. Evolution continuously seeks a fitting house for the consciousness to expand in certain ways = different species/ different levels of awareness. First thing we have to realize is that we currently know nothing.As I have said before: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Science will explain what our concepts of reality look like on paper, but as yet I haven't found anything on the inner thought processes of a snail.
Religious and atheistic arguments are sheer amusements, doesn't take too much IQ to argue for or against the unprovable..xx

Carmen Torres
Carmen Torres
12 years ago

.....we are all born sinners...and we need a savior ...Dont be fooled by the devil and his lies..listen to ur heart sayng save me from the wrath to come!!!! if u dont repent and put ur trust in Jesus Christ then u will not be saved frm hell..eternal damnation..then it will be too late to repent....Today is the day of salvation......10 out of 10 ppl die....U are the next one...!!!!creation itself speaks out the glory of God...u dont have to be a bill gates or an Einstein to know and see that u are surrounded with creation perfect creation that fits right into our lives and u are a creation....May the creator , the alpha and omega forgive us all for doubting his goodness and the great sacrifice he did for us at the cross......

JumpingAtheist
JumpingAtheist
12 years ago

Evil is god's plan. Suffering is god's plan. And it could not be more obvious; even if he didn't come right out and admit it in the Bible ("I form the light, and create darkness. I make peace, and create evil. I the Lord do these things"-- Isaiah 45: 7).

TheRealMax
TheRealMax
12 years ago

The FSM is an interesting idea. It exists is beyond our perception.

I am a carbonnarist. Bolognesiststs are infidels!!!!!!

robertallen1
robertallen1
12 years ago

@Chad Roy and hhy2k

There's nothing ignorant about hhy2k's statement, especially considering that creationism itself is the embodiment of ignorance.

jonathan jackward
jonathan jackward
12 years ago

this documentary has opened up a new door for me

lasheen
lasheen
12 years ago

if only the makers this series of documentaries actually interviewed some advocates of creationism, that actually had half a brain.there's no substitute for proper and meaningful research and by quoting these intellectually starved people, no progress will be made in the debate of creationism versus chance. after all evolution and the big bang are still theoretical last time I heard.

Cas
Cas
12 years ago

I just don't get why so much energy is dedicated into convincing some individual who obviously had all the chance in their society to enlighten themselves but choose to remain ignorant.

It is really simple:

1) The human mind is big enough to ask for explanation as to why it is here, in other words it has become complex enough to self-question.

2) Looking at all the different tribes spread around the world, they have all devised a way to reason their world...call it a THEORY...because that it is what it is. Except it was limited by observation and acquired knowledge those tribes gained. Just as the Church imprisoned Galileo, because he basically shook their THEORY of the world.

3) Everyday millions of blank minds are born ready to absorb what the information the world offers. Some acquire the necessary prerquisite to understand the scientific method others are left clinging to old theories that don't stand to the rigor of reason.

4) It is sad that most of the creationist originate from the part of the world that consumes so much of the world resources....I call this a waste of human capital. Worse some of them block scientific progress.

Shows like this annoy me, because these resources could have been directed to people who are not arrogant as to be willfully ignorant. There are millions given quarter the chance who can contribute to our modern world, directed by reason and science.

thedilema
thedilema
12 years ago

this guy is doing far too much.

Snoik
Snoik
12 years ago

Yesterday i was knocked over by bus, and i'm ok. Just a bump on the head. I think these creationists have a valid point. We know the earth is 5000 years old, because there is no monument, fossil or geological mineral thats older than 5000 years. Apart from Puma Punku, dinasasaurs and o wait.

abdulwalee
abdulwalee
12 years ago

A nice little article by Granville Sewell on the problem with natural selection, which is in reality a metaphysical explanation (not a "scientific" one) invoked as part of Darwin's theory. This has been published online and is also in his book "In the Beginning."

In a 2000 Mathematical Intelligencer article, I speculated on what would happen if we constructed a gigantic computer model which starts with the initial conditions on Earth 4 billion years ago and tries to simulate the effects that the four known forces of physics (the gravitational and electromagnetic forces and the strong and weak nuclear forces) would have on every atom and every subatomic particle on our planet. If we ran such a simulation out to the present day, I asked, would it predict that the basic forces of Nature would reorganize the basic particles of Nature into libraries full of encyclopedias, science texts and novels, nuclear power plants, aircraft carriers with supersonic jets parked on deck, and computers connected to laser printers, CRTs and keyboards?

A friend read my article and said, computers have advanced a lot in the last seven years, I think we could actually try such a simulation on my new laptop now. So I wrote the program -- in Fortran, naturally -- and we tried it. It took several hours, and at the end of the simulation we dumped the final coordinates of all the particles into a rather large data file, then ran MATLAB to plot them. Some interesting things had happened, a few mountains and valleys and volcanos had formed, but no computers, no encyclopedias, and no cars or trucks. My friend said, let me see your program. After examining it, he exclaimed, no wonder, you treated the Earth as a closed system, order can't increase in a closed system. The Earth is an open system, you need to take into account the effect of the sun's energy. So I modified the boundary conditions to simulate the effect of the entering solar radiation, and reran it. This time some clouds and rivers had formed, but otherwise Earth still looked a lot like the other planets, and still no libraries or computers or airplanes.

My imaginary friend looked more carefully at the program, and said, good grief, you are using classical physics, you can't simulate the effects of the four forces without quantum mechanics. He explained that according to quantum mechanics, the exact effects of these forces on any particular particle are impossible to predict with certainty, the new laws only provide the probabilities. I said, you mean there is a supernatural force at work here? He said, well, technically, yes, if you define the supernatural to be that which is forever beyond the ability of science to predict or explain -- British astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington said quantum mechanics "leaves us with no clear distinction between the natural and the supernatural". But there is no reason to doubt that this so-called "supernatural" effect is completely random, you can simulate it using a random number generator. So I completely re-wrote my simulator, I used an IMSL random number generator with a user-supplied probability distribution to simulate this randomness, and computed the required probability distributions by solving the Schrodinger equations with my own partial differential equation solver, PDE2D. Still no luck -- no space ships, no TV sets, no encyclopedias, not even a cheap novel.

My friend looked at the new graphs and tried to mask his disappointment. Well, he said, of course the problem is you haven't taken into account the one natural force in the universe which can violate the second law of thermodynamics and create order out of disorder -- natural selection. You mean there is a fifth force -- why didn't you say so? Just give me the equations for this force and I will add it to my model. He said, I can't give you the equations, because it isn't actually a physical force, it doesn't actually move particles. So what does it do, I asked. He explained that one day a long time ago, by pure chance, a collection of atoms formed that was able to duplicate itself, and these complex collections of atoms were able to pass their complex structures on to their descendents generation after generation, even correcting errors. He went on to talk about how genetic accidents and survival of the fittest produced even more complex collections of atoms, and how something called "intelligence" allowed some of these collections of atoms to design computers and laser printers and the Internet. But when he finished, I still didn't know how to incorporate natural selection -- or intelligence -- into my model, so I never did get the simulation to work. I decided the model was still missing a force or two -- or a smarter random number generator.

Granville Sewell is a professor of mathematics at the University of Texas El Paso.

The above is a tongue in cheek illustration of how absurd the idea that random undirected processes mobilized material (atoms) into the creation of bridges, ships, cars, planes, computers and the interne

jonathan jackward
jonathan jackward
12 years ago

google this .....unified field of consciousness

Bryce Gibson
Bryce Gibson
12 years ago

dont let stupid misinformed humans lead you away from what is not human. think of us as ants, we can only see whats infront of us, but theres a hell of a lot more

Guest
Guest
12 years ago

The "Banana affair" was just hilarant!
As much as that "Cartonist" explanation of the bible flood when God splitted the earth apart & that earth oozed its water on the moon!
Better yet, the USA Grand Canyon was flooded in less than 5 minutes!
Water engulfing the canyon at (3-5) times the speed of sound.
Not a drop vaporizing! Hilarant those "Cartoonists"!
Made in the USA, mirror of the Taliban principles.

It's hard for me to believe that such retarded peoples as "Creationists" & their other associates really exist in the USA. That is the mirror or Talibans!
-Anybody stole someting using his hand? Let's get rid of that devilish hand of your's! ZAP! Amputated, problem resolved.
Taken from some interpretations of the Quran.

To be a little serious if such homosapiens are really strucked by such delirium tremens, within all the speaches these supposed creationists shout, it appears they suffer a deep lack of faith, in religious belief I mean...
Anybody can identify their feeling of guilt toward their lack of faith.
Religious faith has nothing to do with pure & applied science.

All their pseudo science principles based on diverse biblical citation is the exact same thing as Adam & Eve trying to figure out what this material world of ours is made of or how its works, the total "Birth Acquired" knowledge!
According to the bible thay claim to have such an extensive respect, they commit the 1st sin whatever God scoled humankind for.
- Quote: -"Pardon them, they dunno what they're doing".

I work in pure & applied science, earn my living with it and never doubted that there is some sort of God. So badly defined and described through history because of hoaxters such as these cartoonists.
-Sorry, creationists, is it?

Sit down & relax! It was found lately that many dimentions do exist factually.
Now, which is which. I mean "The one"?
Who knows? Who cares... We'll see when we'll get to that bridge!

What I do in science is not to compet or obtain a "Godish" knowledge but rather see and have the pleasure to bring a better living to my fellows homosapiens.
It may be because I enjoy it when we have a better life here within this material world.
-Misleading someone is not loving who ever can be that other one.

Faithfully your's,
Pierre.