What's so great about Ilion's blog?

Recently, one of the God-hating leftists who infest Michael Egnor blog asked, "What's so great about Ilion's blog?"

In full, he said, " What's so great about Ilion's blog? His posts consist mainly of links. There are hardly any signs of intellectual activity there."

Think about this condemnation of me he offers -- because I think that others' thoughts are worth thinking about and are worth sharing with others, therefore, there are hardly any signs of intellectual activity here.

You just know that if I never posted anything but my own musings, he'd be condemning me for that ... and in the same terms.

Leftists, atheists ... they are almost always intellectually dishonest.

Yet another conundrum

Here is yet another conundrum for evolutionism --

Cornelius Hunter has a recent post concerning the "sixth sense" of magnetoreception that many animal possess, with a focus on how this ability relates to evolutionism Evolutionists Conclude Magnetoreception Evolved (After They Doubted its Very Existence) ... but then, they “conclude” that about everything, once they stop denying that it exists.

Hunter: -- “... It is also another example of the failure of evolutionary theory. Not only is there no scientific explanation for how such magneto reception, processing and decision-making could evolve, but the entire idea runs counter to evolution. Fifty years ago evolutionists ridiculed the idea that animals could detect such weak signals and use them in a sort of geographic information service. Now they claim it is all a result of blind evolution. As one evolutionist explained regarding the loggerhead turtles, “We think different areas along the migratory pathway are marked by unique magnetic signatures, and the turtles have evolved responses that are coupled to these signatures.” They think that not because the turtle’s magnetoreception appears to be a product of evolution, or that they have anything close to a scientific explanation for how it could have evolved. They think that because they believe evolution is true.

That is the extent of evolution’s contribution to this research.”

Here is the conundrum for evolutionism -

Supposedly - it’s (presently) Gospel in evolutionism -- the earth's magnetic field periodically collapses and reverses.

So, one must wonder, given Darwinsm/evolutionism, and give the periodic collapse and reversal of the earth’s marnet field, how do there happen to be species that rely upon magnetoreception to get to where they need to be when they need to be there (for instance, their breeding or spawning grounds)?


A collapse and reversal is supposed to happen on an average of 450,000 years. That hardly seems like time enough for magnetoreception to randomly evolve-and-fix. Or, even if it were enough time, about the time a species came to get good at it and to depend upon it, the magnetic field would collapse and reverse.

According to the Wickedpedia (no foe of evolutionism, that!) - " A geomagnetic reversal is a change in the Earth's magnetic field such that the positions of magnetic north and magnetic south are interchanged. The Earth's field has alternated between periods of normal polarity, in which the direction of the field was the same as the present direction, and reverse polarity, in which the field was the opposite. These periods are called chrons. The time spans of chrons are randomly distributed with most being between 0.1 and 1 million years with an average of 450,000 years. Most reversals are estimated to take between 1,000 and 10,000 years. The latest one, the -BrunhesMatuyama reversal, occurred 780,000 years ago. A brief complete reversal, known as the Laschamp event, occurred only 41,000 years ago during the last glacial period. That reversal lasted only about 440 years with the actual change of polarity lasting around 250 years. During this change the strength of the magnetic field dropped to 5% of its present strength."

So, according to evolutionism, a mere 41,000 years ago, there was a brief (i.e. 440 years) complete reversal of earth’s magnetic field. Now, while 440 years (or 250 years) may be “brief” on geological time-scales, in the life-span of an organism which needs to be at the right places -- feeding grounds and/or breeding grounds -- at the right times, this span of time of being unable to rely upon its magnetoreception to get there equals species extinction.

Hey, we do that here too!

Dubai sends American to max-security prison for … a YouTube satire video

As Bob Parks noted: Hey, we do that here too!

Stupid 'Atheist' Tricks VI

The blogger ‘Shadow to Light’ has a recent post concerning just how weak-vaporous are Jerry Coyne’s “powerful arguments for atheism”. I have some comments --

Shadow to Light: "This [the sixth "argument"] is a nonsense question. We inquire about the origin of something if we have reason to think that thing came into existence. Treating God as if He is supposed to be one more thing that is part of contingent reality means you have not seriously considered the question of God’s existence, which is probably why this is a favorite argument among the pre-teens and young teens."

Also, as an "argument", it is blatant straw-manning and question-begging built upon an equivocation. Consider it again --

Jerry Coyne: "6. Who made God? Secularism provides the best explanation for the idea of God, for we have ample reason to think (and in fact have often witnessed) that gods are created by the human mind."

The equivocation: no "idea of God" is God himself. Conceptions of 'god' may or may not be accurate -- they may or may not actually refer to the actual God -- but even accurate conceptions of God are incomplete. And none of them is God himself: no more than is one's understanding of one's father one's father himself.

The strawman: as 'Shadow to Light' notes, "[t]reating [the Biblical Judeo-Christian conception of the Creator-]God as if He is supposed to be one more thing that is part of contingent reality means you have not seriously considered the question [and arguments] of God’s existence"

This strawman contains another equivocation -- Coyne is treating the Biblical Judeo-Christian conception of the Creator-God -- the uncreated/non-contingent Necessary Being who is the "ground of all being", who is "being itself" -- as being logically equivalent to any of the various the pagan conceptions of their gods, all of whom were conceived as being contingent, all of whom were conceived either as having been born of some pre-existing deity, or as having spontaneously "arisen" from some pre-existing state of affairs.

It is a favorite strawman of atheists to knock down Zeus and then triumphantly proclaim that they have knocked down The Ancient of Days.

The question-begging: by equivocating between conceptions of God and God himself, this atheist "argument" begs the question whether the term 'God' refers to anything other than this or that conception of 'god'. That is, this "argument" *begins* with the assumption that the terms 'God' and 'god' refer ever and only to ideas and never to what those ideas are believed to concern. So, of course, by *assuming* that the Judeo-Christian use of the term 'God' refers *only* to the Judeo-Christian concept of what God is like, and never to God Himself, he is able to "conclude" that God is merely an idea "created by the human mind."

Well, d'oh!

Keep in mind, Gentle Reader -- this is the *best* that the militant God-haters (and would-be murderers of his people) can do.

Gettin' your freak on ... and not

Bob Parks: How To Piss Off Your Wife

'I do not think that word means what you think it means'

Bob Parks: Boneheads Of The Day -- Notice the sign a person in the picture is holding -- as Inigo Montoya might say, "I do not think that word means what you think it means". For, after all, what they are demanding for 'Juan' is the opposite of justice.

The other side!

Washington Times: Obama: Hole U.S. ‘digging out of’ requires billions more in unemployment benefits

The problem is that you and I ... and everyone else ... just aren't smart enough to grasp the sheer genius of continued digging when you find you've dug yourself onto a hole. Sure, everyone likes to say, "The first thing to do when you realize you've dug yourself into a hole is to stop digging", but that conventional "wisdom" just shows a lack of imagination.

You see, as Our Zero, Who art The Won, has realized, the only sure way to get yourself out of the hole you've dug yourself into is to keep digging until you reach the other side!

The other side is, of course, China: when the Democrats have turned America into China, then all our problems will be solved.

The MFAP hypothesis of human evolution

I've know about this particular howler for some months. I wish to share with Gentle Reader Michael Egnor's amusing take: You thought descent from apes was bad

Fun with 'life expectancy' comparisons

Bob Parks linked to a supposed news story and commented: Screenshot Of The Day

The US ranks 26th for life expectancy, right behind Slovenia

The left [is] using this to bash American health care while avoiding the daily inner city crime contributions

I commented --

"Life expectancy" rankings between polities using different metrics are inherently dishonest -- and the US uses a different set of metrics than European countries do (hint: ours is more honest, and lowers our "score" in comparison to theirs).

For instance, infant mortality rates -- and how they are counted and then computed into the "life expectancy" number -- has a significant impact on the "score" being used to compare countries. The US counts *all* live births, even if the infant dies immediately after its birth. On the other hand, most other countries *don't* count all live births, but rathe count only those infants who survive some arbitrary cut-off period -- days or weeks, even as much as a full year. The majority of infant mortality occurs within the first few days of birth, and unless a society is a total hell-hole, if an infant survives the first year, he's generally going to make it to adulthood.

Consider:
If there are 98 people -- and just to make the math simple -- all of whom live exactly 70 years, then the average life-span of that group of people was obviously 70 years [i.e. (70 * 98) / 98].

But, add to the group a ninety-nineth person who died at birth, and the average life-span of the group drops to 69.29 years [i.e. ((70 * 98) + 0) / 99].

Now, add a one-hundredth person who died at birth, and the average life-span of the group drops to 68.6 years [i.e. ((70 * 98) + 0 + 0) / 100]

In the US, we count those two persons who died at birth; most European countries don't.

Who wouldn't want to live in the hypothetical polity with an average life-span "score" of 70 years as compared to the one with a "score" of 68.6 years -- and yet, these two hypothetical polities are the exact same place! The only difference between them is *how* the average life-span is being calculated.

Also, keep in mind, in calculating these "average life-spans", I *know* exactly how long the persons being counted actually lived. In contrast, in "calculating" "average life expectancy", no one yet knows how long the persons being counted actually will live: "average life expectancy" is derived via actualial computations, not from computations of actual lives lived.

As Mr Parks said: The left [is] using this to bash American health care while avoiding the daily inner city crime contributions ... because leftists don't give a damn about truth, and they will use *any* excuse they can get you to swallow to get you to give up your liberty and so increase their power over your life.