Weapons of Mass Distraction

The Insanity Continues February 17, 2007

Now there’s the chairman of the Texas House Appropriations Committee, Warren Chisum who doesn’t quite believe that the earth goes around the sun.

But it gets so much better – the Kos article has a link to the Fixed Earth people. I found their little diatribe against Hubble’s explanation and ruminations on red-shift to be downright amusing.

What I’ve noticed is that the fundamentalists love to take things out of context. Take evolution for example. There are those who are incredulous that we’re related to the apes. This is because they see evolution in a linear context, vs. the fact that evolution is all about branching. Yes, humans, chimps and bonobos have a common ancestor. We’re just branches off that ancestor so technically speaking, humans are third branch of the chimp family. Instead of changing the taxonomic description of chimps, perhaps we should be moving humans from homo to pan.

Next thing you know, the fixed earthers will be flat earthers. The world most definitely is NOT flat. And it most definitely is not magnetically suspended in space while the sun revolves around us. Matter of fact there’s plenty of evidence now amassed that the earth most definitely is spinning around on its axis, which also has precess (Which means right now that the northern hemisphere is in winter, while the southern is in summer). We also know the approximate orbit we make around our home star, the sun.

We know this because people have been observing the sky for quite some time now. Not content to just observe from the earth, we’ve put orbiting satellites up that get past atmospheric distortion, light pollution, etc. to give us a clearer view of the cosmos. And those views are phenomenal.

For instance, slip the slider to 2:45 on the video below. Galaxies – 3,000 of them. In one small part of the 78 billion light year sized universe. And at night we can only see a few thousand stars. Might also want to look at an updated version of the deep field image at 5:25

Do you still believe that the fixed earthers are correct? That Christian and Islamic fundamentalists are correct? If you do, I feel sorry for you because there is so much evidence out there that contradicts religious teachings. You might want to check out the Rational Response Squad.

Our so called holy books regularly feature things in which it is clear that the authors had not one clue. The whole ‘spilling of seed’ thing is just a chauvinistic view that the sperm was the key component, that the egg brought nothing to the party, hence nary a mention of lesbianism in those books.

Then of course there are the prohibitions against pork and shellfish contained in Leviticus. Of course if you don’t cook your food, you’re going to suffer the consequences. They just didn’t know about the pathogens and parasites living in the tissue of pigs, and in the case of shellfish they didn’t like the way they looked so assumed they were bad for you. Ha!

Then of course we have the agenda of folks like St. Thomas Aquinas, or Saul of Tarsus, et al. These were men who were shall we say, interested in keeping the power to themselves. Share the power with the downtrodden or women? Never! These were the original male chauvinist pigs. And don’t even get me started about Mohamed and his sidekick Allah. I still boggle when women freely join such a misogynistic religion.

My rant ends here. But it could flare up again at any time in any place. Beware!