Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Hunters and Creationists fall into the Grand Canyon



Shannon Wright's anti-hunting series [12 MOST VILE], is slowly but surely working up to a crescendo, one fuelled by the hunters' anger, or is it angst. Since about #6, the hunters have begun to showing signs of serious agitation. As of #5, they have posted it in their own hunting sites and used it for target practice, and none too accurately I might add. Now it is up to #4, and they are hysterically besieging the post with what they consider to be lethal verbal fire, most of which being laughable, if not for the serious fact that the right-hand seats of power in America are almost uniformly occupied by recreational and trophy hunters the likes of Bush, Cheney, Perry, Palin, and now Romney, and whichever running mate he may choose, who will be a hunter, guaranteed. Even Obama, who once jeered at hunters, has been forced to faux-joyously proclaim the new National Hunting Day.

One of the things hunters say is their indignant "How DARE you compare us to serial killers?!" To this I say, "I don't COMPARE you to serial killers, you ARE serial killers. You do kill serially, don't you? Unless you use a bomb to kill many animals with one bang, which would make you a mass killer. And once you stop serial killing, you cease to be a hunter." Their response to my answer is either silence or a change of subject.

And what do they change their subject to? Since they are intellectually and verbally inept, a typical one is call upon the "THOU SHALT KILL" deity-of-their-own-making (no typo) to smash fire and brimstone upon our sinful heads, while ascertaining that "Jesus was no vegan." Be it as it may, my reply is, "I cannot imagine him being a trophy hunters either, can even you?"

Then one of them changed the subject to human history, citing our binocular vision as proof that we were hunters from the very Beginning. My answer is that whether early Homo sapiens began as hunters (-gathers) or not, theirs was Subsistence hunting, out of necessity, a far cry from the "modern" hunters' Recreational and Trophy hunting, "recreational" meaning amusement, pleasure, and in a child's lingo, fun.

"Besides," I add, "binocular vision does NOT necessarily imply hunting. What it does mean is that whatever species in possession of it needs a keen sense of depth perception, such as the primates that live in trees," adding, as a trap, "from which we have evolved," into which he promptly fell by indignantly announcing, "I AM a CREATIONIST!", to which another duly echoed, "Good God! These ANTIs (their supposedly derogatory term for us anti-hunters, in which we take great pride) are Godless EVOLUTIONISTS!!", which brings us to the focus of this blog.

For those unfamiliar with Creationism, a Creationist is one who believes in the literal truth of the Book of Genesis: that the entire Universe, the Earth included, was created in six days about 6000 years ago by a pre-existing deity of unknown and unquestioned origin, that all species were created simultaneously (except ours) in their current form, and that they are immutable, i.e. that they cannot evolve (in keeping with the hunters' own mental stagnation; they even have a T-shirt saying "I DID NOT EVOLVE!" LOL). Therefore, in their view, not only are Evolutionists anti-Bible, they are anti-God. The fact of the matter is that not all Deists are Creationists; in fact, except for the Fundamentalists, who take every word in Genesis as the literal truth, a slim majority of Christians today, even those who believe that God did create the Universe, including Charles Darwin himself of yester-era who began as a Creationist before his famous Voyage-of-the-Beagle, accept Evolution as the means by which creation was achieved, and is still being achieved.

Another hunter interjected, "Science is the Devil's instrument, which spawned the evil concept of Evolution. Look at the great intricacy of nature - how a simple leaf is made up of millions of tiny cells, each performing a complex process called photosynthesis to feed the whole plant - and you claim that this just came about by chance? This alone shows that there is an intelligent Creator God." As Darwin's "bulldog" Thomas Huxley said when Bishop Wilburforce publicly asked Darwin if he claimed his paternal or maternal line to trace back to the apes, "The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands", I replied, "How, pray tell, did you get to know about cells and photosynthesis, if not from science?" Again, silence.

It is pointless to try to explain to these pseudo-intellectual simpleton ignoramus Creationists trophy hunters the vast complexity of Evolution, from the tree of which they thoughtlessly and carelessly puck the most magnificent of fruits, thus dimishing its overall magnificence. So let me use a simple example to illustrate the gross stupidity of their ways, one of which being, "Evolution is only a theory", which it is NOT. Evolution is a FACT proven by millions of pieces of EVIDENCE, all but a few of which the Creationist chooses to ignore, citing them as "the Devil's temptation", while creating their own "evidence" to justify their irrational beliefs.

Here I have to digress slightly to define three words.

The first is "theory". I repeat, Evolution is a proven FACT, species do change with their changing environment, whereas how it happens could be said to be a "theory", until it too has been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt, when it too becomes fact. When Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace simultaneously and independently advanced the mechanism of Natural Selection, it was indeed just a theory, but so much evidence has been unearthed since then that even this previous theory has also become fact. Natural Selection does happen and happens on a daily basis, and nothing that the Creationists can say or do that can negate this.

The second word is "belief". My favourite definition is "To believe without question is to let others do the thinking for you."

The third word is "evidence", and I'll say what it is not. It is not something one conjures up to justified a preconceived erroneous conclusion.


Speaking of evidence, now back to how Creationists create their own to justify their grossly erroneous beliefs, here is a simple example - the Grand Canyon. In short, one of their claims is that it was created, again within a few days, as a result of a flash flood, one likely associated with Noah's Flood, and the resulting rock layers were laid down in its aftermath, with the fossils sorted by gravity. They further claim, since dinosaur fossils are among the layers, so they believe, that it is proof that humans and dinosaurs were contemporaries, just that the dinosaurs all died in the flood, whose remains were deposited in the middle layers, whereas humans, being lighter, floated to the top and survived. And since the entire Universe was just 6000 years old, then the Grand Canyon must be younger than even that. When it suits them, they have no problem ignoring Uranium Dating (which measures on the scale of millions of years), which they habitually confuse with Carbon-14 Dating (which measure on the scale of thousands of years), of neither of which they have the slightest comprehension.


Such a model is of course so full of holes that the Titanic could sail right through it. In fact , there is so little substance in it, if any, that the Titanic would not be able to find anything in it to collide with if it wanted to. But it cannot be lightly dismissed. Almost half of all Americans subscribe to Creationism in one form or another, approximately the same half that still deny that global warming is real. They have so much influence that the display at the Grand Canyon would not even dare to mention its age.


The FACTS about the Grand Canyon are as follows:

When it comes to the age of the Grand Canyon, there are two answers:

1. How long it took to create it: 20 million years ago, the site was just a plateau, with the Colorado River flowing through it. It took the river 6-17 million years depending on the exact location to carve it down to its present maximum depth of approximately 1 mile or 1.6 kilometres.

2. How old the rock layers are: The Grand Canyon comprise 3 rock groups (not of the musical kind:). At the bottom are Pre-Cambrian schist and granite over 1600 million year old. On top of this lie slanted Pre-Cambrian sedimentary rock layers 740-1200 million years old which had been tilted by earlier geological activities. And on top of this lie horizontal sedimentary rock layers the lowest and oldest being of the Cambrian period 525 million years old, rising up to the highest and youngest at the surface pertaining to the end-Permian period more some 250 million years old - before even the first dinosaurs began to exist, much less humans.


So, what does all this leave the Creationists? A total lack of credibility except to themselves, that's what.


Anthony Marr, Founder and President
Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE)
Global Anti-Hunting Coalition (GAHC)
Anthony-Marr@HOPE-CARE.org
www.HOPE-CARE.org
www.facebook.com/Anthony.Marr.001
www.facebook.com/Global_Anti-Hunting_Coalition
www.myspace.com/AnthonyMarr
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www.HomoSapiensSaveYourEarth.blogspot.com
www.DearHomoSapiens.blogspot.com
www.AnthonyMarr13.wordpress.com

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