Another Creationist Moron: Roger Ebert. Not kidding.

[SirNitram]

Link

Questions and answers on Creationism, which should be discussed in schools as an alternative to the theory of evolution:

Q. When was the earth created?

A. Archbishop James Usher, working out a chronology from the Bible, calculated in 1654 that the earth was created on the night of October 23, 4004 B.C. Other timetables reach back as far as 10,000 years.

Q. What about oil and coal, which seem to have been generated from ancient forests millions of years ago?

A. They are evidence of a Great Flood about 4,400 years ago, which laid down all the layers of sediment at once. They are nowhere near as old as evolutionists and archeologists say. A fossil claimed to be 200 million years old, found in Nevada in 1917, shows a shoe print. [See photograph]

Q. What about bones representing such species as Cro-Magnon Man and Neanderthal Man?

A. Created at the same time as man. They did not survive. In fact, all surviving species and many others were created fully formed at the same time. At that moment they were of various ages and in varying degrees of health. Some individuals died an instant later, others within seconds, minutes or hours.

Q. Were there ice ages lasting millions of years?

A. No, but a recent and catastrophic Ice Epoch.

Q. Did the Colorado River carve out the mile-deep Grand Canyon over eons?

A. It was the result of Ice Epochs, the Great Flood and other catastrophes within the last 64 to 100 centuries.

Q. Was there a Noah, and did he have an Ark?

A. Certainly. There are many unverified reports of a massive wooden vessel on Mount Ararat. The Arc contained eight people, from whom we are all descended. It also contained two of each kind of animal. Since living species were obviously not created through an evolutionary process, every surviving land-based mammal species (about 5,400) had both ancestors on the Arc.

Q: What about dinosaurs?

A. They walked the earth at the same time as man, but were wiped out by the Flood, whose turbulence buried their bones in non-sequential sediments.

Q. What did the creatures on the Ark eat?

A. Food on board, fish, and possibly trapped sea birds.

Q. How long did the Great Flood last?

A. We know that Noah was 600 years, two months and 17 days old when he sailed. Using that as a starting point and counting forward, Genesis tells us it lasted for 40, 150, 253, 314 or 370 days.

Q. Since the earth was completely covered, even to the highest mountains, where did the waters go?

A. This is explained in Psalm 104, verses 6 and 7: "Thou coveredst it with the deep as with a garment: the waters stood above the mountains. At thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away."

Q. What about such cosmic phenomena as the rings of Saturn?

A. Evidence of a catastrophic collision between Saturn and another object within the same 10,000-year span.

Q. Why would God create such an absurd creature as a moose?

A. In charity, we must observe that the moose probably does not seem absurd to itself.

Personally, I knew he hated us from around Valley Of The Dolls.

[Kanastrous]

I dig 'Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.'

This is my happening, and it's freaking me out!

But yeah, maybe it's no surprise that the writer of that screenplay, buys this kind of hogwashery...

[Illuminatus Primus]

Jesus, what a moron. Now let's see Sarah Palin's column on the subject.

[Darth Wong]

A couple of years ago he wrote a scathing column attacking creationists. Either he's being sarcastic here or his health problems and growing sense of his own mortality has caused a major reversion.

A third possibility is that he was deluged with creationist bullshit E-mail after his last remarks on the subject and he was tricked into believing their bullshit. He's not a scientist after all, nor does he have even a smidgen of postsecondary science-related education as far as I know. It might be that he actually found their arguments convincing because he didn't know how to identify their flaws. They are very cleverly constructed arguments after all; one must learn to be a truly expert salesman when the product is shit.

[Cyborg Stan]

A. Created at the same time as man. They did not survive. In fact, all surviving species and many others were created fully formed at the same time. At that moment they were of various ages and in varying degrees of health. Some individuals died an instant later, others within seconds, minutes or hours.

Wow, that's a new one. Create entire populations of people, with apparent dieases and faults just so that they can watch each other die out hours later. Makes the entire global flood thing look like a warm hug in comparison.

[DPDarkPrimus]

I don't know why the hell that is on the website proper instead of his blog or why it's there without any additional context, but all of Ebert's reviews and writings that I've read have shown him to be a supporter of science and a believer in evolution, and strongly opposed to the kind of non-thinking that dogmatic ideas like creationism espouse.

[Fire Fly]

Ebert has previously used his Q&A for tongue in cheek commentary and he has openly opposed creationism. Then there's the possibility that his site was hacked or that prose without witty remarks makes for bad humor.

So until new light is shed, I'm not about to call the man an idiot. Everything I've seen about him shows him to be a supporter of science.

[Thanas]

There is no possibility of this being a hack, is there?

Because quite honestly, that was what first came to my mind. From all his reviews, he doesn't seem to fit the profile of fundamentalist moron.

[hongi]

I'm calling Poe's Law.

"Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing."

[Sriad]

A. Created at the same time as man. They did not survive. In fact, all surviving species and many others were created fully formed at the same time. At that moment they were of various ages and in varying degrees of health. Some individuals died an instant later, others within seconds, minutes or hours.

Wow, that's a new one. Create entire populations of people, with apparent dieases and faults just so that they can watch each other die out hours later. Makes the entire global flood thing look like a warm hug in comparison.

This one especially has me believing it's a joke. Can you imagine even the nuttiest creationist telling you hordes of Neanderthals were created in Eden and then died seconds later?

[General Zod]

This one especially has me believing it's a joke. Can you imagine even the nuttiest creationist telling you hordes of Neanderthals were created in Eden and then died seconds later?

Quite easily, actually.

[Crayz9000]

Still, this seems sufficiently ludicrous and worded in a very tongue-in-cheek fashion. See the comment about eating trapped sea birds.

[Darth Wong]

The last comment in particular makes it seem like sarcasm, which is why that was the first option I listed. When someone says "to be charitable", it normally means that he thinks most of the arguments from the group he's talking about are crap.

In a way, we are so accustomed to dealing with batshit-insane fundies that perhaps we've forgotten how it's easy, when first encountering their nonsense, to think it's so comical that simply quoting it unaltered is sufficient mockery.

Still, Roger is the type of guy who will normally put something like that in context. It's rather odd, to see so little context around it. Even if he had converted to a rabid fundamentalist in the last 6 months due to painkiller medication, he would have put a lot more dressing on the article than that.

[Patrick Degan]

Archbishop James Usher, working out a chronology from the Bible, calculated in 1654 that the earth was created on the night of October 23, 4004 B.C. Other timetables reach back as far as 10,000 years.

At around 9a.m., I suppose.


Was that Eastern Standard Time, or Rocky Mountain Time? It wasn't Daylight Savings Time, because the Lord didn't make the sun until the fourth day.

More seriously, I will also reserve judgement on Ebert's intelligence for the present.

[DPDarkPrimus]

Still, Roger is the type of guy who will normally put something like that in context. It's rather odd, to see so little context around it. Even if he had converted to a rabid fundamentalist in the last 6 months due to painkiller medication, he would have put a lot more dressing on the article than that.

If it were a conversion that radical you would think there would have been signs in his blog entries and movie reviews of a shift in moral and theological beliefs.

[PeZook]

I guess that once the Earth was created, God mandated the Gregorian calendar as well, but the sinful humans forgot and had to rediscover it

[Rye]

The ark comment especially makes me think it's not too serious, as does the Neanderthal one. Creationists don't like to mention that anything they believe in is unverified and tend to believe that Neanderthals were normal humans or nephilim or whatever, not a different species of human that lasted a short time.

[Hillary]

Q. Why would God create such an absurd creature as a moose?

A. In charity, we must observe that the moose probably does not seem absurd to itself.

This is the one that made me think "pisstake".

[Surlethe]

Evidence that the OP's article is sarcastic:

Questions and answers on Creationism, which should be discussed in schools as an alternative to the theory of evolution:

Q. When was the earth created?

A. Archbishop James Usher, working out a chronology from the Bible, calculated in 1654 that the earth was created on the night of October 23, 4004 B.C. Other timetables reach back as far as 10,000 years.

Q. What about oil and coal, which seem to have been generated from ancient forests millions of years ago?

A. They are evidence of a Great Flood about 4,400 years ago, which laid down all the layers of sediment at once. They are nowhere near as old as evolutionists and archeologists say. A fossil claimed to be 200 million years old, found in Nevada in 1917, shows a shoe print. [See photograph]

Q. What about bones representing such species as Cro-Magnon Man and Neanderthal Man?

A. Created at the same time as man. They did not survive. In fact, all surviving species and many others were created fully formed at the same time. At that moment they were of various ages and in varying degrees of health. Some individuals died an instant later, others within seconds, minutes or hours.

Q. Were there ice ages lasting millions of years?

A. No, but a recent and catastrophic Ice Epoch.

Q. Did the Colorado River carve out the mile-deep Grand Canyon over eons?

A. It was the result of Ice Epochs, the Great Flood and other catastrophes within the last 64 to 100 centuries.

Q. Was there a Noah, and did he have an Ark?

A. Certainly. There are many unverified reports of a massive wooden vessel on Mount Ararat. The Arc contained eight people, from whom we are all descended. It also contained two of each kind of animal. Since living species were obviously not created through an evolutionary process, every surviving land-based mammal species (about 5,400) had both ancestors on the Arc.

Q: What about dinosaurs?

A. They walked the earth at the same time as man, but were wiped out by the Flood, whose turbulence buried their bones in non-sequential sediments.

Q. What did the creatures on the Ark eat?

A. Food on board, fish, and possibly trapped sea birds.

Q. How long did the Great Flood last?

A. We know that Noah was 600 years, two months and 17 days old when he sailed. Using that as a starting point and counting forward, Genesis tells us it lasted for 40, 150, 253, 314 or 370 days.

Q. Since the earth was completely covered, even to the highest mountains, where did the waters go?

A. This is explained in Psalm 104, verses 6 and 7: "Thou coveredst it with the deep as with a garment: the waters stood above the mountains. At thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away."

Q. What about such cosmic phenomena as the rings of Saturn?

A. Evidence of a catastrophic collision between Saturn and another object within the same 10,000-year span.

Q. Why would God create such an absurd creature as a moose?

A. In charity, we must observe that the moose probably does not seem absurd to itself.

[Ted C]

There's some speculation that this was actually a hack. Sarcasm also looks pretty decent.

[DaveJB]

I'm not sure why, but I get the impression that this was ghostwritten by someone who doesn't really get the humour in Ebert's writing style. Either that, or he (understandably) wasn't firing on all cylinders when he wrote this.

[Guardsman Bass]

I'm guessing he's being sarcastic, by pointing out that some of these answers up for "discussion" can be pretty ludicrous in examination.

[Phil Skayhan]

Relevant piece by Ebert in 2005

'Job vs. the Volcano':
Faith vs. science in IMAX

IMAX theaters in several Southern cities have decided not to show a film on volcanoes out of concern that its references to evolution might offend those with fundamental religious beliefs. -- Associated Press

I suppose the AP meant to say "fundamentalist," since most people with fundamental religious beliefs, including the pope, believe in the theory of evolution. But what is more disturbing is that the theaters have made this decision simply because they are afraid someone might be offended. Not even a single protester needed to appear before the chilling effect of faith-based intolerance was felt.

Surely moviegoers deserve the right to decide for themselves what movies to see? "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea," according to the AP, "makes a connection between human DNA and microbes inside undersea volcanoes." It says that if life could evolve under such extreme circumstances, it might help us understand evolution all over the planet.

This is not a controversial opinion. The overwhelming majority of all scientists everywhere in the world who have studied the subject would agree with it. Although discussion continues about the mechanics of evolution, there is no reputable doubt about the existence of DNA and the way in which it functions.

Yes, there is “creationist science,” an attempt to provide a scientific
footing for beliefs which should be a matter of faith. Creationists say
evolution is “only a theory,” and want equal time for their theories,
one of which is that God created the earth from scratch in six days,
and rested on the seventh.

Evolution is indeed a theory. Creationism is a belief, not a theory. In science, a theory is a hypothesis that has withstood the test of time and the challenge of opposing views. It is not simply somebody's notion about something. The creationist belief cannot withstand such tests and challenges; it exists outside the world of science altogether.

There is no conflict between a belief in Darwinism and a belief in God as the creator of the universe. Many scientists have no trouble with the idea that God was the creator of all that is. In evolution, they think they see the elegant way by which he caused suns and planets to form, matter to interact, and life to come into being; that over some 4 billion years, the Earth and the creatures on it gradually evolved into the world we occupy today.

Fundamentalism denies this majestic idea and substitutes God as a magician who created everything more or less as it is now, all at once or very quickly. Dinosaur bones, geologic strata and carbon dating, by providing evidence that seems to contradict their beliefs, are a test of faith.

Now we have theaters, school systems and the media asked to give equal footing to a theory based on science and a belief based on faith. Creationists want it both ways. They want their ideas introduced into schools, but (if IMAX is right) they do not want evolution included in movies about volcanoes. If they are right and can prove it, what do they have to fear?

An industry has grown up around the "science" supporting the "argument for intelligent design." It refuses the possibility that evolution itself is the most elegant and plausible argument for those who wish to believe in intelligent design. If you are interested, you might want to go to www.talkorigins.org, where the errors of creationist science are patiently explained. And you might want to ask at your local IMAX theater why they allow a few of their customers to make decisions for all of the rest.

That pretty much settles it in my mind that Ebert is not a creationist.

[DPDarkPrimus]

This is the dawning of the Age of Credulity

Some days ago I posted an article headlined, "Creationism: Your questions answered." It was Q&A that accurately reflected Creationist beliefs. It inspired a firestorm on the web, with hundreds, even thousands of comments on blogs devoted to evolution and science. More than 600 comments on the delightful FARK.com alone. Many of the comments I've seen believe I have converted to Creationism. Others conclude I have lost my mind because of age and illness. There is a widespread conviction that the site was hacked. Lane Brown's blog for New York magazine flatly states I gave "two thumbs down to evolution." On every one of the blogs, there are a few perceptive comments gently suggesting the article might have been satirical. So far I have not seen a single message, negative or positive, from anyone identifying as a Creationist.

at was my purpose in posting the article? Can you think of a famous Creationist? Perhaps I was trying to helpfully explain what Creationists believe. The article, although brief, was accurate as far as I could determine, which explains why there have been no complaints from Creationists. What was there to complain about? Nor have I received any praise from Creationists, which speaks well for their instincts; they're apparently more canny than the evolutionists who believe I have lost my mind.

But the purpose of this blog entry is not to discuss politics (a subject banned from the blog). Nor is it to discuss Creationism versus the theory of evolution (that way lurks an endless loop). It is to discuss the gradual decay of our sense of irony and instinct for satire, and our growing credulity.

Let me take you back to 1997, and a conversation I had with Paul Schrader, author of "Taxi Driver," director of "Mishima" and "American Gigolo." He told me that after "Pulp Fiction," we were leaving an existential age and entering an age of irony.

"The existential dilemma," he said, "is, 'should I live?' And the ironic answer is, 'does it matter?' Everything in the ironic world has quotation marks around it. You don't actually kill somebody; you 'kill' them. It doesn't really matter if you put the baby in front of the runaway car because it's only a 'baby' and it's only a 'car'."

In other words, the scene isn't about the baby. The scene is about scenes about babies.

To sense the irony, you have to sense the invisible quotation marks. I suspect quotation marks may be growing imperceptible to us. We may be leaving an age of irony and entering an age of credulity. In a time of shortened attention spans and instant gratification, trained by web surfing and movies with an average shot length of seconds, we absorb rather than contemplate. We want to gobble all the food on the plate, instead of considering each bite. We accept rather than select.

Were there invisible quotation marks about my Creationism article? Of course there were. How could you be expected to see them? In a sense, I didn't want you to. I wrote it straight. The quotation marks would have been supplied by the instincts of the ironic reader. The classic model is Jonathan Swift's famous essay, "A Modest Proposal." I remember Miss Seward at Urbana High School, telling us to read it in class and note the exact word at which Swift's actual purpose became clear. None of us had ever heard of it, and she didn't use a giveaway word like "satire." Yet not a single person in the class concluded that Swift was seriously proposing that the starving Irish eat their babies. We all got it.

What you do is, first, consider the source. Jonathan Swift was not a noted cannibal. Then you look for little giveaways, or triggers. Did I supply any triggers in my Creationism piece to inspire such a process? Yes, although they were not waving flags and calling attention to themselves. Possible triggers have been identified in the comments I've read. The most cited was the Q&A about the moose. I didn't want to be obvious, because I hoped to reach readers who were uninformed about Creationism and would find the information interesting. If I had used an obvious slant, readers might have responded according to their pre-existing beliefs. I wanted to fly under the radar. I seem to have been all too successful.

I have something like 10,000 articles on my web site. I don't expect most people to have read even 100 of them. I have forgotten some myself. But I hoped my track record might have provided a gentle nudge in the ribs. And there was a bold trigger in plain view, elsewhere on the same page, in this headline: "Evolution is God's intelligent design." Yet intelligent readers, even in comments on Richard Dawkins' own site, didn't see the quotation marks. Would Dawkins have? Of course. I can't prove it, but I'm certain.

Let me give another example of credulity. The following paragraph appeared this week in a New York Post review by Adam Buckman of the season premiere of "Heroes."

This show, which was once so thrilling and fun, has become full of itself, its characters spouting crazy nonsense. Here's one I wish someone would translate for me: "There's a divinity that shapes our ends--rough hew them how we will," spouts the enigmatic industrialist Linderman played by Malcolm McDowell, who should win an Emmy for keeping a straight face while reciting these lines.

Perhaps McDowell kept a straight face because he knew he was quoting one of the most famous speeches in Hamlet. I don't expect everyone to have read Hamlet, but I would hope a New York critic might have run across it once or twice. Still, we all have our blind spots. After I once quoted Dr. Johnson, I had an editor who asked me who the doctor was, and whether he practiced at a Chicago hospital. So let's assume Buckman knew Hamlet by heart, but had forgotten that one sentence.

Let's go to work as perceptive readers. It might be a two-step process. (1) As he requests, we can translate: "Fate determines how we end up, no matter how crudely we try to control things." (2) Does anything about those words suggest they might be a quotation, appearing as they do in the middle of otherwise standard TV dialogue? Buckman went to the trouble of writing them down correctly. If a red light had gone off, he could have Googled them. See what you get. There is a third possibility. He had invisible quotation marks around his paragraph. I confess I cannot see them.

These days, there is no room for ambiguity, and few rewards for critical thinking. Now every word of a politician is pumped dry by his opponent, looking for sinister meanings. Many political ads are an insult to the intelligence. Here I am not discussing politics. I am discussing credulity. If you were to see a TV ad charging that a politician supported "comprehensive sex education" for kindergarten children, would you (1) believe it, or (2) very much doubt it? The authors of the ad spent big money in a bet on the credulity and unquestioning thinking of the viewership. Ask yourself what such an ad believes about us. No politics, please.

The adventure with the Creationism article has been enlightening, and a little depressing. I expected better from evolutionists. Thank goodness for my readers like Anna, Mike S., Mark Dottavio, Martin Wagner, John McFerren, and Robert of Taiwan. They could see the quotation marks.

A postscript and confession. As I said, everyone has blind spots. Many of my supporters cited Poe's Law, which I was completely unfamiliar with.

From his blog

Poe's Law, which for some reason will not dress as a link using the [URL] code: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... =Poe's+Law

[Darth Wong]

As I said earlier, the first option was sarcasm, but I think Mr. Ebert underestimates the insanity of real creationists. Someone who didn't know about Mr. Ebert's past statements on the subject of creationism vs evolution would be hard-pressed to identify the sarcasm because real creationists say things that bizarre all the time. Once you've dealt with enough real creationists and had enough jaw-dropping "shake your head in disbelief" moments, you lower the bar for the kind of things you might expect a creationist to say without irony.