Below are Christian taunts to atheist Penn Jillette concerning a debate challenge. Penn Jillette has been contacted via Twitter, YouTube and email.

“He’s watching. trust me. Most Atheists are obsessed with the TRUTH, they just don’t [...]]]> Currently featured on the front page of Conservapaedia is the following short article:

Christian taunts to atheist Penn Jillette

Below are Christian taunts to atheist Penn Jillette concerning a debate challenge. Penn Jillette has been contacted via Twitter, YouTube and email.

“He’s watching. trust me. Most Atheists are obsessed with the TRUTH, they just don’t like it.”

“Come on Penn, you even WANT people to debate because our opinions on the existence of God are too important to keep private!”

Who could this bold, confident creationist challenger called “shockofgod” with over 18,000 YouTube subscribers be? Interest piqued, I clicked on over to watch his video challenge:

If you don’t want to waste your time viewing the video (and I wouldn’t blame you), his thesis is that the viewership of Brights website–where Penn Jillette is listed as being an “Enthusiastic Bright”–is in decline and it will take a miracle to turn it around. (In reality, after one good month last year, views of the the-brights.net has been flat, but that’s not the main purpose of this post.)

For some unknown reason, “shockofgod” selects Penn Jillette out of all the main supporters of the Brights website to challenge to a debate over evolution. He could have selected, you know, an actual evolutionist like Richard Dawkins to challenge, but whatever.

Looking through the comments, I saw that someone had pointed out the obvious–that there is no reason to assume that Penn Jillette even knows about the challenge. “Shockofgod” replies that he has sent Jillette an email and posted a comment on his YouTube channel, so that he must be aware of the challenge by now.

So I thought I would post my own comment on the video, pointing out that Jillette, as a public figure who undoubtedly gets hundreds of emails a day,  is highly unlikely to be personally monitoring his email or YouTube comments, so there is no reason to assume he knows of the challenge. I also pointed out that a decline in the viewing figures of a minor atheist website like “The Brights” (an effort that not all atheists agreed with in the first place, including myself), is hardly a good proxy for the fortunes of atheism in America. Certainly the current demographic trends would indicate that non-belief has a bright future here in America.

When I clicked the “Post” button, the message came back that the comment would be moderated. This is actually quite typical of creationist and religious web sites, who tend not to like being challenged, but I was willing to wait. An hour or so later, I got a couple of emails from YouTube saying that someone had posted a comment on my channel and on my one remaining video. It was “shockofgod”:

Why isn’t Penn Jillete debating me you guys scared? He knows about my challenge go ask him he is here on youtube. Why are atheists such cowards? Tell me why?

and

Proof atheism is madness Shockawenow . n e t

He spammed me! I clicked back to his video to find my comment, and surprise, surprise, it was nowhere to be seen. A further comment brought no response at all.

So this (anonymous) conservative Christian, who claims to be so boldly challenging a prominent atheist to a debate can’t even bring himself to allow a mildly critical comment on to his own YouTube video.

Par for the course, I guess. Just like Conservapaedia, who has trumpted information about his inconsequential challenge on at least three of its pages, he all bark and no bite.

In response to the posting of the news story about a group of physicts at CERN may have detected neutrinos traveling faster than the [...]]]> I was surfing the inanity-insanity that is the ultra-conservative Christian website, Conservapaedia, when I came across this brief conversation that sums up the site far better than any lengthy essay could.

In response to the posting of the news story about a group of physicts at CERN may have detected neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light, a contributor by the name of DavidZa initiated this exchange on the main Conservapaedia page’s talk page:

“We don’t allow faster than light neutrinos in here” said the bartender. A neutrino walks into a bar.(A rather good joke that’s going around) DavidZa 18:25, 24 September 2011 (EDT)

[T]hat’s a joke for a relativist. If relativity is false as long shown here by the Counterexamples to Relativity, then the joke isn’t funny.–Andy Schlafly 23:34, 24 September 2011 (EDT)

I think you’ll agree that it is a rather good joke, but apparently, the founder and main force behind Conservapaedia, Andy Schlafly, fails to see any humor in the quip.

You see, to Schlafly, the well-established scientific Theory of Relativity is synonymous with relativism, the philosophical belief that there are no absolute truths, and Einstein’s landmark discovery in the early part of the twentieth century is one of the major contributors to the rise of relativism in America today and the consequent decline in religious faith and values.

This, of course, is arrant nonsense, and Shlafly has been told this time and again by the less deluded denizens of the site. But it makes no difference. He still believes that one of the most tested and confirmed theories in physics has already been counterfeited and, naturally, Conservapaedia’s content is required to reflect his personal belief.

But even if by some bizarre coincidence Schlalfy is correct, and relativity is disproved (and faith in God is rescued?), the joke is still pretty funny, but of course, he can’t allow himself to admit even this.

Perhaps if you’ve never studied [...]]]> After a passable first attempt, and a merely “bleah” follow-up (a typical misrepresentation of what scientists claim about the Big Bang), Eric Hovind really hits rock bottom (pun intended) when it comes to his third “Creation Minute” video.  See if you can spot the howler:

Perhaps if you’ve never studied high school geography you might have missed it, but Hovind’s questioning of how the Colorado River could have flowed uphill for millions of years to carve out the Grand Canyon demonstrates a profound (and wanton) ignorance of proven geological processes.

One of the first things you learn in high school about our home planet is that the Earth’s crust is always on the move.  The theory of plate tectonics—the notion that the Earth’s crust is made up of a number of individual plates that drift around and bump up against each other—was one of the triumphs of the geological sciences of the early 20th century.  Today, in this age of satellite monitoring, it is trivially easy to show that many parts of the world—most notably the Himalayas, the Alps, and the Andes—are rising as the tectonic plates they rest upon are being thrust upwards by the neighboring plates which are pushing underneath, like placing a lever below a large rock to lift it up.

This is almost certainly what happened to the Colorado Plateau before the formation of the Grand Canyon.  There is ample geological evidence to show that the Colorado River (or a predecessor) carved out the canyon as the landmass around it rose due to pressure being exerted from neighboring tectonic plates slipping below it.  Studies of canyon’s route across the plateau show that the river’s flow and direction was directly influenced by nature of the upthrust of the land going on around it.

Of course, it has taken many hundreds of person years of scientific research, and many thousands of published papers to build a good picture of how the Grand Canyon was formed, and even now some questions over the details remain.  But then Hovind comes along that dismisses all of that with a wave of the hand and cries “Inconceivable!” as he fobs people off with an argument from incredulity. 

If pressed, no doubt he will spout the usual unsupported and unresearched creationist claims about rapid deposition and erosion during the Great Flood, but that is no more than using a toothpick to attack the Himalaya-sized mountain range of scientific evidence arranged against him.  It’s worth remember that analogy when you next heard a creationist calling for an equal hearing in the science classroom.  The disparity in supporting scientific evidence between the two sides simply cannot be overstated.