Our tranquility was once again shattered by blaring sirens and lights flashing on the wall display of our Retard-o-tron™. The blinking letters on the wall said WorldNetDaily.
WorldNetDaily (WND) is the flamingly creationist, absolutely execrable, moronic, and incurably crazed journalistic organ that believes in and enthusiastically promotes every conspiracy theory that ever existed. WND was an early winner of the Curmudgeon’s Buffoon Award, thus that jolly logo displayed above this post.
We were directed to an article written by Ben Kinchlow, whose work we’ve mentioned a few times before — most recently WorldNetDaily: Theocracy Is Our Only Hope. There’s actually a Wikipedia article about him.
Kinchlow’s latest is Stop and think about it. Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us, and the italics — Kinchlow uses them a lot — are his:
A proponent of the theory of evolution says we crawled out of the primordial ooze onto dry ground, and just look at what we have become today! Keep in mind, according to the dictionary, a theory is a “proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural.” It is a speculation, a guess, a conjecture.
When a creationist reaches for the dictionary, you know two things: First, he has no other non-scriptural reference books; and second, he’s going to select the least appropriate definition he can find. We use this online dictionary, and its first definition of “theory” is:
a coherent group of tested general propositions, commonly regarded as correct, that can be used as principles of explanation and prediction for a class of phenomena.
Kinchlow didn’t like that one. He chose the next, and he used only part of it. There’s no attempt at subtlety here; this is is raw creationism — intended to appeal to the most primitive minds. That’s why it’s published in WND. Let’s see what else he says:
[C]onsider the eyes you are reading this with: “To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances … could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.” Wonder what preacher said that? Oops, it was Charles Darwin, the father of evolution.
That’s correctly attributed to Darwin, but it’s wildly out of context, and it’s one of the most common and insidious of all creationist misrepresentations. We explained it in this post, Evolution of the Eye, so we won’t repeat ourselves. Let’s read on in Kinchlow’s steaming pile:
Life … feel the word. Roll it on your tongue. L-i-f-e. What is life? No one knows for sure, but it is assuredly much more than the result of a random bolt of lightning striking a pond of primordial stew.
Hey, that’s good! It’s been a long time since we’ve seen anyone advocate the theory of Vitalism. We continue:
How does your blood know exactly how many white cells and red cells it needs to achieve a perfect balance? How does the body know that if you have too many white cells you die, or if you have too few or too many red blood cells you die? Who instituted chemical laws, such as H2O [sic] and O2 [sic] , fertility and gravity, without which, life as we know it cannot exist?
Profound questions! Who — who? — instituted chemical laws such as H2O and O2? Here’s more, and so there’s no confusion, the parenthetical material is Kinchlow’s:
Could there have been an Intelligent Designer of such awe-inspiring magnitude behind all of this that it impels worship? (Say, for example, the first chapter of Genesis? God spoke and BANG! … it happened?) Nah, that’s religious. (One very brief point: The Bible is not a religious book and was never intended to establish religions, Christianity included. There are seven references to religious/religion in the Bible, and only one is overtly positive. My conclusion? God doesn’t like religion, either.)
Stranger and stranger. Moving along:
Consider this comparison: Alaska, a male polar bear (poster child for global warming) that hasn’t eaten for six weeks kills and eats a baby polar bear; New York City; a homeless guy who hasn’t eaten for almost three weeks snatches a baby out of a carriage, runs down an alley into an abandoned building, builds a fire, cooks and eats the kid. “Ben, that is barbaric!” (savagely cruel, exceedingly brutal, uncivilized). The intellectuals (and uninformed) who relentlessly denounce traditional, religious societal mores and argue so passionately for evolution’s natural law wail that such behavior among humans is uncivilized, wrong or even immoral. Why? Who says? Isn’t that just survival of the fittest?
Jeepers, he’s right! If evolution is true, we can eat babies! Another excerpt:
In other words, I can do whatever I please and no one has the right to impose their definition of morality on me. Right? Therefore, if, in my view, atheists, agnostics, homosexuals, mothers having children out of wedlock and guilty racist whites should be eliminated, who is to say I am wrong? And based on what? Your opinion?
According to Kinchlow’s understanding of Darwin, he’s right! Here’s the conclusion:
As I have previously stated, if we are truly the product of evolution, then there are no moral absolutes, as there is no author of moral absolutes. If you believe evolution to be the truth, you can and/or will act in a manner consistent with your view of self – unless, of course, you stop and think about it.
We’re persuaded. From now on, your Curmudgeon is going creationist. It’s the only way. We don’t wanna eat no babies.
Copyright © 2012. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
Curmudgeon: “We’re persuaded. From now on, your Curmudgeon is going creationist.”
So does that mean that you’ll be treating us to the Discoveroid rebuttal to WND?
Possibly the strangest claim by a creationist that I’ve ever read. The rest is the usual “my morals are better than yours” b.s.
The moral issue is sort of scary though. Kinchlow asserts that people are moral only because they fear eternal punishment. If Kinchlow ever came to understand that there is no eternal punishment – would he run amok and cause all sorts of havoc? Would he become a threat to society? He seems to think so – all the rules are off. It’s baby BBQ time. Now multiply Kinchlow by the millions of creationists who think like him….
Maybe we shouldn’t be trying so hard to change their convictions. We may be creating the zombie apocalypse.
Frank J wrote:
SC, I’ll put in a dollar for that!
garystar1 says: “SC, I’ll put in a dollar for that!”
Save your money. They all make sense to me.
Does WND also publish a foods and cuisine page, or will we be forced to look to the sleazy HuffPo for suitable recipes?
Evidently Mr. Kinchlow stopped to think, and neglected to start again. Kudzu to Curmie for another fine report.
And all this talk about eating is making me hungry. The tasty bit starts at about 1:50s.
Just inserting my lost html tag.
If you read more sophisticated Christian conservative critiques of secularism and atheism, you’ll be told that non-believers reject Christianity while continuing to believe in Christian values – ie most of our values are the product of Western Christian civilization even when we cease to believe in Christianity.
Your less sophisticated Bible-thumpers argue that you can’t believe in Christian values if you cease to be Christian, so it’s “baby eating” time.
Obvious both critiques cannot be true.
It was funny in Modest Proposal. Mr. Kinchlow, you’re not too Swift.
meh:” Your less sophisticated Bible-thumpers argue that you can’t believe in Christian values if you cease to be Christian, so it’s ‘baby eating’ time.”
They’re sophisticated enough – as snake oil salesmen – to never use David Klinghoffer, Harun Yahya and other non-Christian anti-evolution activists as examples. That’s because peddling pseudoscience and paranoia is the end-all, and Jesus is just another optional tool in the toolbox.
“…if we are truly the product of evolution, then there are no moral absolutes, as there is no author of moral absolutes. If you believe evolution to be the truth, you can and/or will act in a manner consistent with your view of self – unless, of course, you stop and think about it.”
That’s exactly right, but not the way he meant it. It seems to me that “stopping and thinking about it” is exactly where morals come from. No need for any “absolute” moral “laws” handed down from on high- just good old-fashioned intelligent thought about the best ways to advance yourself and your society through mutually co-operative measures. It’s funny to me that these guys believe so whole-heartedly that “evolutionists” must be naturally unable to act from any other motive than pure self-interest, which somehow makes them “evil,”; yet, seem to admit quite openly that their bible is the only thing standing between themselves and their natural desire to eat babies. It’s of a piece with their response to science- they don’t want to learn the answers, or be moral, they want those things given to them. And they need the answers and the morals to be as short and simple as their prayers for them.
The assertion that evolution leads to eating babies forces me to question one of my deepest held beliefs. Is everything truly better with bacon?
When God tells you to eat a baby, that becomes a moral absolute too, right? God can assign moral absolutes as He sees fit, can he not? God can tell you to hijack planes, exterminate the Canaanites, whatever. So how do we know that what God tells us is moral?
Oh but God would never tell us anything that was immoral, so if someone claims God told them to do X, if X is immoral then God didn’t really tell them, they are mistaken or lying, or maybe the Devil pretended to be God and they didn’t detect the difference.
So when a religion makes a claim about morality religious people must judge the morality of the claim, then they can decide if God really ordered it, and then they can obey it.
And so the problem of judging what is moral cannot be thrown off on God at all.
But you can’t blame Kinchlow for being behind on that. Euthyphro only came out about 2400 years ago and I think it likely that Kinchlow is a slow reader.
Gabriel Hanna says:
No! When God told Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, ol’ Abe didn’t ask any questions, he saluted and proceeded to do as he was told. When God stopped him, only then did he stop. The moral of the story, Gabe, is that the truly religious don’t ask questions. They obey. Go and do thou likewise.
If we are truly the product of design, then we are designed to be much like other vertebrates (for example, that marvel of design, the vertebrate eye), and most of all like chimps and bonobos (among all contemporary forms of life). If we are designed to be like chimps, that must mean that our purpose in life must be like the purpose of chimps. So, if we are the product of design, then we ought to act like chimps.
Gabriel Hanna says: “And so the problem of judging what is moral cannot be thrown off on God at all.”
Exactly. That’s the point I was getting at so badly, only much better (and more succinctly) stated- you still have to think about what you think god is telling you, and decide the morality of it for yourself.
“Alfred Packer, you depraved Republican son of a b1tch! There were only seven Democrats in Hinsdale County and you ate five of them!”