Darwin Day is coming!
Pictured above is what popped out of our toaster this morning — a miraculous omen reminding us that two days from now, 12 February, will be Darwin Day.
We already told you that our friends at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) have two posts about it, because there are two resolutions in the US Congress — see Darwin Day resolution in Congress, for the one in the House of Representatives, sponsored by Jim Himes (D-Connecticut), and also Darwin Day resolution in the Senate, sponsored by Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut).
But not everyone is looking forward to Darwin Day. This is the time of year when creationists start growing fur and howling at the moon. Four years ago we wrote about a post by Casey Luskin, informing us that the Discoveroids were attempting a pathetic effort to hijack the day for their own purposes (see Casey: Not Darwin Day, It’s Academic Freedom Day). It was as successful as Casey’s effort to create an IDEA club (Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness) on every college campus.
Today we bring you the shocking news that Ken Ham (ol’ Hambo), the Australian entrepreneur who has become the ayatollah of Appalachia, is opposed to Darwin Day. He’s not just opposed — he’s very opposed. Once again, as so often before, ol’ Hambo is furious. We imagine that he’s red in the face, foaming at the mouth, and rolling around chewing the carpet.
This is what we found at Hambo’s blog: House of Representatives Members Promoting Darwin Day. Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us:
Some members of the House of Representatives are working with a well-known atheistic organization, the American Humanist Association (AHA). Now keep in mind the AHA describes their beliefs this way:
[Hambo’s alleged quote, which we haven’t checked:] Humanism encompasses a variety of nontheistic views (atheism, agnosticism, rationalism, naturalism, secularism, and so forth) . . . .
Gasp — what an ungodly organization! Hambo says:
So why is this group working with some US congressmen? Because they want Congress to pass a resolution to celebrate an atheistic religion!
Oh, how horrible! Let’s read on:
Now, of course, they claim that by celebrating Darwin, they are celebrating science! But they are actually celebrating Darwin’s historical science — Darwin’s beliefs about where life came from. And Darwin clearly taught and believed life arose by natural processes — and naturalism is, for all intents and purposes, atheism.
Go ahead, count the errors in that paragraph. We see three. Hambo then gives some quotes from Darwin, which we’ll ignore because when accurately quoted in context, nothing Darwin said or wrote contradicts his theory. After that he quotes the proposed Congressional resolution, about which he says:
Now it is not likely that this resolution will pass. But even proposing such a resolution symbolizes the effect of groups like the AHA and those members of Congress who support them. They want the government of America to establish a religion in this nation (against the First Amendment) — the religion of naturalism or atheism.
The religion of atheism — is that anything like the noise of silence? Here’s more:
All Christians need to wake up and understand that at their core, Darwin’s ideas were proposed to explain life without God. That’s why it is so distressing to see so many Christians claim they can add Darwin’s ideas (really, Darwin’s religion) to God’s Word — thus compromising and undermining the authority of the Word of God.
That’s a perfect description of Darwin’s motivation. What an evil man he was! Moving along:
On Darwin’s birthday, let’s celebrate instead Darwin Was Wrong Day and proclaim this message to the world: [bible quote].
Hambo wraps up his tirade with a link to an article at the AIG website: Ken Ham Declares Darwin Was Wrong Day. Go ahead, click over there and read it. But we predict that Hambo’s bold proposal will never catch fire. It’ll be a flop, just like Casey’s IDEA clubs. Why? Because drool isn’t flammable.
Copyright © 2015. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
There’s a lot wrong here, but I think I can take the whole thing down based on one lucid example.
Avery Foley writes for Hambo:
Of course, because of the Curse and the Fall, things do not work quite the way God designed them to because of mutations and other defects in a fallen world. Nonetheless, we should expect our bodies to be well designed, and this is exactly what we find.
The issue I take with this is that while there are mutations and defects, there are also design flaws. Case in point: The blind spot in the vertebrate eye caused by nerves in front of the retina. No designer would design that. Can’t be result of “curse or fall” because the eye still functions very well, the brain even fills in the blind spot, “yay evolution!”. It also has a good evolutionary explanation:the eye evolved from brain/nerve cells so it had to evolve inside-out. In higher mollusks in remarkable case of parallel evolution the eye ball also evolved without the eyespot. Evolutionary explanation: the eyes of mollusks evolved from the excitable skin cells with an inside-in configuration.
Looks like Mr. Darwin was right after all.
So Hambone’s message shows he’s confused about what science is and about what religion is. Is there anything he’s not confused about?
I checked my Google calendar. It lists the 14th as Valentine’s day, and the 16th as Presidents’ day. There is no mention of Darwin Day.
Hmm, the alleged Darwin Lobby that the discoveroids keep complaining about must be slipping.
Here’s how I plan to take advantage of Darwin Day. My wife keeps reminding me not to buy her any presents or cards, or plan any special celebration for her birthday on February 12. Therefore I plan for us to go to a nice restaurant and celebrate Darwin Day. We might throw in a little early Valentine’s Day revelry too, if the spicy food and the heady wine happen to fan the concupiscent flame.
I bet he’d rather see a “Ham on fRYEday celebrating himself, exalted person that he is. Perhaps he could even MUSTARd up some support for his cause.
Abeastwood asks a retorical question: “Is there anything he’s not confused about?”
His bank account.
You didn’t reference the Twitter feed he created which is barrel of laughs. https://twitter.com/hashtag/DarwinWasWrongDay?src=hash
I just had a thought after reading Hambo’s rant. All this time I thought he was a complete idiot. A laughable buffoon. A complete dummy who simply doesn’t understand things.
I was wrong.
He’s no idiot. He is utterly insane!
So why is t[he American Humanist Association] working with some US congressmen? Because they want Congress to pass a resolution to celebrate an atheistic religion!
There is, by definition, no such thing as an “atheistic religion.” That’s an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms—you know, like “creation science.”
Mr. Ken “Hambo” Ham: “Now, of course, they claim that by celebrating Darwin, they are celebrating science! But they are actually celebrating Darwin’s historical science — Darwin’s beliefs about where life came from. And Darwin clearly taught and believed life arose by natural processes — and naturalism is, for all intents and purposes, atheism.”
WRONG, HAMBO!! Nowhere in Darwin’s published writings did he say anything concerning the origins of life! We know you are a regular reader of the Curmudgeon’s blog, Mr. Ham, so I’ll presume you are reading this. You know (or should know) that Darwin never addressed the question of how life originated, and yet you say “Darwin clearly taught and believed life arose by natural processes”. So you are either ignorant or a liar. Which is it, Mr. Ham?
If you can show us any passage from Darwin’s works which shows that “Darwin clearly taught and believed life arose by natural processes”, I will apologize and admit to being ignorant myself.
Again, Darwin never wrote that life arose by natural processes. He merely stated that species changed by natural processes. He called this “change by natural selection”. Easy enough to understand, and clearly evident in nature.
We realize you have millions of dollars at stake in the demonization of Darwin, and that no matter the evidence to the contrary, you will never admit to changing your views. You can’t afford to. But don’t make up stories to promote your money-making agenda. That’s not a very Christian thing to do.
@retiredsciguy: Well, there is Darwin’s 1871 “warm little pond” quote from a private letter to Joseph Hooker. Applying the habitually loose standards of exegesis to the quote, it can be made to look as if Darwin had argued for abiogenesis, when in fact what he said is that if such abiogenesis occurs, then its products are very likely to be consumed by extant organisms.
@Con-Tester: Exactly. From your Bruce Owen quote linked above:
“Apparently, this is the only place in all of Darwin’s public and private writings where he even speculates about this initial stage. He never published any opinion on the matter. He seems to have realized that it was:
1. touchy for many people;
2. not amenable to scientific investigation, at least with the knowledge of his day;
3. and most importantly, not relevant to whether or not his theory of evolution was correct for the time after the process had gotten rolling, however that happened.”
It’s point no. 3 that the “deliberate creationists” such as Ken Ham attempt to obfuscate when they conflate the Theory of Evolution with the origin of life itself.
We (and by “we” I mean everyone who accepts evolution) must state it clearly over and over and over — “Evolution makes no statement whatsoever concerning the origin of life. The Theory of Evolution is only about the process by which life has changed once it began.”
I recognize that in the present state of affairs, there is precious little that we can say about the origin of life on Earth.
Yet I would not be surprised to find out something about the origin of life which would bring that question within the scope of evolutionary biology. Is there anything that we know of which excludes evolution being involved?
Does anybody has even a hint of an idea for shedding light on the origin of life which does not make reference to evolutionary concepts?
You may have seen my latest two posts here:
http://forums.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2967&start=1620
retiredsciguy
The Ham blog of 9 Feb did include a Darwin quote (not from ‘Origin’) that also appears in the abstract of a 2009 science paper ‘Charles Darwin and the Origin of Life’ (I cannot paste the link for reasons unknown). The quote from Darwin includes the words “spontaneous generation not improbable” (though it’s not clear that he ruled out that a God caused this). The 2009 paper however makes the assumption that Darwin actually believed in a “natural emergence of the first life forms” ie the modern naturalistic abiogenesis concept whereby ‘primitive’ life somehow got going on Earth but possibly only once (all life being descended from the first ‘simple’ living organism).: