In The Beginning, Physics Was Optional

So the first thing God did, according to Genesis 1, is create the heavens and the earth, both of which were mostly completely composed of water. I imagine it looked something like this:

God then got around to creating light, and everything looked like this:

I swear I'm not doing this because I'm lazy...

God was getting sick of monochrome, so he made another blue thing for some reason. (Read about Rayleigh scattering if you just assumed you knew the answer to why the sky is blue). 

Okay, so maybe I am.

Everything was still way too boring, so God put a big rock smoother than a billiard ball in the middle of the apparently formless mass of water.

God finally decided to get down to business and started making plants. How he expected the plants to survive without the sun, I don't know.

The next day, God invented photosynthesis and calenders. And by that, I mean the sun and the moon and stuff. Not sure why these weren't included when he created day and night.

On the fifth day, God created animals and blamed them on the interns.

Now, there is some chronological inconsistency when it comes to the account of humanity's origin. Genesis 1:27-31 says that both men and women were created on the sixth day. However, Genesis 2:4-25 says that Adam was created before there were any plants (the third day), and Eve was created after the animals (the fifth day). The Creation Museum (whose exhibit is pictured below) wasn't fazed by that, though, so I will just say this:

As a post-script, someone apparently googled "how to tell the story of Abraham and Lot to kids" and was linked to my blog. I hope they got some good info.

Lucy: Do You Love Her?

The Creation Museum, one of the last bastions of truth in the secular United States (only 46% of Americans believe that the earth is 6,000 years old), has just refuted a century of research into human origins. With its highly controversial claim that Lucy "looked more like an ape than a human," the Museum and Answers in Genesis have truly given evolutionists cause to watch their backs. OH WAIT NO THAT'S REALLY STUPID. These people must have gotten their PhD's from a cereal box.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2012/05/28/lucy-exhibit-news-release

Here is a reconstruction of Lucy:

And here is the brain trust's version:

Would you look at that... I guess the scientific community ALREADY KNEW THAT IT LOOKED LIKE AN APE. Literally the only difference, according to the article, is that the creationists think that Lucy was primarily quadrupedal, whereas most scientists think that she was primarily bipedal.

“'Ultimately, with this excellent display, we want to show museum guests, once and for all, that this knuckle-walking creature needs to be discarded as a ‘missing link’ in human evolution,' Menton concluded."

I don't... what? Do they not understand how evolution works? If you look back far enough, we evolved from little organisms that were basically germs.

Evolution clearly cannot be mapped using physical resemblance as the primary criteria. So no, Menton, the possibility that Lucy walked on all fours does not discredit her candidacy as a human ancestor. Not that I'm conceding that this is even a possibility until I've read your paper. Oh, you don't have a peer reviewed paper?

To be fair, this article presents an argument, if not a convincing one, in favor of a reinterpretation of the Lucy skeleton. The conclusion is still bogus, but hey, at least they tried.

Another fun thing about the Creation Museum is that it has exhibits claiming that humans and dinosaurs coexisted. I understand that children love dinosaurs and that children are the museum's target audience, but dinosaurs are people too and they shouldn't be exploited.

DDYL

Ananias and Sapphira and the Donation of Death

The Old Testament is just so over-the-top outlandish that making fun of it sometimes feels like making fun a kid with braces and a mullet. (Just so we're on the same page, I was the kid with braces and a mullet... I imagine that I was pretty easy to make fun of). Not always, but today is one of those days.

So I am going to tell you the story of Ananias and Sapphira. It is found in Acts 5, and is often told in Sunday School for whatever reason. These were two really great people who found themselves with some excess funds when they sold some land. They decided to donate a bunch of it to the church. If I gave an appreciable portion of my money to a church, they could probably buy a fern. I have a feeling that these two contributed more than a fern. And in a time when Christians were apparently being treated worse than historical accuracy in a Mel Gibson movie, the fact that they were willing to part with a suspiciously large chunk of their bank account is pretty admirable 

Passion of the Spielbergheart

Now, the thing is, according to the New International Version of the Bible (biblegateway.com is probably loving me right now), ANANIAS DIDN'T EVEN LIE ABOUT HOW MUCH OF THE MONEY HE WAS GIVING. I cannot stress this enough. In this story, Ananias did literally nothing other than give a bunch of money to the church. He just "kept back part of the money for himself," which is kind of like putting a paycheck in your bank account. He was for all intents and purposes a really swell guy. But God decides to smite him anyways.

Try as I might, I can't seem to draw togas. Or anything else, really.

It was Sapphira who lied about it being all of the money they got for the land. Which really wasn't even all that bad; the church was still getting a ton of money from her, and I seem to recall Peter, who apparently knew that God was about to smite our philanthropists before it happened, doing some pretty serious lying... Something about a rooster...

Case in point...

So I guess the lesson here is that if you get a bunch of money, you should probably just give it to your local Gospel Hall and be done with it. Think of it as life insurance.

I want to start posing for pictures like Renaissance characters.

Everyone Except Noah Goes Swimming

Genesis 6-9 provide us with an example of what all geologists call "catastrophism" and what real geologists call "impossible."

Apparently everyone except Noah and his family was into short pants and Jason Derulo, so God decided that the best way to fix the problem would be to drown everyone on the planet. Except Noah, because he
"[didn't] listen to that mainstream crap."

This was my reaction to Derulo's bastardized version of "Hide and Seek."

God gave Noah plans for a boat that was roughly not the size of the Titanic, and yet big enough to contain a mating pair of every animal species on earth. I did a quick Google search and discovered that there are anywhere between 3 and 30 million species currently in existence. Most of them are bugs and stuff, but that's  still plenty to fill a relatively small boat.

"But Clark! Housecats are just one species with different variations!" "Shut up, God created everything exactly as it is."

Anyways, Noah started to build the thing, and all of his friends made fun of him. I remember my Sunday School teacher telling me that it hadn't rained (like ever) prior to the flood, which seems suspect to me. Regardless, it was probably pretty funny, since Noah lived in a desert.

According to some racists fundamentalists, Ham was black, and his curse (he walked in on his dad once or something) was used as an excuse for slavery. 

So Noah built his dingy and got all the animals/food for the animals/fresh water for the animals/his family on board. It began to rain, and everything died. There are a few pesky laws of physics that just won't cooperate here, but God is all-powerful, so it's mostly a moot point.

Too much of a good thing for the poor trees.

Eventually, after 40 days, God decided that everything was dead enough. But he decided not to inform Noah, and Noah sent some birds to go and find a live branch from one of the trees that were crushed by 9km deep water.

We made Ham kill them.

A phrase than needs to be taken behind the barn and shot.

They finally ran aground on Mt. Ararat beside some aliens. God said that the rainbow was a promise to never flood the earth again, but he left himself plenty of loopholes.

There is also no building material other than the boat, no fresh water, no genetic diversity, and no hope.

I feel like lack of genetic diversity is in part responsible for people still believing that this actually happened.

Abraham and the Almost Shanking of Isaac

Today's story is found in Genesis 22:1-18.

So some background; Abraham married his half-sister Sarah and they got all sad because they couldn't have babies (which was, in keeping with Biblical tradition, apparently the woman's fault). They got really old, and then God says to them "yo, I'm going to give you quasi-incestuous seniors a kid, because that isn't a recipe for some sort of birth defect." They were pretty stoked about this for some reason.

Flash forward a few chapters, and God decides that he wants to test Abraham's faith. He decides to do this in such a way as to give 21st century fundamentalists shock value when they say "I would sacrifice my kid if God asked me to."

I find fundamentalists who complain about gay parents adopting children hilarious in a sad sort of way.

So God says to Abraham "take your only son and shank him and then burn him." Abraham wasn't super jazzed about the idea, but I mean, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, right?

So Abraham took Isaac and somehow got him strapped down to an altar. I can't imagine that Isaac was very old, or maybe Abraham explained the situation to him rationally. The point is, Abraham gets him tied up and then whips out this sweet butterfly knife and nearly goes all Hit Girl on his only child. 

It's a little known fact that Lot founded Children's Aid after Abraham told this story at their family Christmas.

Honey, I have some bad news... You know God? Well, he just told me...

God is still catching up on "Lost." Oh wait, that's me. I think that bandwagon is rusting in a field somewhere.

So anyways, Isaac wasn't sacrificed and his descendants eventually slaughtered the Amalekites, a lovely story which I will discuss at length later.

Things In My House That I Hate

This list is by no means exhaustive. 

1. My water bottle; 

This is unequivocally the worst water bottle. It is shaped so that the top 2/3 of the water bottle is at least twice as wide as the base. To aggravate this already crippling structural error, the lid is attatched by a plastic tether, which, when the bottle is not entirely filled with liquid, is heavy enough to tip the entire bottle (due to the narrow base). The other problem with the water bottle is that it used to say "Protect Yourself" in large letters and "From Heat Stress" in smaller letters. But now the small letters have somehow faded and the bottle simply says "Protect Yourself," which, of course, is embarrassing in many scenarios.

2. My toaster;

This is actually not my toaster, but I hate it enough to include it in this list. It toasts the bread to a point... And then refuses to toast the bread any more. Even if the toast is not done, it has decided that the toast is, in fact, done and will act as though it is the authority on the matter. To make the problem worse, the little handle that makes the toast go down is sharp. And serrated. It's like someone cut little spikes into the edge of a tuna can lid. It has become a morning ritual for me... Toast, chocolate milk, and raging around the kitchen trying to stem the bleeding from my index finger.

As a short side note, I hate tuna can lids.

3. My small fridge;

I thought this fridge would make my life easier by allowing me to keep my expensive 3.25% milk and my vegetable bucket safe from my food-stealing roommates. However, nothing fits in the fridge. It's almost as if the fridge were designed specifically to be incompatible with the most frequently-occuring shapes in the food industry. So, since I cannot keep my milk and my vegetable bucket in the small fridge, I am forced to keep them in the communal fridge, which mysteriously changes temperature and freezes my vegetables.

4. The futon

I thought it would be comfortable (due to Shad's general recommendation of futons), but instead the cushion is too thin, so it's like sitting on a barbeque. Also, it appears as though it is supposed to fold down into a bed type thing. But it doesn't. It exists somewhere in limbo between being 90 degrees and flat. Actually, that's inaccurate... It stays in the least comfortable angle and resists my best efforts to restructure it. 

I tried to draw a picture, but this is way more accurate.

Eggs Are Not Steak

I have never been good at ordering in restaurants. I routinely get coerced into ordering 17$ chicken with a side of a lighter to burn more of my money. And tipping? Good lord, I just can't win. Left to my own devices, I would tip away my life savings due to sheer social incompetence. But I get made fun of for it enough that I now tip like that guy in the beginning of "Reservoir Dogs." Far and away the most embarrassing experience I have had at a restaurant, however, was my first time ordering eggs. 

 I suppose it was a learning experience; I now know that eggs are not the same as steak.