You may rememer a while back that PZ Myers got hit with an awesome stupidgasm of ill-thought-out, scientifically illiterate “proofs of God” by one Debra Rufini. Well, she’s targetting Richard Dawkins now, and copied me in on her e-mail to him. Once again, Debra has copy-and-pasted a hopeless list of sub-Hovind one-line arguments into a huge blithering mess, and, since I strongly suspect Prof. Dawkins is, well, a little above taking these kindergarten “arguments” apart, I figured I’d have at her again. Here’s her e-mail, with my responses interspersed:

Dear Professor Dawkins,
I have recently written a book exploring the possibility of yourself seeking therapy, but your ‘Wonderful Counsellor’ turns out to be Jesus Christ!
I understand my ’50 proofs why God is real’ is circling the athiest field on the internet.
I would like you to take into account these facts, and reconsider your current belief -

Tiny atoms & sub atomic particles make up everything, yet they are not alive, so even if we were to assemble ourselves from atoms, we would not be alive but just corpses. The miracle of life can only come from a Creator God.

The “miracle of life” which you tout is merely a way of differentiating between systems. A “living” system is one with certain properties (growth, reproduction etc.) which are not shared by non-living systems. It’s a mode of classification, nothing more. In fairness, this is a better argument than your usual fare, and warrants a more thorough rebuttal – I’ll write a post about this in the next week or so.

99.99% of all life is now extinct & extinctions are regular, even without man. No new species are appearing, and no new species has ever been documented. So it appears that ‘mother nature’ is better at distinguishing lifve than creating it.

We discover new species all the time. ScienceDaily will keep you up-to-date with the latest discoveries.

Earth is in just the right place relative to the right type of star & is the right type of planet to support life. Is it just a lucky fluke that the universe is finely tuned for life?

That’s the anthropic fallacy – I explained this last time; check numbers 17-20.

Genesis 22 v 17 & Psalm 147 v 4 tells us that the stars are limitless.
Job 26 v 7 tells us that he hangs the earth on nothing.
Isiah 40 v 22 tells us that the earth is round.
How would the writers of the Bbile know such things, if not God-inspired?
Especially when such religions believed that the earth rested on turtles backs etc.

I think you’ll find the turtle hypothesis was rather uncommon in the Middle East – not many Terry Pratchett readers there… As for biblical astronomy, some slightly less nebulous statements, maybe with some mathematical models might impress me (the Greeks were doing precisely that at around the same time), but c’mon! Four verses that vaguely suggest not all Israelites were flat-earthers? That’s not evidence of divine inspiration, that’s just observational inference.

A number of athiestic scientists are continually modifying evolution to keep it alive in the face of a barrage of new evidence against it. This holds back true science as everything is made to conform to an incorrect theory.

*headdesk* Debra Rufini, meet the Scientific Method. Scientific Method – Debra Rufini. She’s a big fan.

Seriously, have you really misunderstood how science works to that extent? Do you honestly think that it’s better to work to an unchanging, Bronze Age worldview thought up by a bunch of nomadic goat-herders than to adapt one’s theories to fit reality? Are you a Poe? Are you?

If evolution did occur, it would have happened in other worlds.

Probably has. We wouldn’t know about it though – here’s why.

Population growth of 0.5% gives present population from Noah’s time. If man has existed for millions of years, 300 000 000 000 000 people have lived even with a zero growth rate. They have left no trace of their existence, no fossils, no bones, no buildings, no culture – nothing!

Okay, firstly? Cite your sources. I strongly suspect you (or the website you copy-pasted this from) pulled a figure of 0.5% out of thin air, since we have no reliable global population data from “Noah’s time”. Secondly, population growth is not constant – it fluctuates, quite drastically, sometimes. Thirdly, I think you’ll find that your 300 thousand billion figure was also pulled out of your (or your source’s) arse. Feel free to prove me wrong with citations, though. Finally, population growth is not exponential – overpopulated communities die out, which is why we aren’t knee-deep in rabbits (which reproduce far more quickly than we do) right now.

Apart from the Bible, many ancient civilisations have flood stories similar to the Biblical account.

Specifically the Mesopotamians and the Babylonians – who lived on a massive fucking flood plain! Also worth noting – the story of Noah’s flood wasn’t written down until after the Jewish exile to Babylon, where the uprooted Israelites would have had ample opportunity to hear the story of Utnapishtim’s flood… suspicious coincidence, don’t you think?

It has been demonstrated that some creatures cannot arise from evolutionary progression.

Oh, has it? Would you like to tell me what they are, and how it’s been demonstrated? I mean, call me cynical, but when a crazy lady makes a completely unfounded statement with no reference material or specific information, I tend to think, you know… perhaps what she says might be bollocks?

Everyone accepts the ability of species to adapt to their environment, but species crossing species barriers & becoming another species is nonsense.

Oh, is it? Well, that’s a century or so of carefully investigated science down the drain, then. “Hang on guys – a crazy lady just said it’s nonsense, so it can’t possibly be true! Pack up the equipment – we’re going home.”

Mutations are cited as the cause of new species but are usually sterile, pointing to an intelligent designer designing stability into the system preventing reproduction of defective creatures.

Actually, most mutations have no visible effect at all, since your so-called “intelligent” designer saw fit to stuff our DNA with millions of surplus bonds. The vast majority of mutations which do have an effect are fatal. Your “intelligent” designer chose to create a massively redundant system that regularly goes wrong and kills itself, is that it? Wow, he must have really thought that through!

All the missing links found have eventually proved to be either men or monkeys or hoaxes.
It’s not just a missing link between men & monkeys, but millions of missing links between all species. There is not one single example of a transitional form that has ever been found & proved valid. There should be billions of examples in the fossil record, however, we see everything fully formed.

Here is a massive fucking list of “transitional” fossils. Now do some research, you intellectually dishonest hag.

Man creates computers and artificial intelligence, yet our most powerful computer has less intelligence than a worm, so how are we to suppose totally random processes are capable of producing complex organs, species & life?

I’d love to see a worm play Deep Blue at chess. What are your criteria for intelligence, exactly? I mean, call me harsh, but intelligence (artificial or otherwise) doesn’t really seem to be, shall we say, your specialist subject?

Sir Frederick Hoyle was not a Christian, but calculated the chance of forming life from inanimate matter to be one raised to the power of a number with 40,000 naughts after it & stated “it’s enough to bury Darwin & the whole theory of evolution.” To show what a large number this is, there are estimated to be only ten to the power of 80 electrons in our vast universe, and it’s easier to find a single electron in the universe.

Hoyle was a great astronomer, but he did tend to back the wrong horses… Nice use of the (entirely invalid) Argument from A Clever Person Said It, btw.

Darwin had many doubts about his own theories, and admitted that we can’t prove one species has changed. He made many wrong assumptions, and assumptions & suppositions are not science. Science deals with fact. Later in life, Darwin realised the truth in the many arguments scientists leveled against it, and saw the serious flaws & he abandoned evolution.

First, any half-decent scientist doubts their hypotheses. The amazing thing about Darwin is that he has been consistently proved right – his theory has stood up to every test that’s been thrown at it. Secondly, and I’m not going to mince words here, you’re a fucking liar. Darwin did not “abandon evolution” – you’ll be citing Lady Hope in a minute. Oh, wait – you did that last time.

The law of cause & effect – that the cause must be equal to or greater than the effect, so something which is dead cannot produce something living. There is nothing within the universe capable of its creation, it can only be an external God. To create order, design & energy is used to complete the process – energy needs wisdom & skill. Man cannot come out of nothing by itself.
Design, skill & energy are required to create something, and that with time order flows to chaos. Evolution is the opposite, suggesting that with time life becomes more ordered, moving to higher levels.
Explosions do not produce order, but are destructive processes producing chaos. We cannot get the highly ordered universe we see, from a ‘big bang’.

“Blah blah, whoops I’ve completely misunderstood the Second Law of Thermodynamics, blah.”

Rock strata showing simple creatures at the bottom and man at the top, does not indicate evolutionary progression. At the time of a great flood, the simple creatures & fish would be buried first, mammals would run to high ground, and men & monkeys would climb trees.

Yes, perhaps… so if you accept Flood geology you have to accept creationism? Who’d ‘a thunk it?

Have you perhaps totally failed to understand how fossils are formed? It wouldn’t surprise me.

If the universe is winding down, aren’t we to assume that someone had to wind it up?!

Oh! Oh, that’s clever! Now you’ve used a clever and memorable analogy, likening the entire, vast, complex universe to a pocket watch, I see that God must exist!

Darwinism does not explain life. It may only explain certian things about when we’ve got life.

Er.. yes. You are, amazingly, absolutely correct (okay, the grammar and spelling are a bit dodgy, but this statement is totally factually accurate). No disagreement from me here.

Why do we assume that God has to be created? God is existence. God is uncreated, the universe was created by him. God is both inside & outside of the universe, along with time. If matter & energy was always there, there must be something eternal.

Well, if you say so. Of course, you do realise that the magic goblins of Wibble are uncreated, both inside and outside the universe, eternal and, oh yeah, real. Plus, they have better hats than God.

I hope that you will ponder on the contents of this email, and recognise its truth.

Very best wishes to you,

Debra.

Here she does get credit from me – no, “I’ll be praying for you,” or, “God bless you.” She may be ignorant, but she’s polite enough to refrain from ramming God down our throats.

(Which makes me suspect a Poe, actually – how many Christian e-mails do you get that don’t end with, “God be with you,” or, “I will laugh whilst you burn in hell, infidel! But Jesus loves you…”?)