The Internet is now bringing folks who would never normally meet into direct contact with each other, it is as if a marketplace for ideas has been opened up. In that context the sane rational ideas will bump up against the kooky crazy stuff. Well, I have a few examples … purely to amuse you. These all come from my Facebook interactions with Muslims in the past couple of days, and yes, I don’t need to look very far to find that examples of “crazy” abound.
Example 1 – Censoring Criticism
Chap arrives with a link that contains a long list of sites that contain criticism of Islam and announces …
The most obvious observation here is …. “Hello Streisand effect” … here are a lot of sites you should not be reading, so naturally instead of 50 folks reading them, they will now have 50,000 popping in to take a look and see what all the fuss is about.
However, what makes this truly ironic is that they are complaining about their beliefs being attacked by websites on a Facebook group set up by Muslims to attack the beliefs of others.
Example 2 – Quote Mining Darwin
We get this posting …a typical example of some creationist quote mining …
Yep, he is a creationist … but appears to seriously think believing in evolution is a religion and that Darwin is a prophet. Now least you wonder, this is a well-known bit of quote mining where you lift something out of context to completely change the meaning. This is often presented as part of an assertion that Darwin himself believed that natural selection could not fully account for the complexity of life. However, Darwin went on to explain that the apparent absurdity of the evolution of an eye is no bar to its occurrence.
The quote in context is
To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real.
It was indeed a rather blatant attempt to lie and deceive. So how did he respond when this was pointed out? Well, not only did he pretend he had not been caught and simply carried on, he starts a new thread with the exact same quote still quote-mined. One can only wonder if he thought we all suffered from some form of short-term memory loss.
Example 3 – How Old?
While debating some topic, I mentioned in passing that eyes had evolved about 540 million years ago. They asked, “How do you know?”. Good question, but still I began to wonder something, so I asked “How old is the earth?”. Now what happens next was truly odd, I get vague woolly answers. I play back my understanding of their answer and asked if I had understood it correctly, but they then refuse to clarify.
I get it that folks believe in crazy stuff, but do indeed find it odd that folks dish out vague woolly answers and then refuse to engage … but still demand that you all their questions.
Oh and least you wonder, he also suggested Carbon 14 dating was belief based and not scientific at all, and yes I know that it is only good for dating up to 60,000 years, but he did not … one does wonder how he thinks radioactivity works … magic perhaps.
Example 4 – Water water everywhere
Apparently the Quran is full of modern science (yes that old chestnut) … and the proof …
Just when you think nobody could be “that” stupid, up pops somebody to prove you quite wrong. We are not “made from water”, they are simply plucking vague poetical phrases out of context and declaring that it equates to modern science … very dishonest. The “Earth, wind, fire and water” thinking is a very very ancient idea … Jinns made of fire, humans made of water etc… this is an old idea. What modern science does now enable us to understand is that this is indeed bollocks, so in essence highlighting this confirms that the author of the Quran was a man of his time and reflected the thinking at that age, it proves that nothing magical was going on.
“Ah” says one chap in defence, “It’s a book of signs”. In response, a nice chap called Ben posts the Highway code with the comment, “No THIS is a book of signs”.
Example 5 – Death by Stoning of an innocent 13 year old girl
We somehow get onto the topic of stoning, the case of Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow. At the age of 13 she was gang raped. When she reported the crime she was put on trial and found guilty of adultery. They then took her out and stoned her to death.
The cretinous Islamic gobshites and utterly pathetic excuses for humans in the discussion thread point-blank refused to denounce this crime.
Feel Free to Jump In
The FB group in question is “ATHEISM DEBUNKED BY MUSLIMEEN“, but be warned, your patience will be tested to the extreme, oh and they also have a weird rule …
4. Members are requested not to involve in debates based on pure logic and reasoning because it could lead to disbelief (kufr), disobedience and loss of submission to Allah and His Commands. However established scientific facts don’t come under logic ,so please use science after Qur’an (Revelation from Allah) and the Ahadith (Sayings of the Prophet s.a.w.).
Hi Dave,
I just perused the page and it reaffirmed my conviction that Islam is a reprehensible religion. Eating pork is a sin but stoning rape victims is Allah’s will. Disgusting!