Thanks to Jonah Goldberg for adding this phrase to the lexicon.
Update:
To be clear, Goldberg is the one who pinned the phrase on The One. It was Saturday Night Live, and Christopher Walken, who added it to the lexicon. My thanks to a loyal reader for the link and the reminder.
I suppose this would be news only to people too young to remember Pravda, or to people who still get their “news” from “newspapers”.
It has only gone way downhill since into Soviet-era Pravda territory. The MSM’s modus operandi today is identical, and I don’t say that lightly. But having listened to Radio Moscow broadcasts on ham radio for years during the Cold War era, combined with some Naval Intelligence training and research into the subject, I deconstructed the Soviets’ propaganda MO down to five simple canons. All five are in direct violation of every principle of objective and unbiased journalism there is:
1. Always make the State and its political leadership appear infallible.
2. Promote the State’s ideology and official policies wherever possible.
2. Demonize political adversaries and dissidents as enemies of the State.
4. Suppress news that reflects poorly on the State or its leadership.
5. If bad news cannot be suppressed, attack and discredit the source.
In case you were on the fence about shunning WorldNutDaily and relegating it to the trash heap of kooky ideas where it belongs, this ought to seal the deal.
Bob Unruh has an article about an edition of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species which claims it is really an anti-evolution book. How? Well, this super genius wrote his own introductory chapter saying so.
In his book, he describes the love-hate relationship he has with atheists: They hate him, but he loves them, he says.
Atheists, Comfort says, are disturbed when he simply and elegantly states exactly what they believe – that nothing created everything, which is a scientific impossibility – and in so doing expose the common error that atheists are committed to logical thinking.
The book is a thought-provoking glimpse into Comfort’s world – an ongoing dialogue with professed atheists.
Is this really the guy who should lecture on “logical thinking”?
Earth to Dimwit: It was the Almighty Banana Plantation Owners who made the banana that way. Which just goes to show: You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.
Let’s see how many fallacies and distortions we can find in that one, short WorldNutDaily piece:
Right off the bat he confuses atheism with the recognition that evolution is a reality. This false dichotomy permeates the whole article, and will come as quite a shock to the Pope. Compartmentalization is an amazing thing, and a lot of religious folks, even Christians, not only recognize evolution as the fact that it is, but also will tell you the earth is not flat.
Comfort claims that there are “huge holes” in evolutionary theory. Well, at last count, the number of “holes” is zero. Although even that terminology is not very scientific. Our picture of just how evolution works keeps getting better, so gaps in our knowledge exist, of course. If science knew everything it would stop. But there is no longer any more doubt of evolution than there is of a round earth.
His conversation with a hypothetical atheist is at once a straw man argument and a false dichotomy.
“Darwin wasn’t anti-God at all. In his famous book ‘Origin of Species’ Darwin refers to creation as the ‘works of God’ and calls Him the ‘Creator’ an amazing seven times,” Comfort said.
There’s that false dichotomy again. Perhaps he’s shocked to learn that Darwin was, at least for part of his life, religious. Maybe that’s because Comfort hadn’t bothered to actually read Darwin until now. One thing Darwin was that Comfort is not, though, is honest. Should Comfort ever attempt this conversation with a flesh and blood atheist with an IQ somewhere north of room temperature the result will be quite different.
This is just plain weird:
Comfort cited the “rave reviews” his special edition already is attracting.
“It’s like a book with multiple personality disorder – two parts that absolutely hate each other; an intro that is the inane product of one of the most stupid minds of our century, and a science text that is the product of one of the greatest minds of the author’s century,” wrote PZ Myers, who teaches at the University of Minnesota at Morris.
Does Comfort think that Meyers’ stinging rebuke is a badge of honor, or is he so utterly clueless that he thinks this is a positive review? (Watch that banana video again before you answer.)
“According to evolutionist Steven Jones, a renowned British geneticist, ‘We also share about 50 percent of our DNA with bananas, and that doesn’t make us half bananas,” says Comfort.
Leave it to a complete moron to take pro-evolution data and claim it disproves evolution. The reason for so much common DNA is common ancestry. It takes only a minuscule percentage difference in DNA to be in an entirely different species. Comfort should consult a bonobo on that point.
Mr. Comfort, should he ever be honest and brave enough to look at the data, will be shocked to learn that that the DNA evidence for evolution is so complete and overwhelming that it would be considered a true and tested theory even if we had not found a single fossil, ever.
Stick a fork in that banana, dude. The game is over. And you are a shameful, silly man.
Update (and bumped):
They’re planning on handing out mangled editions of Darwin’s book on university campuses. I think Dawkins’ suggestion of getting copies and ripping out the 50 pages of idiocy is a recipe for disaster. That would play right into the creationists’ false cry of “censorship”. I can just hear the cries of “what are the atheists afraid of?”
Perhaps a better idea would be to stamp the first page with “Please try not to laugh while reading this introduction, but please compare it to what Darwin actually wrote.”
I watched their offensive little video. It answered the question at the top of this post, and the answer is dishonest.
What I haven’t been able to determine is if this slimy Comfort fellow has tampered with Darwin’s text itself, nor which edition of his book he started with. Anybody know?
