Shadow Wraith

One of the bitter ironies that constantly plagues me is the fact that just about every friend and relative of mine is a conservative Christian, often with fundy-ish tendencies. One of my friends was driving me to the mall a couple of weeks ago as a favor (I don't have a car right now) and while we were driving, I had the unpleasant experience of listening to some music by a character named Carman, whom I've heard of for many years but never actually heard any of his stuff. One of the songs on the CD was entitled "There Is A God," a nearly seven-minute long journey through audial idiocy. The song is basically a defense of creationism (first time I've heard such stuff in music), and was even lamer than some of the stuff from AiG, the ICR, and other anti-evolution goon squads. I would've preceeded to dismantle every last claim in the song, but decided not to since I didn't want to offend someone whom I depend on for transportation (but once I get a car... :devil1: ). Anyhoo, here's some excerpts from the song, which contains claims so simplistic and ridiculous that an 8 year old--at least one that hasn't been indoctrinated by cretinists--could call it as bullshit (full lyrics can be found at http://www.leoslyrics.com/listlyrics...q0tdGcMFmuY%3D):

Right off the bat you can see how much of a loon this Carman guy is. Not only is he a creationist, but he also apparently supports the notion of a geocentric universe. :rolling: Later on he says "Though they silently orbit, the sun, the moon, the stars are like celestial evangelists above. Who circle the earth every 24 hours shouting in every languages that there is a God."

About this nothing need be said.


I've heard the "distance from the Sun" arguement--the notion that if the Earth were even slightly closer or further from the sun, it'd be too hot or cold to support life--before from creationists. (Side note: Why in hell does Carman measure distance in degrees? ). This assumption is false. The habitable zone of our solar system is not so narrow. According to most literature I've read about habitable zones around stars, the Sun's HZ extends from about 0.85 AU or so (roughly halfway between Earth and Venus orbit) to just past the orbit of Mars--a total range of over 110 million km. So if it were possible, you could move the Earth quite a few million kilometers closer or further from the Sun and keep it within an acceptable range to support liquid water and the biosphere on which it depends. Even the very narrow HZs around a dim M-class star (red dwarf) would still have a range of several million km.

The claim about the Earth's tilt being exactly as it is is a prerequisite for life is a new on on me, but it is still obviously false even after giving the claim just a perfunctory examination. First off, the Earth's axial tilt is not exactly 23°; it's about 23.45°. Also, the axial tilt oscillates from about 21.5° to about 24.5° over a roughly 42,000 year cycle. Secondly, any two opposing points on the Earth's surface would receive equal amounts of solar rays regardless of the degree in tilt, assuming the axial tilt of Earth is kept relatively stable (as it is by tidal interactions with the moon, IIRC). A tilt of, say, 15, 10, or 5°, would cause far less pronounced seasons, and a tilt of approx. 0° would eliminate seasons--hardly something that would render a planet uninhabitable. Conversely, the greater the tilt, the more pronounced the seasons would be; I doubt a modestly larger tilt, say 35 to 50°, would prohibit the development of a biosphere either. I seriously doubt that even if the planet was tilted 60° or even all the way on its side it would still have been habitable, though life might have evolved quite differently given that the seasons would be quite extreme. In short, I find no reason--and I've read nothing in any scientific literature suggesting otherwise--that life would not have evolved had the Earth formed with an axial tilt markedly different than it has, so long as the tilt is kept stabilized.


Haven't heard this one either (I'm guessing it's one of the more obscure creationist/ID claims). In any case, though, I know of no evidence suggesting that the levels of nitrogen and oxygen have to be exactly how they are now to support a biosphere or even animal life. Furthermore, the composition of Earth's atmopshere has gone through quite a lot of change since the origin of life, due to life itself. Before the advent of photosynthetic origins, the Earth's atmosphere was much thicker and was composed mainly of carbon dioxide, with some nitrogen and little oxygen. Said organisms were responsible for the change to the thinner, nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere we have today. So not only is an exact blend of nitrogen and oxygen unnecessary for animal life, life itself altered the previously CO2-rich atmosphere to the present atmosphere. As for the "other planets" comment in the song, the reason that there is little or no free oxygen on other worlds is because they don't support life, ergo no oxygen-producing photosynthetic organisms. Free oxygen, being highly reactive, will readily combine with other substances; the process of photosynthesis is what is needed to sustain an oxygen-rich atmopshere. Even if Titan, another world with a thick, predominantly nitrogen atmosphere, existed within the Sun's habitable zone, there would not be any oxygen unless photosynthetic life forms were present.


:banghead: Does any of this make sense to anyone? This incoherent babbling simply boggles the mind.

Well, it's 7 in the morning, and I usually go to sleep at 3 or 4 AM, so I'm off to bed. If there's anything you want to add or have any other creationist/anti-evolution songs you want to systematically destroy, please share it. Have fun. *goes to sleep*

Jet Black

those are sony lyrics? what on earth is the tempo of this song?

Rich Brown

I too think the creationist's claims are just so much BS, but I think your rebuttal puts the cart before the horse, so to speak. It isn't that life as we know it could still survive with slight deviations in conditions, but that life as we know it evolved because of the existing conditions.

Had life evolved elsewhere, it would had to have evolved to meet the conditions of the environment, and would look very different than the life forms evolved in our particular "habitable zone", but it would be life none the less.

The analogy I think of when presented with these lame arguments is that of a large box filled halfway with small pebbles. I toss the box in the air, and it lands with the pebbles in random arrangement. If I then poured water and seeds through the randomly arranged pebbles, the mixture would distribute along a random path in the pebbles, and some plant life would certainly emerge. These (now amazingly sentinent) plants might well make the claim the "had just one pebble been a bit to the left, we would not have grown here", but their argument would hardly be consequential and most certainly not prove intentional design in the pile of pebbles.

What concerns me the most is that otherwise sane, educated people can so compartmentalize their brain, that they will display skepticisim about a great many things in life (like when the 16 year-old boy claims the party won't have any girls or booze...lol), and yet they are taken in by the most transparent of arguments when it comes to religion. It's almost a multiple personality problem.

Evoken

I was wondering the same thing, it reads more like an essay than a song. I'll have to download it to hear it but I am not sure I am willing to waste 10+ MB of my hard drive for that

Jet Black

not to mention that downloading music is naughty and I am sure nobody here does it.

Rhaedas

Just looked around because I figured if this person did one essay song, there's likely more. Sure enough:

http://www.leoslyrics.com/listlyrics...8l1WXHH3yyM%3D

"America Again": More junk on how the founding fathers intended America to be a Christian nation. Never mind their efforts to specifically create a secular government that protected all beliefs.

The latter part of the song is a long winded version of the persecution card that we hear all the time. I find it so damn ludicrious that there's a church on every corner, religious symbols everywhere, TV channels devoted to spreading the word, and yet this "bring God back to America" is repeatly used. It's a bit Orwellian...

Evoken

True

apocalypsecow

It's a spoken-word piece. Carmen does a great number of them (*used* to be a fan.... )

Crazyharp81602

Hey There!

Have you ever heard of Apologetix?

It's that parody Christian rock band who are all fundys that turn mainstream music into christian parodies. One time I got all of their songs on mp3s and even though I very much like them for a while but at one point I will hear a few songs that has yec crap in them like Monkey Scheme which is a parody of the theme from tv show The Monkees which it has hypocritial statements like "They say we were from monkeys." and "They called the lie the truth. Everytime they get busted, they think of something new". All of these songs have been playing in my head at times since I've listened them and is offended by those words in the songs. I find their lyrics very appalling! Then theres is A Lie that is a parody of "Alive" from Pearl Jam which contains the phrase that says that you daddy or your great granddaddy was a gorilla and then there was part of a lyric in the song Real Sin Savior which is a parody of the "Real Slim Shaddy" by Enimem that goes like this: ".......come fron evolution. yo momma was a fish, yo momma was a fish......" which is all that i can remember about them and then there is song called A Story of a Squrrel which is parody of 'A Story of a Girl" which tells of a claim that says something about having a difficult time finding Noah's ark because of terrorists on the sides or something like that. I used to have nearly all of the mp3 of apologetix but I threw them all away. If you want to see their website Click here.

http://www.apologetix.com/

If you want to laugh and critique their lyrics here is the links.

http://www.stlyrics.com/songs/a/apologetix8712.html
http://www.top50lyrics.com/a/apologe...rics-8712.html
http://www.cybrtyme.com/personal/pau...kedLyrics.html
(Note: the background image is so "loud" that you made have to highlight the words to read them better or enlarge the text.)

Hope there's enough to discuss here.
See you all later.

Crazyharp81602

Deacon Doubtmonger

Just an FYI: That "oxygen/nitrogen" claim isn't new; it goes back at least to those "Bible Story" books you always used to see in doctors' and dentists' waiting rooms.

I have to ask: could this possibly have been intended as a children's record??? The sing-songy rhyming seems to imply so. It wouldn't surprise me to catch a fundy adult listening to one; "except ye become as a little child" and all that ...