Hate Mail

Michael Miller, Page 4

March 17, 2001:

You know your arrogance really astounds me. You are so full of yourself that you can't even read simple text. You have your own beliefs and they have very much clouded what you take in.

You're a pretty funny guy. Like most right-wing fundies, you continually label others as doing what you are doing. The difference between me and you is that I can explain my position rationally while you rely on appeals to authority.

Appeals to authority which has knowledge in that particular subject is irrational? What are you looney?

Obviously, you haven't even spent ten minutes in your entire life studying the principles of logic. Yes, appeals to authority are irrational and fallacious even when they have knowledge in that particular subject. If the authority himself wishes to argue, he can do so. He can call upon facts which he has learned in his studies, and he can make arguments based on his knowledge. But when you attempt to use his authority by proxy, then your argument is absolutely irrational.

The appeal to authority is not a method of winning an argument; it is a method of avoiding an argument, by foisting it (your burden of argument) onto an absent third party. Even a recognized authority can be wrong, but a good and knowledgeable authority will be able to argue his point. You, on the other hand, are reduced to name-dropping, and "irrational" is actually an understatement.

It is also hypocritical; you ignore the conclusions of the world's geologists, biologists, paleontologists, and astrophysicists in their various chosen fields of specialization because you don't trust their authority, but when some lunatic at a Bible school makes claims of expertise in a field that is not his own, you believe that his qualifications make his opinion unquestionable. Your problem is that your conclusion is pre-ordained. Methods, facts, and ideas which fit into your preconceived expectations are good, everything else is merely noise to be dismissed out of hand, and you don't even bother maintaining the illusion of a consistent, rational approach even though you claim to be rational.

Can you provided an example of how inanimate chemicals suddenly organize themselves into a complex structure such as a cell?

Standard-issue Creationist ignorant strawman version of abiogenesis. The first organic self-replicator was not a cell.

Show me how it is done and where I can observe it occuring? Man made labs don't count.

Actually, they do. If it is scientifically impossible, then it won't occur even in a man-made lab.

[Editor's note: this is another common creationist misconception about scientific laws. They think that something can be scientifically impossible even though it's been reproduced in a lab, because a lab is not a "natural" environment. The problem is that if something truly violates the laws of nature, then it can't be done in or out of a lab]

Also what is the mechanism which a reptile's scale becomes a bird's feather.

Standard-issue Creationist ignorant strawman version of evolution. No such huge leaps were ever required.

Show me current examples of such. If you can't, why not?

The first organic self-replicators would have formed in the anaerobic environment of primeval Earth. A reasonable simulation of that environment, on the size and time scales necessary to test mathematical models of abiogenesis while maintaining absolute sterility in order to guarantee that the process is not polluted by existing life forms, is simply not feasible. Your demand is another standard-issue Creationist argument which ignores the fact that our present environment is not conducive to such experiments. However, the underlying chemical reactions necessary for abiogenesis are easily verified.

If you are referring to the process of evolution itself, it is constantly occurring, and bacteria are the most obvious example. Of course, you will naturally find ways to classify that as something other than evolution in your mind. You'll probably fall back onto the simple-minded "God foresaw bacteria and designed them with dormant DNA that would make them resistant" argument.

[Editor's note: by his logic, since we've never witnessed the formation of a mountain, all geological theories about the formation of mountain ranges must be wrong. Scientific inquiry involves observation and experimentation, but sometimes, experimentation is simply not feasible. Sometimes, direct observation of the event in question is also not feasible (for example, we never saw the Grand Canyon being formed). However, it is ludicrous to claim that scientific inquiry is impossible in such cases; it is merely more difficult, and it becomes entirely observational rather than experimental. However, it can still have an "experimental" aspect, in that each new discovery of evidence essentially represents an impromptu experiment, which can support or disprove existing theories]

Isn't this supposedly an ongoing process?

Abiogenesis was a one-time process. Evolution is an ongoing process.

Where are the transitional fossils?

Everywhere if you understand evolution, and nowhere if you subscribe to creationist strawman distortions of it. You draw hard lines of distinction between species (based on your assumption that there are only a small number of different "kinds", and you assume that a "transitional fossil" is something which straddles these lines. In reality, there are so many closely related species still living on this planet that we can see "transitionals" all around us. Fossils of extinct transitionals are almost unnecessary, although they have been found (of course, creationists dismiss them all as frauds).

Yes we must use your definitions and your criteria. Even with your criteria you cannot prove evolution. It takes more faith to believe that evolution is true than creation.

More standard-issue creationist dogma. My definition of the scientific method is the accepted definition. The fact that you are utterly ignorant of this definition is your problem, not mine. As for "proving" evolution, you are merely reinforcing the fact that you are ignorant of science by saying that, since scientific theories are never proven. There is as much evidence for evolution theory as there is for the notion that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

As for creationism, it fails to even qualify as a scientific theory. You still fail to understand that it's not a matter of "believing" in evolution theory or creation theory. "Belief" is the acceptance of phenomena for which no evidence can be found. Creation theory is a belief. Evolution theory is a scientific theory. The two are not remotely comparable.

I say the same to you. Prove your beliefs. And that is what they are.

For the umpteenth time, scientific theories are not proven. You obviously have no idea how scientific theories are evaluated.

Yes and we see how your kind of thinking has really improved the world. Your own attitude her and on your site is something we should all emulate. Arrogance and bigotry.

Insults instead of arguments. Classic last resort of the intellectually overwhelmed creationist. Should I be surprised? Not really. The fact is that the world has been improved by secularism. If you don't think the present-day world is better than the one that state religion built during the Dark Ages, then you are even more ignorant than I thought.

As for "arrogance and bigotry", what is more arrogant? To believe that you can overturn the entire scientific community with your homespun little pseudoscientific ideas, or to conclude that after studying the scientific arguments, you agree with them? What is more bigoted? To deride the Crusade mentality that has caused more suffering than any other societal construct in history, or to deride anyone who doesn't share your very specific beliefs? I don't have a problem with taoists. I don't have a problem with Buddhists. I don't have a problem with Hindus. I don't even have a problem with Christians, so long as they are moderates, which means they won't try to shove their beliefs down other peoples' throats. You, on the other hand, regard anyone but a Christian fundamentalist as an immoral heathen. Now that's bigoted.

I don't do anything to "please God for some reward" I already know that I can't. I have accepted the fact that I have violated His being and that I deserve death (permanent separation from Him) but He came and paid that price for me and I do what He says because it is the right thing to do. He is morality. We aren't.

Exactly. You define morality in terms of obedience to your God. Therefore, by your view of morality, everyone who doesn't agree with your beliefs is immoral. That is an inherently bigoted attitude, but since you are a bigot, you obviously can't see it for what it is.

[Quoted] "Again, you resort to the "I believe" argument, if it can even be called an "argument"."

Belief is a very strong argument and motivator. It is difference of beliefs that cause the most conflicts.

Belief is a strong motivator, but it is not a strong argument. As for differences in belief, you are correct that they have caused terrible conflict and suffering throughout history. That's why we should abandon irrational belief in favour of rational method.

Your response there just proved my point. You are the arrogant bigot here. My beliefs hurt your ego so I must be evil. What kind of attitude is that?

It's not a matter of hurting my ego. It's a matter of being told that I must be immoral if I don't share your beliefs. That is bigotry, and only a true bigot would be incapable of seeing that. You have just tarred everyone in the world but Christians as immoral, and you don't even see why that's wrong.

[Editor's note: as I've mentioned before, ethics are a very complicated subject. They are certainly much more complicated than "you don't share my religious beliefs so you're immoral", but fundamentalists tend to gravitate toward easy answers rather than complicated explanations]

Yes we have done very well haven't we? Humanism has really changed the world. Yes where Christianity is gone or outlawed has people doing very well. Yes lets all look to China, the Old USSR or any other communist government for inspiration.

Ignorant right-wing fundie strawman. China, the USSR, and other communist states are not following the principles of secular humanism [Editor's note: nor have any of them even claimed to. They claimed to follow Marxism, which is an entirely separate concept]. None of them recognize the human rights that are central to humanism. All of them rely on the doctrine of central authority, which is the same doctrine that you advocate. It's the same mentality, with a different God.

And what of state religion? Name one government in which state religion has flourished and has not resulted in human rights violations. The only governments whose behaviour we consider moral today are the governments in which state and church are separate. Christian state religions have resulted in more than a hundred million deaths throughout history. Is this the sort of thing you wish to return to?

If you want an example of a secular humanist state, try examining America. That's an example of a state which was founded on secular humanist principles. Is it perfect? Certainly not. But it's a helluva lot better than the papal state, or any other church state throughout history. You don't have to look too far to see what happens when state and church mix; Islamic fundamentalist nations are committing horrendous abuses of human rights every day.

[Quoted] "Or didn't you know that he slaughtered 3000 people immediately after being given the Ten Commandments, because they were not following God? Try reading Exodus sometime."

First that was before Christ and second those people were outright rejecting God and hurting others for not following what they were doing. Did you read it?

[Editor's note: this is another interesting characteristic of fundamentalists: when in doubt about the Bible, they simply make up things which sound good, and hope that you won't bother checking up on them. If he had actually bothered to read Exodus 32, he wouldn't have lied about Moses' victims "hurting others for not following what they were doing"]

Of course I did. Those people weren't "hurting" anyone. Their only crime was making a golden calf and dancing in a pagan celebration. Read Exodus 32:

... the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, "Up, make us gods" ... And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, "These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt".

...

And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play. And the LORD said unto Moses, "Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves:"

...

And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said unto Moses, "There is a noise of war in the camp". And he said, "It is not the voice of them that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them that cry for being overcome: but the noise of them that sing do I hear."

And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount. And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strawed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.

...

Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the LORD's side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him.

And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour. And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.

...

And the LORD plagued the people, because they made the calf, which Aaron made.

What did they do to deserve death? Who were they hurting? Did they kill anyone? Did they beat anyone? No. They simply failed to obey God, and for that, they were all murdered. This is the morality that you would have us consecrate into law in our societies, and that would be an abomination.

[Editor's note: if you read the passage, you will see that they are singing and dancing in a pagan festival, and for this "evil", Moses forced the children to drink contaminated water and then butchered their fathers. Lovely precedent, especially when God himself followed it up by sending them a plague].

As for your "that was before Christ" argument, I have never heard a single Christian denounce the Ten Commandments [or Moses], nor did I hear of Jesus himself doing the same. And you cannot have morality and religious tolerance if you think that everyone should obey the Ten Commandments.

Morally indefensible? When what where? Aagain I ask:

I discussed this in detail on my page. More than a hundred million dead, their blood spilled for the glorification of Christ. That's morally indefensible (at least, to most of us). However, since you think there was nothing wrong with Moses murdering 3000 people over a golden calf, you are proving quite admirably that I am 100% correct about right-wing fundie bigotry.

You see that is part of what Christianity is. You are telling me to take away part of my belief to examine my belief. What in the world are you thinking. That's like me asking you to prove evolution but don't talk about Darwin or Stephen Jay Gould or reference a paper or book on it. Are you that nuts?

Nice analogy. Too bad it's totally wrong.

I'm asking you to be rational, and rational thought means that you cannot accept anything for which you have no evidence. In other words, belief is out of the question. You, on the other hand, try to equate this to the summary dismissal of research data. Dismissal of irrational belief and dismissal of useful information are hardly similar.

You have proved that reason is not a part of who you are. Just generalizing and putting down others for their beliefs. How is that reason?

If the beliefs in question are immoral, there is nothing irrational about pointing that out. The fact that it offends your precious sensibilities is your problem, not mine. Hitler believed that the glorification of God was best achieved through the extermination of Jews and atheistic Bolsheviks. Do you consider it irrational to criticize those beliefs? A belief demands criticism if it is immoral. [Editor's note: or if it is incorrect]

So far, you have failed to provide a single useful argument. You can't find any flaw in secular humanist morality. You can't provide a rational argument for creationism. You can't even define evolution theory properly, so you endlessly attack a strawman distortion of it. And the vast bulk of your argument is consumed with personal insults, none of which are backed up by examples of the imagined personality flaws you harp on.

There was no indoctrination. They taught reading and writing to allow others their own study of the Bible so that everybody could study it and communicate about it with each other. It was through this schooling that the Dark Ages ended.

No, the Dark Ages ended because of the rise of secular humanism. Or didn't you notice that the end of the Dark Ages coincided with the appearance of people who were finally willing to criticize the church in public? The Church had 1500 years to do something constructive. They failed. Secular humanism came along to take a shot, and in a few centuries, it has accomplished far more than 1500 years of state religion did. Too bad you can't understand that.

[Editor's note: Christian fundamentalists tend to credit the church with the rise of science, but since the early scientists were persecuted by the church, this is an absolutely ridiculous position. They also conveniently ignore the fact that the two biggest "inventions" which kick-started science and engineering again were the printing press and gunpowder, both of which were actually copied from Chinese "heathens". Moreover, he is wrong when he claims that schooling was invented by the Christian church. Schools existed in ancient Rome, before Christ was born!]

No. You did not read it. The doctors just made me comfortable until I passed on. After the prayers my pediatrition suddenly thought of sending me elsewhere. They said I was gonna die.

So all those [procedures] were just part of the "waiting for death" phase, eh? I see.

Who gave the Doctors the ability to learn about the world? You might say science but science did grow out of learning that was originally started by study of God's word.

Wrong again. Christianity crushed science and stifled it mercilessly for more than 1500 years. Science did not re-emerge until the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy (the one you're trying to resurrect) was finally broken.

[Editor's note: notice how he ignores the fact that science predates Christianity, as if it was invented by Christians. In reality, science and engineering in Europe progressed at a steady rate during the Hellenic period, and then it virtually stopped (and in fact, regressed in many areas) during the rise of Christianity, so that it was largely kept alive by the Asian, Indian, and Arab nations. European science didn't restart in earnest until the church lost its iron grip, and even then, it needed help from outside sources, such as the Chinese inventors of the printing press. Also notice how he ignores the fact that the science has conclusively disproven many of the claims of the Bible]

Uh huh. There have been studies done. I will look up the reference for you and get it to you when I find it. They show that patients after a heart attack had done better and recovered faster when they were prayed for.

That's called the placebo effect, and that's exactly what I was talking about. Patients also do better in recovery when they're allowed to have dogs visit them (seriously). Does this mean that dogs can perform miracles, and that we should worship them?

Show me an example of where a heart valve was showed to be leaking (not bleeding) greatly by an echo and later during a heart catheterization shown not be be leaking more than normal, and a later echo showing not a significant leak?

I am hardly a medical encyclopedia. However, are you saying that this has only happened to you? Are you saying that it is medically impossible? Because if it isn't, then it's no miracle.

After the Cath they said sometimes an echo is not very accurate and may make things look worse. Yet they talked as if they were extremely shocked to find such a small leak. They expected it to be worse then the echo showed. And echo years later showed normal flow through the Aortic valve.

So the doctors told you that the echo is not very accurate (hence the need for invasive procedures to get a better picture), yet you interpret any discrepancy between the echo and the cath as a miracle. Miracles are self-fulfilling in the minds of believers; if you really want to see a miracle, you'll see one.

[Editor's note: he finally admits the truth. The doctors warned him beforehand that the echo was not a very accurate diagnostic tool. It indicated that a blockage was starting to form. They used a more invasive test to get a more accurate picture, and it wasn't as bad as they thought. How this translates to proof of divine intervention is beyond me]

There was no bleeding or are you refering to my article on the web site, when I refernced my one surgery where I lost pints and pints of blood? Shouldn't that have killed me? After that they said I wouldn't be consious for a long time yet the next day I was motioning to my mother to watch a tv program that I liked. They thought my mother was nuts when she asked them to turn on the tv for me. Then they saw I was awake and very alert and I watched the show and went back to sleep. That picture on that site was taken the day I wanted to watch that show and less then 24 hours after I bleed out and the ventelator died.

If you're asking me to go carefully over your self-account of your medical history and study it thoroughly so I can describe everything precisely as it happened, I don't really see the point. If there is something in your account which violates the laws of physics or is otherwise impossible, hence requiring "miracles" as explanation, then by all means, describe it. But the fact that you recovered more quickly than expected is hardly a miracle. Some people recover faster than others. It happens. Most people don't attribute this to miracles.

What was I healing from when the echo and cath was done? They occured 4 years after my last surgery and 12 years after the surgery when I bleed out. It was just a routine echo and they were watching the blockage get worse over the years. The blockage would have been the arteries becoming narrow not grow bigger as they should have been during my growing up.

They were gonna even put a stent in to help open it up. They didn't need to do that. If they were so wrong about it why are they still practicing? That would be a poor showing on their part.

Doctors are wrong all the time. That's because medical science has been nowhere near as successful as the other branches of science, in understanding its subject matter. This is arguably due to the complexity of the human body. Others argue that it's due to the fact that most research is bankrolled by pharmaceutical companies, whose only interest is in finding new drugs to sell. Regardless of the cause, doctors aren't perfect. But they are far more knowledgeable than the healers of the church-run Dark Ages, who would have stuck leeches on you or tried to exorcise your demons through physical deprivation and abuse (if you survived long enough for them to even bother).

Why was science so wrong about it then. Unless science and the doctors were right about the leak and the narrowing but some extraordanary occured. Which is it?

You seem to treat "science" as some sort of monolithic entity, as if a single measurement error in an admittedly inaccurate device somehow constitutes a failure of all science. That's exactly the kind of anti-scientific generalization that I've come to expect from creationists like you.

Sure my self-fulfilling belief caused a nurse to see something out of the ordinary. I must be amazing to have accomplished that. I had thought the same as you that it didn't really occur until my mother told the story to someone and I happened to overhear it. So I caused two people to see something I only imagined in my mind. Wow I must remember how I did that.

You obviously didn't get the point, did you? You thought you saw an angel. You were happy about it. The nurse saw that you were happy. Your mother saw that you were happy. That is not two people who verified that you had been visited by an angel; that's two people who saw that you were happy. There's a huge difference.

[Quoted] "Do you realize that I could say the exact same thing about Santa Claus?"

Has no bearing on what happend to me.

Obviously, you missed the point completely, which was that your method of "proof", if applied to Santa Claus, will prove that he exists. Therefore, there is either something horribly wrong with your method or you must believe in Santa Claus.

Logic has a funny way of comming around and biting you when you least expect it. Especially when it is a manmade concept. Logically I should be dead. Logic can not explain my survival. Or many other such things

Who said that "logically" you should be dead? If you can actually produce some sort of medical evidence to show that your survival was actually an impossibility, then by all means, provide it. Otherwise, you're just misinterpreting pessimistic doctors [and an inaccurate diagnosis] as a miracle.

Science has not demonstrated anything about how old the Earth is. Or even how out of nonlife we got life.

It hasn't demonstrated any of that to you, because you refuse to read any of it. Your only knowledge of biology, evolution theory, and geology comes from the study of creationist propaganda, rather than the study of a single legitimate scientific publication.

You did not address my point. Technically Evololution is a belief as well. It is based on so many unprovable assumtions that calling it a theory is laughable.

You have provided only a pitiful handful of examples of such "assumptions", all of which I effortlessly shot down with no rebuttal from you. You chose to simply insult me and evade the points, which indicates that you had no rebuttal available. Therefore, you have utterly failed to demonstrate that this dismissal of evolution theory as "belief" rather than legitimate science is anything more than your uninformed, baseless opinion.

Granted Creationism is not scientific but neither is Evolution. Creationism's mechanisim of the appreance of life (God Said it) is much simpler the Evolution's which doesn't really have a described mechanisim. I asked above to explain some of it mechanisims.

I do so on my page. If you're too lazy to read it, that's your problem, not mine. The mechanisms of evolution have been observed and verified, and you would know that if you ever bothered to read what scientists had to say about the subject, rather than searching for right-wing Christian fundamentalists who agree with you and whose qualifications are totally irrelevant to the field in question: a chemist from a Bible school and a RIM specialist.

[Quoted] "Thank you, but I would appreciate the sentiment more if you did not have the goal of corrupting schools so that they can become tools of religious indoctrination, to shove your religious beliefs down my sons' throats."

And yet that is preceisly what you are attempting to do as well. You don't want me expressing my beliefs to others but I sure better accept yours.

You think that science is a "belief" because you quite obviously don't understand it. Science, unlike Christianity, does not make any of its conclusions subordinate to the belief system of any particular religion. It applies equally and fairly to Buddhists, Taoists, Christians, Hindus, Wiccans, etc. That is why it can be legitimately taught in the schools of a secular humanist state without fear of violating human rights, unlike your attempt to merge church and state, which would enshrine hatred and bigotry into law and treat followers of all other religions (not to mention atheism) as second-class citizens.

And Yes God Bless you, if for no other reason then to give you happiness.

No thanks. Many of the worst things that happened in my life came from churches. I've personally been a victim of both racial and religious hatred. My wife's devoutely religious Mennonite family denounced her and condemned me (sight unseen) for violating God's divisions of race and religion (a Christian can't marry a non-Christian, you know ... and for some reason, they don't see how this constitutes religious segregation and bigotry, and you probably can't see either). They ostracized her, and vilified me without even getting to know me. The worst part was reading the Bible passages they sent me and realizing that they were right: the Bible really did support their position. That's how I knew that the last thing I would ever want is God's blessing.

If you want God, you can have him. Just keep him out of the public schools and the government, where he would be an abomination and an invitation to the same human rights abuses which have been endemic to every state religion in history.

Continue to Michael Miller, Page 5

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