Tue 14 Oct 2008
You Damned Dirty Ape!
Posted by anaglyph under Hokum, Idiots, Religion, Science, Skeptical Thinking, WooWoo
[9] Comments
It warms the cockles of my heart* to know that Cow Readers are ever-vigilant for tidbits to whet my whistle†. JR sent me the above flyer which was popped through his door recently by some vagrant evidently disenfranchised from the Land of Normal Thinking.
Let’s deconstruct it, shall we?
•IS EVOLUTION PART OF SCIENCE OR IS IT A TAX SUPPORTED RELIGION?
Given the tone of the nonsense that follows, this is probably meant to be a rhetorical question. Sadly for the person who wrote it, evolution is, in fact, part of science. A tax-supported religion is something like Catholicism or Scientology or Mormonism or just about any other whacky belief system that calls itself a religion. Governments seem to be real happy about allowing those kinds of organizations to accumulate cash and avoid their social financial responsibilities. Calling yourself an Evolutionist, on the other hand, doesn’t attract any tax benefits. Trust me – if there was even the remotest chance of that, I’d have the certificate.
•HAS EVOLUTION EVER AIDED MAN IN TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT AND PROGRESSION?
Well, duh, yes. That’s why we’re not in still in caves hiding from Big Noise and Light That Come From Sky When Gods Make With Much Falling Water. You idiot.
•WHAT ARE THE FRUITS OF EVOLUTION?
Well, I really want to say ‘bananas’ here but that would just be flippant wouldn’t it? What do you mean by that you loon? It’s a question that defies any sense whatsoever. I couldn’t make up a stupider question if I spent a month trying.
•WHAT ROLE HAS IT PLAYED THROUGH RECENT CENTURIES AND WHAT ROLE DOES IT PLAY TODAY?
You really are a halfwit, aren’t you. Evolution plays the ‘role’ of having gotten us where we are. Maybe you think it would do better playing the role of Hamlet? Or Riff-Raff from Rocky Horror? And ‘recent centuries‘? Hello? Missing the point bigtime there fella.
ALL QUESTIONS ARE ANSWERED! ALL SIDES ARE SHOWN AND EXPLAINED THOROUGHLY AND FUNDEMENTALLY SUPPORTING MUCH EVIDENCE.
AND ALL IN CAPITALS WITH SPELLING MISTAKES AND NONSENSICAL SENTENCE CONSTRUCTION!
KENT HOVIND, A SCIENCE TEACHER AND A BIOLOGIST WITH A DEGREE IN PHD AND OTHER AREAS OF QUALIFICATION
Hmmm. A degree in PHD. That either makes no sense at all (surprise!) or possibly stands for ‘Phony Historical Dissertations’ or maybe ‘Preposterous Hysterical Diatribes’, seeing as Kent Hovind, a well-known Creationist, knows as much about science as George Bush knows about, er, science. As for ‘other areas of qualification’, well sure, if you accept a Bachelor of Religious Education from a non-accredited college, or a ‘Master’s’ Degree in Christian Education gained via a correspondence course as qualifications. I guess they could be considered ‘areas’ of qualification. As in, “Yeah, they’re in the general area, but not actually qualifications.” Of course, anyone with actual qualifications that meant anything could just say what they were.
– IS A FEARED OPPONENT IN DEBATES, AND YOU WILL KNOW WHY
Well, that’s true, anyway. He’s a feared opponent in debates because he’s a pig-headed close-minded bible literalist of dubious (if any) intellect, with a track record of making ridiculous and unsupportable claims. Richard Dawkins, a well-known champion of evolution, refuses to debate people like Kent Hovind because, really, who could be bothered? It’s not so much a fear of losing the debate, as a fear of losing your sanity.
Oh I can’t go on. Suffice to say that if you did waste valuable time visiting Kent Hovind’s ‘Dr Dino’ site, you would not get an explanation of ’60+ Hours of Science’ so much as an irritating spew of biblical silliness. How Atlantis quite fits in there I’m not sure, but it doesn’t surprise me in the least that it’s included. They probably have stuff on UFOs and unicorns too.
As for the promise that ‘you won’t be dissappointed‘, well, aside from the fact that you might be dissappointed by the awful spelling, you certainly won’t be dissappointed if you’re looking for more of the kind of claptrap that the flyer spruiks. There’s LOTS of that.
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*What does that actually mean, ‘cockles’? Since when did you ever hear a doctor talking about your heart cockles? “I’m sorry Mr Smith, but it seems you have near-frozen heart cockles and we’ll have to operate”.
†And what the heck does that mean, too?
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I love Kent Hovind, Ken Ham, etc. They provide hours of entertainment. I wasted about five hours on youtube one day watching creation science videos. It’s amazing stuff.
I mostly like how they equate most of science with a religion. Mostly, the complete misunderstanding of what exactly science is irritates me, but they come up with some dynamite fossil theory.
What if his lecture was made into a musical?
Okay, Revrend, yer a little out o yer deptf here.
Allow ME to deconstruckt, if ya dont mind.
IS EVOLUTION PART OF SCIENCE OR IS IT A TAX SUPPORTED RELIGION?
(*a-HEM*)
Uhhh …
I know you are, but what am I?
Casey: I can watch small grabs of those guys, but eventually my brain rebels at the idea that anyone can be quite so ignorant. Then I get scared that LOTS of people are quite that ignorant and I have to go shoot some nails through my hand with the nail gun to calm myself down.
Atlas: It would need some damn good tunes, cause it couldn’t rely on the words.
Joey: Try as I might, I can’t get The Church of the Tetherd Cow registered for tax exemption. No matter how much I threaten the tax office with smiting and plagues.
Well, until Jesus comes to save us, might I suggest you sit in the Mysterious Corner and play with your cockles?
Happy to oblige Rev.
Also, from the site World Wide Words:
“In the expression, whistle is just a joking reference to one’s mouth or throat and to the fact that one can’t easily whistle when one’s mouth is dry. It’s a very ancient expression: its first recorded appearance is in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales at the end of the fourteenth century, and it must surely be even older.
You can sometimes see the phrase as whet one’s whistle, as though it is in need of sharpening. It would seem that those who first wrote it that way — more than 300 years ago — were as unsure of the real source of the expression as many of us are today.”
Also, for “cockles”, see here
is he related to peter popoff?
Atlas: Mysterious Corner is still well-and-truly in storage. For now. But VT and I have got some big plans…
JR: Yes, well, despite your erudition, the sum total knowledge of where each of those phrases actually comes from still appears to be WHO REALLY KNOWS?! Personally, I don’t buy the ‘wet’ your whistle ‘dry lips’ explanation because it doesn’t go any way to explaining the actual way the phrase is used, which is kind of to ‘give you a teaser’ or ‘pique your interest’. I guess you could argue that the intended meaning has altered through the ages, but it’s still obscure. I love these kinds of expressions because of that obscurity. I was thinking only last night about the way we ‘cc’ things to people; I asked Viridian and Vermilion if they knew what it meant, and they had not the faintest idea. How utterly great is that? To understand what it means, you need not only to know what carbon paper is, and how it was used, but also, what a typewriter is. These concepts are so alien to the twins as to be most mirth-provoking.
Nurse Myra: Hmm. It is tempting to say yes, but I think Kent Hovind is just a simpleton and Peter Popoff is a morally-bereft con man. Hovind believes what he spouts, and Popoff most certainly doesn’t.
Well I have to say it’s not my erudition – I’m just putting my eggs in the basket of someone who has put in the hard yards, and who I know to be more learned, and has better resources, than myself.
Besides which, I always thought that to have one’s whistle wetted was to either have an actual drink, or to have a metaphorical thirst slaked. Having an appetite whetted, on the other hand…
But you’re right, many expressions have etymologies that are truly and wonderfully obscure, especially ones as old as the wet whistle one (though the experts do seem to agree on its first appearance in print, surprisingly!) All we can hope is that future research will shed more light and that slack-jawed wonderment will give way, the world over, to basking in the warm glow of actual knowledge.