To get this out of the way up front, I don’t believe in evolution. It’s not a religious thing, it’s a logic thing.
Most people will stop reading right now. That’s fine with me, I understand that there is no theory held dearer to the hearts of the people who believe it, than the theory of evolution.
This maybe the most wildly unpopular article I ever write, but if you’re still reading now, than you likely either know me and have read enough of my articles to know that I’m a thinker (maybe an odd and unconventional thinker, but a thinker all the same). Or maybe you’re already a cynic of the theory and are looking to find some ideas to confirm your already held beliefs. I suspect there will be another much smaller group still reading who will want to debate (or scoff at my inferior intelligence).
Evolution has become a world-view and it has been settled. There is no room for doubt or even a thought at this point. If anyone doubts evolution, they are considered “simpletons” and lose all hope of being considered a thoughtful scholar.
Now you may be thinking. OH NO, not more Ben Stein!
No. Absolutely not. I saw Ben Stein’s Expelled and I was thoroughly disappointed. I could’ve done a much better job myself. If I had a couple million dollars lying around, I probably would.
I don’t believe that Creationists, which are considered “the other camp” have it all figured out either. Which leaves me with no theory to call my own, but I figure, no theory is better than a wrong one. There’s no sense in making assumptions about the unknown, it just makes us look ignorant, which is clearly what we’ve been doing for years now.
The first thing that must be understood about evolution is that evolution doesn’t have intention. There is no mind behind evolution; there’s no purpose or goal. For example, if we are going to paint a picture, we have in our mind an idea in which the art becomes. Natural selection works in a way that there doesn’t need a purpose; it doesn’t have a brain; it cannot think ahead about what it would like to create; it’s just survival of the fittest. The longest beak gets the most worms, while the shorter beaks die off. This makes good sense and there is no doubt that it takes place.
The second thing that we must keep in mind is that evolution works very, very, very slowly. It would take millions or years and thousands of generations of an organism to make a measurable change.
The questions I raise here are about how things like horns, antlers and wings develop (which is excluding many other inconsistencies with the theory).
To explain my point, I will give you a chart similar to any other evolutionary chart we’ve all seen, this one involves the evolution of the rhinoceros.
Now at first appearance it looks quite legitimate, we’re so used to seeing these and accepting them, we never give them a second thought. But now we will. Let’s take a look at the change from the Trigonias to the Dicerorhinus. Here’s a closer look.
The most noticeable difference is the fact that one has no horn at all, and the other, clearly does. Now there is obviously millions of years and many, many generations between them, so let’s think about the implications that go along with this.
Since natural selection is the method used, we must ask how these things developed. Now keeping in mind that evolution doesn’t “know” what it’s creating, we must rely on the idea that the beginnings of a horn must have some advantage over not having the beginnings of a horn.
We also must remember how long the process would take to create a horn, we can imagine that the beginnings of a horn or antler would be just a simple bump on the creature’s bone structure.
The first thousand generations of having this “horn” or “bump” in this case, it would absolutely do the creature no good. It would have no advantage. So with that knowledge, it would not be advantageous of the organism for another couple million years, when it would have a horn big enough to help it defend itself. Why would the creature continue to evolve a little bump that wasn’t giving it an advantage in being the most “fit” for the environment? Natural selection would do away with this bump, not evolve it into a horn.
This thought can also be applied to wings too. Below is a picture of a prehistoric dinosaur supposedly linked to birds and the beginning stages of aviation in the animal kingdom.
Why would wings use several million years to develop, if flying wouldn’t be possible until the wings are complete? It does seem possible that before the wing would be developed enough for flying, it could give it some propulsion on the ground to make it faster, but there would still be several million years that the wing-like thing would be completely useless, and actually get in the way. It seems to me that that is adding a characteristic to evolution that it doesn’t have by nature. Intention.
There are folks who believe in an intelligent designer who evolved creatures into what they are today. I wonder about this view because I think it has been developed to try to link religion with the “indisputable scientific evidence that supports evolution”. With this thought, you are giving up the idea of Natural Selection as the evolutionary tool to evolve creatures, which is the common mindset in the scientific community. You are giving up natural selection because you are assuming that God did it instead. If you believe that God created natural selection then my argument above still holds strong.
I’m not a scientist and don’t pretend to be one. Still, in my simple mind, these examples seem to poke at the weak underbelly of the theory of evolution. I can’t help but wonder how people keep confidence in such a disputable theory. It’s become a world view. I don’t know how something this scientific, this big, could be accepted without more scrutiny. Perhaps I do know, perhaps it has happened before.
“The great mass of people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.”
“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.”
You know, that title actually sounds legitimate, even though it says, “My Thoughts on Unidentified Flying Objects Flying Saucers” which is quite redundant and doesn’t really make sense.
But I bet you didn’t notice.
That’s because nobody notices subtleties.
I don’t know if UFO’s and aliens are real or not, but I will tell you that since I don’t want to believe in them, I don’t.
No matter how much evidence was given to me on the subject, I would still be skeptical of it. If it came down to me meeting an alien, being lead to the Mothership, having testing done on my body, and then being gently descended from the sky on a large column of light, I still wouldn’t believe. I would probably think I was a schizophrenic, and I would drive myself straight to the mental hospital (which is quite close, I must add).
Despite the fact that I don’t believe in aliens, I did some thinking about them and thought about “what if” they were real. Like, really real. Because I believe there are two types of real in the world nowadays, there are real things and then there are real Photoshopped things.
I must admit that ever since Adobe Photoshop has come out, UFO pictures are looking more realistic than ever.
A thought I had was, if aliens made it here to Earth from somewhere, they must have an extreme amount of advanced technology. This technology is amazing too; we’ve never been able to make a saucer looking object fly, without throwing it. I mean, we have frizbees, but all of our planes have…wings.
They also must be either very cautious or very shy, since they have not had any real contact with humans. What I wonder about though, is if they are so cautious or shy, why they continually use bright lights on their spaceship at night. Do they not have night vision technology? They’ve made a round object, like a saucer, actually fly but they don’t have night vision? I mean, come on.
Since aliens must have much more advanced technology than we do here on Earth, it’s not out of the realm of possibilities that they are reading this now just as you are. They certainly must have wireless internet connections in their saucers. They are probably connected to my unsecured wireless network right now, like all of the homeless people in the area.
Yes, there are homeless people with laptops. I saw a couple in Starbucks the other day. And I’ll tell you, there’s nothing more encouraging than to see homeless people with laptops, cell phones and drinking a $3.00 cup of coffee. God Bless America!
Ok, so in the picture at the top, I admit, it’s not a real UFO sighting. But, like I said, nobody notices subtleties. You looked at it and just assumed that it was a “UFO sighting”. Don’t lie, I know you did.
I Photoshopped the picture of the Goodyear blimp below and turned it into a UFO sighting.
Or was it this one?
I may have got them mixed up since I labeled them both UFOSIGHTING.JPG.
Since it has been decided by various special interest groups that the globe is warming because of the human race, environmentalists have been thinking up creative ways to reduce the carbon footprint of our species on this planet. It has been said by a leading global warming theorist that in 30 or 40 years “most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals… Civilization will have broken down. The few people left will be living in a failed state — like Somalia or Sudan — and living conditions will be intolerable.” -Ted Turner
Today in some large city, an assembly of the most renowned climatologists gathered at a global
warming convention to try to change the direction of our species. The
convention lasting several days was resolved after long deliberation by discovering
the only reasonable way to stop global warming in its tracks, before our
civilization “breaks down”. It was decided that the only way to save the human
race from global warming is suicide.
They had been for several years taking less severe means of
saving the globe by having things like hybrid cars, vegan lifestyles, metal
water bottles, Al Gore DVD’s,and countless bumperstickers about hugging trees and such, but with only futile efforts. They decided that more severe path needed to be taken. They made a quick press release
to domestic as well as international communities about suicide being the definitive option to save the human race.
They made it a point to mention that it had been decided that they were not actually going to take part in this, stating “someone had to be around to collect the data”, but were urging Hummer owners to be the first to “kick their own bucket”. Rumors of that being discriminatory toward SUV owners were immediately
quieted by the group with this comment, “There is no such thing as discrimination against the guilty, and we all know, those people are largely at fault.”
Follow-up comments were made suggesting that if ridding the earth of Hummer owners, did not affect the global warming situation; it would “at the very least, lower the price of gas”.
I’ll be the first to say that I’m a pretty conservative dresser, and I’m not on the cutting edge of fashion. That’s because, well, I don’t want to be. If this is the cutting edge of fashion, you can count me out.
(Plus, I don’t wear dresses.)
We see all these two second clips of runway models all the time but what are they wearing?
Is that even reasonable?
If I saw some person dressed like that on the streets I would burst out into hysterical laughter. That maybe rude, but I don’t think I could help myself.
Is it all a joke? It looks a lot like Halloween to me, not a fashion show. Even so, there are still so many girls I know, who would just love to be one of these models, especially since America’s Next Top Model came out. I keep trying to tell girls that those models are only relatively pretty. I say relatively because they are very pretty compared to other awkward, long-legged creatures, like gazelles and giraffes, but are, when compared to females of the same species, in my opinion, just average looking skinny girls.
What is the purpose of runway modeling anyway? I think it was originally to advertise clothing. But can’t you reach a bigger audience with something like a … oh, I don’t know… commercial?
As if women aren’t objectified enough in this world, we need to actually have them strut up and down a stage with the sole purpose of being a “clothing holder”, an object much like a coat rack. If we keep up these objectifying principles, maybe I could hire a skinny girl as an ottoman.
The purpose now I think is just money. It all comes down to money and people who have it. It’s those people who have plenty of money to spend on absolutely nothing but either watching these girls strut, or buying these ridiculous clothes. This life is for the pure elitist, the one’s that consider themselves high-class and have a pseudo-need to dress in clothes that will keep them years ahead of the fashion trend.
For the sake of learning from our history, and showing how whimsical our predictions of the fashion trend can really be, I give you a video. It’s a prediction from the 20s about fashion in the year 2000. Let’s just say lady’s aren’t actually wearing electric lightbulbs on their head just yet.
There is apparently some legal discussion in the UK about deaf parents being able to pick deaf embryos over hearing ones. Why this is even a discussion is beyond me.
“Deaf parents should be allowed to screen their embryos so they can pick a deaf child over one that has all its senses intact, according to the chief executive of the Royal National Institute for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People (RNID). Jackie Ballard, a former Liberal Democrat MP, says that although the vast majority of deaf parents would want a child who has normal hearing, a small minority of couples would prefer to create a child who is effectively disabled, to fit in better with the family lifestyle.” Sarah-Kate Templeton, The Times (UK)
This video is an interview with some deaf parents about how they think it’s about discrimination. http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/05/19/herriman.deaf.embryo.cnn It all comes down to selfishness. Who are these parents thinking about? Are they thinking about the baby or are they thinking about themselves? Are these people saying that they think their baby would like to be deaf? If so, let him grow up for 12 years with his hearing and if he then decides that he wants to be deaf, then so be it, have him poke out his eardrums.
At the age of 12 he’ll start taking an interest in music and develop his own tastes. He’ll want to be in the band at school. He’ll want to play video games and actually hear the gunshots in Grand Theft Auto VII. If being deaf was so preferred, why don’t more people poke out their eardrums? Or have them surgically removed? No one wants to be deaf. And I think it to be extremely odd that a parent would want that for their child. No one who has ever been able to hear would ever think it was better without their hearing. That’s just plain stupid. And to make a choice like that for another human before he’s even born is just not in his best interest, and shouldn’t that be what it’s about? It’s not just a matter of preferences. This is a real person. It’s not like parents have to pay extra to get a kid with all 5 senses. People typically come with all of their senses included.
They say it would fit better into their lifestyle. How is that true? There is nothing that a deaf person can do that a hearing person can’t. A hearing child can learn sign language and do all the other “deaf community things” just the same as a deaf person would. I find this story troubling because all of the attention is given to the parents and how they think it is discrimination against the deaf community, when in reality it should have nothing to do with anyone but the child. When the child is considered, this argument just falls apart.
Discrimination talk makes me sick. It’s always about trying to be “progressive” and “giving equal rights”. The truth is that we all discriminate and there’s not anything necessarily wrong with that. Nature discriminates. Some trees are tall and some are short, and it’s not based on merit but no one’s complaining. When we point out a difference that isn’t based on merit, that’s discrimination. That’s the true meaning of discrimination. If we just start caring about people and stop selfishly thinking about what we deserve. THAT will be progressive.
Since I’ve convinced you that not everyone should vote, I’d also like to convince you now that not everyone should go to college. It’s ok not to go to college. There are jobs out there and no one should feel bad about not going if they don’t want to. It should be a choice, not an expectation.
It all starts when we’re children and our parents tell us we can do whatever we put our mind to. That’s a lie, and when I was 4, I knew it. I specifically remember thinking “No matter how much mind power I put into lifting my house with my pinky finger, I will never be able to do it.” And the cynicism has continued ever since.
College is one of those things that guidance counselors are paid to tell you to strive for, but what they don’t tell you is that if everyone were to take their advice, finding a job would be a miserable and almost impossible experience.
College is commonly thought to be a place that is attended by a student hoping to learn skills for their future profession. This is just not true. College is actually a place that is attended by a student hoping to get a degree which will in turn set them apart from the average applicant when trying to get a job.
If everyone were to go to college then the people who want to set themselves apart in the job market, have to get more advanced degrees. This is what has been happening over the last 30 years. In the U.S. over 50% of high school graduates are now going to college. That’s not good. Now people like me who want to get a good job have to go another 5 years to get their masters or doctorate, as if 17 years of institutionalized education wasn’t enough. Keep in mind that these degrees have nothing to do with being smart, or having skills, it’s all about the appearance of being smart and having skills. I have to take classes like anthropology and “Legal Environment of Business”. They say it’s to make me a well rounded student, but at over $1,500 a course, we all know what it’s really about.
Since colleges exist to make money, and not to actually train people, it’s easy for colleges to lower their standards so more students can attend.
I have two other problems with college. The first problem is that Wikipedia is free. Doesn’t seem like a problem but it is. It’s a problem because what I’ve learned from 2 years of college so far, I could’ve learned on Wikipedia in about 2 hours. The fact that it is free is a problem because most people have to pay for college. I don’t, but if I did, I would think it to be an even bigger problem.
The second problem is that professors in college don’t like Wikipedia. As progressive as college professors think they are, they still think Wikipedia is some hacker’s thread. They say that they don’t accept Wikipedia as an academic source because anyone can post on it. The reality is that I posted an article this morning that was taken off in less than 3 minutes. This is it:
The fact that this was taken off so quickly is a perfect example of how Wikipedia is trying to show professors that it really isn’t so bad. If Wikipedia was full of hatred and contempt for college professors, which they have a right to be, they would have kept my article up, since it was such an accurate depiction. Despite the accuracy of the article, I didn’t cite any sources, so it Wikipedia took it off. It’s the rule.
Perhaps college professors are jealous of Wikipedia’s accuracy, broad mindedness, and true progressiveness. Or perhaps they are worried that if people knew how much absolute hogwash they spout out every lecture, that they will stop paying them and turn to the free and more available Wikipedia.
So it all boils down to a few things. Colleges should keep high standards so that people who really go to learn don’t have to spend 30 years on their education. If people don’t want to go to college, then they shouldn’t be expected to. And if we ever have the option to choose between going to college or Wikipedia, the answer is Wikipedia. Hands down.
I have very observant friends. I was told about this card the other day. I had to run to K-mart and pick up this card. (They’re still in business? Who knew?)
A Mother’s Day card for fathers? That has to be one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen. Is this K-mart’s lame attempt at being progressive? I’m not certain but I assume it’s aimed at split/gay families with no mother. It’s a shame there’s so much inequality in this world that there’s no opportunity for us to celebrate our fathers. Ya know? I wish there was a Father’s Day so mothers didn’t get all of the caretaking credit. I should make a holiday like that. I would make it an annual holiday on the 3rd Sunday in June.
