If you were ever looking to get on my nerves quickly, or at the very least expose the iceberg of your ignorance, start by repeating the bullshit line that Darwin refuted his own Origin of the Species on his deathbed. Though this often repeated claim has been debunked since the day it first was unleashed upon the world like a bad chili fart, Christianists still love unleashing it upon not only us heathens but upon their own followers in an effort to reinforce their stunningly limited vision of the world.

Unfortunately for a friend of mine, I made the mistake I often do when I posted a response to a video she linked on her Facebook profile. It was a video from a Creationist geologist entitled “Where Darwin Went Wrong”. To sum up: Darwin made some incorrect observations of the formation of a river valley and because he was wrong about that (add obnoxious sarcastic voice here) what else is he wrong about? Now I could’ve let this go, but as usual I didn’t. Of course it shouldn’t take a genius to figure out that his observations of a geological event neither disprove his evolution theory any more than they prove that he obviously couldn’t cook.

Of course my response prompted a response from another of her friends wherein he repeated the Darwin recanting myth. Rather than eviscerating him on her Facebook, I simply posted this link along with a brief line about how it was a myth. He then replies that we shouldn’t debate on her Facebook, challenges me to find chemical and biological evidence to back up my argument and then sends me a friend invitation.

No, I have no intention to either, one, be friends, or two, get into a debate with someone who obviously has had years of religious mumbo jumbo crammed into his skull to the point where he’s willing to discount the mountains of geological,chemical and biological evidence that have been published on the most scientifically proven theory on the record. There is simply no fucking point. If gravity — another theory mind you — were against his church’s beliefs, there is absolutely nothing I could say that would prove to him differently.

Religion is a truly awesome thing to behold. It redefines what it means to be willfully ignorant. It also makes it impossible for me to discuss the subject with any believer because what I consider to be rational observations of the glaring flaws in any dogma they end up taking personally.

What also compounds the difficulties of debates about religion versus science is that the religious folks cannot think outside the box, so to speak. For example, one of their favorite remarks to make is, to paraphrase, atheism is just another religion, and therefore cannot be taken any more or less seriously than whatever they believe in. This illustrates how confined their thinking is. When they argue about evolution, they continually want to drag the debate into theological terms because it’s the only context they’re comfortable.

Even the evolution “debate” is something they cannot argue outside of their thinking. For example, they love to argue that Atheists think the world was “created from nothing” when it is actually their own theories that suggest this magical happening. Science states that all matter is created by other matter — religion would have you believe that all of creation was magically blinked into existence. But since they have no base concept of actual scientific theory, they have to drag it into their own. Unfortunately this is where a great deal of their arguments come from because, by their tortured logic, science is just another religion that they must refute.

Here’s a couple more of their arguments: One I’ll call “The Eye” and another called “Microevolution vs. Macroevolution”. They actually tie into one another as they both clearly illustrate a Christianist’s inability to think outside of their own worlds. “The Eye” refers to the Kirk Camerons of the world marveling at the eye and how it’s impossible that it “happened by accident”. It didn’t and that has never been a scientific principle. Unfortunately for them, the eye is precisely where they do not want to go as it both proves evolution, but also lends weight to the concept that their particular sky-dwelling being isn’t as perfect as they like to think. While there are countless of examples on our planet, geologically, historically and currently of eyes of nearly every evolutionary stage of development, one need only look at the millions of people who are forced to wear corrective lenses to see how imperfect eyes can be. Never mind that if a god wanted us to have such a perfect creation of eyes, why not have the nightvision of a cat, or the clarity and focus of the eyes of a bird of prey? These are the results of billions of years evolution, which ties into the next argument.

In an effort to fit their own theology around facts which are indisputable, such as the eye for example, many Christianists like to fall back on the argument that “while there is such a thing as micro-evolution, there is no such thing as macroevolution.” Put another way, birds developing feathers didn’t just happen without God’s help. Again, this clearly demonstrates their inability to think outside of Biblical terms — they want to force the concept that feathers just happened over the weekend. It didn’t and that has never been the contention of any scientist. In fact the term microevolution is pretty much a construct of mainstream religion, used primarily to deflect arguments like “how do you explain opposable thumbs” and other irrefutable demonstrations of evolution.

I think the problem here is that most Christianists have no concept of the actual age of this planet nor a fundamental understanding of how quickly, when speaking in billions of years, evolutionary changes can actually happen. I think this is best demonstrated by a question posed in a movie recently: “If I gave you a penny on the first day of the month, two pennies on the second day, four on the third and just kept on doubling it every day, how much money would you have at the end of the month?” When told of the answer, $21,474,836.47, most people are floored and that’s because they have no real ability to think in those large terms. The same can be said for evolution: Christianists appear to be completely unable or unwilling to think in terms of billions of years of life. After all, many of them apparently can’t accept that the earth is about 4.5 billion years old because — and this is the true rationality — the ages of the people in the Bible only adds up to about 12,000 years so the earth can’t be any older than that.

Yeah…no fucking point in debating people like that. Let them wallow in their own ignorance.

Oh, and PS: Don’t “friend” someone you want to argue with. Facebook is pointless enough as it is.