Dear Aron, I would say that I enjoyed the experience of our one-on-one conversation, but that would be a rather easily disproved lie given there is a video available. What has pleasantly surprised me is the number of people who would normally agree with you yet reached out to say they did not approve of how you interacted with me. But I’m not writing to complain about your boorish behavior. It's over and done. Frankly, I knew who you were before the show and what to expect – it was never going to be a polite conversation or a meeting of minds. As I mentioned, I'd watched a few of your videos. It was going to be a lecture about how I’m wrong about absolutely everything because I am a Christian. You didn't even seem to notice that I mentioned religion and faith only briefly, and when talking about myself. When we were talking about evidence, I only spoke about scientific evidence, logic, and probabilities. I did expect to be able to complete the occasional thought, however. Better late than never, I suppose. In this letter I'm going to say everything I would have said during the podcast given the opportunity to speak, and you can no longer interrupt me. I can finish all of my sentences. It will be a unique experience for you, I'm sure, to have to read instead of talking over people, and cathartic for me. You are an extremely intelligent person, and very gifted. I also knew that before the show. What I did not realize was that you are an unwise person, and you simply do not realize or refuse to acknowledge all that you do NOT know to be true as indisputable … [Read more...]
An Evening With Aron Ra
Some people might believe I didn't know what I was getting into when I accepted Aron Ra's offer to appear on one of his podcasts to be insulted, mocked, and ridiculed. On the contrary, I pretty much knew exactly what would happen, although I must concede that Aron failed to even meet my lowest expectations. Aron didn't care about anything I had to say. He'd already decided that everything I might say would be wrong or a lie or both before I ever opened my mouth. An unedited copy of the entire podcast recorded from my laptop can be viewed here. I was given less than 30 minutes notice before the show started, so I had no opportunity to invite people who might be friendly to my point-of-view. My appearance was exploited purely for his financial benefit. Not that I care all that much, but you'd think he'd be a little nicer to a potential cash cow. I haven't been given a link to the podcast or a copy for my own use. Perhaps I'm being premature in judgment, but he's given me no reason to believe I'll be getting a copy at any point in time in the future. I have yet to feel like I've been treated with even the slightest respect by Mr. Nelson, a.k.a Aron Ra, and the experience is now over. Don't expect I'll be getting any respect anytime soon, either, even though I bent over backward to be nice at the start of the show by complimenting Mr. Ra on his undergraduate degree in Anthropology, I believe it was. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Basically, I've been treated as nothing more than an opportunity for Aron Ra to fleece his willing audience of a few hundred dollars, or … [Read more...]
Why I do NOT believe humans evolved from apes
For the umpteenth time, I'm going to explain why I do NOT believe humans evolved from apes. My atheist friends would like to attribute this rejection of a basic tenet of evolution theory to my personal religious beliefs, taking away the credit from where it belongs: a mental exercise in which I attempted to take the theory as an idea and applied it to reality. Now, to first prove that I do understand the basic concepts of the theory fairly well, I shall describe the beliefs of evolutionists in a brief narrative: once upon a time, there were (now extinct) Old World apes. A small breeding population of these apes became separated from the main pack and evolved from Australopithecus to Homo Habilis and all the other homos until eventually becoming Homo sapiens. And why did humans evolve from apes? Well, because they could. See the progression chart below. The illustration is one of the primary reasons I've often derisively described macroevolution as "shape-shifting" because it is a truly remarkable belief to hold that the ancestor of the guy sitting behind the computer desk on the far right was the ape on the far left, once upon a time. One might also say it was ludicrous to believe it. However, a lot of people do believe just that, so the remainder of this article will explain my objections to the theory of ape-to-human evolution in fuller detail. The key word in the sentence about shape-shifting is ancestor. How does one creature become a descendant of another creature? Bluntly stated, the ancestral creature has sexual intercourse with another creature and … [Read more...]
The perfect World Cup
I've never really liked soccer. Never played the game, never understood the rules, and still don't, even though I "coached" my son's youth soccer team when he was younger. I just listened to what other coaches were yelling at their kids to do and told my kids to do the same thing, but it wasn't "real" soccer. There were only three or four players per team, and everyone played offense except the goalie. Nothing at all like a World Cup match. Quite frankly, I've always felt that my son's games were far more exciting than your average World Cup match. After all, each side typically scored four or five goals per game, easily, while in World Cup an entire game can end in a scoreless tie. With far fewer players on my son's team, the idea was that the best defense was a great offense. Nobody ever passed a ball backward to a defender so they could waste time moving the ball around without any apparent purpose behind it. I was a pretty horrible soccer coach, but the kids seemed to have a lot of fun. At one point, I bought my son a Spiderman goalie's jersey, but then all of a sudden my goal scorers wanted to play goalie, too. Fun memories. However, those memories never inspired me to learn the game. If given the choice between watching a professional soccer game and watching paint peel, I'd be hard pressed to say which would be less entertaining. About the only thing that could put me to sleep as fast as a soccer match on television is a golf tournament on television, but the difference is, I sort of enjoy golf. So, in keeping with my personal tradition, I watched none of the … [Read more...]
My biggest mistake in The God Conclusion
I'm quite pleased with my effort in writing The God Conclusion, but I will be the first to admit it is not a perfect book. It was thoroughly and professionally edited, of course, but even so, I've found a couple of minor mistakes post-publication. For example, I only intended for one quote to be repeated in the manuscript, but in the final published version somehow two other quotes were accidentally repeated. I believe the problem was due to copy-and-paste versus cut-and-paste, and I wonder if many people even noticed, but all that really matters is that I noticed. The mistakes seem to be a little more obvious in the audiobook. However, one mistake stands out as my worst. I admit that I had some difficulty finding the right words to describe the ultimate dichotomy that must be applied to our existential questions if we are ever going to have any hope of finding some real answers. What were the right words? In my book, I didn't know, so I tried several: God versus good luck (which I also called good fortune and serendipity.) Order versus chaos. Intelligent Design versus evolution. Accident versus on purpose. Lots of oppositional words. In other words, I had no idea of what were the best words to use in describing this dichotomy, so I used too many "other" words. Even when it came to a dichotomy like God versus good luck, I'd substitute other words for God like "supernatural intelligence" and for luck I'd use "good fortune" or "serendipity." Probably the biggest problem was that my choices were often not truly oppositional words. The logical alternative … [Read more...]
