Twittering for Jesus

Like millions of others, I have a Twitter account. My Twitter account is @DawkinsDog because, well, I liked the idea of being Richard's dog who sneaks online to comment about evolution, religion and creationists. One of the joys of this is that I sometimes, though not often, encounter religious Tweeters who respond to my comments. One such is @ImH0me, who recently sent me the following comments, which sadly a 140 character reply (the normal Twitter limit) cannot do justice to. So, I shall comment here☺

I'll start with a few of their tweets to me.

@DawkinsDog Chemists had not produce conscious products but only unconscious things like unconscious plastic, unconscious pills. Have they ?

@DawkinsDog Have u or anyone yet produced a conscious product applying chemistry ? So far none. I believe God is our origin not dead stones.

@DawkinsDog I am throwing the possibility that there could be a God,& that belief in God makes more sense than believing we came from stones

@DawkinsDog About angels&devils, these are my own understanding of the bible that may differ from others. Faith is what matters, not reads

Okay, stop the bus, let's take a look at this. What ImH0me seems to be getting at is that chemists have not produced life. Well, it depends how you define 'life'. If 'life' is a self replicating organism capable of evolving, then they have.

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2009/January/09010901.asp

Then ImH0me drops in the wonderful strawman that we came from stones. Find me any evolution supporter who believes this and I'll show you an evolution supporter who doesn't understand evolution! We didn't come from stones, I'm pretty sure nobody ever said we did – at least not from the evolution side of the fence. How can believing in god make more sense than something nobody ever said happened? Why their god anyway? Why not Zeus, Hecate, Vishnu, Allah … ?

I replied explaining that this stones rubbish was a fallacy. The building blocks of life have been replicated in experiments of the early Earth's atmosphere and amino acids have been found to be plentiful in asteroids and comets.

The reply?

@DawkinsDog How amino acids came to be if u exclude dead stones or unconscious matter in ur theory of origin ? Does that make sense to you ?

How did amino acids come to be? Naturally, they're pretty simple chemicals made of simple elements and they're common in nature. There's really no requirement to invoke a god to make something so simple!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amino_acid

Again, ImH0me

@DawkinsDog I do not claim. I just believe. And b/c your theory of origin is half empty b/c u want 2 exclude dead stones, u just believe too

Yes, ImH0me you DO claim. What you claim is that evolution is wrong, atheism is wrong. That is a claim. My theory is half empty? It's not actually my theory, it's a theory built upon 150+ years of

scientific exploration and endeavour and, so far, it's not been shown wrong, however many 'creation scientists' have been thrown at it! Oh, and again, we didn't come from f**king stones!

@DawkinsDog And because we both just believe, my belief makes more sense than your belief "consciousness came from dead stones", doesn't it?

No, we don't 'just' believe. I have fecking evidence on my side. Evolutionary biology is based on falsifiable science, not blind faith. And again, WE DIDN'T COME FROM STONES!

@DawkinsDog How can you possibly simulate early earth if u do not even understand how dead stones ended conscious after billions of yrs ?

I'm starting to lose the will to live with these stones now lol.

We know what the Earth's atmosphere was like billions of years ago. Live with it.

http://eesc.columbia.edu/courses/ees/climate/lectures/earth.html

Using that information, they have done experiments and found the building blocks of life are formed, and it didn't take that long. No stones were involved.

http://www.chem.duke.edu/~jds/cruise_chem/Exobiology/miller.html

Once you have basic chemicals forming it's not exactly a massive leap to basic structures like RNA, which science now thinks was the precursor to DNA.

http://www.evolutionofdna.com/Evolution-Of-DNA.html

Back to ImH0me

@DawkinsDog Negating possibility of Conscious Intelligence is welcoming d notion that our origin is unconscious matter or simply dead stones

Okay, so either we have conscious intelligence or we came from unconscious matter or dead stones (has he got a thing about stones?) What ImH0me appears to be doing here is confusing consciousness, the awareness of what is around us, with a soul. If they are claiming the existence of a soul then I'm sorry but burden of proof is squarely on them because the soul, much like god, is a matter of faith. Consciousness is most likely the perception we have to the chemical reactions in our body, nothing more.

@DawkinsDog The fact that we can violate Physics by acting on our beliefs hints that we did not come from Physical Nature. We came from God

What? Please, pray tell, where have we ever violated the laws of physics? There's kind of a clue to the word LAW! We didn't come from physical nature? Strange that every branch of science disagrees with that. Nice false dichotomy to end with, too – if we didn't evolve we must be the product of their god. Nope, doesn't work logically, could have been any of the hundreds of deities man has worshipped over the years. My money is on Zeus, he was a real bad ass dude.

@DawkinsDog Richard Dawkins has no ioata of clue how unconscious matter ended conscious. He just pretends 2know 2b blameless @RichardDawkins

Not sure Richard Dawkins would agree on that, you'd have to ask him. We're back to what constitutes life anyway and, as I've said above, there's a difference between consciousness and positing the existence of a soul much less proving the existence of one.

Life coming from non-life falls under abiogenesis, not evolution. This is a sticking point for many creationists. Evolution is the mechanism by which organisms replicate and change. Abiogenesis deals with the very first 'spark of life' so to speak.

“He just pretends 2know 2b blameless” I'm not even sure what this means. Richard Dawkins doesn't pretend to know anything, he can back up what he says with scientific evidence – evidence that anybody would be welcome to disprove and could likely win a Nobel Prize if they were able. As to blameless, how so? Blameless of what exactly?

@DawkinsDog RichardDawkins,who has no clue how stones ended conscious,is corrupting minds w/ his half empty theory ofOrigin @RichardDawkins

I'm fairly certain that Richard would respond the same way I am about to – WE DIDN'T COME FROM STONES SO STFU ABOUT STONES ALREADY! How is he corrupting minds by writing of the latest scientific findings? He doesn't do all the work himself, there are millions of scientists the world over working in the evolutionary related fields – oddly very, very few support creationism!

Oh, maybe it's Richard's book The God Delusion? Well, it is a delusion. You say it's not, you prove the existence of your god. It's quite simple! Of course you need to disprove the existence of the gods of every other religion that has ever existed, for whom there is just as mush evidence as yours. That may prove more tricky.

@DawkinsDog And while RichardDawkins book has corrupted many minds, he is making money too to the detriment of moral values from faith inGod

Okay, now this final one really pisses me off. Richard Dawkins corrupting minds by letting them read about actual evidence of evolution? The God Delusion was only his opinion. He is entitled to his opinion remember, YOUR god gave us free will so stop trying to take it away from us! Give me a break lol.

Right, now the moral values we get from faith in god. Bollocks! We know morals are a product of evolution, we can see basic moral codes exhibited in other animals. All we see when we read that book of absolute crap The Bible is how god spends almost the entire Old Testament either committing genocide, wiping out entire civilisations on a whim, or he is commanding his 'chosen people' to do the slaughtering for him. We also see him demand the brains of innocent babies be dashed out for the parents to see, because they worshipped a different god. He goes further, he dictates that if a man rapes a woman he is to marry her – she doesn't have a say in this. If a child answers back to his parents they are to murder him. Witches shall not be suffered to live. If one person in a town worships another god, that entire town shall be put to death. Slavery? Sure, go right ahead, god gives you a handy cut out and keep guide to how badly you can beat them! God is the single most amoral son of a bitch man has ever invented and anybody excusing his behaviour is morally bankrupt in my humble opinion!

Oh, but then god sent his only son, Jesus Christ, to save us! Why is it his only son? He's god, he could have an entire football team of sons if he wanted to, unless he's not all powerful? Anyway, that aside, the entire Christ myth falls apart if you actually take the time to look into it with intellectual honesty. He's a complete plagiarism of so many older messiah myths, that's when he's not pulling off completely impossible feats such as being born at a time when two people were in power when one died around 10 years before the other even took power!

I'd best stop before I forget about ImH0me's tweets and go off on a rant about god's morality, or lack thereof!

I'm not saying ImH0me is a bad person, they most likely aren't, but they are badly misguided if they believe evolution says we came from stones and it's indicative of the fallacies creationists have been led to believe. Similarly they are wrong when they make claims of life from non-life when they cannot first quantify what life actually is beyond chemical reactions. When they claim we get our morals from an amoral, genocidal, infanticide fixated sky tyrant, then I do have issue with them and it was mainly that tweet that resulted in this blog update.

See, it would have been really difficult to shoehorn that lot into 140 character chunks!