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Preachy Comment Spam

I get email notifications when someone posts a comment on one of my posts and today, over the course of about an hour, I got 7 notifications that the same person was commenting. That’s great, I thought! Someone’s actually reading what I wrote and is taking the time to give their feedback!

As it turns out, “Truth seeker” is the commenter and it seems doubtful that he/she was actually reading my posts. All the comments were roughly the same, with bible quotes and preachy “God is great” declarations. Here’s an example.

God is sovereign creator of heaven and earth. He revealed Himself in His Word. He is in control and does His will. God is holy and man is sinful. In order to be in right relationship with God we must repent of our sins and believe in His Son, Jesus Christ, who died on the cross in our place. The wages of sin is death, but Jesus died for us so that we could be reconciled to God. God knows our thoughts and examines our hearts. He knows if you believe in Him or not. When we die, we will each stand before God in judgment. Those who have humbled themselves before God will inherit eternal life. Those who have rejected God or denied His existence will be damned for all eternity. Don’t believe the lie that God does not exist. He has revealed Himself in His creation, the world and universe, and in our hearts and minds. If you truly ask God to reveal Himself to you, He will. Scripture says if you draw nigh to God, He will draw nigh to you. Jesus said, if you deny Him in this life, He will deny you before the Father. I encourage you to humble yourself before your Creator God before it’s too late. Answers to this life and all eternity are found in His Word. God bless.

All the comments are about the same length and vary only slightly in content, but share something in common (other than the religious proclamations). They all contribute nothing to the discussion in their respective articles.

I won’t post any more full comments because it would be redundant, but I just wanted to quote a few select lines [sic]. My comments are in blue, of course.

  • Evolution has never been proven. In over 100 years of studying evolution, science has been unsuccessful and monitoring the evolution of anything. In all their efforts, they cannot turn a dog into a cat or a fly into a misquito. [I think truthseeker was channeling Ray Comfort or Kirk Cameron there]
  • Many people waste their entire lives believing in lies. [Isn’t that an ironic statement?]
  • Faith is a lie is called foolishness. [I was amused by this typo]
  • Evolution is too unbelievable. The odds and likelihood of all necessary events to result in this perfectly balanced universe is ridiculous. [Evolution and the origins of the universe… more Comfort and Cameron]
  • Global warming claims are trickery used to divert funds to other people and nations. [Divert funds from where to where?]
  • All you have to do is believe what God tells you to believe. [So I should hear voices in my head and listen to them?]
  • I choose God and true biblical religion over any and everthing this world has to offer. I don’t have to worry about downloading my memory to a disk [so cool!!!] before I die because my Creator God has kept an account of my life.
  • I encourage you to read the Bible and pray that God will reveal Himself to you. [I did part one. Part two is contradictory]
  • God does not change, His does not waver. Therefore, truths 2,000 years ago are truths today. [So genocide, baby killing, blood sacrifices, and stonings for minor offenses are all still perfectly fine, then?]
  • Every human will one day die. [I can agree with that one]

If you want to read all the comments, here are the links to each one. I marked them all as spam (with “*spam*” at the top) so new visitors won’t confuse them with legitimate comments.

Cherry Picking, Scary Church Signs, Vague God, Creationism = Intelligent Design = Not Science, I am a believer and an atheist, Howse wants to reclaim the church

Cherry Picking

This looks like a good cherry to pick! I recently spoke with a friend who is a fundamentalist young Earth creationist. I’ve known him for quite a few years and we get along great, despite our diametric views on religion and science. We’ve had plenty of discussions about religion, science, God, theology, and the bible and they’re always enjoyable because neither of us takes the points and counterpoints personally and we really listen (mostly) to each others’ views, even if we disagree. We also tend to toss in some humor to the mix to keep things light.

We started talking about science and the age of the Earth again with another friend, though it was really late and we didn’t get into anything in great detail, but one of his comments (which he’s made before) is a common one that I find exasperating. The comment was something along the lines of "We all have the same facts. However, depending on our worldview and our assumptions, we reach different conclusions."

My response was basically that the difference wasn’t a worldview or the starting assumptions. The difference was that science looks at the facts and then tries to come to a conclusion (theory) while religion starts with the conclusion already established and tries to make the facts fit. He denied that was the case (radiometric dating was the point of contention in this particular instance). Before we got any further, it was time to call it a night because we were on the verge of falling asleep anyway.

What struck me as I thought about the exchange was that creationists, fundamentalists, and other groups that deny evolution or the age of the Earth, cherry pick science in much the same way that they cherry pick from the bible.

They’ll trust science when it comes to medicine, happily going to the doctor for a prescription or to the hospital for surgery. They’ll trust science when it comes to the manufacture and operation of cars, trains, and airplanes when they want to go to work or on vacation. They’ll trust science when it provides them with a television signal or allows them to download new music for their iPods. They’ll trust science when it provides them with an inexpensive abundance of biologically improved crops, meat, and dairy products for their backyard barbecues.

They’ll trust and depend on science when it comes to the manufacture of their footwear, clothing, homes, automobiles, medicine, televisions, computers, appliances, cell phones, and a myriad of other things that don’t conflict with their fundamentalist theology… but if there’s a conflict, science is suddenly a flawed methodology where facts are interpreted differently due to worldviews, preconceptions, and baseless assumptions.

It’s hypocritical and it’s an insult to the scientific community. To be so cavalier in dismissing some of the most well-supported scientific theories in the history of science, yet depend upon science for their entertainment, convenience, and sometimes even their very survival, seems to me an irrational position at best.

But I suppose that’s what cherry picking is all about.