"The Origin of Specious Nonsense"

Ush1

PDN wrote: »

And then you'd start a thread in the anti-maths forum whining about how petty the maths mods are.

Just saying ....... :pac:

Yes but that forum would just be based on faith.

It would be supernatural and 2+2=5 would be actually correct as the anti-maths book says so.

Ghost Buster

Im having a major issue with this thread and may soon have to stop perusing it. Any time I read JC's posts now I read them in either a strong North of Ireland accent just like the bible bashing loons one regularly find on street corners threatening passers by with fire and brimstone. But more and more often now i read them in a deep South 'Billy Bob plays the banjer' accent. Help :eek:

Ush1

Ghost Buster wrote: »

Im having a major issue with this thread and may soon have to stop perusing it. Any time I read JC's posts now I read them in either a strong North of Ireland accent just like the bible bashing loons one regularly find on street corners threatening passers by with fire and brimstone. But more and more often now i read them in a deep South 'Billy Bob plays the banjer' accent. Help :eek:

I always think of him as American, but now I know we have our very own nuts copying Americans such as the author of this book.

sensibleken

Ghost Buster wrote: »

Im having a major issue with this thread and may soon have to stop perusing it. Any time I read JC's posts now I read them in either a strong North of Ireland accent just like the bible bashing loons one regularly find on street corners threatening passers by with fire and brimstone. But more and more often now i read them in a deep South 'Billy Bob plays the banjer' accent. Help :eek:

oi! dont besmirch (i have no idea if thats how you spell it) the banjo. tis a fine and sexy instrument.

Ghost Buster

sensibleken wrote: »

oi! dont besmirch (i have no idea if thats how you spell it) the banjo. tis a fine and sexy instrument.

And has been used to serenade and seduce many an attractive first cousin.

PDN

sensibleken wrote: »

oi! dont besmirch (i have no idea if thats how you spell it) the banjo. tis a fine and sexy instrument.

You've done gone and done it now! I'm going to be hearing this tune in my head all day!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uzae_SqbmDE

coffee_cake

J C wrote: »

You really don't appear to get the irony of it all ... that Atheists and other anti-Creation science types are behaving exactly like mainstream churches behaved fifity years ago ... preaching from their 'pulpits' to their unquestioning acolytes, decrying/discriminating against any minority that disagree with them ... and generally belting anybody, who doesn't adore at their Evolutionist Shrines, with their proverbial 'croziers'!!!:)

I'll try and reply in your language, ok?

I'm notlisteninglalalalalla:rolleyes:;):p:cool::pac::cool:

sponsoredwalk

2 + 2 = 5

If you want it to equal 5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfyeaOlbMvU

sensibleken

PDN wrote: »

You've done gone and done it now! I'm going to be hearing this tune in my head all day!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uzae_SqbmDE

what tune is it? i cant see videos in work. I recomend jerry o'connor

PDN

sensibleken wrote: »

what tune is it? i cant see videos in work. I recomend jerry o'connor

It's the banjo duel from the movie Deliverance - a bit drawn out by modern film standards (where audiences suffering from popcorn-induced diabetic comas need an explosion every 30 seconds) but pregnant with a sense of impending menace.

coffee_cake

J C wrote: »

Unfortunately there is no beer in Hell ... but the 'best larger in the Universe' will be freely flowing on tap in Heaven!!!!

Best larger than what?

The Mad Hatter

Zillah wrote: »

Can you give a real world example of choosing to believe in something? I'm trying to believe in unicorns at the moment but I'm not having much luck.

Quoting from The God Delusion:

The saddest example I know is that of the American geologist Kurt Wise...[H]e obtained a real degree in geology at the University of Chicago, followed by two higher degrees in geology and palaeontology at Harvard (no less) where he studied under Stephen Jay Gould (no less). He was a highly qualified and genuinely promising young scientist, well on his way to achieving his dream of teaching and doing research at a proper university.

Then tragedy struck. It came, not from outside but from within his own mind, a mind fatally subverted by a fundamentalist religious upbringing that required him to believe that the Earth - the subject of his Chicago and Harvard geological education - was less than ten thousand years old. He was too intelligent not to recognise the head-on collision between his religion and his science, and the conflict in his mind made him increasingly uneasy. One day, he could bear the strain no more, and he clinched the matter with a pair of scissors. He took a bible and went through it, literally cutting out every verse that would have to go if the scientific world-view were true. At the end of this ruthlessly honest and labour-intensive exercise, there was so little left of his bible that,

try as I might, and even with the benefit of intact margins throughout the pages of Scripture, I found it impossible to pick up the bible without it being rent in two. I had to make a decision between evolution and Scripture. Either the Scripture was true and evolution was wrong or evolution was true and I had to throw out the bible...It was there that night that I accepted the Word of God and rejected all that would ever counter it, including evolution. With that, in great sorrow, I tossed into the fire all my dreams and hopes in science.

The Mad Hatter

J C wrote: »

I want to learn ... that's why I'm here!!

This is demonstrably untrue. If it were true, you wouldn't change the subject every time you lose the argument and come back to the same lost points weeks later when the rest of your circle of arguments is defeated.

The Mad Hatter

bluewolf wrote: »

Best larger than what?

Our in the Universe is slightly bigger than the in the Universe of the next Universe over.

sensibleken

darjeeling

robindch wrote: »

On the other hand, at least it's entertaining to see that Augustine was having trouble with creationists 1600 years ago and found them and their ideas as risible as last night's crowd found John May

Go on, Robin, tell all!

robindch

darjeeling wrote: »

Go on, Robin, tell all!

Right. Photos can wait.

This was one weird, weird evening.

I only decided to cycle up at quarter to seven from pearse street and things were already under way with a few people in the bar and almost nobody at all in the room downstairs where he was supposed to do the talk. I signed myself into the guest book as Charles Darwin, just after Abraham Lincoln did. The bouncer on the door was bemused by the whole thing. Back upstairs and outside the hotel, May was giving in interview in a stretch pink lomiusine to the "UK-based television crew" that was making a "documentary". There were large pink lip marks down the side of the limo and I'm sure they signified something, but I'm buggered if I know what.

Back inside and a spectacularly badly-dressed up Darwin had arrived with four tits and a gorilla. These were photographed by a guy whom I suppose was being paid for by May, who was himself delivering a rant to a surprised-looking lady from the Irish Times.

Time passed and a few more people came in, some of whom were familiar from various skeptical events around town (Hi, Steve * 2!) and I suppose around half seven things got going with around 35 people in the short-chaired room and May began a long rant about the usual stuff. Putting my finger in the air, I'd have said there were ten or fifteen family, friends and creationists and the rest were along for the hell of it.

It was all predictable enough, though the atmosphere was lightened a lot by one well-known blogger who sat more or less underneath May's nose and who kept on breaking into fits of very infectious giggles every minute or two. A new Darwin, the gorilla and the four tits arrived in and May delivered a surreal lecture about perfect sperms, perfect penises and perfect vaginas, er, coming together to produce perfect babies with another dose of his "well, like, a baby isn't wrinkled" objection to evolutionary science. During one dramatic gesture, he almost took the head off one of the pair of breasts who was standing too close behind him.

Somebody must have dropped upstairs to the bar and told them about the table full of free booze downstairs, since what I think was the entire contents of Buswell's bar arrived in over a ten minute period to being the total number of people up to maybe sixty or seventy.

With the aircon off, it began to get quite heated and not just because some big guy arrived from somewhere, well oiled and waving a glass of wine around in the air and started a high-energy Q+A, then some mild heckling and ultimately him and May ended up in a full-on exchange of four-letter insults at the tops of their voices. Both had to be mildly restrained from going at each other. May then stoped the meeting, so everybody turned around and grabbed as much wine as they could from the forty or so bottles at the back. It took an hour for everybody to finish this, at which point, everybody evaporated back up to the bar upstairs.

I bought a copy of the book -- hey, it's research! -- and I'd say about ten, max, other people did, leaving around fifty unsold in a pile on the desk beside the booze. I counted four creationists (I asked them) and I'd say that was about half of the total. Everybody else was there for free drink.

Interesting fact from the night -- two people reported that John May used to be a Jehovah's Witness and in the early 1980's, lead a schism in which half of the JW's in Dublin left the organization.

Quote from page one of the book:

John May, Page 1 wrote:

To undertake the extirpation of fond fictions from the mind is, I know, irrefragably fraught with explosive consequences. Therefore, I begin as I mean to finish, gently with simple explanations for complex concepts and hopefully to elevate reason and true science as a magnate to sanity, purpose and a future with hope.

No, they are not misspellings -- they're verbatim.

"The Origin of Specious Nonsense" is available, via his website, for fifteen euro from several large and almost completely full crates in John May's garage.

Dades

Good work, Mr Mole.

PDN

robindch wrote: »

Right. Photos can wait.

This was one weird, weird evening.

I only decided to cycle up at quarter to seven from pearse street and things were already under way with a few people in the bar and almost nobody at all in the room downstairs where he was supposed to do the talk. I signed myself into the guest book as Charles Darwin, just after Abraham Lincoln did. The bouncer on the door was bemused by the whole thing. Back upstairs and outside the hotel, May was giving in interview in a stretch pink lomiusine to the "UK-based television crew" that was making a "documentary". There were large pink lip marks down the side of the limo and I'm sure they signified something, but I'm buggered if I know what.

Back inside and a spectacularly badly-dressed up Darwin had arrived with four tits and a gorilla. These were photographed by a guy whom I suppose was being paid for by May, who was himself delivering a rant to a surprised-looking lady from the Irish Times.

Time passed and a few more people came in, some of whom were familiar from various skeptical events around town (Hi, Steve * 2!) and I suppose around half seven things got going with around 35 people in the short-chaired room and May began a long rant about the usual stuff. Putting my finger in the air, I'd have said there were ten or fifteen family, friends and creationists and the rest were along for the hell of it.

It was all predictable enough, though the atmosphere was lightened a lot by one well-known blogger who sat more or less underneath May's nose and who kept on breaking into fits of very infectious giggles every minute or two. A new Darwin, the gorilla and the four tits arrived in and May delivered a surreal lecture about perfect sperms, perfect penises and perfect vaginas, er, coming together to produce perfect babies with another dose of his "well, like, a baby isn't wrinkled" objection to evolutionary science. During one dramatic gesture, he almost took the head off one of the pair of breasts who was standing too close behind him.

Somebody must have dropped upstairs to the bar and told them about the table full of free booze downstairs, since what I think was the entire contents of Buswell's bar arrived in over a ten minute period to being the total number of people up to maybe sixty or seventy.

With the aircon off, it began to get quite heated and not just because some big guy arrived from somewhere, well oiled and waving a glass of wine around in the air and started a high-energy Q+A, then some mild heckling and ultimately him and May ended up in a full-on exchange of four-letter insults at the tops of their voices. Both had to be mildly restrained from going at each other. May then stoped the meeting, so everybody turned around and grabbed as much wine as they could from the forty or so bottles at the back. It took an hour for everybody to finish this, at which point, everybody evaporated back up to the bar upstairs.

I bought a copy of the book -- hey, it's research! -- and I'd say about ten, max, other people did, leaving around fifty unsold in a pile on the desk beside the booze. I counted four creationists (I asked them) and I'd say that was about half of the total. Everybody else was there for free drink.

Interesting fact from the night -- two people reported that John May used to be a Jehovah's Witness and in the early 1980's, lead a schism in which half of the JW's in Dublin left the organization.

Quote from page one of the book:No, they are not misspellings -- they're verbatim.

"The Origin of Specious Nonsense" is available, via his website, for fifteen euro from several large and almost completely full crates in John May's garage.

Post of the year!

Pink limos and lip marks, lots of tits, perfect penises, perfect vaginas, and Robin gets buggered if he knows. All in one post! :eek:

Dades

PDN wrote: »

Pink limos and lip marks, lots of tits, perfect penises, perfect vaginas, and Robin gets buggered if he knows...

I keep thinking of that scene on the train at the end of Trading Places...

Paparazzo

Looking at his videos online, all he seems to do is to make a point that supports evolution, and just say "bullshìt" after it! I now know why dawkins refuses to debate with these guys.
The former JW bit makes sense.

darjeeling

robindch wrote: »

This was one weird, weird evening.

Thanks Robin!

John May, Page 1 wrote:

To undertake the extirpation of fond fictions from the mind is, I know, irrefragably fraught with explosive consequences. Therefore, I begin as I mean to finish, gently with simple explanations for complex concepts and hopefully to elevate reason and true science as a magnate to sanity, purpose and a future with hope.

That's some prose style there - more turgid than Henry James, as if his sales prospects weren't bad enough already. Still, Mr May does seem to put on a good show; Darwin didn't even turn up to his big night at the Linnean Society back in 1858, and there were no gorillas & gals then either, let alone late-night goings-on in Lillie's Bordello.

stevejazzx

PDN wrote: »

Post of the year!

And there I was thinking that there'll never be a time where I'm in complete (or even partial) agreement with PDN; funny what can be achieved by lunatics like John May:)

Now then, enough of that, back to completely disagreeing with PDN....ahh feels good.

vibe666

robindch wrote: »

Back inside and a spectacularly badly-dressed up Darwin had arrived with four tits and a gorilla.

so TD's did turn up in the end? :pac:

Galvasean

So... who fancies a poll for Loon of the Year: May versus Coleman?

Dougla2

this thread is now the number 1 google result for origin of speices nonsense

Paparazzo

So, can we stop talking about the bible and get back on topic and start taking the piss out of John May again?

vibe666

so john may ah? bit of a crackpot by the sounds of him.

robin, did you get to read any of the book yet, or did you just give up and set fire to it already?

Turtwig

vibe666 wrote: »

so john may ah? bit of a crackpot by the sounds of him.

robin, did you get to read any of the book yet, or did you just give up and set fire to it already?

He managed to read Ayn Rand's book so I'd imagine he'll have no trouble here.:D

Gordon

Waking-Dreams wrote: »

Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover and summary.

Well it's what the author wants you to do. Check the first 7 seconds of the below clip: "I want this book to be judged by its cover."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mYt974wGqo

My judgement of the cover: Embryo cell splitting within magical Jesus-halo of scientific DNA and author running up to pop it with a pin, aborting the new life. Quite a strange and disturbing cover, one I won't be buying if I see it in the fiction section.