Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Logical fallacies, Part Two: Chemical Boogaloo

So as most of you know, I'm an atheist. I'm not an atheist because it's the cool thing to do, or because my parents didn't love me (they do, they're awesome), or because I'm an asshole. Well, I AM an asshole, but I don't TELL anyone that because that'd open up another whole can of worms.

I'm an atheist for one simple reason: Evidence. The thing that irritates me most about theists, and Christians specifically, is that they actively deny verified, observable evidence because it conflicts with their fairy tale world. Willful ignorance of the simplest of scientific concepts drives me up the wall.

So I'm a member of a few atheist facebook pages, mainly to get a laugh at the theist trolls who try to start shit for no reason, and I see one thread where this colossal moron named Scot Brandon tries to tell US what OUR beliefs are, most notably, the retarded idea that "living things come from nonliving things". When religious types say this, what they're implying is that atheists think that plants were created by rocks and fish magically appeared from water. This is yet another logical fallacy, brought to you by the mental incompetents of Christendom.

Protip: all matter is nonliving. "Life" is a descriptor used by humans to distinguish between inanimate objects and animate ones. Things we term "living" are nothing more than a complex amalgamation of chemical processes and cellular compounds that can reproduce itself utilizing more chemical processes.

That's it. Anyone who tries to tell you that life is anything more than that is applying romanticized philosophy to a self-aware existence. This is not to say that one should not make the most out of the time they have before their chemical processes no longer function, but to claim that life is a sacred thing that was created by a higher power and we shouldn't question it is, on it's face, completely ludicrous.

For those who don't know, we are all made up of stellar matter. Star stuff. Stars are colossal elemental forges that create every known element in the Universe through a simple process called nuclear fusion. The reason why everything on the planet Earth is based on a carbon-12 template is because when a star runs out of hydrogen fuel to "burn" (parentheses are to keep theists from bombarding me with the 'things can't burn without oxygen dummy' comments), it then starts to fuse helium atoms together. Three helium atoms combine to form stable carbon-12 atoms. When stars go supernova, all of those atoms are blasted out into space, some to be used in the creation of new stars, some remain as gaseous nebulae, and some are trapped in forming planetary systems, such as EARTH.

Carbon-12 is an amazing thing. It is one of the only atoms that can combine with a plethora of other atoms to create a myriad of stable chemical compounds, most notably hydrocarbons, the simplest organic molecule. Add some oxygen, nitrogen, and sulphur into the mix (all elements readily found on a prehistoric, volcanic Earth) and you have amino acids. Strings of amino acids form complex proteins, and with a little added phosphorus, you have DNA. Over millions of years, random mutations and adaptations to environments produced the organic systems you see today. This is not something that magically happened in two seconds like Scot would like me to tell him I believe.

The theory of evolution isn't really a theory, as it has been observed to happen over time. Theists latch onto that word "theory" though.

Isaac Asimov has this to say about that:

Even if that were the case, if you have observable, verifiable evidence to support your theory, then it doesn't matter if you were drunk, it's CORRECT.

Returning to Scot (as much as I wish I didn't have to), like a good little Christian he told me he ignored my post after he read that all matter is nonliving, and just posted a link to a wikipedia page on the definition of matter like he had won the argument, even though it proves exactly what I just laid out in terms so simple a 10 year old could get it.

Can't have all those facts polluting your brain now, can we? Have to save those brain cells you refute the existence of to be able to blindly worship an Iron Age, Middle Eastern, tribal sky-god who tells you "You have free will so that you will do what I say".

In the immortal words of Professor Farnsworth:


 


Edit: Scot, the imbecilic monkey, responded with THIS little gem: "you probably think all molecules are alive and there is life on the moon, ha!" I don't even know where to begin. I hope he doesn't breed, I don't think our planet can handle any more abject stupidity.

Death is only the beginning...

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