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	<title>Pull The Plug On Ignorance &#187; Quote Mining</title>
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	<link>http://pulltheplugonignorance.com</link>
	<description>On the matters of faiths, beliefs, sciences and worldviews.</description>
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		<title>True Ignorance</title>
		<link>http://pulltheplugonignorance.com/2009/05/true-ignorance/</link>
		<comments>http://pulltheplugonignorance.com/2009/05/true-ignorance/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2009 16:10:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Nathaniel</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Intelligent Design / Creationism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Quote Mining]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Theism / Religion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://pulltheplugonignorance.com/?p=119</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Ray Comfort is at it again. After a short period of trying to act serious and humble, he&#8217;s right back to insulting the intellects of atheists everywhere, while still claiming that he has good reason to believe what he believes. Let&#8217;s dissect his statement: I also love science. No, he doesn&#8217;t. He probably doesn&#8217;t even [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Ray Comfort is<a href="http://raycomfortfood.blogspot.com/2009/05/true-science.html"> at it again</a>. After a short period of trying to act serious and humble, he&#8217;s right back to insulting the intellects of atheists everywhere, while still claiming that he has good reason to believe what he believes.</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s dissect his statement:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">I also love science.</p>
<p>No, he doesn&#8217;t. He probably doesn&#8217;t even know what the word means.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">In case you didn’t know, &#8220;science&#8221; is God allowing man to discover the secret workings of His incredible creation.</p>
<p>As usual, simply assuming that the world is <em>created</em> is more than enough evidence to prove that it is. Ray Comfort <em>loves</em> science, but doesn&#8217;t understand the first thing about it.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Einstein (a theist who didn’t believe in a personal God) rightly said, &#8220;Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.&#8221;</p>
<p>Ah, here we go with Einstein again. You would think a Christian would show some respect for the dead, but not our dear Ray. Einstein was not a theist, at the very most he was a <em>deist</em>, but even that is up for discussion since he hints at having a definition of a god that isn&#8217;t really a god at all. It&#8217;s more of a term simply to describe the wonders of the world itself, and not an intelligent force, whether personal or not. I&#8217;ve quoted him before, but I&#8217;ll do it again:</p>
<blockquote><p>It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.</p></blockquote>
<p>Back to Ray.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">But [atheist scientists] also intellectually disqualify themselves from speaking on behalf of science, because their basic worldview of &#8220;nothing created everything&#8221; is a scientific impossibility.</p>
<p>He holds on to his most beloved strawman as it he&#8217;d die without it. Metaphorically speaking, he probably would. Without his delusion that atheism somehow implies <em>any</em> stance on creation whatsoever, he would wither up and crumble. It&#8217;s his only weapon, and all it does is irritate and annoy. Regardless, if he maintains that it&#8217;s true that atheists believe &#8220;<em>nothing created everything</em>&#8220;, then it&#8217;s equally true that all Christians firmly believe that &#8220;<em>nothing created God</em>&#8220;. However, as soon as you mention that, Ray and his followers will start screaming that &#8220;God has always existed, he&#8217;s outside time&#8221; as if that answers all the questions. But, if believing that our universe didn&#8217;t have a creator is &#8220;intellectually dishonest&#8221;, why is it reasonable to believe that God didn&#8217;t have a creator as well? I&#8217;ve never understood this, nor have I ever gotten an honest answer out of <em>any</em> Christians whom I&#8217;ve asked.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Einstein said, &#8220;I want to know how God created this world, I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.&#8221; If you also want to know God’s thoughts, read your Bible.</p>
<p>This, of course, right after Ray himself said that the god of Einstein <em>wasn&#8217;t</em> the personal, theistic God of Abrahamic religion. Ray doesn&#8217;t care if his logic is flawed. In fact, he flaunts his errors in order to troll for more insulted atheists to hang around his honey pot blog.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">You love creation. I love the Creator and will escape His terrible swift sword, because I trust in His mercy.</p>
<p>I have no feelings whatsoever towards the creation of the universe. Why would I? It&#8217;s an impersonal event billions of years in the past. How do you have feelings towards a giant cosmic expansion-event?</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">It&#8217;s my earnest prayer that you would also trust Jesus for your own eternal salvation today. He doesn&#8217;t promise you tomorrow.</p>
<p>He doesn&#8217;t promise anything, because he isn&#8217;t real.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Just let Einstein speak for himself</title>
		<link>http://pulltheplugonignorance.com/2009/03/just-let-einstein-speak-for-himself/</link>
		<comments>http://pulltheplugonignorance.com/2009/03/just-let-einstein-speak-for-himself/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:29:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Nathaniel</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Quote Mining]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://pulltheplugonignorance.com/?p=24</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Christian creationists are often very eager to claim the great thinkers of our time for themselves. They think that, if someone is both intelligent and Christian, it not only lends credence to religion, but it also implies that Christianity has something to do with intelligence. XKCD made a wonderful comic about the notion that &#8220;correllation [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Christian creationists are often very eager to claim the great thinkers of our time for themselves. They think that, if someone is both intelligent and Christian, it not only lends credence to religion, but it also implies that Christianity has something to do with intelligence. XKCD made a wonderful comic about the notion that &#8220;<a href="http://xkcd.com/552/">correllation implies causation</a>&#8220;, which is the same mistake which can be seen made by Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron in this video:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">[youtube]V4DgsB7wciw[/youtube]</p>
<p>At first glance, it might seen that not only was Einstein not an atheist, but he was also a devout Christian who believed in a personal God. However, you&#8217;ll know more about Einstein from the quotes they <em>didn&#8217;t</em> read, including his famous one where he directly and explicitly denies a belief in a personal god:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: left;">&#8220;It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.&#8221;</p>
<p style="text-align: right; padding-left: 30px;">Albert Einstein, letter to an atheist (1954), quoted in Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas &amp; Banesh Hoffman</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: left;">So, in Einstein&#8217;s own words, he expressly denies belief in the same god as Comfort and Cameron, which they so insidously implied he did believe in. Make no mistake, the quotes chosen for this video were carefully picked for maximum implication that Einstein was a religious theist. Here are some more of Einstein&#8217;s own words, refuting much of what Ray and Kirk want you to think:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: left;">The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.</p>
<p style="text-align: right; padding-left: 30px;">Letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind, January 3, 1954</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: left;">During the youthful period of mankind&#8217;s spiritual evolution, human fantasy created gods in man&#8217;s own image who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate influence, the phenomenal world.<em></em></p>
<p style="text-align: right; padding-left: 30px;">Albert Einstein, quoted in: 2000 Years of Disbelief, James Haught</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: left;">I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.</p>
<p style="text-align: right; padding-left: 30px;">Albert Einstein to Guy H. Raner Jr., Sept. 28, 1949, quoted by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: left;">&#8230;I can keep quoting him, if you want. However, five seconds worth of Googling will give you multiple results, all of which show us the same thing:<br />
Einstein had so much more to say about God and religion than Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron want you to know about.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Albert Einstein may not have been an atheist, but he definitely wasn&#8217;t what this video portrays him as either.</p>
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