Goat Getting

Screen capture from video of a live Coelacanth, believed to have gone extinct 65 Million years ago, and rediscovered in 1938, 1998, 2001 and now 2006 live video off Southern Africa!

If there's one thing that gets my goat, it's having to argue about Evolution with someone who's train of thought is, essentially, an evolutionary deadend.
Course I don't say that until I'm at least 20-30 minutes into the conversation.

I've had some memorable battles, like one with an older woman who claimed to be a professor of Bible studies at U of T in a starbucks of all places, she looked more like a bag lady who'd scrounged up enough change for a cuppa.

More recently, they've been virtual battles and usually started by things people say that make my head spin, real quick and painful like. By 'virtual' I mean within the confines of a virtual world with a population just over 200,000. I won't go into that here, let's just say I was involved in a conversation about 'extra dimensions' which is not an improbable thing to be discussing, I mean some theories of the universe argue for 11 dimensions right?
Anyway, in response to a crack I made about chimps being our cousins, cuz they are, it's a fact, albeit distant cousins, she said, 'that hasn't been proven.'. My jaw dropped and I thought, 'are you (bleep)ing kidding me?! I was in mid sentence about something else and was going to come back to that when we got onto multidimensional talk, but then:
'we know there's a spiritual dimension because Jesus ascended into heaven, in front of a lot of witnesses.'

?! o.O we do, do we? The bible was being quoted as if it were describing an 'historical event', that's in quotes because later she called it just that. I'm a recovering catholic, I've read the bible, i know the passage. ..'ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the father.' I don't remember. . .'and there were lots of witnesses.' That part's not there and it's not meant to be taken literally. . sshh calm down. okay... Evolution not proven?! Since when? Same thing the old lady said to me in starbucks, 'that's been disproven.' my response then was 'oh like the shroud of turin, you mean?' their turn to drop a jaw. :=)

What frustrates me to no end, is that I am always shocked into silence at first. It's not that I think they're joking and I am confused about whether to laugh or not. . . gods I wish I had. It is simply that I'm aghast that someone in this day and age, could be so sheltered (I'm being nice) as to thoroughly buy this hogwash and so literally! Then you have to take into account where they're from in the world, but we needn't go into that either since it's an entirely different topic.

Intelligent design is a political agenda and is not to be confused with a religious belief.. People write books, deities don't. What's more people edit books to suit their ends. There is a long standing tradition of religiously influenced folks doing just that. So if you're like me and don't want science and humanity dragged back to the dark ages, stand up and fight I say! Or I suppose we could just wait till the stupid gene is selected out of our species, but where's the fun in that!?

I am in possession of a certain document I obtained from a certain scientific community, entitled '15 answers to creationist nonsense'. If you would like a copy please say so and leave an email address where I can reach you. Thank you. And also, if you've clicked on the link that the word 'where' took you to(above), the forum below the pic sprouted some wonderful diatribes--> good reading. :-)