Topic: That's a Fact? Institute for Creation Research

[cshorey]

I feel a personal connection with the ICR for various reasons.  More recently they started a video series titled "That's a Fact".
http://vimeopro.com/icr/thats-a-fact
They had already censored my comments at their blog site, but on Vimeo they couldn't and so they shut down all comments.  The saga was documented by a high school student in New Zealand here:
http://eyeonicr.wordpress.com/
Since the ICR has shut down comments, I decided to practice making short films by making some responses to the ICR on my own time.  I will try to post one a week, and here's the first one:

http://youtu.be/tGWrZ5u8EiM

[Eternally Learning]

Wow.  I made it through 1 and a half videos before wanting to shoot myself.  Summation of what I saw:

1. Here's a valid scientific fact.
2. Here's something fucking crazy that we pulled out of our ass or the Bible.
3.
4. Creationism.

[Chew]

I wish to subscribe to your videos.

So I did!

[Traveler]

I didn't recognize your voice in the video until you did the Earth and Environmental Systems Podcast tag at the end. I loved that series.

[seaotter]

Subscribed

[cshorey]

Wow.  I made it through 1 and a half videos before wanting to shoot myself.  Summation of what I saw:

1. Here's a valid scientific fact.
2. Here's something fucking crazy that we pulled out of our ass or the Bible.
3.
4. Creationism.

Try watching each one several times, reading their daily e-mails and parts of their monthly magazine for two years.  All this because a fundamentalist students told me everything I was teaching was wrong and I would understand if I read the ICR Acts & Facts.  So I subscribed and two years later I'm ready to make some comments on their work.  They censor any critical comments I make at their "Science Essentials" blog, and had to shut down all comments on their "That's a Fact" videos to get rid of me there. 
Really this is practice for me in making short educational videos so that I'll be ready to produce the "Earth Explorations" vodcast.

Hi Chew, always good to see you.
Hi Traveler, glad to hear it worked for you.
Hi seaotter, thanks.

[seaotter]

Hi, what do you teach?

[cshorey]

Mainly Earth Systems Science which the podcast is modeled around (a course that integrates geology, hydrology, meteorology, climatology, biology, and universal history), but I've taught varying intro geology and environmental science courses through the years along with biogeochemical modeling, remote sensing, geomorphology, meteorology, and climatology.  My PhD is in paleoclimatology in which I made computer simulations of speleothems as archives, with their growth rate and isotopes as climatic proxies. 
The student in question was mainly upset with my coverage of deep time and evolution in my Earth Systems course.  He is now a chemical engineer and I actually saw him post on one of the ICR's sites that he has made the disproof of abiogenesis his goal in life.  I'd pull him aside the next time I see him to remind that unexplained is not the same as unexplainable, but I don't think it will help. 

[Audiophile]

I approve and applaud your efforts. I'll watch the vids, bith yours and theirs and will then make my own mind up what makes sence or not. <cough>

[Audiophile]

Ok... I lasted 2 of them vids and now I want to punch someone.

[drizz]

ICR is hilarious. Twice now I have subscribed (or attempted to subscribe) to their Acts and Facts magazine, thinking that at least I could cause them to lose the cost of printing and mailing one copy, but I have never received it...might have something to do with the fact that I answered their survey question "What use will you make of Acts and Facts?" with "comic relief". So now I just get an email a day that rarely has anything to do with science, evolution, or even creation. It's typically just a bible verse or some pseudo-inspirational crap. The latest one was all about singing; it basically quoted some Bible verses where someone is singing or commanded to sing...nice...wtf?

[cshorey]

Yes, the daily e-mails are delightful.  I try to read those each day as well and pull aside the best ones.  I think my favorite so far was the justification of God's commandment to bash babies' heads against stones because those babies were Babylonian and all Babylonians end up sinful and get cast into hell.  Therefore it is a mercy to bash a Babylonian baby's head against a rock before it become a determined sinner.  Theocracy anyone? (shudder)

[Halleyscomet/Wakefield]

ICR is hilarious. Twice now I have subscribed (or attempted to subscribe) to their Acts and Facts magazine, thinking that at least I could cause them to lose the cost of printing and mailing one copy, but I have never received it...might have something to do with the fact that I answered their survey question "What use will you make of Acts and Facts?" with "comic relief"

Subscribe here:

http://www.icr.org/subscriptions/index/?option_old=signup&f_country=US

I suggest you try again, as they no longer ask "What use will you make of Acts and Facts?"

[seaotter]

Yes, the daily e-mails are delightful.  I try to read those each day as well and pull aside the best ones.  I think my favorite so far was the justification of God's commandment to bash babies' heads against stones because those babies were Babylonian and all Babylonians end up sinful and get cast into hell.  Therefore it is a mercy to bash a Babylonian baby's head against a rock before it become a determined sinner.  Theocracy anyone? (shudder)

Why then don't they go mercifully bashing Muslim, and Hindu babies heads? Wouldn't the act be just as merciful in these sinful days?

[Traveler]

Therefore it is a mercy to bash a Babylonian baby's head against a rock before it become a determined sinner.

As long as they waited until after the birth. It would have been immoral to abort them.