Prickly Pear Status

It looks like a few of my prickly pears survived the Winter

Inspired by The Bloggess, Search Terms that Lead People Here

Jenny Lawson, The Bloggess, will periodically post a list of the strangest search terms that have lead people to her blog. With that in mind, I thought I'd examine the same data for  my own blog.

michael cremo debunked  Not surprising, given my article Michael Cremo, fraud or just incompetent?

auburn wa motor city books 
motor city books These search terms are expected, given my post Motor City Books, no book, no contact, I want a refund

paul mounet keanu reeves
is keanu reeves a reptilian alien  These results are unsurprising as the "Popular posts" widget on my blog lists my post about The Keanu Reeves Conspiracy Theory as the #1 most popular post I've published so far.

joshua mills fraud  I'm glad people looking up the Glittering Flaming Con Man for Christ! are finding my article about the huckster.

The rest of the search terms that lead to my site were just as mundane, leading people to posts like The Truth about Atlantis THEY don't want you to know and my battle with First Financial and their efforts to rip me off. Frankly, I was hoping for something a bit more "out there" in the search terms. All of these are related, at least tangentially, to actual articles on my blog. Jenny Lawson gets incoming search terms that are delightfully irrational yet mine are, given the content of my blog, depressingly accurate.

The book is live!

Answering Kirk Hastings is now live on the Amazon Kindle store. The full content is available for free under the "Kirk Hastings" category on this blog, but the Kindle book puts it in a convenient format for reading without an active Internet connection.


I may offer the book on Nook, iBooks or in print in the future, but I want to give Kirk Hastings a chance to respond, possibly even offer up a new idea.


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Bacon stuffed gluten free pancakes

It turns out making bacon stuffed pancakes is pretty easy. My first attempt was messy but delicious.

My Son has Good Taste in Clothing

How Caleb dressed himself this morning. He needed a hand tying the tie. 

Answering Kirk Hastings: Tenth Question for Darwinists

This post is part of the ongoing saga to answer the questions asked by Kirk Hastings of the defunct Evidence 4 Faith podcast. This post addresses the fifth question of Kirk's "Top Ten Questions for Darwinists."

10) If Darwinian evolution is true, and we are simply the result of random processes with no real reason or purpose, then why should we even be concerned about surviving, either as individuals or a race? Why shouldn't we all commit suicide as soon as possible, in order to get all the pain and suffering of this world over with quicker -- especially since we are only going to die eventually anyway?

Because most people actually enjoy living.

On a more pragmatic note, a suicidally minded species is going to go extinct. We’re here because our ancestors chose to live.

This last question is, in many ways, the saddest one. In it Kirk reveals something of himself that I don’t think he knew he was exposing. With this question he reveals an emptiness inside. There’s something missing in the life of Kirk Hastings, and while he apparently tries to fill it with religion, in the end, I think he knows he’s only fooling himself.

For all his misinformation and misdirection, in the end I feel sorry for him. He really seems to think that without religion life isn’t worth living. This says a lot of very depressing things about his family, professional and social life.

Referenced Podcast Episodes with Full Descriptions

111: Kirk Hastings’ "What Is Truth?"

Surprise! Kirk Hastings’ recent email drew me out of (semi-)retirement. After recovering from those withering electronic insults, I sat down with expert Hovindologist Matt W to review Hastings’ magnum opus, “What Is Truth?” We examined his many and varied claims about truthology, and how they relate to science and most especially “Darwinism.” In this episode — part one of a three-part series — we discuss Kirk’s conversion process and his absolutely unshocking failure to grasp even the basic principles of science and mathematics while he attempts to take down Darwinism. This series could also be entitled, “We read Kirk Hastings’ shitty rehashed creationist screed so you don’t have to.”

Kirk does get an A for effort, though, and should he succeed in his quest to demolish Darwin’s theory of evil-ution, he may ultimately end up with a Nobel Prize. History (or maybe the next episode, where we finish talking about the science portion of his book) will have to render a verdict on that score.

112: What Is Truth? II

Continuing our hard-hitting inquiry into the nature of Truth with Kirk Hastings as our guide, we cover the following chapters: “Sixteen Additional Problems with Darwinian Evolution,” “What Does Microbiology Indicate?”, “Is the Concept of Intelligent Design Scientific?”, and “Superstition, Philosophy, and Religion.”

Do Kirk’s arguments fare any better than they did in the last episode? Could they possibly fare any worse? Has he gained any scientific understanding at all? Does Chuck answer more of your questions from Facebook?

Find out here.

And if you can’t get enough of those lovable Evidence 4 Faith guys, check out Joe and Emma’s E4F takedown podcast on Meat Mutant.

113: "WIT" III: The Reliability of the Bible

The next chapter in our continuing series on “How Dumb Can Arguments for Christianity Get?” is live! The answer: pretty dumb indeed. We cover Kirk’s gaffes on the manuscript evidence for the Old and New Testament, discuss the Amazon reviews for “What Is Truth?”, dramatically re-enact some of Kirk’s Irreligiosophy comics, and engage in serious literary criticism of one of Kirk’s fan fiction stories.

All that packed into one hour of juicy podcasttainment. Don’t say I never gave you anything

114: "WIT" IV: The Case for Christ                   

It all ends here, folks. I have given up the ghost after trudging my way through 12 chapters of the oddly-named “What Is Truth?” by Kirk Hastings. In this episode we cover the recent bannings of 99% of the members posting on Kirk’s “Question Irreligiosophy Project,” as well as my now-deleted review of his Superman fan fiction story. Matt and I make it all the way through Part XI, “The Case for Christ,” but only halfway through Part XII, “What About All These Other Here Religions?” before my brain finally overloaded from the sheer magnitude of dumb.

I must retreat now, and think no more on moronic Christian pseudo-arguments for their evidence-free religion, or quite possibly even dumber Christian arguments against other evidence-free religions.

2.6 Spontaneous Generation and Abby O’Genesis                       

WARNING! This podcast contains explicit science not suitable for creationists!

In this episode Matt and I go over the history of spontaneous generation, how the idea began and how it fell out of favor. We then go over various myths of creation before proceeding to the Scientism myth of creation: abiogenesis. We take a whirlwind tour through hydrothermal vents, the Krebs Cycle, the iron sulfur world of Günter Wächtershäuser, and about a semester’s worth of high school biology in just a few excruciating minutes.

So strap on those nerd glasses, get your pocket calculators out, and let’s do this thang.

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Volunteer Tomatoes

These are the tomato seedlings that spontaneously sprouted from among my coffee trees. They nearly killed the coffee plants and look to have done in a couple of the smaller ones. I look forward to seeing if they survive on the porch and if so what they produce.