I attempted to counter convert Jehovah's Witnesses!

Workout notes Part two: 4 miles on the floodplain trail with Olivia in Wildlife Prairie Park.

While on the trail, we saw some small “frogs”; I think that they are small American toads.

Politics
Crooks and Liars has a nice post about Bill O’Reilly’s obsession with the Daily Kos.

Liberalsmustdie: on fire, as usual. Check out their Beware of Bibles from England post.

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Counter Conversion Attempt

Just prior to leaving for Wildlife Prairie Park, some Jehovah’s Witnesses appeard at my door. I told them flat out that I didn’t “believe in God” but they still wanted to talk.

I told them that I thought that the Bible is a completely human book; of course they tried to “show me in the Bible” where “it says that the Bible was inspired.”

I didn’t bother to comment on their circular reasoning, but rather I pointed out that that epistle to Timothy was written well before the Gospels or the book of Revelation were written; hence that phrase had to have been refering to Jewish scriptures! After a few mintues, they finally started to get it.

I didn’t get anywhere with them about evolution, the big bang or other science stuff, but they did seem to listen to me when I reminded them that things were NOT uniformly getting worse (I pointed out to them that Peoria crime has actually gone DOWN over the past several years, by official police statistics) and reminded them that life has actually gotten better for most people, espeically those of us with darker skins.

Still, my attempts to convert them fell short; I didn’t do a good job.

But still, this represents progress, as there was a time where I really didn’t want to convert anyone; “science and rationality” wasn’t for the intellectual “riff-raff”, I used to think.

No more…and besides, it isn’t as if I am a Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, Edward Whitten or Bill Thurston anyway.

Speaking of Science, Professor Moran actually shoots down a negative review of Behe’s newest book! By the way, Moran is NOT an ID person.

Bascially, and I am making a huge simplification here, Behe assumes that for a mutation to become fixed in a population, it must be beneficial. In fact, many “neutral” mutations can become fixed in a population, and a criticism of Behe’s work should focus on that.

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