David Barton’s 10 Dumbest Statements

Not “parts of the Constitution were lifted verbatim from the Bible”?

That’s always been MY favorite.

Is he running for Pat Robertson or something? Because it seems like he’s working up to it.

Maybe replace the next-to-last one, since life DOES begin before conception. Beelyuns and beelyuns of years before conception, in fact.

The founding fathers opposed the teaching of evolution.

Pretty good trick considering that Darwin didn’t write his book until some 70 years after the Constitution was ratified. In fact, Darwin wasn’t even born when that happened.

The Bible opposes Net Neutrality.

Holy shit that’s stupid. What’s even stupider is that the Bible is against Barton’s grossly incorrect caricature of Net Neutrality. I’d say he and Rick Green are sharing an IQ well below room temperature, but that would be overly generous.

Gee, life must have been wonderful during the centuries when theocratically approved royalty ruled Europe – you know, the Dark Ages.

The US may just get there yet.

RandomFactor @5 beat me to it.

I’ve always thought of life as a continuum that started out billions of years ago.

Though David Barton seems to be saying it in more of a “God can violate causality if he wants to” sort of way.

I take it that this list is more or less congruent to “David Barton’s 10 most recent statements”.

Someone should forward the list to the Daily Show.

“We can’t find a cure for AIDS because it is”

AIDS is really intractable because it’s a retro virus. One of several hard to overcome problems is that it writes itself into your DNA. Your immune system has a really hard time finding a virus that may exist only as DNA within your chromosomes. There is actual science on this; no need to invoke a sadistic God.

I’d say he and Rick Green are sharing an IQ well below room temperature, but that would be overly generous.

Just switch to Celsius.

@5, @13, @18,

Yes, it is technically correct that life begins before conception, and that extant life is essentially an unbroken chain of life going all the way back to the first living cell…BUT…

You gotta check out Barton’s “reason” for why he believes this claim:

I have to consider that Biblically, life begins before conception because it says “before you were in your mother’s womb I knew you.” So I gotta say, well it at least begins at conception. How you handle that Jeremiah verse that says before that I knew you, you know that’s an interesting question.

That verse in Jeremiah is Yaweh talking to Jeremiah, saying that Jeremiah is special, that He had plans for him before he was even conceived. It doesn’t apply to the rest of us non-prophets.

I like the one about Jesus opposing the minimum wage, and citing the Parable of the Vineyard Workers as “proof”.

Short recap: “The kingdom of heaven is like a vineyard whose owner …” who hires a bunch of guys early in the morning offering a denarius to work his vineyard. He goes back at noon and hires a bunch more for a denarius. He goes back late in the day and hires some more for a denarius. When the first workers find out the latecomers are getting a denarius just like them, they’re pissed, but the owner says, “Hey, it’s my money, I want to pay them whatever I want to.”

But this isn’t approval of the owner’s actions. It’s a parable, an analogy. It’s saying the Kingdom of Heaven is open even to deathbed converts, and they will be equal in the eyes of the Lord to those who were lifelong believers.

I suppose Barton also thinks we should all be like the prodigal son? Maybe Jesus approves of extravagant living and disapproves of hard work?

Re eamick @ #24

Is Mr. emmick claiming that Aristotle proposed common descent? It is my understanding that the first individual to suggest the theory of common descent was Darwin’s paternal grandfather, Erasmus Darwin. And the statement that Darwin proposed the first plausible explanation is wrong. Lamarck proposed a plausible mechanism before Darwin was born. The fact that Lamarck was wrong doesn’t mean the theory of inheritance of acquired traits was not plausible.

Can we be really sure that Barton isn’t a Poe that has gotten out of hand?

Well, supposing he was. So what?

Actually, I don’t even want to let him off that easily.

One more time, the quote:

If you consider that life begins at conception … and I have to consider that Biblically, life begins before conception because it says “before you were in your mother’s womb I knew you.” So I gotta say, well it at least begins at conception. How you handle that Jeremiah verse that says before that I knew you, you know that’s an interesting question.

The obvious dualist interpretation of “before you were in your mother’s womb I knew you” is that the soul exists before life as it (putatively) exists after death. There’s no reason to infer from this statement that “life” begins before conception, only that the soul exists before conception. From this passage alone there’s not even any reason to infer that “ensoulment” occurs at conception.

Re chuck @ #28

Evolution, as it is currently understood, means common descent. The question was, whether Aristotle or anyone else prior to Erasmus Darwin propose common descent, namely that existing animals descended from earlier forms? Or putting it another way, did Aristotle or anyone else prior to Erasmus Darwin propose that, say, horses and cows had a common ancestor from which they evolved? If the answer is yes, I would appreciate a reference. If the answer is no, then Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck deserve the credit.