Baumblog EST 1968 - A blog for the Baumbachs who originated in Syracuse, NY

Breaking news! Kurt Cameron and his buddy Ray Comfort are going to prove, on national TV, that GOD EXISTS. He's going to do this without mentioning the Bible, or Jesus, or any gobbledygook. I don't know about you, but I'm truly excited. Maybe I was wrong about this whole "God not existing" thing.

I've heard that he's going to demonstrate the Atheist's Nightmare on this show. Never heard of it? Never fear, I have a video where Ray explains it, and Kurt sits next to him looking pretty. Or something like that.

GJ said 15 minutes later

There is a slight problem with this nightmare scenario for atheists. See, culinary bananas (which is what he is describing above) don't have seeds. Non-culinary bananas are not very similar to this easy to eat variety, and lack most of the "design features" quoted in the video.

Why don't they have seeds, you ask? Very good question. Culinary bananas don't have seeds because they are genetic manipulated breed, much like donkeys. Culinary bananas were invented...by man. They propagate only with man's help. Sorry, James. God didn't design the banana. Man did. You couldn't have picked a dumber proof of God's existence.

He's going on this TV show to debate two atheists. They're going to rip him to shreds, especially if he uses the banana proof. There is no way to prove the existence of God, period. It's a faith thing, through and through.

So...this isn't a dig on belief in God. It's a dig on two fundamentally stupid fundamentalists. Need I remind you that our elected president is one as well.
GJ said 22 minutes later

Mistakenly referred to Ray Comfort as James in the above comment. Comment editing doesn't work yet.
Darcy said about 1 hour later

And it is Kirk Cameron you doofus!

Comfort's arguments made my brain hurt.
Marc said about 2 hours later

Atheist or not, this guy's argument reminds me of anything having to do with Mega Churches, and all of them are nuts. I was actually waiting for Comfort to put his hand on Cameron's head and heal him, then Cameron would fall to the floor. At least then it could have been tagged "funny."
Geoff said about 3 hours later

I would have loved to have seen that!

Ray's banana proof would have been better served if he tried to disprove Darwin's theory of evolution to help prove God: If Darwin's "Survival of the fittest" was true, then the banana wouldn't lend itself to be so easily eaten by humans and apes. Thus, Darwin is full of crap and God creates to serve man (oh and apes too!).

I think that would have been a better approach. His intelligence rating would have gone up to say...the critters under a rock, rather than the rock itself. Oh well, at least we got to see Kirky give us his warm, dumb smile. I think I might go have a human harvested Dole banana, I hear those God branded ones don't shape up.
GJ said about 22 hours later

Darwin's theory isn't "survival of the fittest." You've been listening to the creationists too much. ;) Part of the the strategy of those who oppose evolution is to paint it as something it's not. See this great PDF, it's a great introduction into all thing evolution. I promise, it won't make your brain hurt nearly so much as that Ray Comfort video.
GJ said about 22 hours later

Btw, disproving evolution is not going to prove God. If we find a new mechanism to describe how humans came about, and we truly do find that it replaced what we though of a evolution, I can guarantee it won't be any more palatable to those to hate evolution so. If anything, they'll hate it more--as it will further reduce the mystery of God.
Geoff said 1 day later

Your right, disproving evolution doesn't prove God, however I think it is a better tactic than saying, "a banana fits in my hand, therefor God exists." Remember, I was trying to think on Ray's brain frequency. It is difficult, I know, but perhaps you need to eat a few more bananas and then you shall see the light. I mean, what was this Darwin guy thinking?!?

...I funny....don't hurt me.
Abby said 1 day later

*laughs*

Funny. xD

Just because bananas are quite convenient doesn't prove anything.

(and I finished another book after buying it in the same day)
GJ said 2 days later

Oh, one more thing. Most religious folks, even fundamentalists, are not as dumb as these two. However, they are going onto national television debating those folks behind The Blasphemy Challenge, some fairly smart atheists who go by the handle "The Rational Responders." In a live, open debate, they'd eat Ray for breakfast. However, he may have worked a deal with the network to get editing rights on the debate, so what shows up on TV might not reflect what really was debated. We'll see, as the Rational Responders will likely post the whole thing on their site after the broadcast. It'll be interesting to compare and see what the network filtered. They do have a financial incentive to not alienate their religious viewers.
Geoff said 2 days later

I'm glad you brought up "The Blasphemy Challenge." I've been looking for this scripture, Mark 3:29, which talks about the unforgivable sin. The wacky priest at Bishop Ludden told us about this once (didn't mention it was in the bible though)...and I just assumed he was a moron, but it is actually written in the bible. How funny is that!

So I guess the all powerful one will forgive us for everything....oh, except if I spit on the Holy Spirit. I can crucify Jesus, deny God the father and still repent, but you better not mess with old Holy one, or else you get the boot!

Do Christians even know about this? I'm surprised it wasn't eradicated from the bible as it pretty much contradicts the foundation of Christianity.
GJ said 2 days later

The Blasphemy Challenge was funny, but totally immature, too. It did serve to reveal the idiocy of that particular part of faith, and what was more interesting was the panicked responses of some well-meaning folks who were sure these challenge participants had just damned themselves to hell.

Oh, another update on Ray--here's his new proof:

When you see a painting, you know there was a painter.
When you see a building, you know there was a builder.
So then creation is proof of a creator.

Duh. The logic is simply mind-blowing.
Geoff said 3 days later

wow....I'm a believer.

Marc said about 4 hours later

AMD chips run about 10°C hotter than Intel chips. Although the 75°C is a bit hot under load for the AMD, but not by much. Here's the typical breakdown:

AMD Idle: 60°
AMD Load: 68°-70°

Intel Idle: 48°
Intel Load: 58°-65°

Your new mobo supports PCI Express? That's pretty sweet, those cards rock, but frankly I'd save your money a bit long, there's still quite a battle going on for video card formats. I think there's a Dual PCI Express now or something, I don't pay much attention since I haven't built a computer in a few years.

GJ said about 15 hours later

What AGP card are you running? I just dumped my 9600xt ati cards for geforce 8800xt cards--the new ones actually have a slower GPU but far fatter memory pipeline, which actually uses the 256MB on it, unlike the 9600xt. I did the same thing as you, but I'm running even farther behind the times...went from two boxes running T-bird 1200s to two running XP2000+ on the same mobos. It was great, bang for the buck wise, but the jump in cpu temps took me by surprise, too. I went from 47C to 60C.

Steve said about 20 hours later

Sorry Marc, no my new mobo doesn't support PCIexpress. I had to find a mboard that supported AGP because that's the video card I have. I also wanted one that I could reuse my PC2700 memory on. I wanted to keep this a low buck upgrade for now.

GJ, I'm running an 512 MB ATI Radeon X1600 Pro AGP card. I'm hoping these upgrades should keep my computer happy for the next 2-3 years. The XP1800+ and the Asus MB it sits on have been in my computer for at least 5 years. To give you an idea how long I've had it, it replaced the Pentium computer that you gave me way back when. I have had to replace 1 hard drive and 1 CDRW drive (both failed), and I've upgraded the power supply from 300W to 450W, and upgraded the video cards twice in the 5+ years that I've owned it. Seeing as I use it all the time, I'd say it's doing pretty good.

I really only wanted the faster processor and new MB so that I can do more multitasking. BitTorrent uses up a lot of the CPU, and I like to watch TV shows I've downloaded and just let BitTorrent work in the background. Currently the computer really slows down, and sometimes produces choppy video when I do that. And if I start to open other apps on top of that, things slow WAY down.

Steve said 2 days later

Hehehe, got the new system up and running. New CPU temperature - 40°C!! I put a monster cooler on it, must be twice the mass of the cooler that was on the XP1800+ (factory cooler on the old CPU).

This cooler was only $15 from newegg.com. I did also use a special sealant between the CPU and cooler, not the stuff that came on the cooler originally.

Well, it seems faster. Of course, most restarts and stuff so far take a while, as it's installing or updating drivers or software each time. Hopefully things will speed up once everything else stabilizes.

GJ said 2 days later

Best way to speed up boot time is rebuilding the OS. ;) I recommend this at least 1x per year.

So when you say rebuild, how do you mean? Reformat the main drive and start over? Or is there a way to just reinstall windows without affecting everything else on the drive? If so, would I have to redownload all driver updates, or will most of those stay, and I'd only need to redownload all the WinXP updates?

GJ said 3 days later

When I say rebuild, I mean format and start over. Easiest to do with two drives--one for the OS, and one to store the data you want to keep. That, or you save your data to CD/DVD, but that takes forever if you have a lot of crap.

Steve said 3 days later

I'll keep that in mind next time around. If you segment your drives, and put only the OS on onesegment of the drive, you can probably get away with just formating that segment, right? Are are you thinking wipe clean the entire computer, all programs, everything?

GJ said 4 days later

Segment drives--yeah, that works too...but they're so cheap today, why bother. ;)

And yes, I do mean EVERYTHING. It doubles as the perfect spyware sweep. hehe.