Ole Fashioned Southern California Creationism

I just don't understand the fascination these people have with collecting the same dozen stupid arguments, placing them in random order, and then inscribing their name at the bottom. It's sort of a social ritual of shared stupidity; you bond with your fellow creationist by publicly avowing the same nonsense he publicly avowed last week.

Doesn't Jesse have something better to do? (What does an 'International Studies' major do, anyway?)

DNA, etc.

Gee . . .what a smart guy!

With almost no discernible knowledge of even elementary school level science, little Jesse has completely overturned biology, geology, physics, astronomy, history, . . . . . .

I sure am impressed!

Man, where were these idiots when I was growing up in Southern California? They either hid themselves well, or So Cal has become a mecca for the insane.

Well, that's just tiresome. No surprise that he isn't a science student.

This is not the first time Nickles has graced our university with his wisdom. Note his well-researched piece on climate change from a few months back. To be fair to UC Irvine and SoCal in general, Nickles' ideas are hardly commonplace. His climate change article garnered its share of criticism, and his current masterpiece is doing so as well.

So Cal has become a mecca for the insane.

— Sir_Toejam

Language: Not only does mankind have a special brain capability that caters specifically to spoken language, but the human mouth, lips, tongue and larynx are perfectly suited to play along, with no sign of such harmony anywhere in sight for other species.

— Jesse Nichols

International Studies Major = Capacity to perform brain surgery, Build replacement space shuttle, Factor 1024 digit numbers in only a few minutes and splice DNA.

I wish I had one. I bet he gets the chicks with a degree like that.

... "become"?

I got a chuckle out of his "Sex" argument that humans are the only species to have sex in private.

If other species were having sex in PRIVATE we, by definition, wouldn't know about it... would we?!

He he.

Females: Although debatable, humans are the only species in which the females are more physically attractive than the males---the sole exception being, perhaps, Stephen Colbert....

I got a chuckle out of his "Sex" argument that humans are the only species to have sex in private. If other species were having sex in PRIVATE we, by definition, wouldn't know about it... would we?!

— Chris Andrews

humans are the only species in which the females are more physically attractive than the males

Jesse's mindless twaddle ought to be an embarrassment to UC Irvine.

That he is a university student and writes this drivel boggles the mind.

What units of "physically attractive" are we talking about here?

To tell the truth, the only units I'm familiar with are "millihelens," being defined as the amount of beauty necessary to launch one ship.

Milli Helens? I had a date with her once...

:-)

Hey, Sir_Toejam, I was born in South Gate, Calif., and grew up in Huntington Beach during the 60's.

I guess we wuz almost neighbors . . . .

I weep for what HB has become.

when I was 15, we used to surf huntington near bolsa chica; parked at the big dirt lot near the river outlet.

now, it's all condos as far as the eye can see.

*sigh*

Orange County is pretty much dead to me now, sorry to say.

even the name is a misnomer any more; no more orange groves left.

I was certain that the posting was a joke, a lampoon, until I saw everyone here taking it seriously. Wow.

I'm still not entirely certain, Sam. The Colbert reference near the beginning seemed suspicious to me ... Is it at all possible that this guy's published persona is an extended bit of performance art, kind of like Pee-Wee Herman (but dweebier and less attractive)?

A fourth year student, eh? I see that he has named to call out the names of the most worn and dreary canards that show, irresistibly and incontrovertibly, that evolution cannot be. And that it's nasty, too.

Wonder how he's ranked by his professors and his peers.

Oop!

"learned to call out the names," as all must have already deduced.

Females: Although debatable, humans are the only species in which the females are more physically attractive than the males---the sole exception being, perhaps, Stephen Colbert....

At the bottom of his ... essay, young Jesse wrote:
"Jesse Nickles is a fourth-year international studies major. He can be reached at jnickles@uci.edu."

I sincerely doubt it. There is no way he could be reached if he is willing to publicly embarrass himself by posting his ignorance for all to see. And UC should take away the ".edu" at the end of this email address.

Worst of all it isn't true. I can think of another one that is less debatable than humans: the Black Widow. The female is so striking she looks fake. The male is a drab brown runt.

I was Director of the Orange Counth Natural History Museum, and I was a studnet at UCI 1969-1976. I still live behind the orange curtain. We have a long history of rightwing whack nuts in addition to Ahmanson. The Knott family was the money machine for the John Birch Society and the Minute Men (with plenty of help I heard from Disney). The Minute Men were probably sexually inadequate, but they were heavily armed (compensation?) to mount a counter attack against the Roman Catholics, Communists, and the Negroes. Kent Hovind was a total amateur compared to Benny Hinn, Paul and Jan Crouch, the Schuller family cash machine, and oh so many others still rakeing in the cash from OC.

The "Children of God" died in Waco but they started in the late '60s in Hunington Beach. Charley Manson camped out in Laguna Canyon for a while, as did Tim Leary, and the later mega freek Bagwan Rashneesh.

The widow female isn't necessarily more "attractive" ... her coloring is more for warning

Sir Toejam - remember the Continental Tilt Theory?
The Intelligent Designer picked up the United States by the tip of downeast Maine, and all the loose nuts rolled into Southern California.

Sir Toejam - remember the Continental Tilt Theory?
The Intelligent Designer picked up the United States by the tip of downeast Maine, and all the loose nuts rolled into Southern California.

Sir Toejam - remember the Continental Tilt Theory?
The Intelligent Designer picked up the United States by the tip of downeast Maine, and all the loose nuts rolled into Southern California.

Sir Toejam - remember the Continental Tilt Theory?
The Intelligent Designer picked up the United States by the tip of downeast Maine, and all the loose nuts rolled into Southern California.

This is an antiscientific opinion puff piece from someone with no demonstrable scientific credentials. Michael Behe he is not. I doubt that the "New University" is an official publication of UCI. Why anyone at this blogsite should feel this is worth commenting on is beyond me. There are probably, on any given week, hundreds of these kinds of science denying postings online somehere in the USA and elsewhere. None of PT's regular contributors post opinions on "International Studies." Why should we care about Mr. Nickles opinion on anything?. If it's not a joke it's pathetic beyond belief. Time to move on to something more interesting like Lindsey Lohan's blood alcohol level.

A 4th year student? And that's what he argued? I'd expect something better from my 5th grader. And by the time she hit HS, I'd expect her to be able to far, far better.

Why should we care about Mr. Nickles opinion on anything?

Time: According to the theory of evolution, it took millions of years for mankind to figure out how to cultivate, hunt, invent the wheel, etc.,

Dover: If it's not a joke it's pathetic beyond belief. Time to move on to something more interesting like Lindsey Lohan's blood alcohol level.

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i think this is a spoof
i'm using his colbert reference as a clue

C'mon folks. Jesse is having a big laugh as grown ups from both sides of our favorite heated issue feverishly reject/embrace his musings. This is sophomoric satire at its finest.

Michael

He pulls the bait-&-switch in the 1st paragraph, so how is the ending any surprise?

I don't think that Jesse Nickles is kidding. Those are all arguments I have seen/read other creationists make.

It is too obviously stupid to be real. It must be a joke - just note the mention of Colbert, which is a clear clue.

It is so fortunate for the anti-ID and anti-Creationist apologists of naturalism that guys like this exist and write as silly as they do.

They provide an "opponent of evolution" which can be used to straw-man all other doubters. Forget dealling with Behe or someone like that. Let's bash some kid in California and pretend he is representative of all non-naturalists.

MS

Re: Comment 181924 by Mark Studdock. I don't know whether Studdock's comment is a result of his myopia or of an irresistible desire to mislead readers. Who has "pretended" that the "kid" from UC Irvine represented all anti-naturalists? On the contrary, most of the commenters expressed puzzlement caused by inordinate stupidity of his "arguments." Furthermore, to assert that critique of that "kid" served to avoid replying to Behe and his cohorts, shows that Studdock is either ignorant of the real situation or deliberatly decieves readers. Behe's output (as well as of other prominent ID advocates) has been addressed by ID opponents in minute detail in dozens of publications (as well as in comments on this blog). Especially after his fiasco at the Dover trial, Behe looks like a clown for the overwhelming majority of mainstream scientists. His seeming sophistication is just a smokescreen while in fact the essence of his arguments is not much better than the piffle by the Irvine "kid."

Apology: Studdock's comment was not 181924 but 181284.

served to avoid replying to Behe and his cohorts,

btw, just to be clear, I'm using the words from the post above to address studdock's post.

I think quoting pop song lyrics as evidence qualifies as a spoof, too.

Forget dealling [sic] with Behe or someone like that.

I only want to, coming into this from the 'soft sciences' as I do, point to a psychological dysfunction not uncommon in both ideologues and extremists (and obviously even moreso in extremist ideologues...), which I call 'pathological egocentrism'.

"All those tens, even hundreds of thousands (millions?) of other people, who have studied and worked in all areas of the life sciences, for centuries - representing at the very least, many millions of years of theorizing, hypothesizing, measurement, observation, study, collaboration, debate... among individuals from all manner of backgrounds, all personality types, from average intellects to utter geniuses -

...and they're all blind! Only I can see these totally obvious, fundamental flaws in what they all naïvely believe to be true."

That, my friends, is the underlying "reasoning" at work in poor, deluded Mr. Nickles' mind - as well as his like-minded brethren, with whom we are all too familiar.

To believe such a literally fantastic scenario is on a par with believing affirmatively in Russell's teapot - it actually constitutes prima facie proof of psychosis, far past any reasonable degree of doubt. The man is not a fool, nor is he a fraud; I will aver, with no fear of contradiction, that he is utterly insane.

Maybe Jesse really does worship the Colbert faux persona. If you look at his blog, he IS that clueless.

Well, "professor" or whatever you are, I think we're all sick of the haughty arrogant attitude of the Darwinists.

Rather than play your sick "Old-Earth" heliocentric random mutation mind games, I am going to stick with the real science that gives me the truth every time - Media Creationism.

Actually, peacocks find peahens to be more attractive than other peacocks. This is why there are little baby peacocks and peahens. Or am I stepping on Mr. Nickles lifestyle?

So how do we know that humans have sex, if it's so private...? Or isn't it so private after all?

I forgot to ask if anyone is planning to write a debunking of Mr. Jesse Nickles?

Come on, people ! It's just satire, you know. Actually, mixing old, tired creationist canards with obvious jokes is not a bad way to mock them.

If you doubt his evolution and global warming ruminations, check out his take on the Geneva Convention and why it is unnecessary in Iraq. Cheney and Gonzalez and Yoo would love this kid.
He does seem capable of superficial Wiki-level research but other than that could have been a GOP Brat in Charge of a Ministry in Bremner's administration of Iraq.

Oh well, I wrote a response and sent it to the campus newspaper. Perhaps futile, but the alarm clock failed us this morning and I missed the fishing boat I had planned to take. Plus, as a graduate of UCI (31 years ago this month) I felt a little bit of responsibility and so I responded.

My fisking was a bit long, so you can read it at Stones and Bones.

Nickels did not have any original ideas, but I did use some interesting references from Science and Nature that people might have missed.

My take is that even the creationist clowns at the Discovery Institute cringe at seeing this type of claptrap seriously touted about. This guy hasn't even made it to the big lie about the science of intelligent design. I wouldn't be surprsed if the ID scam aritst might refer to ridiculously bogus creationists arguments that depend on an ignorance so deep or a incompetence so profound (you can't rule out dishonesty) as bonehead age creationism. This doesn't mean that they won't engage in it when they know that they can get away with it, because it still fools a lot of people, but you don't see them touting the junk where it matters like in court and the Ohio model lesson plan.