Wasp Stings Young Earth Creationism In The Bum

Over at the Mac Gafraidh blog, I questioned Chelsea on whether she took the following verses literally:

“And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which [is] upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which [is] the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein [there is] life, [I have given] every green herb for meat: and it was so.” (Genesis 1:29-30).

Like all biblical literalists, she said that she does believe this. These verses basically says that all animals were created to be vegetarian - an absurd position to hold. We need only think about carnivores and their killing adaptations like the canines of big cats that that are so good a piercing flesh – and just happen to be at the right spacing to dislocate the cervical (neck) vertebrae of their main prey species. Then there are species of fish specifically adapted to eat scales and fins (eg Perissodus sp and Exodon paradoxus). One species, the Sabre tooth blenny (Aspidontus taeniatus) even mimics that Cleaner wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus). Cleaner wrasse pick parasites, which are themselves highly specialised non vegetarians (see my article on Trypanosomes for an complex example of adaptation to living inside and off of another species). Fish approach cleaner wrasse to be serviced and the wrasse signals back. This signifies the intentions of both parties and wrasse are even allowed into the mouths of large predators, where they are unharmed. Sabre tooth blennies on the other hand do a similar display but instead of cleaning the other fish, they take a chunk out of it. This is a problem for YECs.

However, I want to use an example that Darwin used (more against the idea that god was a loving creator). He cites the Ichneumonoidea – a group of parasitoid wasps that lay their eggs in the living bodies of their insect hosts (usually caterpillars).

Darwin writes:

“I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.”


There are several special adaptations that are needed:

A suitable host must be located.

The host must become infected – hence the long ovipositor. Some species (eg Ephialtes manifestator) can locate their host through wood and drill to them . Other species also paralyse their hosts, so the toxin is yet another adaptation. Many species also parasitize dangerous spiders so avoiding becoming dinner is another adaptation.

The larvae must evade the hosts’ immune system.

The larvae must keep the host alive and fresh for as long as possible to ensure fresh meat.

In the example below, involving the Blue butterfly as a host, we see several adaptations. These include locating the host and distinguishing it from ant larvae (bear in mind that the ants can’t even do that) and avoiding being attacked by the ants. This latter applies to both infected pupae and adult wasps.

So, the fundamentalist is left with a problem. How did these specific adaptations arise if animals were intended to be vegetarian? They either have to claim god made them that way (lacking any evidence) or claim that some evolution occurred – although that would have to be incredibly fast for a vegetarian wasp to become a wood drilling, ant avoiding spider paralysing, immune system evading parasite.

Of course, the problems for YECs don’t stop there. They believe in the flood. There were only of two of every non clean kind on the ark. That means no ant colony to feed the blue butterfly larvae for the Ichneumon to eradicate. Mind you, the ants would have been killed by lancet flukes (Dicrocoelium lanceolatum). That’s if Anty the ant eater didn’t get them first.

God Hates Animals!

It’s been a busy day. This is my fourth post and I’ve also had a trip to Edinburgh where I bought a Carcharodontosaurus saharicus tooth (below). It made me realise though that these things deserve to be extinct because they flout god’s laws of nature. They ate meat when they should have been vegetarian (Gen 1:29-30).

So, I’ve compiled a list of animals that are in danger of god’s judgement.

Wanted for breach Leviticus 19:9: the wearing of clothes made of more than one fabric.


Yes, not only is this hermit crab wearing a shell of aragonite, but it is also covered in anemones and sponges. It truly is an abomination to the lord as it also has no fins or scales (Leviticus 11:9-12).

Also breaching Lev 11:9-12 (These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat. And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you: They shall be even an abomination unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, but ye shall have their carcases in abomination. Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.”

That’s right, these baleen mouthed bastards eat krill wholesale. Japan is god’s judgement on them.

This evil little fish called the Amazon molly laughs at the lords interspecies sex laws of Leviticus 18:23. ("Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion.")


This species is all female and reproduces only through mating with males of another species.


Wanted for being a drunkard – the pen tailed shrew.
If the good lord wanted this little sinner to drink the equivalent of 9 glasses of wine a night, hang about outside chip shops, and bullying fruitbats, he would not have given us Romans 13:13.

I particularly look forward to the day the lord punishes these:



Lesbian bonobos are an abomination! Look at them, they will do anything to anything. Lord, show your deep compassionate love and drown the planet again!


Or could it just possibly be that ” because it is against nature” is not a justification for something to be wrong?

Is God a Bastard?

I though I would start off with something not too controversial as I write some posts on molecular evolution. It’s actually a modified post first published on richarddawkins.net in response to claims we get our moral values from god. Any Christian reading this will, I hope concentrate on the content and not the sarcastic tone – which I hope will raise a wry smile with my other readers.
I introduce it as a primer to some biblical difficulties that I hope to respond to in a more balanced manner in later posts. In the mean time, I hope you enjoy the rant.

Richard Dawkins describes God thus "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." This contrasts somewhat with the cuddly Christian God; one who supposedly cares intimately about us and wants the best for us. He cares when we are hurt, ill, hungry or lonely. All he wants is for us to reach out to him so that he can help us and lead us out of the mess we have made of our lives – a self inflicted mess - caused by wilfully turning our backs on our dear gentle lord and hurting him. And if we don't, well he's going to boil us for eternity in a cauldron of septic leper juice– as the saved sing Hallelujah over us as we writhe and squeal relentlessly for all eternity, constantly begging for relief from this constant and unbearable torment – but he still loves us!

So, why is God a bastard? Firstly, God deliberately set up man to fail. I say this because, before Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they could not know that it was wrong to disobey this dictatorial and draconian god (Genesis 3:5 and 22). To make matters even worse, he put the serpent in the garden to tempt these naïve people into disobeying him (Gen 3:1-6). God even makes this evil creature in the first place (Gen 3:1). What a bastard! That shows as much parental responsibility as hiring a paedophile to baby-sit for you! Because of this situation, God condemns all mankind to die. What a thoroughly evil bastard! This is just the first of many examples of God punishing people for "sins" perpetrated by others:
Exodus 11 (very disgusting slaughter of children)
Isaiah 14:21-22 and
Deuteronomy 5:9, just for example).

Imagine the police arresting you one night because your great-grandfather was an Australian sheep fiddler or a German concentration camp guard - it is just ludicrous. Most bizarrely, he even punishes people for being evil and audacious enough to be born to unmarried parents, or because they were born in the wrong place, like Moab (Deut 23:2-3). It is truly bizarre, because he (through the birth of Jesus) is the bastard descendant of a bastard and a Moabite (Matthew 1:3-5, Gen 38, Ruth 4 and Matt. 1:18-19) – who apparently got his own mother pregnant??!!!???

Not only has God created evil, he often uses it to harm others (Lamentations 3:38, Jeremiah 26:3, 36:3, and1 Samuel 16 :14-23 to name a few). The God of truth even uses lies when it suits him (2 Chronicles 18:19-22). The bible also tells us that God hardens the hearts of those he wants to destroy, such as the Pharaoh (Ex 14:1-31) and he does this after he has bullied the Egyptians into getting his way. It didn't seem to matter that his gripe was with an individual - oh no! He just thought he would just be cruel to the whole nation instead. Then after much bum festering but holy nastiness, God basically took away Pharaohs' free will and lead him and others to destruction. What happened to mercy and forgiveness? If you are going to make Pharaoh do something, then why not just make him let the Israelites go free, without all that nastiness, plagues and the unjustifiable killing of Egypt's first born? If all this was true, you have got think Pharaoh must have been incredibly thick not to let the Israelites go. You can imagine the scene:
God "Let my people go or I shall smite you in the nuts with my boot"

Pharaoh "Nae danger ya tulip, smell yer maw ya baw bag!"

God: "Takest thou that" Boot! "now letteth my people go"

Pharaoh: "ooh yah cunt! Ma Swingers! Naw ya dobber!"

God: "Letteth them go or I'll shalt give thee piles"

Pharaoh: scratch scratch "sook ma banger ya dong"

God "OK then, I'll make it rain frogs"

Pharaoh "Ha ha ya fanny, I've got ma umbrella"

God "thou leavest me no choice. I shall createth a plague of Ainsley Harriets. Verily, that shall getteth it right up ye."

Pharaoh "aw naw, maaan, here huv them! A wis only pullin' yer plunger big man,"

The exodus probably never happened (and certainly not in Glaswegian). But that doesn't change the immoral nature of the god of the bible. Remember, this is a God who for no good reason other than because he is God, prevents people from believing in him and being saved (Romans 9:18).

The whole book of Joshua is about God-ordained acts of ethnic cleansing, intolerance and genocide. Apparently, God did not want his people contaminated with the practices of pagans. Again, this does not justify the extreme methods that God commanded, including infanticide. This means that if you are different, God does not want to forgive and enlighten you. In fact, he wants you and your babies dead. The contradiction with Jesus' hippyish New Testament theology is glaringly obvious! Have the publishers of the bible never heard of editors? Again, God's inability to be pleased (and inconsistency) is shown when he orders the Israelites to "righteously murder" the Midianites, including women and children (Numbers 31:7-18). This very act however makes the Israelites impure and unable to approach God (Num. 31:19). In other words, God says "I am the God of righteousness, who cannot abide evil. Go and carry out this evil act that I demand or I will be angry, even although this act will make you repulsive to me."

I don't know about you, but I'm getting pretty depressed at this point - but there's more.

God doesn't have a problem with forcing people into cannibalism, for example (Lev. 26:29, Jer. 19:9). Neither does he have a problem with kidnapping women, nor with making them gifts to be used as sex slaves (Jud. 21:11-14). In fact, the god of the bible doesn't think too much of women at the best of times. The following makes me sick! A rapist must marry his victim (Deut 22:28-29) and pay compensation to her father! Forcing someone to live with their abuser is surely just about the worst thing you can make them do. At least I now know how to get a wife that I can use as a sex slave - thanks God! Right from the start, God has it in for women, and lays all the blame for the original sin on Eve (1Tim. 2:12-14), and women are the property of men and were created for men, because we are superior. They must be silent in church and never hold authority over men, or even teach a man (1Cor. 11:8-9, 14:34-35, Ephesians 5:22-24, Colossians 3:18, 1Tim.2:11-14). All however is not lost, as a woman can be saved through childbirth (1Tim. 2:15). The only problem is that God would rather men didn't get married (1Cor. 7:8), and for those lucky enough to get a man, child birth will be incredibly painful (Gen.3:16). Yep, God hates women, even in the New Testament!

So, what does he like then? Well, slavery for one, as long as the slaves are not Israelite (Lev. 25:44-46). Furthermore, he doesn't mind you beating them, as long as you don't kill them (Ex. 21:22-24). God likes slavery so much; he even sets different laws for their welfare to those of their Israelite masters. If an owner knocks out a slave's eye, he must set the slave free (Ex. 21:26). If he did it to another Israelite, the law requires the loss of his eye too (Ex. 21:22-24). An eye for an eye, leaves everyone blind, according to some smart-arse like Gandhi – Pagan!.

And there's more, as God likes perfectly-formed people too. Anyone deformed may not approach him (Lev. 21:16-23). He must love having someone to hate, because the bible tells us that he knits people together in the womb (Ps. 139:13-15). So I guess every now and then, he uses his special magic god powers of righteous justice to decide exactly who to make deformed, just so he can hate them. The almighty loving God is also partial to accepting the occasional human sacrifice (Num. 31:41-46, Jud. 11:29-40). In the second example, a girl (Jephthah's daughter) was sacrificed to God because of her fathers' vows. Of course, if you question God on the subject, he denies accepting human sacrifice at all, claiming the whole idea to be abhorrent to him (Jer. 19:4-6). Nice lie your holiness! The only time God actually behaves himself, is when he is worried about how he appears to others, and not because it is the right thing to do (Ex. 32:11-14 and Num. 14:15-20). In fact, the supposed sacrifice on the cross was (as many Christians will tell you) was for his own glory.

Moral god? Don't make me laugh! I'll tell you what does make me laugh however, is the story where Elisha gets God to make some bears maul and kill 42 young boys for calling him baldy (2 Kin. 2:23-24). It's a good job that they didn't call him a specky big nosed feminist and abolitionist! If they had, the loving, forgiving and slow to anger god of the bible would probably eternally curse mankind (not again!), and make us all lesbian Moabite hunch backs. That would give him a real reason to be cruel to us.