Conservatism

I was never very interested in politics until...well, really until Bush Jr. got into office. I always figured that things sort of evened themselves out over time. Also, I wasn't a US citizen, so I couldn't really do anything about it anyway. I got my US citizenship in 2000 - just in time to vote in that election. Lotta good that did. I've slowly gotten more and more active - enough that I actually went in and volunteered to work on Charlie Brown's campaign for Congress against that lying, carpetbagging, scumbag Tom McClintock (did I just say that out loud?) because I felt so strongly about it (McClintock won - barely).

My son seems to have grown up with a highly developed sense of fairness. Being raised by me and two dads, he's been a gay rights activist from a fairly young age. He also refused to join a fraternity because they required a declaration that there might be some sort of higher being, and he felt that that discriminated against me (I think the "frat" part of that would probably have excluded me, anyway).

He's taking a Problems in American Politics class this semester. I keep getting calls immediately after he gets out of class that go something like this:

Me: Hi William. How much money do you need?

William: CONSERVATIVES ARE SO %@#$ing STUPID!

Me: Uh...yes, but...

William: ALL THEY %@#%ing WANT IS TO MAKE THE RICH RICHER AND THE POOR POORER!!!

Me: Um...Yeah, I think that's pretty much a given. Some of them don't feel....

William: My professor is trying to give a balanced viewpoint and let us draw our own conclusions.

Me: And your conclusion is...

William: Conservatives are MORONS!!

Me: *hysterical laughter*

William: We're learning about the healthcare debate this week. Oh, and I need to use PhotoShop for a class. Could I please have $60 dollars for 2 gigs of RAM so I can run it on my computer?

Me: *sigh* Try asking your dads first.

I was telling my mother about this conversation, and she completely agreed with William. I got almost the same response from her, without quite so many vulgarities. At least I didn't end up sending her money.

Can someone please explain?

In my ~two years of reading "atheist" blogs, I've noticed something interesting. I seem to be one of the few atheists (blogging atheists, anyway) who has never been a theist. Most of the atheist bloggers seem to be originally Christians, although a very few, like Friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta, and KafirGirl were other religions (Jain and Sunni Muslim, respectively). Keep in mind, I only read blogs written in English. These are people who had to go through often extremely emotionally painful realizations that god really is imaginary. Many of them have deconversion stories. UPDATE: Andrew from Artificial Habitat pointed out the de-conversion blog. It is amazing that people are able to escape this type of brainwashing. Critical thinking can really hurt sometimes and I am very grateful to my parents that I never had to go through that.

The religious nutcases in this country are desperately trying to take us back into the dark ages. When school officials suspend a kid for witchcraft, and suspend a teacher because he's suspected of being a liberal and an atheist, and we have creationists constantly attacking real science, and trying to get (un)Intelligent Design taught in science classrooms along with evolution, it indicates a huge problem. So far this hasn't always worked, and common sense has prevailed. UPDATE #2: Florida is currently trying to legislate the teaching of (un)Intelligent Design. My mother even asked my why we shouldn't teach the controversy, as it's only fair. People don't seem to understand two things:

1) There is no controversy in the scientific world about whether life evolved. It did. The only scientific controversy is regarding the mechanisms of evolution. The "controversy" about whether or not evolution happened is entirely made up by the creationists.

2) Science isn't fair. Science is about the truth. Science has specific rules that are followed to find the truth. The supernatural has never been shown to exist in anything other than people's minds.

Belief in this nonsense is harmful, even if you say, "Well, I'm not one of those theists! I don't believe that." Enough of you do. Parents already poison the brains of too many of our young people. We cannot allow this bullshit to creep into our classrooms, too. It will be an uphill battle since it is estimated that 47% of Americans believe that the world is between 6000 and 10,000 years old. FORTY-SEVEN PERCENT! I can tell you from personal experience that people in other countries (Ok, England anyway) think that Americans are completely NUTS! (Demographic wikifactoid:United States - 5% atheists, England - 35% atheists.)

I've always been mildly surprised when a scientist turns out to be a theist, but this has happened numerous times. At least one of my college professors went to church every Sunday.* I find it even more surprising when it is a biologist, because they know that there is a much better explanation for life on earth than that some sort of supernatural being created it. As far as I can tell, most of them were indoctrinated early in their lives. I just want to ask them why? Why do you still believe against all the evidence. Or maybe I should say why do you believe in the supernatural when there is no evidence?

I had a scientist say to me once, "Well what about the extra energy? Where does that go when we die?" My reaction at the time, "Uh,.........." I couldn't understand the question, and it wasn't just because I was drunk. Huh? What extra energy? The same thing happens to us as happens to any other living thing on the planet. Do worms have extra energy, too? What about trees? Bacteria? Whales? Dogs? I really have ab-so-lutely no idea what this person was talking about.

Saying "you just feel that there's a god" doesn't answer anything, either. The human mind can imagine all kinds of things. I know someone who "felt the battle" when she went to Culloden and various American Civil War battlefields. This does not mean this person is actually feeling anything, it just means she has a well developed imagination. In fact, she has often exclaimed to me in frustration, "Well, you just don't have any imagination!" Because that's ALL it is. And no I don't. When I feel that there's someone watching me while I go to the bathroom, and feel that there are people who are in a different dimension who can see me, but I can't see them, I realize it is just my imagination and that I've obviously read far too many science fiction books. Ok, maybe I do have an imagination. Or it could be the guys who just installed the new ducting in our house left a camera in the vent. But that's just being paranoid, although it's far more likely than being watched from an alternate dimension or by some supernatural sky daddy who can read my thoughts.

Many people claim that the human body/world/universe is too complex to be explained naturally. Complexity does not need a god. The complexity of the universe can be, and is being, explained non-supernaturally. Just because we don't know all the answers now, doesn't mean we won't eventually, and filling the "gaps" with some sort of god is just silly. I touched on this in a previous post.

There will be no hope for this country to stay a superpower if we don't start doing a better job teaching the general public about reality rather than being respectful of ancient superstitious bullshit. Anyone, especially biologists, believing in iron and bronze-age myths is just not logical. I just want to ask why?

And when you realize why you don't believe in any other gods that man has ever invented, you'll understand why I don't believe in yours.**

/rant

*When this was pointed out to him, one of my atheist professors said, "Well, nobody's perfect."
**Paraphrase of a quote by author Stephen F. Roberts.

Projector not your average Joe the Plumber

$275 overhead projector from Staples:

$449 overhead projector from Staples:

Do teachers even still use these?

$3 Million "overhead projector" of the type McCain keeps going on about:

Is he that stupid? Does he think we are? Has he ever even been to a planetarium? By the way, you can donate to the Adler Planetarium to help them buy this, because what McCain leaves out of his little tirades is that it was not funded. Hat tip to Pharyngula, Bad Astronomy, Gizmodo, and one of the other blogs I read, but I can't find the post right now.

Line breeding

I read hundreds and hundreds of books while I was growing up. Somewhere among all the Black Stallion, Hardy Boys, Hornblower, and of course Tolkien books, I read a book by Albert Payson Terhune called Lad: a dog, a (somewhat anthropomorphized) true story about the life of Sunnybank Lad, a collie. From that moment on, I wanted a collie and was going to get one as soon as I could. And I did. My ex-husband David and I weren't married yet and couldn't afford an expensive dog, so I called a local breeder and asked about pet quality puppies. She didn't have any puppies, but she had a two year old that we could come and look at. It was love at first sight for both me and Robin.

While talking to her, I was completely flabbergasted when she started explaining her breeding practices. She "line bred" which meant selectively inbreeding the dogs with the best characteristics to try and reproduce those characteristics...I don't remember exactly how much, but Robin's mother was very closely related to his father. I had recently taken a genetics course at UC Davis, so I was even more shocked. She didn't seem to understand that, though she was trying to consolidate the genes that resulted in a champion's conformation, the puppies were far more likely than average to receive two copies of a deleterious recessive gene.

I googled line breeding and got a lot of dog breeders who more or less said the same thing. They defined inbreeding as the breeding of relatives not separated by more than one generation. Line breeding is used to concentrate the good qualities of an ancestor. They seem to justify line breeding because they use it to "set" characteristics that they want and weed out the genetic defects in a line. The genetically defective dogs are sold as pet quality if they are not "too" defective, or destroyed. Personally, I think that purposefully creating defective animals is inhumane and immoral. That said, I can understand that for certain rare breeds, line breeding may be the only option.

Of course, line breeding isn't limited to dogs. I pointed out that genetic relatedness is one of several hypotheses about why champion racehorses often have major problems in a previous post. Line breeding occurs in all domestic animals.

Then I happened upon this guy. He justifies line breeding because it is sanctioned in the bible, starting with Adam and Eve. If you take the bible literally, Adam and Eve's children would obviously have to breed with each other (this wouldn't be line breeding according to the dog breeders' definition - it would be inbreeding). He then points out that everyone would be 50% related to Adam and 50% related to Eve. This doesn't seem to faze him.

He then goes on to state that Noah and his progeny were God's line breeding program and calculates out their percent relatedness. Apparently God chose Terah's blood to concentrate and create the Jewish race. This guy is a Pony of the America's (POA) breeder. I have a special fondness for POAs, as I had one (Paleface) when I was growing up. I hope they're not all being bred by morons.

My mother took this photo just after my son was born. Robin was a lovely dog.

And remember. If it doesn't drool, it's not a collie.

The Ad-dressing of Platypuses

With all the fundamentalist morons claiming that a platypus is some sort of chimera, I feel as though I have to defend the integrity of my blog title. So with apologies to both T. S. Eliot and The Digital Cuttlefish:

The Ad-dressing of Platypuses

You’ve heard of the platypus from Australia
That is a member of the Class Mammalia
It split off from our family tree
Before we evolved viviparity
When first discovered it caused a ruckus
But was very soon named Ornithorhynchus

But how do you ad-dress a platypus?

It has a bill superficially like a duck
That it uses to dig around in the muck
This “beak” is electro-sensory and more
To locate prey for this carnivore
It does lay eggs, like few mammals other
But young platypus do drink milk from their mother

And contrary to what you may have heard
A PLATYPUS is NOT part BIRD

The venomous ankle spurs the males portray
May help keep other males at bay
And this is hypothesized to be the reason
They are only venomous during breeding season

But do not make the silly MISTAKE
To think the Platypus is part SNAKE

A chimera is a mythical creature
With breathing fire as a prominent feature
Part lion, part serpent, part goat but all Greek
Bellerophon and Pegasus killed this freak

Although the beast was born of Echidna
A platypus is real and is NOT a CHIMERA

A chimaera is a fish of the deep and dark
With a rat-tail and claspers, it’s related to the shark
It also is any organism with genetically different tissues
A chimera can cause the CSI some real issues
Although this might confuse a true believer
The platypus is obviously neither

A chimera is also a wild dream or illusion
This is MUCH more like the creationist’s delusion

The genetics are causing evolutionists no fuss
And this is how you AD-DRESS a PLATYPUS

INTERESTING THOUGHTS

I recently received this e-mail from a friend. It was just like this - all in black caps with INTERESTING THOUGHTS in the subject line:

LET ME SEE IF I HAVE THIS STRAIGHT:HIS FATHER WAS A KENYAN, MUSLIM, BLACK - WE HAVE SEEN PICTURES OF HIS AFRICAN 'FAMILY.

HIS MOTHER IS A KANSAN, ATHEIST, WHITE. WHERE ARE THE PICTURES OF HIS KANSAN, WHITE MOTHER AND HIS WHITE GRANDPARENTS WHO RAISED HIM?

HIS FATHER DESERTED HIS MOTHER AND HIM WHEN HE WAS VERY YOUNG, AND WENT BACK TO HIS FAMILY IN KENYA.

HIS MOTHER MARRIED AN INDONESIAN MUSLIM AND TOOK HIM TO JAKARTA WHERE HE WAS SCHOOLED IN A MOSLEM SCHOOL.

HIS MOTHER RETURNED TO HAWAII AND HE WAS RAISED BY HIS WHITE KANSAN GRANDPARENTS.

HE LATER WENT TO THE BEST HIGH DOLLAR SCHOOLS, HOW?

HE LIVES IN A $1.4 MILLION DOLLAR HOUSE THAT HE ACQUIRED THROUGH A DEAL WITH A WEALTHY FUND RAISER. HOW?

HE 'WORKED' AS A CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST IN CHICAGO- HAS NEVER HELD A PRODUCTIVE JOB. THE PRESIDENCY IS NOT A CIVIL RIGHTS POST NOR IS IT SUBJECT TO AFFIRMATIVE ACTION SET ASIDES.

HE ENTERED POLITICS AT THE STATE LEVEL AND THEN THE NATIONAL LEVEL WHERE HE HAS MINIMAL EXPERIENCE.

HE IS PROUD OF HIS 'AFRICAN HERITAGE', BUT IT SEEMS THAT HIS ONLY AFRICAN CONNECTION WAS THAT HIS AFRICAN FATHER GOT A WHITE GIRL PREGNANT AND DESERTED HER. I DIDN'T KNOW THAT SPERM CARRIED A 'CULTURAL' GENE. WHERE IS THE PRIDE IN HIS WHITE CULTURE?

HE GOES TO AN 'AFROCENTRIC' CHURCH THAT HATES WHITES, HATES JEWS, AND BLAMES AMERICA FOR ALL THE WORLDS PERCEIVED FAULTS AND THEN HE REPEATEDLY COVERS UP FOR THE PASTOR AND THE CHURCH.

HE CLAIMS THAT HE COULD NOT CONFRONT HIS PASTOR BUT HE WANTS US TO BELIEVE THAT HE CAN CONFRONT NORTH KOREA AND IRAN, RIGHT!!!

YEAH, I THINK I SEE HOW HE COULD BE A UNITER AND BRING US TOGETHER... I THINK HE HOPES NO ONE WILL PUT THE PIECES TOGETHER.

I happened to be in a bad mood when she sent it, so she got an earful involving several e-mails in response:

LET ME SEE IF I HAVE THIS STRAIGHT:HIS FATHER WAS A KENYAN, MUSLIM, BLACK - WE HAVE SEEN PICTURES OF HIS AFRICAN 'FAMILY.

HIS MOTHER IS A KANSAN, ATHEIST, WHITE. WHERE ARE THE PICTURES OF HIS KANSAN, WHITE MOTHER AND HIS WHITE GRANDPARENTS WHO RAISED HIM?
His mother DIED in 1995, so there wouldn't be any contemporary photos of her. There are lots of photos with him and his mother. Just google it. His father was an atheist and his mother was skeptical of organized religion and may have been an atheist. Is there something wrong with being an atheist? (I came this close to coming out of the closet in my e-mail) I believe his grandfather is dead, too, but if you google 'Barack Obama grandparents," you'll see several photos.

Of course you would see his "black" family. He's married to a black woman, which would mean his kids are most likely black, and he has several half siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles on his father's side in Africa. Who are black.

HIS FATHER DESERTED HIS MOTHER AND HIM WHEN HE WAS VERY YOUNG, AND WENT BACK TO HIS FAMILY IN KENYA.
And he's responsible for something his father did?

HIS MOTHER MARRIED AN INDONESIAN MUSLIM AND TOOK HIM TO JAKARTA WHERE HE WAS SCHOOLED IN A MOSLEM SCHOOL.
So? My son was schooled in a Catholic school. Does that make him (or me) Catholic? No.

HIS MOTHER RETURNED TO HAWAII AND HE WAS RAISED BY HIS WHITE KANSAN GRANDPARENTS.
Again, he's responsible for something his mother did?

HE LATER WENT TO THE BEST HIGH DOLLAR SCHOOLS, HOW?
I don't know. Maybe his grandparents or his mother paid? I paid through the nose to send my son to Catholic school, and that doesn't make me rich. It actually made me poorer.

HE LIVES IN A $1.4 MILLION DOLLAR HOUSE THAT HE ACQUIRED THROUGH A DEAL WITH A WEALTHY FUND RAISER. HOW?
Um...Didn't you just answer the question? This I'll have to research more, but I'm sure it is googleable.

HE 'WORKED' AS A CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST IN CHICAGO- HAS NEVER HELD A PRODUCTIVE JOB. THE PRESIDENCY IS NOT A CIVIL RIGHTS POST NOR IS IT SUBJECT TO AFFIRMATIVE ACTION SET ASIDES.
Not even worth commenting on.

HE ENTERED POLITICS AT THE STATE LEVEL AND THEN THE NATIONAL LEVEL WHERE HE HAS MINIMAL EXPERIENCE.
As several people have pointed out, both he and Hillary Clinton are "novices" in the Senate. Does living in the White House while your husband is president give you that much more experience? The main experience Hillary has over and above Barack is Bill.

HE IS PROUD OF HIS 'AFRICAN HERITAGE', BUT IT SEEMS THAT HIS ONLY AFRICAN CONNECTION WAS THAT HIS AFRICAN FATHER GOT A WHITE GIRL PREGNANT AND DESERTED HER. I DIDN'T KNOW THAT SPERM CARRIED A 'CULTURAL' GENE. WHERE IS THE PRIDE IN HIS WHITE CULTURE?
Oh, come on. GOT A WHITE GIRL PREGNANT. I'm sure the writer could have been more racist. Also, it is falsely presenting the facts. It makes it sound as though he knocked her up, and then immediately left her to give birth on her own. Barack was actually two when his father left. And sperm from his father did give him a dark complexion, which in this country still carries some sort of stigma. It shouldn't, but it does.

HE GOES TO AN 'AFROCENTRIC' CHURCH THAT HATES WHITES, HATES JEWS, AND BLAMES AMERICA FOR ALL THE WORLDS PERCEIVED FAULTS AND THEN HE REPEATEDLY COVERS UP FOR THE PASTOR AND THE CHURCH.
So it would be better if he went to a "white" church? The Church hates whites, Jews, etc.? Or just one of the ex-pastors hates whites and Jews? He wouldn't even be in the running if he didn't go to church at all, which I would personally prefer.

HE CLAIMS THAT HE COULD NOT CONFRONT HIS PASTOR BUT HE WANTS US TO BELIEVE THAT HE CAN CONFRONT NORTH KOREA AND IRAN, RIGHT!!!
Why does he need to confront him? If I were Obama, I would just ignore the racist idiot. (Actually, I believe he completely severed ties with the man today)

YEAH, I THINK I SEE HOW HE COULD BE A UNITER AND BRING US TOGETHER... I THINK HE HOPES NO ONE WILL PUT THE PIECES TOGETHER.
The pieces that someone has tied together with lies, half-truths, and inuendos.

I'm still voting for him if he runs against McCain, as I'll vote for Hillary if she's the Democratic nominee.

Expelled!

PZ Myers tells me I have a job to do . As he commands, I must obey. Rather than help trigger a Google Bomb flag, though, I’m linking that IDiot Ben Stein and No Intelligence Allowed to the Expelled Exposed website.

I’ll link the word “Expelled” in a day or two. Oh, shoot! I just did it anyway. Twice, actually... Google Bombs away!

Dense isn't only for cake

My brother was recently paying cash for groceries when he noticed the cashier inspecting his money, paying particularly close attention to the one dollar bills.

He asked her why she was doing this.

She said, “Because someone has been taking ones and converting them to tens and twenties.”

“Then why are you looking at the ones?” he asked.

“Because someone has been taking ones and converting them to tens and twenties.”

“Yes, but why are you looking at the ones?”

Slightly aggravated, she said, “Because someone has been taking ones and converting them to tens and twenties.”

My brother, always a glutton for punishment, tried again. “Yes, I understand that, but why are you looking at the ones?”

She looked over at the bagboy and rolled her eyes as if to say, “Got a real stupid one here!” The bagboy looked back with raised eyebrows and shrugged — “Sure do.”

She said, “Because… someone… has… been… taking… the… ones… and… converting… them… to… tens… and… twen… tees.”

My brother just gave up and left.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I had taken off my shoes at work the other day. I do this occasionally just because any sign of Bohemianism makes the enginerds slightly uncomfortable. That, and I was hot. I was walking through the maze of cubicles to the microwave to make a cup of tea, and one of the secretaries came around the corner, looked at my feet and said, “We have mice, you know.”

I looked at her quizzically. “And?”

She repeated, "We have mice."

When I still looked at a loss, she scowled and said, “You're barefoot and we have MICE!” And walked off.

Oooookaaaaaaay. Can someone tell me if these two things are related somehow? Is my being barefoot causing us to have mice? Was I supposed to squeal and jump up on a chair in case a mouse ran out and viciously attacked my feet? Does she think I’m secretly keeping mice in my shoes? What?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When I relayed the story to my brother, he said I should have told her to check her ones because people were changing them into tens and twenties.

McNomination

They had a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition this morning about how the conservative Republicans don’t think that John McCain is conservative enough. He has to "prove" himself to the conservatives to win their vote/hearts/whatever. Since McCain is currently winning the Republican nomination by a landslide, maybe Republicans in general are not as conservative as the conservatives would like to think.

Or maybe they're just worried because he's a closet Pastafarian.

Photo found on uglyrepublicans.com

Arrrgh and RAmen.

Beelzebufo

Illustration by Luci Betti-Nash / Associated Press
I love that name. Really cool name for the worlds largest known toad. Unfortunately it's extinct, because I agree with PZ Meyers, I want one as a pet. Probably just as well. Fang, Attack Rabbit is probably just the right size for a nice snack. The females got up to 10 lbs and 16 inches long. They are related to the currently popular Pac-Man frog, and Kenneth Chang of the New York Times quoted discoverer Dr. David Krause as saying that the female Beelzebufos were “lady Pac-Man frogs, on steroids.”

I read several articles about it, but this quote from a story in the Los Angeles Times caught my eye:

“Krause, along with Susan Evans and Marc Jones of the research department of cell and developmental biology at University College in London, painstakingly removed Beelzebufo's fossilized parts, like an ancient jigsaw puzzle, from deep sediment that dates to the late Cretaceous period, 65 million to 70 million years ago.

That was the time of the dinosaurs, and Earth was a young -- and very different -- place.”

The Earth was young?? The Earth is about 4.54 billion years old plus or minus 1%. Seventy million years ago, it was still ~4,470,000,000 ± 45,000,000. In other words, the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old now, and 70 million years ago, the Earth was about...4.5 billion years old. Sixty-five or 70 million years is a drop in the bucket, geologically speaking. I’ll give them “very different.”

As one of my coworkers said when I pointed this out, "Another confirmation that our science education in the US sucks..."

This blog post was continually interrupted by a total eclipse of the moon! I had to run outside every five minutes. Unfortunately, I don't own a camera that could take a picture of it.

Landover Baptist Church

Months ago, I did a search for 'atheist' on the internet, and I found this site: How to Spot Atheists and Report them to the FBI.

The Landover Baptist website (where the worthwhile worship and the unsaved are unwelcome) is way more than a little over-the-top, but I have to check it out every month or two--sort of like a train wreck. My second favourite article so far was: In a surprise move, God snuffs out Jerry Falwell after a heart healthy breakfast!

What constantly amazes me is their mailbag. Even though when sending them an e-mail, it clearly states that it is the Landover Baptist Parody Website, people STILL take them seriously, and write some pretty scary letters.

Oh, and the way things are going in this country, that "spotting atheists" thing could come true in the not too distant future... No, I don't really believe that, but before they ship us all off to concentration camps, I'm moving back to England. After all, the first President Bush believes that atheists should not be regarded as citizens, anyway. I didn't know this when I got my citizenship, or I might have had second thoughts. Goodness knows what the current President Bush thinks. My husband, unfortunately had no choice. He was born in Texas. Shhh. Don't tell the FBI.

Geologic time scale

I'm not sure that a lot of people understand the incredible amount of time available for the process of natural selection (especially those that think that the Earth is only 6000 years old). The Earth is around 4.5 billion years old, and life began roughly 3.6 billion years ago. That is billion with a 'B.' Ten to the power of 9 (at least here in the US). One thousand million. The fact that the current US national debt is 9 trillion probably doesn't help the general comprehension level. Here is what one billion pennies would look like. I got this from the MegaPenny Project website:










It would take up the space of 5 school buses. Life has been around for at least 18 school buses.

This gives natural selection--the non-random selection of random mutations--an enormous amount of time to occur. If a mutation only has the extremely small one-in-a-million chance of happening in any one year, given a million years it is a virtual certainty. Alternately, if it has a one-in-a-million chance of occurring in any one individual, given a population of a million individuals it is bound to occur in at least one (thanks to Richard Dawkins and E.O. Wilson for those examples). Mutation rates can be much, much faster than that. Beneficial mutations tend to be passed on to offspring, and disadvantageous mutations tend to be weeded out.

Creationists insist that evolution is all chance, and that nothing as complex as X (where X=eye, hand, feather, etc.) could evolve by chance. Natural selection is the opposite of chance. The mutations are chance; the selection is not. The cumulative effects of the non-random selection over this huge amount of time allows the gradual (and sometimes not so gradual) increase in complexity eventually evolving such things as eyes.

As Linus Pauling said, "Science is the search for truth." Unfortunately, he then went on to write rubbish about the benefits of Vitamin C for preventing colds, but that's another blog entry. He was right about science being the search for truth, though.