Monday, May 12, 2008

The Wedgwood Document

They really must try to avoid leaving these documents in the photocopier.

Again I cannot comment on my sources or the veracity of the document but it shows all the hallmarks of the real thing.


The Wedgwood Document

Top Secret – NOT FOR PUBLIC RELEASE

INSTITUTE OF DISCOVERY 2008

In a famous 1952 article, ‘Why there is no God’ commissioned by ‘Illustrated Magazine’, the famous atheist Bertrand Russell wrote:

“If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion .............. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.”

This point, the notorious ‘Russell’s Teapot’ question has been a thorn in the side of religious advocates ever since. Every time we tell atheists that they have not disproved God they invariably bring up Russell’s teapot. We are told that just because we too cannot disprove Russell’s teapot this logically means that any particular invented deity, such as The Pink Unicorn, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Zeus or Allah, cannot also be disproved and such are just as evidentially based as the one true God. Even Richard Dawkins uses the analogy both in ‘The God Delusion’ and on his frequent media appearances, to mock the basis of believers sincerely held faith.

What these infuriating atheists failed to realize is that if Russell’s Teapot could be disproved then the final defence of atheistic materialism will fall. Far from being a logical deathblow to belief in a personal God, the analogy is the Achille’s heel of atheism, for, if we can indeed detect Russell’s teapot in orbit, then it naturally follows that God CAN be empirically proven.

This crushing defeat of atheisms most compelling argument can only lead to one outcome, the inevitable weakening of materialism and the ushering in a new age of piety and faith-based hope for billions.

But how to do so?

Clearly we require two factors to achieve our aim;

1) Russell’s teapot,

and

2) A powerful space telescope.


By a quirk of God-given fate, both of these prerequisites have just become available to us, offering a once in a lifetime opportunity to provide humanity with the ultimate proof of Gods existence.

The Teapot

Years of diligent research efforts by a highly motivated team of workers at the Institute of Discovery have finally managed to trace Russell’s teapot. The item in question was last known to be in the possession of members of the family of the late Yuen Ren Chao, the famous linguist and friend of Russell’s, before disappearing from public sight in the late 1960’s.

Bertrand Russell visiting the teapot in the Chao household (1962).

It is only now, more than four decades later, that it was finally uncovered in a San Francisco yard sale and put up for auction in Ebay whereupon it was tracked down and purchased by our crack Institute of Discovery team.

Russell’s Teapot secured by the Institute of Discovery (2008)

The teapot, clearly identical to that visible in this photo of Russell on one of his rare visits to the Chao family, was secured using $2 million of funding from our Templetown grant, provided to show the public practical and beneficial results of ID research.


Space Telescope

While ID proponents have, to date, concentrated primarily on biological sciences - in particular the theory of Darwinian evolution, this is but one aspect of the many faceted materialistic philosophy of ‘science’ that we aim to ultimately overthrow.

We have every hope to emulate our successful approach towards Darwinian evolution (described as “breathtaking” by liberal activist Judge Jones at Dover) in disciplines such as physics, geology and chemistry.

To begin with we turn our attention towards astronomy and cosmology.

The Hubble Space Telescope is widely recognized as being one of the most successful projects in the NASA’s history. Its cameras aimed at the heavens have, for nearly two decades, provided spectacular views of the wonders of Gods creation. The startling clarity of these images of galaxies, nebulae, star clusters and even our planetary neighbors have been, for many, a testament to the ingenuity of NASA’s staff but, unfortunately, an inspiration for many young people to think that materialistic based ‘science’ can provide the ultimate answers to their deepest questions.

The principle of the Hubble’s operation is the acquisition of photons of energy originating from distant objects that are focused on a powerful digital detector within its main camera.
This allows the telescope to convert these collections of photons into the awe-inspiring images we are all familiar with.

The success of Hubble has not come without a cost, however, and the telescope is designed for a limited functional lifetime that can be extended only though costly and dangerous repair missions.

The recent failure of the main camera and associated stabilizing gyroscopes has, fortuitously for our plan, necessitated a repair mission to Hubble, scheduled for late 2008.

While repair of the Hubble as originally planned would provide for the continuing employment of hundreds of astronomers worldwide, the continuation of the USA’s pre-eminence in the field of astronomy and the inspiration regarding science of further generations of American schoolchildren it can be argued that it may indeed provide some positive benefits too. Unfortunately these are not enough to outweigh the destructive effects of scientific materialism.

Indeed it can be logically argued that, based on the consensus view of the origin of the universe amongst the American public, the Hubble has now collected all the available data from objects within 6000 light-years distance from the earth.
Institute
of Discovery
scientists have devastatingly pointed out that, since the speed of light is constant in the vacuum of deep space, it naturally follows to be worthless looking for objects further away than the 6000 light-year ‘creation-horizon’.

We, in conjunction with our political allies have proposed a unique solution to NASA’s evident embarrassment over the pointless Hubble repair mission.

Instead of taking the heavy replacement camera and gyroscopes to Hubble we will instead use the upcoming mission of NASA astronauts to tether Russell’s teapot to a position directly in front of the main aperture (see attached picture).

Institute of Discovery artist impression of newly modified Hubble Space Telescope

The use of an inexpensive and reliable webcam is that’s required to capture and transmit live pictures of Russell’s teapot back to earth. These will be broadcast live on a 24 hour constant showing on NASA TV, which at the moment is cluttered with materialistic based ‘science’ from pointless missions such as Cassini-Huygens, Chandra-Xray telescope, Mars Rovers and Explorer and the International Space Station. The genius of our plan is the simultaneous elimination of the current objectionably materialistic NASA TV broadcasts and their replacement with live pictures that destroy the ‘Russell’s Teapot’ analogy.

Our project (Mission Wedgwood) has been favorably received by our many influential supporters in Washington. While we anticipate some minor resistance amongst the astronomy community we feel hopeful that the project is approved and scheduled for blast-off this coming year. We ask all our supporters to continue to lobby their local congressional representatives to approve ‘Mission Wedgwood’ and to pray for God’s help on this critical matter.

28 comments:

Shygetz said...

Awesomeness. Sheer, unadulterated awesomeness. Hats off to you, sir.

Unknown said...

You put other Poe's to shame my good sir. Well played.

Bayesian Bouffant, FCD said...

We have every hope to emulate our successful approach towards Darwinian evolution (described as “breathtaking” by liberal activist Judge Jones at Dover)...

Nice.

slith said...

I admit that I was fooled until I saw the teapot...

trog69 said...

Fundies, you win. I can't do this anymore. Your genius blinded me, but now I see. Gimme a bible! I gotta go to the can, man.

No tp...no problem!

Kilgore Trout said...

Well played sir, well played.

I was pretty sure it was a joke when I heard $2 mill for the teapot. The final photo was the only total give away, although fundies probably would think you would need a string to hold it in place despite the microgravity.

Unknown said...

By analogy: Fundies launched God into heaven.

Juhan said...

PWNED!!!1

mikmik said...

What about All the gods that you haven't disproved? What about all the other insipid claims, like the FSM?

By analogy, you have to belive in them. Learn some logic:

Weak Analogy

Exposition:
This is a very common fallacy, but "False Analogy", its common name, is very misleading. Analogies are neither true nor false, instead they come in degrees from near identity to extreme dissimilarity. Here are two important points about analogy:

No analogy is perfect, that is, there is always some difference between analogs. Otherwise, they would not be two analogous objects, but only one, and the relation would be one of identity, not analogy.
There is always some similarity between any two objects, no matter how different. For example, Lewis Carroll once posed the following nonsense riddle:
How is a raven like a writing desk?

The point of the riddle was that they're not; alike, that is. However, to Carroll's surprise, some of his readers came up with clever solutions to the supposedly unsolvable riddle, for instance:

Because Poe wrote on both.

mikmik said...

Not only that, but you intentionally misrepresented the general term "a teapot" as one specific teapot:

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion

You proved there are no chine teapots out there yet?

TourGuideHawaii said...

OHMYGOSH! This was hilarious, wonderful, side-splitting and beautifully done. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

Satire is a very, very difficult medium to work effectively...almost impossible to master; but you, sir, have my full applause.

Quote: "While repair of the Hubble as originally planned would provide for the continuing employment of hundreds of astronomers worldwide, the continuation of the USA’s pre-eminence in the field of astronomy and the inspiration regarding science of further generations of American schoolchildren it can be argued that it may indeed provide some positive benefits too. Unfortunately these are not enough to outweigh the destructive effects of scientific materialism."

BWAAAAAAAAAAA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you.

Aloha-
Dr. Donald B. MacGowan
Kailua Kona, Hawai'i

AgnosticThought said...

I call Poe's law on all of this. The greatest satirical work I've read in quite some time. The brilliance of these cutting assertians have gutted science to only one conclusion. It's true, creationists are correct. The universe is only 6,000 years old, humans are a product of some jewish belief of creation, all our sins are were sacrificed when some angry jews nailed nailed another jew to a some plancks a few thousand years ago.

OK as is obvious, I'm not the greatest satirst out here.

AgnosticThought said...

Nor, the greastest speller. Satirist* and assertions. It's not easy without spellcheck.

Nick said...

Great post - I gotta remember this one

However, I will make one minor nitpick. The teapot would not disprove Russel's teapot, as it would not be in elliptical orbit between earth and mars, it would be tethered to an object in orbit around the earth.

However the flaw with the teapot is that there are currently millions of teapots that are in elliptical orbit around the Sun. However due to the fact that they are on the earth, they are only between the Earth's surface and Mars for less than 50% of the time.

Also, even if you were to prove that there was a naturally occuring china teapot in elliptical orbit between the Earth and sun that was too small for telescopes to detect, (and wasn't sitting on Earth), etc. It still wouldn't prove that the holy babble, the quran or whatever other invisible sky daddy imaginary friend you like existed, just that there was a teapot out there.

Sigmund said...

Some people seem to be taking this way too seriously!
Mind, I'm somewhat surprised that nobody's picked up on the ellipses in the Russell quote.
Always remember, whenever a creationist uses ellipses in a quote, it is for a purpose.

Unknown said...

I hope you spend all your money on useless junk like this! This just highlights the sheer finger-in-the-ear/bind-to-reality-no-matter-what-ness of the entire ID cause! Hats off indeed!

The judge in Dover ruled in your favor? News to me...

How you all doing in Florida? Texas? Arkansas? No? No? No!? Wow.

Reality strikes again!

God Hates Uranus & Other Random Stuff said...

EPIC Poe!

Profitable Conundrum said...

Good news! God has shown me that it would take only twenty five million more dollars to secure the tea-potted Hubble in a heliocentric orbit between Earth and Mars… Praise the Lord!

Why, that amount of money could be raised from "Miracle Spring Water" alone!

Dana Hunter said...

Your powers of satire are Twain-like.

If you ever come to Seattle, you owe me a drink, as you've made me spill mine. ;-)

A teapot on a string on the HST. Brilliant! "...may indeed provide some positive benefits too." BRILLIANT!

Hipple, Rev. Paul T. said...

I seriously doubt this is a real document. It certainly is not something inspired by the Word of God.

The way you can tell is that the logical end of this tale is that the teapot would eventually grow to become recognized throughout the world as an Object of Holy Veneration because it would be taken to represent Proof of the Existence of God.

Yet, Good Christians would never Venerate an object or statue, or otherwise engage in the dark Sin of Idol & Relic Worship, which are the practices of the Demon cult religions, such as Catholic Papism and Islam.

All the Proof of God anybody is ever gonna need rests in His Special Creation, as He spelled out in the Bible for anybody who can read or hear plain American english.

So it seems quite obvious to me this here Wedgewood Document is a product of Deception and Treachery, probably perpetrated by the Demon, though it seems to carry a strong, rank scent of Papist Catholicism all over it.

trog69 said...

Good morning, MartinC.

After looking again at my previous comment on this, it seems I forgot to give kudos to this great bit! Sadly, should some wingnut see this, I would not be the least surprised to learn that they believe it, and condone it, too.

Awesome jorb!

Unknown said...

Won't work. Damn teapotist will only move the goal post. ;-)

trog69 said...

So it seems quite obvious to me this here Wedgewood Document is a product of Deception and Treachery, probably perpetrated by the Demon, though it seems to carry a strong, rank scent of Papist Catholicism all over it.

Sounds like you've gone and switched the Communion wine with Fundie flavored Kool-aid.

Monado said...

Nick, that's part of the beauty of this satire. ID Creationists not only get the logic wrong, they get the science wrong, too. Google the "Behe blunder" some time.

High Power Rocketry said...

: )

Gary S. Hurd said...

My thanks, and compliments.

Unknown said...

The Rev Paul T Hipple is clearly an imposter. Real 'Reverends' spend most of their time drinking tea out of bone china and would know that Wedgwood has only one e, not two, and was correctly spelled by the excellent author of this article.

Unknown said...

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