That would be Moses on the mount, and why not a talking snake? According to Darwin their mental faculties are equal with ours!
58 comments
No, you are wrong.
Wrong. Not Correct.
Well, teophile is stupider than a snake, but he's speaking right now.
Edit: wait, he's typing. Maybe snakes could type, if they had hands.
"That would be Moses on the mount, and why not a talking snake? According to Darwin their mental faculties are equal with ours!"
That's exactly what Darwin said.
*opens Origin of the Species to page 1*
Yup. It's right there -it totally (like, to the max) says Snakes have the same mental faculties as a human, which is totally how speaking works -it's all just cognition.
Damn, you fundies are so smart! I want an edumacation like yours when you grow up.
Um, no. No evolutionary biologist has ever said that snakes are as intelligent as humans. In fact, they tend to believe the opposite for the simple reason that nobody has ever observed a talking snake. Creationists aren't even pretending that they know anything about evolution anymore.
"According to Darwin their mental faculties are equal with ours!"
Uh, no, but I am willing to believe that your mental faculties are equal to those of a post.
"According to Darwin their mental faculties are equal with ours!"
It's written down, so it must be true.... So that would mean that all snakes know how to talk. Unlike Theophile, and to whomever else he refers when he says, "ours", the snakes know when to STFU. That means the statement can't be true because Theophile and company are dumber than snakes! Oh no! Logical paradox! /sarcasm
If I walk next to a snake and it starts to hiss at me, it's saying "You're freaking me out, get away!" and you know what? It's probably right, giant bipeds walking too close ought to be scary. That's about all it can tell me, but that's also all it'll ever need to tell me.
According to Darwin, it has whatever mental faculties its species happen to need. (so in one sense it's equal with ours, as we also have the brain we happen to need)
PROTIP: The Disney animated film "The Jungle Book" is not a documentary.
...still, at least that means the book by Rudyard Kipling said film was based on, has far more credibility than the Bible. It seems that it wasn't just Kaa the snake that could talk...!
why not a talking snake?
Sure. Since no one has actually seen God, you can just invent anything you like and claim God did it. You can make God faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound; and who, disguised as Jesus, mild-mannered preacher to a small tribe of Arabs, fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American way.
Well a talking snake would be smart enough to have learned to talk in our language so yeah, I'd say a talking snake would at least be equal to us.
And no to the above poster, the Bible says that talking snakes are superior to humans. Managed to trick us after all.
Uh, no. I've seen some pretty dumb misrepresentations of Darwin and evolution but that statement is right up there with the dumbest of them.
In any event, Darwin's work is now about 150 years out of date. Why do fundies keep referring back to him? They must think we see him as our 'prophet' and that we take his every utterance on evolution as the first and last word on the subject.
First of all; no one, including Darwin, has ever suggested that snakes or any other "lower" creature has the same mental capacity as we humans.
Second: Mental capacity doesn't really enter into it. Snakes are physiologically incapable of speech. No vocal cords, wrong kind of tongue, no soft palate, no lips or cheeks, no diaphragm, etc. If one could implant Einstein's brain in a snake it would still only be able to hiss.
Theophile is a typical example of the type. He doesn't know anything about anything.
Even if we had to accept the completely erroneous statement that snakes have mental facilities comparable to humans, it still completely forgets that snakes don't have vocal chords. Thus despite the high intelligence of other primates they cannot talk either. They can communicate using sign language, but they lack the ability to vocalize human language.
This level of sheer ignorance is painful.
Things like this make me wonder about the distant future, where Christianity is all but eradicated, when technology allows us to genetically engineer a talking snake, whether that will revive biblical literalism, and by extension, Christianity itself.
(Warning: Off topic.)
I've always wondered why Adam and Eve - especially Eve according to some - are held accountable for being deceived by the snake when they had no concept of falsehoods or lies until after the apple was eaten. I mean, God told them all animals were their servants so even if they were capable of suspicion God basically said they could trust any creature on Earth implicitly. Doubting that would have been doubting God's word just as much believing the snake, (who was either Lucifer or Samael depending on which edition of the scriptures you were reading,) when he pointed out God also said they could eat of every fruit and had a change of heart about the taboo on apple pie. Bluntly put, they were set up for damnation by God himself.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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