I am O’Reilly, Lord of the Idiots

Science Editor Mark Atwill discusses Fox’s worst man in the world and why he has almost ruined the welcomed healthy debate between theism and atheism.

No one is here to refute the existence of a higher power, let’s make that clear. Rather, let’s take a moment to reflect on how ignorance can so easily breed contempt. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Bill O’Reilly, stop everything and go and watch him in action, right now. His insane, militantly ignorant and cringe-worthy war on science – that offends theist and atheist alike with a primary school education – and the general epicness by which he fails on a daily basis, is staggering. Here is a selection of his lowest moments.

1. Tide Goes In, Tide Goes Out. You Can’t Explain That (Wrong).

“I’ll tell you why religion is not a scam; tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication.”

Faith is one thing, but even the most staunchly theist among us would be astounded by the disregard for hundreds of years of astronomical and oceanographic research that has given us a childishly simple and practical model for this somewhat mundane phenomenon. In an interview with Dave Silverman, head of the American Atheist Group, O’Reilly elegantly, calmly, and unfathomably stupidly condenses his belief in God into this elegant raving. It’s like he never even went to school.

Bill O’Reilly in action on YouTube.

2. You can’t explain where the moon cames from! (we can)

“Okay, how’d the moon get there? How’d the sun get there? How’d it get there? Can you explain that to me? How come we have that and Mars doesn’t have it (actually, it has 2 moons)? Venus doesn’t have it. How come? Why not? How’d it get here? How did that little amoeba get here, crawl out there (evolution)? How’d it do it?”

O’Reilly there, ineloquently proving that he is a complete moron. Attempting to combat confusion with more confusion is like trying to put out a fire with a massive fire. This astonishing rationale proves the man simply has NO intellectual understanding of scientific concepts.

3. Even disproved facts should are considered as facts.

“I think the people like the ACLU, who don’t want you to mention it [creationism] in your biology class, are the Taliban.”

Just to clarify, the ACLU is a human rights organisation. This extraordinary attack comes as a reaction to the refusal of American schools to teach the scientifically unsound theory of Creationism as an alternative to Evolution, despite the fact that that would be like teaching Star Wars as an alternative to ancient history because it happened a ‘long time ago’.

Some more of O’Reilly.

4. Faith are easier than doing science.

“It takes more faith to not believe and to think that this was all luck and all this human body and all the intricacies of it, are all luck, than it does to believe in a deity.”

Yes, he went there, clapping his hands and shouting “I believe in fairies so they must exist” mind crapping Cogito Ergo Sum style. This argument for throwing out science in favour of medieval theocracy is based on the idea that thinking about science makes his brain hurt, so why not just embrace the benevolence, man?

5. Science lack the morality of
religion.

“Science doesn’t advance the human condition in any moralistic way — and Jesus did.”

Who gave this moron a TV programme? Completely misunderstanding the whole point of science, which if done correctly, is completely incorruptible, impartial, objective and based simply on unbiased observation for which there is no judgment other than physical reality, WWJD raving O’Reilly comes a cropper. On the subject of morality, getting stupid people to agree with you for money, however stupid you may be is rather questionable, sir.

6. Science is guessing so dinosaurs is might not real!

“As you may know, global warming is cyclical, and right now it’s the focus of a ferocious debate — almost as ferocious as a T. Rex…”

Something is awry when this is your opening gambit. However, does this mean O’Reilly does, or doesn’t believe in global warming, or dinosaurs? Yes, that’s right, DINOSAURS. The things with fossils we’ve all seen. I guess that T-Rex skeleton was really a crocodile, a hippo and a flock of geese that crashed into each other really fast and accidentally got turned to stone 4,000 years ago. Makes sense.

7. Science has holes in it, which is God.

“Science is not always incomplete and I’ll give you an example. There are twenty-four hours in a day”

A point made by O’Reilly in an interview with Jason Rosenhouse on intelligent design Creationism, in which he explicitly suggests the idea of imposing faith on high school students. To give credence to his proposal he decides to impress us with his knowledge of science, for example, how many hours in a day there are. Science!

8.Teach Evolution are fascist.

“Just because science has a gap in it, that does not entitle you to turn to any alternatives — that’s fascism.”

Wow. Fascism. An overused O’Reilly technique when backed into a corner is to throw out a massively exaggerated claim and hope that he can dumbfound his opponent. In an interview relating to teaching the Theory of Evolution involving fundamentalist atheist despot Richard Dawkins, he suggests the failure to teach both sides of the Creationism vs Evolution story is fascism.