Kooks
pharyngula | August 10, 2010That darn English language that makes words with different meanings sometimes sound similar — it always ends up confusing Christian conservatives of very little brain, whose depth of understanding can only be measured in micrometers. The latest from Conservapædia is that they are on a crusade against Einstein…because smart people who study relativity aren't reading the Bible, and because a theory about relationship between matter and energy and the speed of light encourages people to be open-minded and tolerant about different ideas, other than the Fundamentalist Evangelical Christian…
pharyngula | August 9, 2010I have sad news to report. John A. Davison has gone insane. No, I know, he's been nuts for a long, long time, but I was just purging the ol' trashed mail folder today and discovered that he has been writing to me two or three times a day, usually just by dumping his latest comment on his poor dead blog, which mainly consists of him talking to himself about how everyone is ignoring him, and isn't joining his crusade against Richard Dawkins, Wesley Elsberry, and PZ Myers, and how we're all terrified of JA Davison and Darwinism is going to disappear any day now to be replaced by his theory.
As I…
pharyngula | August 8, 2010The latest Chick tract is a wonderful summary of modern fundamentalism. It's got all the totally non-Biblical dogma: the anti-christ will be appointed pope, the Rapture, the weirdly fabulous Wedding of Jesus with his Church (everyone gets crowns!), Armageddon, the mark of the beast…it's all in this one. Also, raging anti-Catholicism. Cute ending, too.
After reading everything that comes before, Delores' "He's nuts" is just perfect. If I were in a conversation with a fundy, and he suddenly vanished in a clap of thunder, I wouldn't freak out, though: I'd applaud.
pharyngula | August 4, 2010Uh-oh. Seed Media has received some demands from Robert Lanza, MD, Scientist, Theoretician, Genius, Renegade Thinker. He wants us to take down a few posts by Orac and myself. I guess he doesn't like being compared to Grandpa Simpson, or seeing disagreement with his ideas about the afterlife, or being exposed as a quantum woo-meister.
Gosh, what will I do?
Seed has a very clearcut policy on our posts, and there is going to be no attempt to censor any of them. Gee. So I'm not going to edit them.
I'd hate to think that anyone might link to this post, or to these presumably objectional posts #1…
pharyngula | August 4, 2010I blame Barbara Bradley Hagerty — or at least, she is the face of religious inanity at NPR. She has a new piece up titled Christian Academics Cite Hostility On Campus, and does she have any evidence for this claim? None at all. Actually, she has evidence contradicting the claim.
There are two parts to the story. The first is someone who is fast becoming a usual suspect, Elaine Howard Ecklund, the person who studied faith among academics and was surprisingly surprised to discover that, golly gee whiz, nearly half go to church! This is a fact that is only news if you've bought into the biased…
pharyngula | August 4, 2010Am I the only one who sees "theidiocy" whenever I read or hear the term "theodicy"? Just curious.
Anyway, take a look at this lovely example of rationalizing the death of children.
The most merciful thing an omnicient God might do is end the life of a child whom he knows will never seek Him.
-Pastor Doug Humphrey
I'm going to have to remember that one. Since the death of seeming innocents is all for a cause visible to an omniscient deity, abortion must be God's way of purging the population of little potential Hitlers, then. Makes a fellow wonder how he missed the original Hitler, though.
pharyngula | August 4, 2010Gullibility really does destroy lives. A Vietnamese couple in Australia, the Trans, were missing a purse, so they made mistake #1: they went to a fortune teller to find out where it was. Really, magic doesn't work.
Mistake #2: the fortune teller told them that a young woman, Leilani dos Santos, who was living with them had stolen it. The fortune teller had no way of knowing, but made this potentially destructive accusation anyway.
Mistake #3: The Trans believed the fortune teller.
Mistake #4, and this is the really big one: The Trans believed that torture was an appropriate method of getting…
pharyngula | August 3, 2010Man, that Heffernan article is turning out to be such an excellent marker for stupid. Now some Catholic wanker is citing it as supporting his claim that scientists are all nasty people, claiming that the problem with science is scientists. Being Catholic, you know exactly who he is going to complain about.
Heffernan writes about the meltdown over at Science Blogs. "Science Blogs", as you may well remember is the home of blogger PZ Myers who is famous for advancing science by desecrating the Eucharist. While Myers is the most read of the misogamists at Science Blogs, his penchant for the…
pharyngula | July 29, 2010One of the more contemptible anti-gay activists is Reverend Scott Lively, a true liar for Jesus who considers it his sacred mission to rid the world of homosexuals. He was proud to have inspired the Ugandan death penalty for homosexuality law (although in the face of the outrage that generated, he backed off, claiming they should give them the choice of prison or gay conversion "therapy").
His other claim to fame is that he is a holocaust revisionist. He has written a book, The Pink Swastika, in which he claims that Hitler and his entire inner circle was gay, that the atrocities the Nazis…
pharyngula | July 28, 2010Mark your calendars! The end of the world is nigh, and we've got a specific date: the Rapture will occur on 21 May, 2011, and the world ends on 21 October 2011. How do we know this? As near as I can tell, it's pure numerology, diddling dates to create a pretense of pattern that are then used to draw conclusions.
I wouldn't worry about it. But now you've got an excuse to plan a party for next spring.
pharyngula | July 28, 2010Zeno catches something amusing: a right-wing radio host ranting about professors.
Sussman:I get a kick out of— You go to UC Berkeley, you go to Stanford, you go to these various campuses and these students are out there protesting, "We need more money for our schools!" And standing next to them are the professors. "We need more money for our schools!" Hey, have you ever asked that professor how much money they're making every year? These professors are all millionaires. They're millionaires with big, big salaries and big, big retirement packages. And yet they dress like little schmoes, you…
pharyngula | July 23, 2010Stay tuned for frolicsome hijinks and high hilarity. We have stirred up some kooks. Here are 3 in ascending order of lunacy.
That climate fraud, Anthony Watts, has noticed Pepsigate. He's got a unique spin on it: the reason some Sciencebloggers were very upset at the inclusion of an unlabeled infomercial as a blog had nothing to do with the ethics of keeping advertising separate from content — it's because we don't like Pepsi. Then he goes off on a riff about how we're hypocrites because we probably eat Doritos and drink Mountain Dew.
Wait. That's not funny. That's just stupid.
This one is…
pharyngula | July 23, 2010Ben Stein has opened his mouth again, this time on the economy. He thinks the 15 million Americans who are unemployed deserve it.
The people who have been laid off and cannot find work are generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities. I say "generally" because there are exceptions. But in general, as I survey the ranks of those who are unemployed, I see people who have overbearing and unpleasant personalities and/or who do not know how to do a day's work. They are people who create either little utility or negative utility on the job.
Wait…Ben Stein is complaining about…
pharyngula | July 20, 2010John Dixon is a councillor in Wales who, a year ago, and one day he wrote this on twitter:
I didn't know the Scientologists had a church on Tottenham Court Road. Just hurried past in case the stupid rubs off.
Oh, deary me. What a blistering attack, what an in-your-face, vicious, horrible, bloody, nasty bit of savagery that was. Surely it fully warrants the Church of Scientology making an official complaint and trying to get him fired? The church claims that being called "stupid" "impinges on the right to religious freedom".
No, it doesn't. Everyone has a right to believe in stupid things,…
pharyngula | July 20, 2010You might want to skip this video. It's Glenn Beck performing in Salt Lake City, when he claims to have macular dystrophy and might go blind — and it's revoltingly mawkish, maudlin, and self-pitying. People are actually swayed by this bathetic BS? Amazing.
Next time I give a talk, I'll have to try rubbing vaseline in my eyes before I get up on the podium.
(via Joe My God)
pharyngula | July 19, 2010Maybe somebody from Kansas can say whether this crazy woman has a chance. Joan Farr Heffington is running for governor, and she has a few priorities.
Require that a Biblical and Constitutional reason exist for the passage of any new laws
Allow teaching of Christianity vs. evolution in schools
I guess there won't be any laws regulating GMO crops in Kansas, or prohibiting stem cell research, or funding the creation of any wind farms. Anything more recent than the 18th century is going to have to be neglected, along with anything not mentioned in the Constitution.
At least she's upfront…
pharyngula | July 18, 2010I really don't know who this Mabey fellow is — apparently, he's a well-regarded nature writer in the UK — but he's recently enthusiastically mentioned his summer reading plans, and they're freaky.
I'll need a long summer break just to finish Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini's dense but explosively exciting What Darwin Got Wrong (Profile). The celebration of the great scientist's bicentenary last year courteously sidestepped the fact that most cutting-edge biologists now regard natural selection as little more than cosmetic tweaking in the process of evolution. What's happening is…
pharyngula | July 16, 2010Feeling bored? Not enough creationists turning up on Pharyngula? Do you need some fresh meat? There's a whole field of sheep on the Natural Therapy Pages on Facebook who are unaccustomed to skeptical wolves! A few sample messages there:
Tony Gyenis Susanne and I are bringing tuning forks and channeling to a whole new level. I am presently the only Tuning Fork practitioner in Canada that I know of working in the 6th dimension. We love the fact that we are working with group healing to empower large numbers of people. We will start in Ottawa, Canada and move this across the country and then…
pharyngula | July 13, 2010At the AAI meeting in Copenhagen, the group formulated a Declaration on Religion in Public Life. It was a nice statement, a bit vague, the product of too little time and preparation, but still a useful expression of godless sentiment. To my amusement, Ken Ham read it and his head exploded. It's the Atheist Agenda for World Conquest! If ever you want to see the Christian persecution complex on full boil, just poke Ken Ham.
For example, here's the first statement in the Copenhagen declaration.
We recognize the unlimited right to freedom of conscience, religion and belief, and that freedom to…
pharyngula | July 11, 2010The Supreme Court recently decided that campus student groups do not have to be subsidized by the university if they discriminate — so, for instance, the campus Christian club can't refuse to admit gays and also collect university money. Perfectly reasonable, to my mind.
It's driving flitterbrained conservatives mad, though. They can't discriminate? Injustice! Perhaps one of the craziest is Mike Adams, who has announced his intention to abuse the ruling at UNC Wilmington.
...when I get back to the secular university in August, I plan to round up the students I know who are most hostile to…