Kooks
pharyngula | June 25, 2008I had no idea Ray Comfort was running an Agony Aunt column, but here you go. He got a rather snarky question:
There've been several hundred gay marriages enacted in California in the past few days. Maybe a couple of thousand by now, I haven't checked the numbers. And in the non-gay-marrying Midwest, they're fighting floods, while in California it's fair and dry. How is The Golden State managing to escape the wrath of your imaginary friend, I wonder?Weemaryanne
And then he answered it. Seriously. Isn't it nice how God has arranged that there is pain and suffering in every part of the world,…
pharyngula | June 22, 2008…there was What the Bleep Do We Know?, another crackpot movie made with interviews obtained under false pretenses and pushing a bogus ideological twist on science. Sean Carroll and David Albert talk about it on Bloggingheads.tv.
Man, that was a bad movie.
pharyngula | June 21, 2008Oh, dear. Earlier, I wrote about Ken Ham's visit to the Pentagon, a soul-shuddering thought if ever there was one, and it seems Ken has read it. He has replied with a blog entry titled Biology Professor Calls Me “Wackaloon”. Ken, Ken, Ken. You act shocked at the thought that one guy publicly stated that you were Mr Flaming Nutbar, but you shouldn't be. Millions of people, including some of the most knowledgeable biologists in the world, think just about every day that you are an airhead, an ass, a birdbrain, a blockhead, a bonehead, a boob, a bozo, a charlatan, a cheat, a chowderhead, a chump…
pharyngula | June 18, 2008Ken Ham, chief wackaloon at Answers in Genesis, was invited to speak…at a Pentagon prayer breakfast.
Just let that sink in.
There are people at the Pentagon who are in charge of planning where your sons and daughter and nephews and nieces and other beloved family members and friends will be sent to put their lives at risk. There are people there who can send missiles and bombers anywhere in the world. There are people there who control nuclear weapons.
And they think Ken Ham is a fine-and-dandy, clever feller.
It's almost enough to make me wish I could pray. It's not just Ham, either — it's…
pharyngula | June 18, 2008We've had a few examples here lately of crazy creationist talk, but some of the climate change denialists are just as bad. Look at this example of someone arguing that greenhouse gases can't cause global warming:
Moreover, the actual trapping of heat cannot raise an object's temperature in the first place. It only slows down heat loss.
It might be literally true, but it's operationally false in this case — that argument only works if there is no internal source of heat and there is no external input. If you slow down heat loss to a point where it is less than heat gain, you will get an…
pharyngula | June 17, 2008Guess who is going to be a guest on the contemptible Christian talk radio station in my area tomorrow, at 5pm Central time?
Chris Hedges. Expect lots of raving anti-atheist lunacy. Call in if you can.
pharyngula | June 17, 2008On the one hand, there is this incredibly tacky exploitation of the devout in the marketing of The Pope's Cologne. It's claimed to be produced according to some 19th century formula, straight from Pope Pius IX, who apparently went around dazzling the ladies with his bling and his expensive scent. On the other, there is this testimonial to the willingness of the devout to be taken. This poor woman's husband has just died, and she's handed a bottle labeled "The Pope's Cologne", so what happens?
What I experienced later will be a sight I will never forget!!! The widow used the cologne to "anoint…
pharyngula | June 17, 2008I just got an email listing 50 "proofs" for the existence of a god. It was also sent to a large number of skeptics, and included a plug for the dumb-as-bricks author's book — she's a flea who writes an imaginary scenario in which Richard Dawkins gets psychiatric counseling…from Jesus! If Debra Rufini's imaginary dialog is as bad as this list of "proofs" — more like a collection of cliches, bad quotes, and lies — I can't imagine wanting to slog through it.
Any one of these I'd happily rip to shreds, but 50 at once? The distilled dementia herein is overwhelming, and I'm sure she counts on that…
pharyngula | June 16, 2008How do these bigots get into high office so frequently? An Irish official in charge of the country's health care cheerfully made some outrageous accusations on the air.
Homosexuality is a mental illness, at least according to the head of Northern Ireland's health committee. Iris Robinson MP, who, with impeccable timing, put forth her views on a radio show while responding to the news that a local man had been badly beaten in a homophobic attack.
After apparently branding homosexuality as "disgusting, loathsome, nauseating, wicked and vile" she went on to recommend that "I have a very lovely…
pharyngula | June 13, 2008Somebody must have mistaken us for the local insane asylum, because my mailbox this afternoon is full of weird stuff. Could it be…could it be…Friday the 13th?
A suggestion for Vox Day: he should debate Jesus' General!
This one is kind of sad. A loon who thinks 9/11 was an American conspiracy has gone on a hunger strike, for the nebulous goal of getting a meeting with John McCain (The fool! McCain was in on it!) His wife and friends are rather distressed. Kooks aren't just for laughs; there are people behind them who are hurt by their behavior.
Note also: he's a professor of religious…
pharyngula | June 11, 2008Gosh. I sure hope the creationist extremists never get any substantial political power, because guess what some of them would like to do: they want to violently expel use crazy evolutionists. Ask Tom Willis, an utterly insane creationist (who is also, scarily, active in Kansas politics):
The arrogance displayed by the evolutionist class is totally unwarrented. The facts warrent the violent expulsion of
all evolutionists from civilized society. I am quite serious that
their danger to society is so great that, in a sane society, they
would be, at a minimum, denied a vote in the administration…
pharyngula | June 11, 2008I keep telling people there is a deep dangerous strain of insanity running through this country, and here's a perfect example: Bobby Jindal.
We've discovered that in an essay Jindal wrote in 1994 for the New Oxford Review, a serious right-wing Catholic journal, Jindal narrated a bizarre story of a personal encounter with a demon, in which he participated in an exorcism with a group of college friends. And not only did they cast out the supernatural spirit that had possessed his friend, Jindal wrote that he believes that their ritual may well have cured her cancer.
Reading the article leaves…
pharyngula | June 9, 2008A while back, I said, "Somebody somewhere is going to have to someday point me to some intelligent arguments for gods, because I've sure never found them. And I know, someone is going to complain that I always pick on the weak arguments…while not bothering to tell me what the strong ones are."
In a fit of unwarranted hubris, the odious Theodore Beale/Vox Day rushed to arrange a debate on a local conservative radio show. Unfortunately, he didn't stop to think — how would debating Vox Day, christofascist misogynist, beneficiary of wingnut welfare, prominent freakshow participant, possibly rebut…
pharyngula | June 8, 2008Richard Dawkins interviewed Rupert Sheldrake on Sheldrake's remarkable assertions about the existence of psychic abilities. Here's Sheldrake's rationalization:
He then said that in a romantic spirit he himself would like to believe in telepathy, but there just wasn't any evidence for it. He dismissed all research on the subject out of hand. He compared the lack of acceptance of telepathy by scientists such as himself with the way in which the echo-location system had been discovered in bats, followed by its rapid acceptance within the scientific community in the 1940s. In fact, as I later…
pharyngula | June 3, 2008I read these lame exercises in making excuses by theologians, and I don't understand how anyone can be foolish enough to fall for them. The latest example is by Edward Tingley, who babbles on painfully about how believers are the true skeptics, the true scientists, while claiming that the believers have a deeper, stronger knowledge than mere atheists. Yet nowhere in his ramble does Tingley ever give any evidence or rational reason to believe in his god or any god — in fact, he triumphantly declares that there is no evidence — god exists, but (I can scarcely believe he makes this argument…
pharyngula | June 1, 2008Those bastards — the Anglicans are trying to appropriate Dr Who.
A conference of Church of England vicars watched a handful of episodes from the sci-fi series to study its religious parallels, particularly its themes of evil, resurrection and redemption.
Similarities between the Doctor and Christ, as well as whether the evil Daleks are capable of changing, were also examined.
"There are countless examples of Christian symbolism in Doctor Who, which we can use to get across ideas that can otherwise be difficult to explain,'' The Sunday Telegraph in Britain quoted Andrew Wooding, a spokesman…
pharyngula | May 29, 2008Let's not ever turn into Michelle Malkin, mmm-kay? She got Dunkin' Donuts to pull an ad…because she didn't like the scarf the model was wearing, and decided it was pro-Islamic.
It was paisley.
Typical dhimmi traitor in jihadist-appeasing garb
It's not like the model was saying "Death to America" or "This iced coffee is perfect for cooling me down after a suicide bombing" or even, "Christians, shut up!" She's not even in traditional Islamic dress — you can see her face, and a bit of her chest. But she is wearing a scarf, and as we all know, good Americans wear only traditional American clothes…
pharyngula | May 28, 2008My brief summary of the position of apologists for religion, The Courtier's Reply, continues to rankle the believers, and they continue to make responses that only make me laugh at their cluelessness. The standard rebuttal is to claim that I was making an argument in favor of ignorance in the face of theological scholarship, followed by a laundry list of esteemed theologians … but never, and I mean absolutely never, even the slightest attempt to address the core of my criticism — not once have they presented a solid, confirmable reason to believe in a deity.
Here's the latest example, and it…
pharyngula | May 24, 2008Seriously. And if you want to see the very definition of 'clueless git', watch this video of Andy Schlafly droning on. Would you believe he accuses wikipedia of bias, and then says that he founded Conservapædia to strengthen Christian faith?