religion
razib | March 28, 2008Michael C. Moynihan has a article up at Reason, In Defense of Geert Wilders:
In response to the controversy surrounding Fitna, Wilders' website was knocked offline by his American host, Network Solutions; he has been repeatedly denounced by the government of Jan Peter Balkenende as a liability to Dutch "interests"; the country's shriveled monarch, Queen Beatrix, admonished that free speech doesn't allow one the right to offend; and last week 1000 "anti-racism" activists protested Fitna in Amsterdam's city center. As one demonstrator told Reuters, "There should be restrictions on what Wilders…
grrlscientist | March 28, 2008tags: Cheesus, humor, punny, satire, streaming video
According to this video, Cheesus was churned by a simple carpenter and his wife who was a virgin. Wow! [3:38].
oops. I meant to show you this video [0:51];
gregladen | March 27, 2008Bible scholar and NorthPointe Christian High School teacher Kent Dobson resigned Tuesday after he and the school board parted ways over Dobson's role in a Discovery Channel program, "Jesus: The Missing History."
"It was apparent to both Kent and the board that some of the views expressed on the program were outside of the Statement of Faith of NorthPointe Christian and therefore his resignation was given and accepted," according to a statement made by NorthPointe Superintendent Jim Hofman and e-mailed to NorthPointe parents.
Dobson, the 31-year-old son of retired Calvary Church pastor Ed…
esiegel | March 26, 2008WARNING: Sensationalism ahead! Are you kidding me, Newsweek? They really titled their article Will Physicists Find God? Presumably, the title is named because physicists are searching for the Higgs Particle, and the title is taken after Leon Lederman's (mediocre, IMO) book, The God Particle. Leon's a pretty humorous guy, and was told by his Editor (according to him, anyway) that he couldn't name his book, "The Goddamned Particle," which is what he called the Higgs, so he shortened it.
For better or worse, the article is an interview with Steven Weinberg, one of the most illustrous living…
gregladen | March 26, 2008Anne Coulter sends me emails now and then (she doesn't know who I am ... don't tell her) so I get the inside anorexia, I mean, the inside skinny on some of the moves the hard right wing are making now and then. Astonishingly, very little of this is ever of any interest. But the latest tidbit is somewhat interesting. The righties are creaming in their jeans about the republication (which actually happened last year) of Sebastian Adams' "time line of history."
This document from the 1870s is historically interesting because it is one of the early "time lines" and it does reflect what some…
oracknows | March 26, 2008A "magician" trying and failing to kill a skeptic with black magic.
It must have been hilarious to watch, especially if one speaks the language. Maybe they'll find a way to show it on American TV. Maybe I'll search YouTube when I feel better.
pharyngula | March 26, 2008This is a tragic story of the malign effects of religious ignorance.
An 11-year-old girl died after her parents prayed for healing rather than seek medical help for a treatable form of diabetes, police said Tuesday.
Everest Metro Police Chief Dan Vergin said Madeline Neumann died Sunday.
"She got sicker and sicker until she was dead," he said.
Vergin said an autopsy determined the girl died from diabetic ketoacidosis, an ailment that left her with too little insulin in her body, and she had probably been ill for about 30 days, suffering symptoms like nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst,…
gregladen | March 25, 2008You've probably already seen this: it is a bunch of crazy home schooling creationists demonstrating that they are utter, incurable morons. In this video, they are seen committing child abuse. Again and again and again.
I stole it from Pharangula, he stole it from Sandwalk.
DO YOU REALLY WANT TO APPEASE THESE PEOPLE, PEOPLE??????
Chris and Matt do.
gregladen | March 24, 2008Conservative Protestants tend to save less and accumulate fewer assets than other Americans, and their religious beliefs contribute to their low wealth, according to a new study by a Duke University sociologist.
Wow. I would have thought the opposite. I would have thought that protestants saved. I mean, Jesus saved...
"We know that wealth ownership is extremely unequal in the U.S., and large numbers of families have little or no savings. However, sociologists and economists have just begun to explore why that is," said Lisa A. Keister, Duke professor of sociology and author of "…
pontiff | March 24, 2008I always knew that T-Rex was a vegetarian:
"Trying to teach children not to believe everything they see." Shouldn't they add "and believe in everything they don't see?"
Update: I should have known Pharnygula would have posted this before me. Note to self: always check with PZ before posting something about creationism :)
evolvingthoughts | March 24, 2008
I once sat across the table from Alex Rosenberg, a well known philosopher, who argued persuasively that one cannot be both a Christian and accept natural selection. I think Alex intended this as a reductio for Christianity, as natural selection is both true by definition and also observed in the real world. Is it correct?
The recent Frame Wars (which followed the Clone Wars) suggest this is really what's at issue in the Expelled case (Yes, I said I wouldn't post on it, but this is broader than that kerfuffle). Is accepting evolution going to make nasty atheists of us all?
Let's think of…
evolvingthoughts | March 24, 2008
This is a nice review in New Scientist, obviously "framed" more in sorrow and confusion than in anger, which ends with
Throughout the entire experience, Maggie and I couldn't help feeling that the polarised audience in the theater was a sort of microcosm of America, and let me tell you - it's a scary place. I also couldn't help thinking that the intelligent design folks aren't being silenced, so much as they're being silent. Because when it comes to actually explaining anything, they've got nothing to say.
gregladen | March 24, 2008Myers? Myers? .... Myers? ..... Myers? (He's not here, Ben ... Your producer threw him out.)You know about the incredibly ironic dust up, whereby Expelled! producers kicked PZ myers out of line at a pre-release showing, but failed to notice that Richard Dawkins was standing right next to him. The evidence suggests that this major bit of bad publicity for Expelled! may have led to the movie being pulled from some pre-release showings. It it too early to be sure of this, and there may be several factors other than the utter embarrassment of this incident at play here. For instance, it is…
grrlscientist | March 24, 2008tags: christian gene, humor, satire, streaming video
Gay scientists have isolated the gene they believe makes people Christian. [1:15].
pharyngula | March 24, 2008
The laughing fellow on the left is Sanal Edamaruku, president of Rationalist International and atheist. The cranky old man in the robes on the right is Pandit Surinder Sharma, a self-described Tantrik Magician. The scene is in a studio on Indian television, where the magician is trying to kill the atheist with sorcery. Sharma had said he could kill anyone with sympathetic magic inflicted on a doll made of dough, and that he could accomplish this in a mere three minutes … so Edamaruku confidently offered himself as a victim. The old fake went on for hours and failed.
After nearly two hours,…
evolvingthoughts | March 23, 2008
So here's a neo-Thomist talking about species, and not getting it due to (i) prior metaphysical commitments, and (ii) not understanding Aristotle - dude, he never called anything a species, not in the biological sense. Eidos and genos were just ordinary words he coopted for the Metaphysics and Posterior Analytics. He used them interchangeably in the Liber Animalia, and sometimes didn't use either words for living kinds. Rule Number One: You can't do science by definitions.
Here's a furore (is that pronounced "few-roar" or "few-ror-ay"?) about whether to respond to the Expelled gaff. Nisbet…