religion
oracknows | October 23, 2013One of the things that I've noticed over the last (nearly) nine years blogging about pseudocience, quackery, and conspiracy theories is that a person who believes in one form of woo has a tendency to believe in other forms of woo. You've probably noticed it too. I've lost count of the examples that I've seen of antivaccinationists who are into other forms of quackery, of quacks who are 9/11 Truthers, of HIV/AIDS denialists who are anthropogenic global warming denialists, and nearly every combination of these and many other forms of pseudoscience, pseudohistory, and denialism. Several years…
oracknows | August 27, 2013If there's one thing antivaccinationists hate having pointed out to them, it's that they are antivaccine. If you really want to drive an antivaccinationist up the wall, point out that they are antivaccine. Sure, there are a few antivaccinationists who openly self-identify as antivaccine and are even proud of it, but most of them realize that society frowns upon them—as well it should given how antivaccinationists are responsible for outbreaks of vaccine-preventable disease. Moreover, most antivaccine activists really believe that vaccines are harmful. They're wrong, of course, but that doesn'…
pharyngula | August 9, 2013
I had a conversation with Tony Ortega about L. Ron Hubbard's book, A History of Man: Antediluvian Technology. He is the author of a blog, Tony Ortega on Scientology, and he had cruelly sent me a copy Hubbard's book specifically to inflame my already enlarged outrage gland.
The post there emphasizes everything Hubbard got wrong about evolution, but let me tell you: there isn't much evolution or history of Man in History of Man. The bulk of this book, written in the preening style of a pretentious fourth-grader, weebles on and on about his tech and how it can cure cancer, illuminated with…
stoat | July 26, 2013Non-beardy says “I’ve met the head of Wonga and I’ve had a very good conversation and I said to him quite bluntly we’re not in the business of trying to legislate you out of existence, we’re trying to compete you out of existence” (see-also the Gruan). When I first heard this while driving into work I mis-heard it (or slightly more accurately, at that point the news was new, and exactly what he meant by this wasn't clear): I thought the CofE were intending to actually loan out money, on a commercial-but-nicer basis. Thankfully they aren't going to do that: it would most certainly have been a…
oracknows | May 27, 2013Those of us who support science-based medicine and do our part to expose and combat quackery are naturally outraged at how rarely quacks are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. All too often, all we can expect is for doctors practicing such chicanery to lose their medical licenses and be temporarily shut down. I say "temporarily" because it's all too often that such physicians manage to obtain licenses in other states. Hopping from location to location, such doctors can often practice for years relatively unmolested by the law, because most states have relatively ineffective state…
aardvarchaeology | March 25, 2013In this well-written, painstakingly annotated and beautifully designed book, physicist Baruch Sterman (with contributor Judy Taubes Sterman) traces the history and prehistory of a certain blue pigment, along with its cultural and religious significance through the ages. It's what the Torah and Talmud calls tekhelet, and it's made from a gland harvested from Murex sea snails.
Though greatly interested in history, archaeology and biology, I find myself poorly equipped to engage with the book's subject matter. Or put differently, I don't think I'm part of its intended audience. Because there's a…
sastyk | March 14, 2013It fascinates me that so many people in the media expected the new Pope to be a flaming American-style social liberal. Consider the New York Times which this morning notes with surprise:
But Cardinal Bergoglio is also a conventional choice, a theological conservative of Italian ancestry who vigorously backs Vatican positions on abortion, gay marriage, the ordination of women and other major issues — leading to heated clashes with Argentina’s left-leaning president.
As Rod Dreher points out this morning, this doesn't mean he's conventional, it means he's CATHOLIC - that is, he believes in…
gregladen | February 2, 2013The Public Religion Research Institute has conducted a poll about the Superbowl They found:
27% of Americans believe that God plays a role in determining which team winds a sporting event.
53% of Americans believe that god rewards athletes who have faith with good health and success
42% of Americans don't think that those 53% of Americans are correct.
By religion, there is variation in the percentage of people who believe that god determines the outcome of sporting events, or that god rewards athletes of faith. They have a graph:
50% of Americans are fine with athletes making public shows…
stoat | January 15, 2013 Conservapedia, as any fule kno, is The Trustworthy Encyclopedia. On matters of politics or "difficult" science like dinosaurs, perhaps one might expect a slight divergence from reality. But on well understood matters like relativity? All will be well, Shirley. But someone posted their E=mc2 article as a screenshot to facebook, so I checked up, and lo! It is true: they really are utterly nutso. We all knew that anyway really, so this is just for fun (if you want details, it looks like rationalwiki is useful). Quoting:
E=mc² is Einstein's famous formula which asserts that the energy (E) which…
gregladen | December 14, 2012When Atheists talk, people listen.
Then, they tell them to shut up.
David Phillip Norris of the Twin Cities recently wrote an article for MNPost called With talk of tolerance and equality, one group is still forgotten: atheists. This was written as a reflection on the just finished and rather dramatic fight against an anti same sex marriage constitutional amendment on the ballot in Minnesota. By today's electoral standards, the amendment was soundly defeated.
So while I’m thrilled that we can start talking about the possibility of voting “yes” instead of “no” for same-sex marriage in…
gregladen | December 2, 2012This post has been moved, with a copy of the very important comments, to THIS LOCATION, otherwise known as Greg Laden's Blog.
Please click through and visit the post, and the blog!
gregladen | November 16, 2012Atheist Voices of Minnesota: an Anthology of Personal Stories was released earlier this year. It is chock full of personal stories about the journey from some place to atheism, written by Minnesota authors such as Norman Barrett Wiik, Elizabeth Becker, Kenneth Bellew, Ryan Benson, August Berkshire, Donald L. Boese, Ryan Bolin, Jill Carlson, Justin M. Chase, Greta Christina, Linda Davis, Andrew Downs, Shannon Drury, Anthony Faust, Paul Gramstad, Mike Haubrich, Kori Hennessy, Peter N. Holste, Michelle M. Huber, Eric Jayne, George Kane, Greg Laden, Bill Lehto, M. A. Melby, PZ Myers, Robin…
gregladen | November 5, 2012This is an interview at Atheists Talk (TV), an update on the war on science, and a rare opportunity to see me wearing a suit.
The first few seconds are sound free; do not adjust your television set.
I mentioned the NCSE, here's their web site.
Here's a couple of books related to the topic:
Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future by Chris Mooney and Sheril
Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America by Shawn Otto
Something on crying babies and vaccination is here, and something on milk allergy is here.
Minnesota Atheists YouTube channel is…
gregladen | October 16, 2012Or even better yet, how about the original? It's going up for sale on ebay. Here's my copy of the letter:
And the ebay site is here.
The letter was written to the author of Choose Life The Biblical Call To Revolt, and includes this famous comment:
... The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and…
milhayser | October 10, 2012
Paul C. Broun by U.S. Department of Agriculture
Congressman Paul Broun struck something into the hearts of empiricists everywhere with his remark that evolution, embryology, and the Big Bang theory are "lies straight from the pit of hell." Some of us were put off, others angered, possibly amused, or else afraid for the fate of the nation. Greg Laden writes, "this man is saying that the Bible, which he takes absolutely literally, teaches us how to run our public policy and everything in society." And while Broun may be on the fringe of modern Christianity, he typifies today's Republican…
oracknows | October 2, 2012I suppose it's possible that there might be doubt that Rob Schneider has become a complete and total antivaccine wingnut. Possible, but not reasonable. After all, he's shown his cards and risen to prominence with his attacks on vaccine science made as part of his effort to oppose the passage of California Bill AB 2109, which was finally passed and signed by Governor Jerry Brown, but not without an attempt to water it down by adding a pointless (and probably unconstitutional) set of instructions for implementation in a signing statement. Leading up to this, Schneider had "made a name for…
stoat | September 13, 2012 Good grief of course people are mocking Islam, if Islam leads to this kind of stupidity. They are pretty well mocking themselves. Bit of a shame they need to kill people to do it.
Bozos.
(Incidentally, did you know that Depictions of Muhammad are only mostly [*] forbidden (in those versions of Islam which do forbid it) because the "key concern is that the use of images can encourage idolatry". Which means images that take the piss are fine).
[*] Updated: apologies for the inaccurate paraphrase of my source.
jrosenhouse | August 30, 2012I have a new post up over at HuffPo. I discuss, and find wanting, the argument made by Daniel Sarewitz in this op-ed from Nature. Here's a taste:
Sarewitz' argument backfires in that it calls our attention to the key difference between science and religion. It is sometimes said that religion answers questions about meaning and purpose, but this is not accurate. The correct formulation is that religion makes assertions about meaning and purpose. Sorely lacking is any reliable method for establishing the correctness of those assertions. Science's contribution to these conversations is a set…
oracknows | August 27, 2012I might as well lay it on the line right at the beginning. It's not as though it will surprise my regular readers given what I've been writing here, most recently about when Rob Schneider played the Nazi card to express his opposition to California Bill AB2109. It's a bill that does something very simple and very necessary; basically it requires that parents seeking a nonmedical exemption from school vaccine mandates actually visit a health care professional to provide informed consent before an exemption is granted. Yet, even suggesting that maybe—just maybe—nonmedical exemptions are too…
jrosenhouse | August 26, 2012Yoram Hazony, writing in the Wall Street Journal, says He does! I suppose that's good news for someone like me, but the basis for Hazony's argument strikes me as a bit dubious. Here's the opening:
Today's debates over the place of religion in modern life often showcase the claim that belief in God stifles reason and science. As Richard Dawkins writes in his best-seller “The God Delusion,” religious belief “discourages questioning by its very nature.” In “The End of Faith,” his own New Atheist manifesto, Sam Harris writes that religion represents “a vanishing point beyond which rational…