religion
gregladen | October 13, 2009Chesley Sullenberger is the pilot who successfully crash-landed his plane in the Hudson River after both engines were lost to goose strikes. His book, Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters, is out today.
A while ago he was asked at which point he started praying as the plain went down. He said ...
... that he was not praying, but rather, concentrating on how to land the plane safely.
The writeup of his book and the publicity does not talk about god or prayer, despite the fact that this event is constantly being called "The Miracle on the Hudson."
Simply put, I would like to…
pharyngula | October 13, 2009I woke up this morning after a poor night's rest, with a surly brain and tired eyes, and what do I behold as I scan through the last few day's worth of email? Stories of faith that piss me off. So allow me to purge my demons by slapping around a few religious goofballs — it'll take the edge of my headache and lighten my step for the rest of the day. Don't worry, I'll start off easy and work up to the really bad ones.
John Shelby Spong is giving some lectures. You know, I think I'd like Spong as a person, and I think he espouses some worthy humanist values, but jeez, he always comes off as a…
pharyngula | October 12, 2009I was sent this scan of a delightful article from Watchtower Magazine — you know, that bizarre piece of pulp from the Jehovah's Witnesses. Look at their list of wicked temptations that might lead a faithful person into a life of sin. Take special note of #2.
"A well-intentioned teacher urges you to pursue higher education at a university." Oooh. Sends a chill down my spine.
I guess I'm even more evil than I, or the Jehovah's Witnesses, can imagine. I've urged many students to go on to graduate school, which as all of you advanced students know, is where all the real licentiousness,…
gregladen | October 12, 2009 17th century Arabic anatomy drawing, from the Advances of Islamic Sciences web site. In some Islamic sects, drawing living things is not allowed. As a very practical matter, this excludes students from taking part in certain activities in science classrooms.
During the Bell Museum Slapdown panel last week, Myers brought up differences between countries in public attitudes towards education. Mooney and Nisbet brought up the difficulty of making fundamental changes via “Popular Science” approaches, which I take to include public, popular culture as well as standard education (which is,…
emjohnson | October 11, 2009
You know, it could work. Consider the Vatican's net worth as reported by Paul Velelli in the London Independent:
⢠The Vatican Bank, Istituto per le Opere di Religione, manages £2bn of assets. It does not reveal its profits or dividends, which are paid directly to the Pope. It enjoys the status of a central bank and has a dealing room adorned with crucifixes and papal portraits where 20 traders work.
⢠Despite the Vatican's assets, including the art collection in the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel, it relies heavily on support from American dioceses.
⢠The Pope owns more than 1,…
oracknows | October 11, 2009I may have been a bit hard on Richard Dawkins lately, but, if he believed in saints, Dawkins would deserve sainthood for keeping his cool in the face of so much concentrated idiocy coming from Bill O'Reilly:
A couple of lovely O'Reilly quotes:
"I'm throwing in with Jesus because you guys can't tell us how it all got here?"
"When you guys figure it out, then come back to me."
Then, of course, O'Reilly couldn't resist pulling out the "fascism" gambit.
Geez, I don't think I could have restrained myself as well as Richard Dawkins did with Bill O'Reilly. In the face of such blustery nonsense,…
grrlscientist | October 10, 2009tags: atheist life, godlessness, streaming video
Being an atheist, you believe that this is the only life, and live it to the fullest. Atheists and skeptics lack proof and evidence of certain deities and spiritual beliefs. So there is no intent for us to harshly bash other religions and forms, for we humbly have our own perspectives in life.
If you however think that atheists are a threat to the general community, first take a look at the mirror. Millions of people have died just because of religion, "religious" wars, and rejection due to contradictory beliefs.
"Skeptic does not mean him who…
gregladen | October 9, 2009You'll recall that it was recently reported that the Californial Science Center, which is loosely affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, had planned a screening of "Darwin's Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record" which is apparently a creationist documentary.
Well, now, the venue has cancelled the showing and the ID people are all lathered up about it.
The group claims the cancellation was an act of censorship, made after the center was pressured by the Smithsonian Institution, but the center chalked it up to a contract issue, without elaborating.
Coined "The Darwin…
gregladen | October 9, 2009A recently published statement on current scientific knowledge on cosmic evolution and biological evolution from the Pontifical Academy of Sciences concludes: "The extraordinary progress in our understanding of evolution and the place of man in nature should be shared with everyone. ... Furthermore, scientists have a clear responsibility to contribute to the quality of education, especially as regards the subject of evolution." The statement appears in the proceedings of "Scientific Insights into the Evolution of the Universe and of Life," a plenary session of the Pontifical Academy of…
gregladen | October 9, 2009This just in from the NCSE:
Will a Massachusetts bill entitled "An Act Relative to Protecting the Religious Freedom of Students" encourage the discussion of creationism in public school science classes? That's what a cosponsor of the bill, Representative Elizabeth Poirier (R-14th Bristol), told the Cape Cod Times (October 7, 2009). The bill, House No. 376, received a hearing on October 6, 2009, at which, according to the Times, "No one testified against the bill, which has bipartisan support and is expected to pass favorably through the Joint Committee on Education."
Evolution is in fact not…
gregladen | October 8, 2009And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness. The unclean will not journey on it; it will be for those who walk in that Way; wicked fools will not go about on it."
-Isaiah 35:8
A Repost
So, I'm having dinner over at Lynn Fellman Studios with Lynn, Genie Scott of NCSE who is in town for a conference, and a variety of friends and colleagues including the recently decorated Randy Moore. And I bring up the idea that I 35 ... the main north-south interstate through the Twin Cities, the one with the recent bridge collapse, is seen by some crazy religious people as a special…
pharyngula | October 8, 2009The Supreme Court just heard arguments in the case of Buono v. Salazar, a case which is challenging the use of a gigantic cross on federal land, which was initially erected to honor WWI dead but has now become a cause celebre for the wanna-be theocrats who want official endorsement of America as a Christian nation. This exchange with Scalia is simply stunning: the man is an incompetent ideologue who I wouldn't trust to rule on a parking ticket. Can we have him impeached?
Here's how he reacted when told that non-Christians might object a teeny-tiny bit to having their dead memorialized with a…
pharyngula | October 8, 2009By now, you probably already know that Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz and Ada E. Yonath won the Nobel in chemistry for their work on the structure of the ribosome, and a well-deserved award it is. They (and many others) put a lot of work into puzzling out how this central feature of the cell works.
However, wouldn't you know it, there are always religious parasites around who want to coopt a scientific discovery.
What strikes me today, however is that scientists who receive these honors win such praise for what they discover, not what they create. Through their cleverness, hard…
emjohnson | October 6, 2009This is painful to watch. If you can make it through to the attempted moonwalk I'll give you a cookie.
H/T Life Without a Net
mikethemadbiologist | October 6, 2009The wackaloons over at Conservapedia have a new project: releasing a new version of the Bible. No, really:
Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations. There are three sources of errors in conveying biblical meaning:
lack of precision in the original language, such as terms underdeveloped to convey new concepts of Christianity
lack of precision in modern language
translation bias in converting the original language to the modern one.
Of these three sources of errors, the last introduces the largest error, and the biggest component of that error…
gregladen | October 6, 2009This is a site I pointed out to you about a year ago, but it is worth another visit.
pharyngula | October 6, 2009I get thrown the miracle of the shroud of Turin on a regular basis — just last week someone confronted me with it, basically saying "A-ha! Jesus existed because there's an old scrap of cloth with a face on it!" It doesn't matter that I point out that it's been dated to the 13th century, and was nothing more than a profit-making 'relic' for churches that would also hawk Jesus's foreskin and John the Baptist's pinky bone. They'd usually retort that it was not humanly possible to make the shroud, so it had to be a religious miracle.
Now I've got more ammo. The Shroud of Turin has been recreated…
pharyngula | October 6, 2009There is an utterly ludicrous evangelical 'course' which has been advertising in England by slapping big ol' polls on the wall. Like this one:
As is, those boxes are blank…but man, they're just begging to be filled in, and a lot of people can't resist walking up to them and marking the right answer. Unfortunately, the transit police are then arresting them.
There's a metaphor there. Looking at this Alpha Course, what I see is a narrow evangelical game that pretends to be an open arena for skeptical inquiry, but is actually nothing of the kind. Their ads are full of questions that by their…