religion
jrosenhouse | August 11, 2009Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum have another of their New Atheist bashing essays up, this time in The Los Angeles Times. It is, alas, a dreadful piece of work. P. Z. Myers has already wieghed in here, as has Jerry Coyne here.
The actual arguments in the op-ed are standard fare: The New Atheists are needlessly confrontational, they scare away moderates, blah blah blah.
The novelty here is the bizarre, and very misleading, way they go about making their points. Even as they encourage mutual understanding and nonconfrontationalism, they are perfectly happy to ignore their own advice in…
laelaps | August 10, 2009
Photography was strictly forbidden. It did not matter that the objects I was about to see had been photographed many, many times before. Security demanded that I leave my camera bag behind. I was in their house and had to play by their rules.
Once inside, I took my time as I walked through the gallery of religious artifacts. There was no hurry. Outside of myself, my two friends, and two or three other visitors, no one was around to jostle or push for a better view of the bibles, ceremonial clothes, or pottery. They were interesting, but they were not what I had come to see.
She was laid out…
gregladen | August 9, 2009As an anthropologists, I have a LOT of thoughts about this. I'd love to know your thoughts.
(Sorry the embedding is so obnoxious. There was no obvious way to remove the ads.)
Hat tip: This site
oracknows | August 9, 2009Too bad it's missing one big one. There's nothing about the birther movement there:
See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.
I think that about sums it all up: moon hoax, 9/11, the Illuminati, the Masons. What more could there be?
grrlscientist | August 9, 2009tags: Test Your Faith Vision, humor, funny, Edward Current, streaming video
This video is a timed quiz and it asks, "Among all the horrible things in the world, how quickly can you pick out our loving Creator's blessings?" Find out with this simple quiz. [4:33]
What was your score on this quiz? My score indicates that I should give up and go back to my sinful way of life. YEEhaw! I can hardly wait!
gregladen | August 8, 2009A group of scientists, students and secularists -- 304 in all -- visited Petersburg, Kentucky on Friday to tour exhibits on display at the Creation Museum.
The visitors are in town attending a conference of the Secular Student Alliance, a group formed "to organize, unite, educate and serve students and student communities that promote the ideals of scientific and critical inquiry, democracy, secularism, and human based ethics."
Read the rest at ABC News
Hat Tip PZ
gregladen | August 8, 2009I wish I coulda been there ... by all accounts it sounds like the Creozerg visit to the Creation Museum went well. A couple of kids were thrown out because they said things or whatever, which is good because it shows that the whole point of the creation museum is to express, secure, and protect a particular point of view and to supress others. For your entertainment, I've collected a handful of links from the event. Please visit these links, and if you are a social neworking kinda person, digg-em-up or stumbleuponthem or whatever. It would be very nice, would it not, if over the next few…
oracknows | August 8, 2009This may be a few months old, but I only just saw it the other night. Seems like it would work:
CreedocideUploaded by greenfaace. - See more comedy videos.
My only question is: Where is the other major monotheistic religion?
gregladen | August 7, 2009I'd like to take a moment to address some of your remarks about how the tactics of "New Atheists" are just too uncivil....
Read the rest at Crowded Head, Cozy Bed
gregladen | August 7, 2009The CreoZerg (and I'm not entirely sure what a Creo-Zerg is) is underway. PZ Myers and the atheists are moving in to the creation museum. Details here. Twittering here.
tqa | August 7, 2009
Earlier this week, the Des Moines bus system abruptly removed ads from their vehicles that had been purchased by an atheist group. The bus system had received numerous calls and complaints, and apparently some people actually refused to ride busses that had the ad. The Governor of Iowa, when asked, said that he "was disturbed personally" by the ads:
Iowa Governor Chet Culver has commented on the controversy: "I was disturbed personally...by the advertisement, I can understand why other Iowans were also disturbed by the message that it sent. But, we'll see how it unfolds,"
Culver avoided…
razib | August 7, 2009On another weblog someone alluded to the sex difference in religious belief among black Americans, to the effect that it was more pronounced than among whites. Is this true? I decided to check the GSS, and found something interesting, though not too surprising. It's a robust cross-cultural finding that women are more religious than men, and it holds for the United States. But how does it break down across demographics?
Know God Exists
Male
Female
Difference
Proportional Difference
All
55.3
70.7
15.4
28%
Whites
52.4
67.8
15.4
29%
Blacks
73.7
86.6
12.9
18%
College+
44.7
58.9…
gregladen | August 6, 2009So, I have this friend who lives in the Midwest (nearest large city of consequence is Chicago1), who shall remain nameless (well, she has a name and all but I'm not telling you what it is) who brought up an interesting, not unusual, and sad dilemma.
She has just moved into a new living situation, and has several roommates none of whom she knows very well. During a conversation not long after she moved in, one of the roommates made a god reference during a conversation. This was a comment that clearly indicated that this person is religious, probably Christian. It was also one of those…
pharyngula | August 6, 2009I tried to watch this new video from Edward Current, but it turns out my Faith-Vision is legally blind.
gregladen | August 5, 2009..that even when you try diligently to separate the politics of religion vs. creationism and to say again and again that religion can go along its merry way as long as it stays out of the science classroom, people like Casey Luskin will still find the words in your rhetoric to accuse you of attacking religion.
Back in May, Genie Scott appeared with me and Lynn Fellman on Atheist Talk Radio, where we discussed science education. Genie is the director of the National Center for Science Education.
In a recent posting on the Discovery Institute web site, Casey Luskin makes the contrast between…
nisbetmc | August 4, 2009
One of the overlooked findings of the Pew survey of U.S.-based scientists is that roughly 51% say that they either believe in God (33%) or a higher power (18%) and roughly 30% self-identify as Protestant (20%) or Catholic (10%). The findings cut against a commonly voiced claim by many outspoken atheists that scientists are overwhelmingly non-religious and that a scientific worldview is incompatible with religious belief.
In addition, among the sample of AAAS members surveyed, roughly 2/3 of scientists ages 18-34 say that they believe in God (42%) or a higher power (24%). This is in sharp…
pharyngula | August 3, 2009Israel has no oil, but some people wish it did, for the worst of reasons. This is an amazing story of a con artist and his willing victims…and nothing is better at leading the sheep to slaughter than religion.
When James Cojanis heard the first rumblings of Armageddon, he was sitting in his San Jose home with the radio tuned to a popular Christian show called The Prophecy Club. Featured that day was a charismatic Texas oilman named Harold "Hayseed" Stephens. Speaking in the rousing cadence of a Southern preacher, he told listeners that "the greatest oil field on Earth is under the southwest…