Pharyngula

Nice lecture

Category: Humor

One of my students said I had to show you this, because it's exactly like one of my lectures.

Posted by PZ Myers at 4:10 PM • 59 Comments

A little light of reason shines in Indiana

Category: Religion

The Indianapolis Star has been running a pointless little prayer on page A2 of the newspaper for years. Not any more; the editor has decided to discontinue it. It isn't because it has suddenly become a mouthpiece for militant atheism, though:

We appreciate that this has been a long tradition in The Star. But we are re-evaluating our mission and all that we do. I believe that prayer is a very personal thing and that offering prayers is something for individuals and their churches. We are a newspaper, not a church.

Also, we do live in a society in which there are many, many different beliefs. We respect all religions, and the prayer was written only from the Christian perspective.

Because of those issues, we have decided to drop the prayer. I'm confident that people will continue to offer their own prayers reflecting their own lives and faith needs.

Good for the Star! As you might guess, this decision has triggered lots of complaints. Here's one that I thought was very funny.

Very disappointing decision. If you are able to print the horoscopes, then you should print a prayer …please reconsider.

They are on a par with horoscopes, aren't they? Just as ineffective, and just as ridiculous…but that's not an argument for keeping either of them.

Posted by PZ Myers at 1:58 PM • 60 Comments

Excuses, excuses

Category: Humor

There are also reasons D, E, F…etc., that I'm sure any sufficiently apologetic Christian will trot out for us, but they're all of ever-increasing absurdity. Most seem to subscribe to a less comical version of A, blaming his reluctance to manifest on a Divine Snit over the Fall.

Personally, I favor answer answer Ω: there never was any god to blame. Simple, clear, reasonable, and it fits all the facts.

Posted by PZ Myers at 12:33 PM • 73 Comments

Orac on Gupta

Category: Politics

Short summary: unimpressed.

But then what else could you expect from a running dog reactionary old guard supporter of bourgeois ideology?^*

^*Let us not linger over the uncomfortable fact that I actually agree with him in this case.

Posted by PZ Myers at 12:24 PM • 26 Comments

First out of the starting gates: Oklahoma!

Category: Creationism

The state of erv now has an embarrassing distinction: Oklahoma has put up the first anti-evolution bill for 2009. The year isn't even a week old and they're already pushing this nonsense.

Senate Bill 320 (document), prefiled in the Oklahoma Senate and scheduled for a first reading on February 2, 2009, is apparently the first antievolution bill of 2009. Entitled the "Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act," SB 320 would, if enacted, require state and local educational authorities to "assist teachers to find more effective ways to present the science curriculum where it addresses scientific controversies" and permit teachers to "help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories pertinent to the course being taught." The only topics specifically mentioned as controversial are "biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning."

Expect these so-called "academic freedom" bills that are really stealth creationism bills to pop up like crusty pimples all over the country all year long.

Posted by PZ Myers at 11:51 AM • 65 Comments

The ways of the Bush administration are inscrutable and stupid

Category: Politics

Thankfully, these are the waning days of the awful, incompetent, no-good Bush/Cheney presidency, years we will try to forget in the decades to come. What will help is that we don't have a good name for this decade — The Oughties? Bleh — and we're just going to have to refer to them as the years with a couple of zeroes in the middle.

This odious administration is not going out gracefully, however, but is instead leaving with a flurry of last-minute knifings of our country. Some are exploitive efforts to pay back interests to whom the conservatives are beholden, such as the stripping of environmental protection laws (which the next administration may be disinclined to roll back). Others just seem inexplicably arbitrary and petty, the work of small-minded tyrants who want to get in one last poke while they can.

Here's one such example: the Department of Justice is redefining "service animal". They've redefined "animal" to mean "dog"! I've got nothing against dogs, but there are people who use non-canine animals as service animals, and suddenly they are going to be stripped of the legal rights associated with service animal use.

Don't ask me why. I think it's just because they can.

Posted by PZ Myers at 8:37 AM • 108 Comments

Unclear on the concept

Category: Kooks

Speaking of people who can't understand basic science, here's Denyse O'Leary:

A couple of years ago, after I had been following the controversy for several years, I found myself listening to a long lecture by a Darwinist, replete with bafflegab and pretty lame examples. Finally, sensing (correctly) that I was unconvinced, he proclaimed to me, "You just don't understand how natural selection works, do you?"

And suddenly, the penny dropped. What he meant was that I just don't believe in magic. I can't make myself believe in magic; I haven't been able to since I was a child.

Natural selection is not magic; there are no miracles, no unexplained steps in the process, and once you grasp it, it's simple and obvious. That O'Leary equates the two means the correct answer to the question was "yes".

The real funny part, though, is that O'Leary is an intelligent design advocate and ardent Catholic. She does believe in magic!

Posted by PZ Myers at 8:17 AM • 163 Comments

The scientist in the white coat

Category: Creationism

I am genuinely amused at this caricature of scientists from a creationist site. How many of you believed these things?

• Everyone is biased. Scientists just happen to be biased in favor of reality, and have a set of tools that help them overcome predispositions that might lead them into error (Non-scientists have the same tools. Creationists just prefer not to use them.)

• Again, they try to be objective.

• Hah! Anyone who has done any science at all knows that a good part of the process is spent winnowing out sources of error.

• He wears a…wait, what? In a list containing such grand and unattainable virtues as lack of bias, objectivity, and infallibility, this joker throws in choice of attire? Something doesn't fit here.

  Need I add that the title is about "the scientist in the white coat," so by definition he or she would be wearing a white coat?

Now watch as our creationist tries to correct these myths:

Read on »

Posted by PZ Myers at 6:14 PM • 214 Comments

I'm not so sure about this pick

Category: Politics

It looks like Obama has picked Sanjay Gupta to be surgeon general. He seems a bit of a lightweight, to me — he's mainly known as a congenial talking head on television news. He's also an apologist for US health care, which does not give me any confidence that we can expect the slightest effort towards health care reform. I suspect Obama has just picked a pleasant smiling face to act as a placeholder, and that disappoints me.

We'll have to see how that ol' conservative, Orac, reacts to this news.

Posted by PZ Myers at 3:56 PM • 189 Comments

Today the buses, tomorrow…the world!

Category: Godlessness

The atheist bus campaign has been a great success, and now it's about to expand, with godless signs going up all over. This is good news for reason — so many people are appalled at the blind faith of their neighbors, but since they don't know anyone who shares their views, they are reluctant to speak up. This is exactly the sort of thing that makes more rationalists aware that they are not alone, and that they can speak out.

Posted by PZ Myers at 2:37 PM • 100 Comments

Jack Chick explains the cracker

Category: Kooks

Did you know the Catholic church was established by Satan? You would if you read Chick comics. We also get the communion ritual explained for us.

You know what will happen if he doesn't. He will burn in hell for all eternity!

I do rather like the idea of an itty-bitty Jesus taking a dive off a cloud to land in a cracker, though. Wham!

Posted by PZ Myers at 11:24 AM • 177 Comments

Funny pages in the weblog awards

Category: Weblogs

You know you're looking at a right-leaning site when the consistently awful comic strip, Day By Day, is doing well. But the Best Comic Strip category in the 2008 Weblog Awards does have two great entries: Jesus and Mo, and xkcd. If there is any justice in the universe, one of those two must win!

Posted by PZ Myers at 10:39 AM • 41 Comments

Darwin on the BBC

Category: Evolution

Those Brits keep showing us up by unashamedly trumpeting good science on television and radio. The BBC has a whole collection of media on Darwin right now, most of it good.

Most. One thing I simply do not get is the infatuation with the idea that evolution has stopped for humans. I am baffled at how anyone can take such an idea seriously, yet there's Steven Jones again making this peculiar claim.

Posted by PZ Myers at 9:26 AM • 68 Comments

I'm in good company

Category: Religion

The Christian Anti-Defamation Commission is angry.

It is time for the Christian bashing to stop and for Christians to no longer be treated like second-class citizens.

Second-class citizens who are virtually the only people who can get elected to political office, who whine piteously if anyone fails to kneel before their sacraments, who also claim that this is a Christian nation, who use their faith to justify war, corruption, oppression, greed, and who use their privileged position to deny non-Christians basic rights. Yeah, right. They're a gang of hypocritical thugs with a persecution complex. It it time for Christian bashing to increase, I should think.

Now they've compiled a top ten list of Christian bashing in America for 2008, and oh, it is a pathetic thing. It is largely a list of people who mocked Christian excess: first on the list is the Proposition 8 Musical, starring Jack Black as Jesus. Bill Maher gets mentioned twice. I am in there for throwing a cracker in the trash. A sports announcer used obscenities. Come on, where are the lions? There aren't any.

Most ridiculous of all, they have to invent slurs. Apparently, Barack Obama's very existence is an example of Christian bashing.

According to research into President Elect Obama's own statements about faith, and an examination of Obama's position on moral issues, CADC has determined that by any biblical and historic Christian standard, Barack Obama is not a Christian, although he claims he is a "devout Christian."

That's it. Because they've redefined Obama's beliefs as non-Christian, the fact that he holds those beliefs constitutes a defamation of Christianity. Poor pitiful CADC.

Posted by PZ Myers at 7:42 AM • 488 Comments

Ping-pong with a creationist

Category: Creationism

Would you believe that Nick Lally has responded — well, reacted might be the better word — to our criticism of his silly letter? This is a reply to one of the editors to whom he had sent his original mail.

Dear "Yo", for lack of a name....since you have not yet given me yours while you put me out there for others to read.

With the exception of a few bright guys who challenged my facts, the rest of the responses were lame, personal and disrespectful. So typical of you atheists.

But I must admit, I did get a laugh of myself for miss-typing "Louis Pasteur".

But for now, allow me to explain my position on only one of the responses I read....and later I will respond to the other responses that are worthy:

Your writer wrote: "Actually, we do have transitions between single-celled and multi-cellular organisms. We do have transitions between invertebrates and vertebrates -- look up protochordates sometime. Your ignorance of these basic facts is not evidence"

I tell you the following about Choanoflagellates: These one cellular animals are designed with a propulsion system that is similar to an outboard motor. They have a propeller (whip) shaft, etc, etc. Just look at this diagram and you would think you were looking at a motor. [he included a standard cartoon of the bacterial flagellum]

Now, just take away any one part of this motor and ask yourself: Could this machine work? The obvious answer is "no". So my question to you atheists is simple: How could a one cellular animal that houses a complex design come into existence with all its parts working simultaneously through a natural process called mutation and natural selection?

Isn't it clear to you that this machine was designed instantaneously by intelligence with a futuristic purpose...and a finished product in mind?

Yo, I tell you the truth: There is a designer. His name is God. I may not understand all there is to Him right now, but one day we all will understand.

Typical creationist, we should say. Note the usual evasion, focusing on the disrespect given to him rather than the content. Note also the goal-post shifting. He said there were no transitions between single-celled and multicellular organisms; I gave him one, the choanoflagellates, so what does he do? Ducks and runs and throws out a different claim, in this case falling back on the tired old ID claim that the bacterial flagellum could not have evolved (it certainly could have: it has homology to other organelles, and there are pathways by which it could have evolved).

Oh, wait…bacterial flagellum? Choanoflagellates do NOT have the rotary flagellum of bacteria. They have the eukaryotic flagellum (also called an undulopodium) which is completely different. Eukaryotic flagella do not rotate, instead consisting of a bundle of fibers that slide past one another to generate a bend in the whole structure.

He really doesn't know what he's talking about. And he was a science teacher?

Posted by PZ Myers at 11:57 PM • 168 Comments