pharyngula

Ol' Ratzi is quite upset at the Belgian raids on Catholic church offices — he's calling them "deplorable", a "moment of sadness", and is calling in the Belgian ambassador to the Vatican for an angry dressing-down. He's doing everything all wrong. Here's what he should be doing: he should be calling…

Scientists and atheists do something that many believers find repellent: we shatter their perception of their relationship to the universe. And understandably, they don't like that. Most religious people in the West have a very specific model of the way the world works that is based on our cultural…

Marit Simonson, one of the helpful people I met in Oslo (and also one of the organizers of Kritisk Masse, the skeptics' conference taking place in October), just sent me a pile of photos from our visit. Here are a few of the faces of modern atheism in Norway, taken at a picnic in Frognerparken AKA…

The Evolution 2010 meetings are taking place in Portland, Oregon as you read this (unless, of course, you're reading this in The Future, in which case they're all done) and Jen McCreight is attending and presenting there. She attended a symposium on communicating science which, unfortunately,…

The beard-or-not donations seem to be fading…we're at 86% of the goal. Clearly you need inspiration, and here it is: the fabulous Captain Nemo. Notice also yet another reason for the beard: it expresses our yearnings for the glorious appendages of the cephalopod. We can't have tentacles, but at…

I had a moment's concern when Butterflies & Wheels suddenly stopped loading for me — it turns out that a prior arrangement to have butterfliesandwheels.com redirect to butterfliesandwheels.org has ended, so if you're using the old .com address, you are bereft. Change it to .org and the world…

Skeptic organizations often face a nagging dilemma: should they be openly skeptical about religion? There are a couple of very good reasons why they should make criticizing religious claims a secondary issue, and one extremely bad reason that represents intellectual cowardice and a betrayal of…

A few people have written me saying I should go easy on those Christian praying for the Gulf — it's harmless, they say, it's just building social bonds, etc., etc., etc. Well, la-de-dah — they're delusional. I don't just mean the people praying, but also those making excuses for them. Somehow, it's…

Gathering comments in the amaranthine thread is a bit like this: Discuss. (Current totals: 10,485 entries with 1,034,268 comments.) (via Dr Gen)

Call me when he's built a Lego laser printer. The neighbors probably really hate this guy.

We are members of a very weird species.

After the computer break-in that revealed so-called 'damaging' emails in the East Anglia Climate Research Group, after all the media hysterics and errors and misrepresentations, now at last some newspapers are coming out and admitting that they screwed up. Any idiot could just look at the released…

There's a documentary coming out about how the Mormons influenced California's Proposition 8, and Salon has an interview with the director, Reed Cowan. He makes the point that it wasn't just that they raised buckets of money, but that they had willing volunteers. Nobody does it better than the…

(via Acousticgirl)

The Great Beard debate is still going strong, and this ought to clinch it for the beard side: how can you deny the puissance of a majestic beard when you look on Darwin's nobly hirsute face? Case closed! Boo-yah! Now I am a fair-minded and magnanimous person, so I thought I would give the naked-…

It's another conversation recorded for posterity: I appeared on the irreligiophilosophy podcast. Fortunately, they did not ask me to pronounce "irreligiophilosophy".

A "psychic" octopus named Paul is predicting the outcome of World Cup games, some Germans claim. I don't believe it. Why would an octopus be at all interested in a game where you can't use your arms? I don't believe in precognition, but I do think octopuses are smart. It's more likely that Paul is…

The Belgian police have raided offices of the Catholic church in search of evidence of the usual Catholic crime — raping children. (It's funny: ask someone to name a Catholic crime, and what's the first thing they think of? It's the worst PR in the world.) I'm hoping that they're just warming up…

The apologetic gang at BioLogos is complaining again — Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins and I didn't understand their recent piece by Daniel Harrell on Adam and Eve, and oh, it is so hard to be the ones in the middle of all those atheist and creationist extremists. Note to BioLogos: squatting in…

I was mildly surprised at the reaction to this cool timelapse video of a molting crab — some people didn't understand how arthropods work. The only thing to do, of course, is to explain the molting process of insects and crustaceans, called ecdysis. Let's go back to the basics first. In the…

Australia has a non-religious woman as prime minister! This is nominally promising, but we'll have to wait and see if she actually follows through with some kind of commitment to secularism (the former PM, Kevin Rudd, was known for recruiting god to his party's side). Also, unfortunately, in all…

The insatiable thread briefly flirted with zombies, of which I approve, and then lapsed back into the World Cup obsession. We can't have that. Too normal. Must instigate deeper weirdness. (Current totals: 10,472 entries with 1,032,213 comments.)

The fundraiser that will decide whether Big Dave and I will have to shave off our beards has passed the halfway mark — you have donated £805.33 for Barnardo's children's charity — but I notice that some people are still voting "no beard", and we can't have that. To counter these weak sallies into…

I got email just now from Evolutionary Leaders. The source sounds promising on the surface, so I opened it. Big mistake. Bad for my blood pressure. Are you tired of sitting around while our environment is being destroyed? Yes! Yes, I am! Do you feel helpless, angry or powerless to make a…

Roy Zimmerman released this one today as appropriate to the dissent at the top in the conduct of the war in Afghanistan. I have to applaud Rolling Stone for exposing the chaos in leadership in the war. The Rolling Stone article highlights how President Obama has long had an even bigger decision…

Easy. We all know the answer to this one. Should 'Under God' Be Removed From Pledge Of Allegiance? Yes. 45.3% No. 52.4% I don't have an opinion either way. 2.2%

An infamously anti-gay Lutheran pastor, Tom Brock, has been outed as gay himself. Unfortunately, the outing is ethically compromised by the fact that the writer accomplished it by infiltrating a confidential 12-step program for gay men dealing with "chastity issues". Basically, he had to violate a…

You're all good, upstanding, moral atheists who like children (and not just on the barbecue!), so you'd all be happy to donate to Barnardo's, a children's charity even without any incentive. Incentives are nice, though, so we're going to give you one: it's a competition. You see, Big Dave (bearded…

It's a world blooming with sex toys…that don't work. Ophrys speculum

But timelapse is always cool.