pharyngula

Video is not Christine O'Donnell's friend — every time she opens her mouth she exposes her ugly, ignorant side. The latest faux pas comes from here performance in a debate with her opponent in which she reveals she hasn't read the first amendment, and is surprised by what's in it. Here's the…

Oh, jebus. Josh Rosenau has another post where the whole point sails over his head. He's basically thrashing away again at the whole accommodationist/confrontationist conflict with more of his imaginary pragmatism and his weasely approach to the truth. If he had the slightest inkling of…

I guess I have to continue this discussion, even though I felt like I hammered it to death last time, since the comment thread is getting so long I have to close it, and since Jerry Coyne still disagrees with me. I'll aim for brevity instead of exhaustion this time. The disagreement is over whether…

Wise advice to the heathenish hordes of the profligate thread. To which I would add, do not expect to be raptured if you are not into fornication, either. (Current totals: 11,180 entries with 1,155,853 comments.)

I'm in London, and I got ambushed by this guy making videos. He bought me beer, what can I say? Anyway, he said he wanted to ask me serious questions about biology, and when he got me on camera he instead asked me all this weird stuff about constellations and telescopes and has me looking like a…

Mary MacKillop has been officially canonized as an Australian saint on the basis of two purported miracle cures — two women reportedly dying of cancer had spontaneous remissions after praying to her. Adele Horin puts them in context. At the time Mary MacKillop answered the prayers of a woman dying…

"Get 'em off! Get 'em off! Aaaack!"

I haven't heard much about Rhys Morgan in the US (if you follow Ben Goldacre, though, you know all about him), but he won an award at TAM London for his skeptical work, so I thought I should do my part to spread the news. Simply put, he was participating in a forum on Crohn's Disease and boldly…

Do you expect a full report? TAM London is over, I have no sense of time left, I just got back from a late and very entertaining dinner with the ferocious Rebecca Watson and the fabulous Richard Wiseman, and I think I need to pass out. It looks like you can get a video feed of the various talks at…

The New York Times has what I consider a skewed but also personally flattering summary of the Secular Humanist convention. Skewed, because it focuses rather more on the disagreements on tactics that were on display, but weren't really the focus of most of the discussions — it was actually an…

I was hanging out in the hotel bar last night when a pair of great Northern savages came up to me and handed me a beer and a flyer and told me, "Here! Promote our meeting!" Or at least I think they did. They were a bit fierce in how they handle the English, you know, for which they have a bit of a…

The Moody Bible Institute foretold my malign influence in 1925.

It will be interesting to see if anyone squawks about this revelation: Army Chaplain Lt. Col. William McCoy seems to have a wild and frolicsome sex life, while writing pious little books promoting Christianity. There's absolutely nothing suggesting male homosexuality in his online personal history…

Let us transition from yet another piece of the gargantuan thread to something about the Catholic mass. (Current totals: 11,170 entries with 1,153,477 comments.)

Yes! You can watch the giant squid episode of Inside Nature's Giants. There's a little squeeing going on in my hotel room right now, I'm just glad no one else is here to record me.

You'd think this one is a no-brainer; a Chilean newspaper is asking who was responsible for rescuing the trapped miners, miracles (milagro) or science (ciencia). El rescate de los mineros en Chile fue para usted más: Milagro 49.5% Ciencia 50.5% I didn't see any miracles on TV. I saw lots of…

Via National Geographic, which also offers this video of Humboldt Squid Wrestling.

This is beautiful, I'd hang it on my wall. It's a genetic map of the first synthetic organism, and it and many others will be on display in the Serpentine Gallery in London this weekend. And gosh, what do you know, I am going to be in London this weekend! I may have to sneak out of The Amazing…

Ross Douthat proposes an explanation for why Republicans are so wacky on climate change. He points out that there's a strong strain of climate change denial in the American public, one that's also present in other countries. What's interesting, though, is that if you look at public opinion on…

Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard has written a book in which he reveals Catholic thinking about AIDS. The Archbishop who is seen as a conservative does not pull his punches. Speaking about AIDS he says that this is a kind "immanent justice". I note that the archbishop is probably mortal, and…

Scotland now has its very own outpost of inanity, the Centre for Intelligent Design. It's wonderfully revealing. The Discovery Institute takes great pains to hide their roots in evangelical Christianity — they want you to believe that their ideas are objective and secular, unwarped by religious…

Somebody should send this image to the jail in Berkeley County, SC. This is what happens if you let prisoners have bibles.

Smithsonian has a fine article on the real history behind America's status as a "Christian nation": it just isn't so. Religion is a poison our European ancestors brought to these shores, and it's been a source of trouble and stupidity since the beginning. From the earliest arrival of Europeans on…

So…not all Texans are dumbass crackers. It's good to be reassured about that now and then.

An Italian woman, Nosheen Butt, and her mother were resisting the idea of an arranged marriage, which annoyed the men in the family. So they took action to put the women in their place. The daughter, 20-year-old Nosheen Butt, was hospitalised with head injuries and a broken arm after her 19-year-…

I have been challenged by Jerry Coyne, who is unconvinced by my argument that there is no evidence that could convince me of the existence of god. Fair enough, I shall repeat it and expand upon it. The question "Is there a god?" is a bad question. It's incoherent and undefined; "god" is a…

(via Meadowview Biological Research Station Hey, there's a cause associated with this image. Meadowview is trying to win a $50,000 grant to purchase a 5 acre bog in Virginia to be set aside as a preserve for carnivorous pitcher plants. All you have to do is go to this site and vote to help them…

Christopher Hitchens was in another debate with his brother, Peter Hitchens. From the quoted material and the video clip at that link, Christopher was brilliant and lucid, and Peter…well, his argument was basically that things were better in the good old days when everyone had that old time…

Doesn't he know he is sick? Christopher Hitchens will debate Tony Blair in Toronto, sometime. Tickets are going on sale, but the weird little article doesn't give any details on date and place.

Awesome. A father and son launch an iPhone into outer space.