pharyngula

Atheists are putting up a billboard in Lakeland, Florida that says, "Don't believe in god? You aren't alone." This is, apparently, controversial, and the newspaper article has an accompanying poll. Does an atheist group have a right to display their own billboard? Yes 77.7% No 22.3% I'…

Wake up, everyone: Iran is about to execute three men for the crime of atheism…well, specifically, apostasy, rejecting the Islamic faith. The news is not good. Habibollah Latifi, Ehsan (Esma'il) Fattahian and Sherko Moarefi have all been sentenced to death for "enmity against God" in unconnected…

To get this, you may want to look at the last episode of Mr Deity, in which Jesse and the Deity struggled with the implications of the trinity — it was hopelessly confusing. This is the blooper reel from the making of that episode. That was hard. It makes me feel good, though, because these guys…

I hereby declare this the official theme of the whimpering, pathetic, anti-atheist backlash of 2009: there are Deep Rifts in atheism. It's all over the place, and it's a little weird. YOU would think, wouldn't you, that one of the principal attractions of atheism would be the complete absence of…

I'm feeling a bit nauseous right now. I'm not sure whether I'm coming down with the flu, or whether it was merely the monthly arrival of answers update, the newsletter from Answers in Genesis, which is mainly a catalog selling garish lies. Anyway, the reason I'm writing this instead of either…

Discover Magazine announced a contest to create a two-minute video explanation of evolution many months ago, and we finally have a winner. All five of the entries are good, so go to the link and watch them all!

We're learning a bit more about the fellow who was maced and arrested in Chicago, thanks to the efforts of the Chicago Ethical Humanist Society; members of that group are busily writing to me to let me know the Whole Truth of the incident, and why they were justified in siccing the police on…

Gene Ray, of Timecube infamy, has a twitter account. If he and Ashton Kutcher started following one another, that would be like crossing the streams. It would be bad. By the way, he's not a very funny guy — more like a racist homophobe with an ego. Not a nice fellow at all.

You will enjoy yourself immensely watching Hitchens and Fry debating a pair of Catholic apologists. Click on the image below (you can see how the debate ended already)! Oh. Unless you're a Catholic or other Christian — you won't enjoy that at all. You might want to go to church instead.

I'm sorry to have to mention this again, but there's a chance the world will end on Wednesday. The same guy with the website that was designed to make you vomit from your eye sockets, who has been predicting the imminent end of the world over and over again, is predicting the apocalypse again. Ho…

The concern trolls are very concerned. They are responding to my posting of Sonia/Tanja/Rosa/Whoevera Jensen's crazy email — she's disabled! She's mentally ill! It's cruel to post her wacky screeds publicly where people will point and laugh! You're picking on her! <ChrisCrocker>LEAVE SONIA…

It's always good to be able to categorize and explain relationships in the world. I'm going to have to ponder this further, though. The Mummy is clearly in the same region as Frankenstein, but does the infectious nature of lycanthropy put the Wolfman in the same category as Dracula? I guess if…

Some crazy lady in British Columbia named either Sonia or Tanja Jensen has me on a mailing list. I'm in good company; also on the list are the president of my university, Bob Bruininks, as well as Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, the Governor of Alaska, Greenpeace, Angela Merkel, and the German…

Today is Carl Sagan Day — I think that means you are officially expected to be filled with awe of the cosmos all day long, while also being thoroughly skeptical of the supernatural. Hang on…I think that means I celebrate Carl Sagan Day every day. If I want to do something different, maybe I should…

A newspaper in Rochester, Minnesota (yes, my backyard extends 250 miles to the southeast) is running dueling editorials by a pro health care local Democrat and a Satan-spawned humanity-hating Republican on the issue of the current health care reform bill. As usual, they run a poll. Please do shock…

So why is the University of Edinburgh Christian Union pushing to have Bibles put in the students' rooms? It seems like a slippery slope to me—before you know it, they'll have verses emblazoned on the caber, you won't be able to dive into your haggis without reciting a prayer, and they'll be…

Dan Casey has just posted the first installment in a story about the day Pat Robertson's bodyguard pulled a gun on him, which is so far an interesting perspective on the obscenely wealthy life of a televangelist. I wish I could afford to build a mighty mansion on an isolated hilltop that I would…

The Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago revoked a speaking invitation to Sunsara Taylor, which led to much drama. I've already posted Taylor's version of events; now the society has sent me theirs, so here it is. It just confirms to me that they don't know what they're doing. We don't know if…

Face it, guys: we all wish we had a penis with the versatility and length and flexibility of the barnacle's. Mating barnacles from Casey Dunn on Vimeo.

Ammonite Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.

Frank Schaeffer really detests most of the New Atheists (except for Dan Dennett; he loves Dennett to pieces). He thinks they're just like the Christian fundamentalists, and he should know, since his father was one of the most fanatical evangelicals around, and he was part of that radical…

Be not faint of heart, O Loyal Cephalopodophiles, but National Geographic has a whole series of photos of a squid slaughter. The whales are shameless. They're just swimming around with tattered corpses dangling from their mouths, and they even dandle the bits in front of their babies, to encourage…

Professor Thomas Tang of Middle Tennessee State University has broken the code of silence and revealed one of the vast powers which are conferred upon us when we land an academic job. It's true, professors can send you to hell. Frustrated over cheating allegations, one professor at Middle Tennessee…

This is fast becoming the theme of news stories about atheists this year: that there are differences in tactics in the atheist community, with some people being more in-your-face about it (yours truly takes a bow), and others wanting to be more conciliatory towards religion. Well, how surprising…

This argument is a new one on me. If you can't read it, click on it to see a larger original. I can try to summarize it, though. The middle finger is the longest finger on the human hand, and da Vinci drew it in his famous figure of Vitruvian Man, which illustrates ideal proportions…therefore, the…

You all laughed at this video of Charlene Werner explaining the physics of homeopathy. But did you know that videos like this, where kooks are caught in the act, are endangered? It turns out that kooks don't like it when their words are made public, especially when those words are so loony that…

The copy-&-paste creationist is a familiar figure in internet debates — they don't have an original idea in their head, but they know how to copy some long screed off the internet and paste it into a comment box, almost always without attribution, or even a link back to their source. I am…

It looks like justice was defeated in Maine, but we got a glimmer of success in Washington (Hooray for my home state!). I think everyone who is unhappy with Maine voters should go tromp on this Canadian poll just to get it out of your system. Do you support same-sex marriage? Absolutely, yes 21%…

At first glance, I thought this story was good news: Oklahoma is going to build a Christian prison! About time, I thought, I can think of a few Christians who deserve a few years for faith-abuse. But no…it's a prison to be administered by Christians to give Christian criminals special privileges.…