pharyngula

Via Sandwalk, this is a clip of Paul Nelson praising Jonathan Wells and his godawful gemisch of bad scholarship and lies, Icons of Evolution. They were making a big to-do over the ten-year anniversary of publication of this ghastly hackwork, and here Nelson is piously praising the premise. It's…

The CBC has one of those awful year-end countdown shows, and this one is rather appalling. It's a countdown of the top 10 miracles of 2010. Hey, there, Canada, I thought we were supposed to be the crazy country, while you were supposed to be the polite, serious brother! What happened? It gets worse…

Did you know that if you decorate your Christmas tree with squids and octopuses and cuttlefish, like ours: …that on Christmas Eve, you'll be visited by Santa Squid? We have our nets and harpoons and great big barrel of formaldehyde waiting by the fireplace, in hopes that the Tentacled One will…

The country has passed a significant threshold. Christians, you're officially a minority now. Every year, researchers from the British Social Attitudes survey ask a representative sample of British people whether they regard themselves as belonging to any particular religion and, if so, to which…

Illex illecebrosus

The cartoonists are having fun with it. Jesus won't be bringing them any presents tonight!

Say, participants in the undying thread, did you know that immortality can be a curse? 39 Degrees North: Christmas Card 2010 from 39 Degrees North on Vimeo. (Current totals: 11,566 entries with 1,223,814 comments.)

It really isn't that hard to learn to think scientifically — kids can do it. In a beautiful example of communicating science by doing it, students at Blackawton Primary School designed and executed an experiment in vision and learning by bees, and got it published in Biology Letters, which is…

You know who really hates Christmas? MUSLIMS! I bet you didn't know that if you converted to Islam you'd get immunity to STDs, your debt would disappear, rapes, teen pregnancy, and abortions would never occur, the rave would be canceled, you'd stop making that silly claim that god had a son, there…

You know who else celebrated Christmas? HITLER! Uh-oh. I just godwined Christmas. If it ends now, it's all my fault. Sorry. (via Inside a Nazi Christmas Party, 1941, from Life magazine)

Oh, actually, shaved apes would be an upgrade from Josh Brecheen, who is more like a shaved and bipedal member of the subgenus Asinus. He's a new legislator who has announced his intention to introduce creationism into Oklahoma schools (or, as perhaps I should refer to them, "skools") for a set of…

Maybe someone will be offended by that, though. They need to take a lesson from Bill Donohue, who has a simple solution to any conflict between religions: everyone should convert to Catholicism. He calls that "inclusion". I don't think he knows what the word means. Watch the latest video at…

I just got a copy of this paper in my email, straight from Santa Claes, and it's a good thing, because when I checked our library didn't have a subscription to PNAS NorthPole. I think it was sent to me because I've been such a good boy this year (oh, you didn't get one? We've found the naughty…

It's about time someone updated that Charlie Brown treacle.

Tim Moyle (I will not call him "Father"; I have a lot of respect for my father, none of it transfers to the clergy) wonders why atheists are so grumpy, and offers some explanations. He apparently does not know any atheists and is completely lacking in self-awareness, so his arguments don't hold up…

By the slimy tentacles of Cthulhu, Cephalopodmas is here today, and I'm not prepared! I only got my grades submitted at 11:00 last night, and I slept in, and now I've got to get the tree up and drape it with squid and octopuses and do my cephalopodmas shopping, all at once. Why can't we have finals…

St Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Arizona was a Catholic-affiliated institution, and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix has just made a major strategic error: they have stripped the hospital of its affiliation. There are two reasons this was a bad idea for the church. One is that it…

History isn't often pretty. Archaeologists have been excavating a site called Towton, where a major battle was fought in the Wars of the Roses in 1461, and in which 28,000 people died and were buried in mass graves scattered about the battleground. It's a fascinating story of the soldiers involved…

Are you planning to round out the year with some charitable donations? Are you looking for suitable targets for your gifts that won't waste the money on religion? Here's a handy list of atheist charities.

Soon, it will be the end of the year. Soon, all those various forms will come trickling into your mailbox, telling you how much money you earned. Soon, you will have to fill out a whole bunch of other forms and pay out your share to the state and federal government. For most of us, it's a big bite…

The pope has the answer, and it's not the priests. Can you guess whose fault it all is? If you guessed godless secular society, you'd be right. It doesn't count for much, though, because you know it was an easy question. I'm not sure how it works, though. He claims that secular society was making…

The Council of Conservative Citizens is very angry, and is calling for a boycott of an upcoming movie that offends their values. The CofCC is a paleoconservative organization which has as its first principle the myth that the United States is a Christian country, so you might think that the reason…

Coccyzus merlini

This priest says there's something wrong with you if you have an imaginary friend. We all agree, don't we, Threadketeers? (Current totals: 11,548 entries with 1,220,945 comments.)

I want a prize. I just submitted the grades for two of my three classes this term, including the big intro biology class with two lecture sections. No one gave me a beer when I mentioned my classes were done…I need one now. OK, so I have to finish the one last class — but that one had the take-home…

This is getting ridiculous. Now people are getting irate at the use of a common word. The teacher…was explaining to the class how the cold climate in Trevélez, Granada province, aided in the curing of the village's most famous local product, jamón serrano. The boy told his teacher that hearing the…

So instead, he's written a Christmas essay about why he's an atheist. It's not bad. He pegs why people get so sniffy at innocuous words from an atheist, and what we all have to live for, so there's that. So what does the question "Why don't you believe in God?" really mean. I think when someone…