pharyngula

My lukewarm support for this president is cooling fast. First he's making absurd excuses to kowtow to the easily inflamed sensibilities of Islam, and now, apparently, he's forgotten that this is a secular nation. Obama said he was proud the country had rallied around the idea that we can't be…

Freshwater turtles are in serious trouble: about a third of the world's species are on the edge of extinction, and others are facing all kinds of problems. It's the usual litany: habitat destruction, over-hunting, the exotic pet trade, and of course, Chinese medicine (traditional Chinese medicine:…

Williams was one of the giants of 20th century evolutionary biology, and he died on Wednesday. Michael Ruse offers a brief summary of his career, while Edge has personal testimonials from people who knew him. I never met him, to my regret, but knew his work, which was enormously influential.

The LDS church has a weird habit of baptizing dead people into their faith — and now you can get even. Atheize anyone! It works, too! I atheized Brigham Young, and next thing I knew, his ghost was hanging about whining about how I'd gotten him kicked out of Mormon heaven and how all his celestial…

I just felt like the long thread needs some Delgados. As you were. (Current totals: 10,968 entries with 1,118,139 comments.)

The Catholic church has announced a few requirements for the papal visit to the UK: The 100,000 Roman Catholics expected to attend the pope's open-air "great mass" in Glasgow have been urged by their cardinal to endure the "sacrifices" the event will involve. Tens of thousands of pilgrims in…

You know, I'm something of an expert in the public desecration of sacred objects, and I'm seeing the same madness going on right now with Terry Jones and his plan to burn copies of the Koran that I saw in the response to throwing a cracker in the trash — only amplified to a ludicrous degree. People…

The OKCupid site dug deep into their database of users and analyzed…a lot of stuff. The interesting one is this chart of reading/writing level by religious belief. Look there: the godless users of OKCupid score higher than the religious users; and furthermore, being more serious about agnosticism/…

Water lily

It has become quite amusing to watch the Defenders of the Faith reach for increasingly more hysterical phrasing to describe what the Gnu Atheists are doing. I thought we were writing and talking, but according to William Oddie, we're carrying out a distressing onslaught. The atheists' utter…

Dr Hall had a gig writing for Oprah's woo-laden magazine, and I didn't even know it (that tells you how often I've looked at O), and it was a good plan: she'd be writing a skeptical column for them that would address common medical myths. Unfortunately, reality smacked hard into the jello of pop…

Universities are supposed to be places where students are free to think and argue…but too often, if a student says something that contradicts the religious dogma of the institution, it's an excuse to be censored. Here's an example: a Mormon student at BYU wrote a letter for the school newspaper…

So I'm having a few niggling little health problems, but all is well and getting better; meanwhile, Christopher Hitchens mentions this: "Well, I'm dying, since you asked," Hitchens replied. "So are you, but I'm doing it faster and in more rich and fecund detail." And what does he do? He gallops…

You know, I'm supposed to watch my diet now. I took my son to lunch the other day and he ordered and ate an entire chicken-fried steak sandwich with a giant platter of french fries right in front of me, which was incredibly cruel…but I was strong, and didn't even steal a single fry from his plate.…

What a curious paper — it's fine research, and it's a useful dollop of data, but it's simultaneously so 21st century and on the edge of being completely trivial. It's like a tiny shard of the future whipping by on its way to quaintness. Researchers have for the first time sequenced the genome of an…

I'm about to enter a classroom for the first time in over a year. I feel a strange dread that I've forgotten how to teach. OK, I'm back. I survived. No students passed out. I think it was OK, although it was made more difficult by the fact that it involved a transition from one instructor to…

It looks like I have to add another book to my currently neglected reading list. In an interview, Cordelia Fine, author of a new book, Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), has a few provocative things to say about gender stereotypes…

Two children are missing in Belize, and no one knows what happened to them. So a helpful 'psychic' declared that they had been fed to the crocodiles in a nearby sanctuary. The results were predictable. Reports are that the mob shot and killed some of the 17 crocs held in captivity at the sanctuary…

Here's a little chat with the president of the Montana tea party, Tim Ravndal: Dennis Scranton: "I think fruits are decorative. Hang up where they can be seen and appreciated. Call Wyoming for display instructions." Tim Ravndal: "@Kieth, OOPS I forgot this aint(sic) America no more! @ Dennis,…

Yellow-bellied three-toed skink She's transitional! This is a live-bearing reptile carrying a load of eggs, and with a modified membrane to secrete calcium and other nutrients to the embryos. She's also looking a bit pugilistic about it all, too.

What are they thinking? The protesters complaining about that violent, militant religion of Islam building a mosque/community center in New York are now towing about a pair of deactivated missiles at their rallies. I guess Christians are trying to send a message that they're friendly and non-…

Hemant Mehta is going to be speaking at the University of South Alabama in Mobile next week, and it turns out that the local newspapers won't mention it! So I've been asked to post something about the talk so more people will know to show up. Here's their ad: Hmmm. They left out the horns and the…

You can now download the latest issue of Awake, the Jehovah's Witness's strange little magazine. The theme of this issue is those marching militant atheists, so it's a little bit personal. Unfortunately, I was only able to read as far as the second sentence before I was blinded by the irony. A new…

Gregory Koger is an ex-con and a revolutionary communist…and none of that should matter in the slightest. He's also a person who was beat up, handcuffed, maced, arrested, and now faces the prospect of a three year jail sentence for the crime of holding up his iPhone to take pictures of police…

It's a ridiculous myth that sharks have magical properties that prevent cancer, but it's not true: sharks do get cancer. Furthermore, even if they did have low rates of cancer, grinding them up and powdering them and tossing them into your gut for chemical breakdown would no more cure your cancer…

No, no, no. This is doing it all wrong. A young man in Valencia received a communion wafer at Mass, took it out of his mouth, and broke it in front of the priest (google translation), and then a scene from the Three Stooges erupted, with slapping and kicking and random cartoon violence in which no…

It's an unfortunate fact of google life that links to my criticisms of Kent Hovind pop up quite high in google listings, so I'm always getting these letters from pissed-off creationists who are shocked, shocked, shocked that there they are, innocently searching for information on their hero, when…

Oh, boy, it's been a while. I was out for the first few lectures (which I am grateful to my colleagues for covering), so in my introductory biology class I get to plunge straight in to Darwin, Darwin's finches, and Sean Carroll's The Making of the Fittest. No preludes, baby, I'm diving right in.…

We're going from the unending promenade to something a little wilder. (Ophelia found this one) (Current totals: 10,945 entries with 1,112,940 comments.)