pharyngula

Jesus in a pita, Madonna in bird poop, gods speaking through the arrangement of viscera…we're used to ridiculous religious pattern seeking. A reader, Mike Barnes, wrote in to tell me about a scientist who has been playing the same game: Francis Collins sees DNA in stained glass windows. Collins…

When all the site problems were at their worst, one of the things I did to try and lighten the server's load was to remove the random quotes feature here. It didn't seem to help, and boy, did I get lots of email complaining about their absence — I didn't think you guys would even notice! Anyway, I'…

A Sudanese woman, Lubna Hussein, is facing the barbaric punishment of 40 lashes for a crime against public morality: wearing pants. Not not wearing pants, but wearing pants. She was busted in the act of wearing pants while having dinner at a nice restaurant in Khartoum. They were green. I'm sure…

Remember, docility and deference is what they want, a little stiffening of the backbone is what we need. He has an excellent ending line, too: "I'm about to get angry at everyone who isn't angry."

Uh-oh. This cartoon about what might happen at the Creation "Museum" might put the monitoring security detail in Kentucky into a tizzy — in addition to the No Rude T-Shirts rule, they'll have to add a No Transformation into Cephalopods rule. Better renew the magical wards and holy anointings and…

Many of us have long noticed the truly awful quackery hosted at the Huffington Post, with acupuncturists, anti-vax fanatics, and general all-around kooks like Deepak Chopra given free rein. Now Salon has pointed out the obvious, with some depth. Have you wondered why the HuffPo is so bad on…

(Note: this is the infamous article on chiropractic that got Simon Singh sued. It is being reposted all over the web today by multiple blogs and online magazines.) Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all, but the research suggests chiropractic therapy has mixed results - and can even be lethal,…

Sam Harris wrote an op-ed criticizing Francis Collins' nomination to head the NIH titled "Science is in the details". Now Ken Miller has written a short letter in reply, and I think he would have done well to have heeded that title. Dr. Collins's sin, despite credentials Mr. Harris calls "…

Joe Biden recently made some remarks in the Wall Street Journal in which he discussed some of Russia's concerns, and he made this casual remark. "I can see Putin sitting in Moscow saying, 'Jesus Christ, Iran gets the nuclear weapon, who goes first?' Moscow, not Washington." It's not such an…

Heresy is so easy to do, you don't even have to try. My wife is off helping kids at Camp Quest, which is, apparently, a horrible, awful, evil act. Just ask the Jebus-lovers of Rapture Ready, who were recently all agog at the opening of a godless summer camp in England. Here are a few of their…

The Creation "Museum" is experiencing some dread and trepidation about our visit, and they have sent a letter to me and to the SSA expressing their concerns. These are some reasonable worries, given that there will be a huge number of us (240 and counting) showing up in one mass. Here's what they…

My most memorable encounter with the anti-animal research cadres was several years ago, when I was a graduate student, and the Animal Liberation Front snuck into our building one night and vandalized one of my colleague's labs; they destroyed data, stole some irreplaceable mutant lines, and walked…

Everyone was so impressed with this clear-thinking Romanian woman whose video I posted last week — from that alone you might get the impression that Romania is a very rational place, full of level-headed smart people who have little truck with religious silliness. To correct that, you should read…

If you believe Bill O'Reilly and Fox News, that is. They've been fond of claiming that that very liberal European nation's experiment with tolerance and personal freedom is a complete failure, that the Netherlands is collapsing in anarchy. So an Amsterdam resident made a short clip documenting…

The other day, one of those routine, empty resolutions came up in congress: a Hawaiian representative brought up a nice fluffy little resolution recognizing the 50th anniversary of Hawaii's statehood, which contained a collection of whereas's listing notable features of the state. Bland stuff,…

Not long ago, we had a story about the University of Wyoming shutting down their geology museum. Now the issue has become…an online poll! We know what to do with online polls, don't we, boys and girls? Should UW put funds into keeping the Geological Museum open? Yes, it needs to be open all the…

Imagine a titanic battle. No, not T. rex vs. a killer whale, but something more alarming, like T. rex vs. a massive bacterial infection. Which side do you think will win? Something similar is going on right now. AT&T, the T. rex of the story, is going after 4chan, the infamous nest of /b/tards…

Sam Harris seems to have triggered some kind of reflex, because there is discussion going on all over the place. Jerry Coyne has a long piece up that chews over that awful talk Collins gave at Berkeley. He has the full recording of the whole talk — it was titled "The Language of God: Intellectual…

Mary isn't here this week, since she's off shepherding kids at Camp Quest Minnesota. A conspirator at Camp Quest did send me this photo of a camp counselor in her native habitat, so that will have to do.

As is his habit, Jason Rosenhouse has begun a long review of Mooney and Kirshenbaum's book. It won't be giving too much away to say that he gives it a "Mixed, but generally negative" review. I know M&K will only present the positive side on their site (as I'm only going to emphasize the…

Sam Harris has published a piece in the New York Times decrying the appointment of Francis Collins to head the NIH. It's strong stuff; he points out that Collins isn't just a Christian, he's an active science-denier who has set aside whole blocks of scientific inquiry as inaccessible to study…

I have been abandoned. My wife has left me. The kids have all moved out. I'm stuck home alone with nothing to do but work and take care of the annoying cats for a whole week, and I may just go insane. The Trophy Wife has gone to summer camp! She's working for a week as a camp counselor at Minnesota…

Some leaked documents from the Church of Scientology reveal their priorities — these are papers they require new staffers to sign, and there is no way anyone in their right mind would sign them. The gist is that they want your promise that you are financially solvent, so that nothing can cause you…

Mooney and Kirshenbaum continue their campaign with an op-ed in the Boston Globe, which, as we all know, has rigorous standards. Their explanation for scientific illiteracy in America is simple: it's the scientists' fault for being so aloof and distant. Their solution is also simple:…

It's annoying. Garbage is thriving: the Discovery Channel is running ads for the Creation "Museum", and our very own scienceblogs is intermittently running an ad for creationist literature. There are a couple of things to know about this. One is that the economy sucks, and the media, in particular…

Ron Numbers is a very smart fellow, a historian of science, who has done marvelous work on the history of creationism. Paul Nelson is a Discovery Institute Fellow, a young earth creationist (but an amazingly fuzzy one), and, unfortunately, very long-winded. Bloggingheads has brought Ronald Numbers…

Number one on my list of dead-giveaways that I'm dealing with a moron of the first order: when they start whining about "atheist fundamentalists", comparing a Richard Dawkins to a Pat Robertson, or babbling about how those atheists are just as fanatical and wicked as the fundagelical zealots. When…

I'd never heard of Roger W. Babson before, but maybe some of you at east coast colleges have seen one of his monuments. He was an eccentric millionaire who founded the Gravity Research Foundation and donated money for anti-gravity research. He gave money to colleges that would accept one of his…

When I read this opening to an article about a Republican politician, I knew instantly exactly where it was going. Meet Tennessee state senator Paul Stanley. He's a solid conservative Republican and married father of two, who according to his website is "a member of Christ United Methodist Church,…