pharyngula

The UK government does not mince words. The government has announced that it will publish guidance for schools on how creationism and intelligent design relate to science teaching, and has reiterated that it sees no place for either on the science curriculum. It has also defined "Intelligent Design…

This is a dangerous link: the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form. A number of obsessed lunatics have been submitting limericks on each word in the dictionary — they've got over forty one thousand entries so far — so it can just suck you in. Here, try looking up limericks on evolution.…

I'm sorry to say that Stanley Fish is treading the same futile path that every defender of religion follows: there's the knee-jerk detestation of atheism, then there's the argument that atheism is nothing but faith itself, and now he's reduced to impotent handwaving about a sublime but unknowable…

…and I didn't even get a lousy t-shirt. Professor Steve Steve, Jason, Tara, and Wesley, along with quite a few others, all took the grand tour last week. I'm glad they went, but it's becoming obvious there isn't a heck of a lot going on there — it's the same old tripe in every report at this point…

A "visionary" is recommending a new way of seeing "visions" of the Virgin Mary: stare directly into the sun. It works! Sort of. Zackey reportedly advised a Gauteng woman, Amal Nassif (37), earlier to look at the sun, and if she had faith, the Virgin Mary would appear. Nassif stared at the sun for…

Here's your course of action. First, tune up your brain with Encephalon #25. Feeling smart now? Next, browse The Carnival of the Godless #69. Now you're smart and aggressively, skeptically godless. Sharp as a knife. Now you're ready to read Revere's Sunday Sermonette. You will be entertained. It's…

I'll be speaking at the Minnesota Atheists on 22 July, on "There Are No Ghosts in Your Brain: Materialist Explanations for the Mind and Religious Belief". Michael Egnor is welcome to stop on by.

Jason Rosenhouse has dug into the details of the evo-devo chapter of Behe's The Edge of Evolution and found some clear examples of dishonest quote-mining (so what else is new, you may be thinking—it's what creationists do). I've warned you all before that when you see an ellipsis in a creationist…

Well, cool — this post, "We stand awed at the heights our people have achieved", has been translated into German as "Die Höhen, die unsere Leute erreichten," in case you're more comfortable with that language.

Hey, Stevens County and all the residents thereabout: you can catch a performance of Inherit the Wind tonight at 7, or tomorrow in a matinee at 2, in lovely Barrett, Minnesota. I'll be there. My colleague in the biology department, Van Gooch, will be acting in the show, so UMM people should…

What is wrong with these people? God Hates the World Be sure to catch the cute little toddler's solo at the end. Tell me, is this child abuse yet?

The general pattern of developing positional information in Drosophila starts out relatively simply and gets increasingly complicated as time goes by. Initially, there is a very broad distribution of a gradient of a maternal morphogen. That morphogen then triggers the expression of narrower (but…

Why, this must be the smartest dog in the universe. Her husband decided to ask their 4-year-old dog another question, the square root of 25. Micah tapped his paw five times. To prove this wasn't a fluke, the couple and a friend tossed out more math than teachers during exam time. Micah consistently…

The situation isn't at all funny—a female volleyball coach was made miserable and discriminated against because of her sexual preferences, and there seems to have been (and probably still is) a nasty culture of male privilege in Fresno State athletics—but this piece of testimony against the…

I guess I'd always thought Wingnut Daily would at least put up a pretense of rationality (it's a paper-thin pretense, obviously, draped over a great massive lump of lunacy), but no—they've just published a hoary old heap of old-school creationist apologetics. It's all about Barry Setterfield's long…

We have a few carnivals for your Friday afternoon delectation… Skeptics' Circle #63 Friday Ark #144 Carnival of the Liberals #41 Otherwise, talk among yourselves. I'm going to be helping a swarm of new freshmen register for their fall classes for a while.

George Gilder, that pompous poseur, has a new interview in the Jerusalem Post. It's more self-serving nonsense and hardly worth noting, except that he does include a short summary of his position on everything. Your life's work has been eclectic, to put it mildly. What do the relations between men…

I've been getting complaints that images aren't showing up at all to some readers. This is strange, because there isn't anything at all special about the html we're using to display images. Anyway, just to rule out some possibilities, here are a few random images. If you've been having problems…

Mark Morford is wonderfully excited about the prospects for biological research, and I don't blame him. Consider what the world was like in 1900 and how physics and engineering changed it by 2000; from horse-and-buggy and steam locomotive to interstates and jet planes, from telegraph to world-wide…

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

Some people were annoyed that I included a link yesterday that led to a silly story that used strippers as an example of good marketing, that also included a photo of a woman in lingerie. It was very mild stuff, and I'm not going to apologize for that; the worst thing at the link was the sexism,…

One of those annoying habits creationists organizations have is the appropriation of legitimate scientific research to 'support' their claims. They almost never do, actually—the creationists have to misrepresent the science, and often they even offer interpretations flatly contradicted by the…

Ahh, Seattle. Seattle is godless. We are, rather famously, one of the least churched cities in North America. It seems that most of us have better things to do on a Sunday morning than go to church. Seattleites would rather take a hike. Or nurse a hangover. Or fire up the bong. It sounds like my…

Aaron Kinney tells me that Egnor is still going on and on about dualism. He's still floundering; are you surprised? P.Z. Myers' reply to my observation that ideas like altruism have no physical properties, like location, leaves a thoughtful observer to wonder: why do materialists have so much…

Dang. Tagged. Can't you people leave me alone? All right, here are the rules. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.…

Catch this Hitchens interview while it's still available. He's lovably irascible. My favorite part: Interviewer: Do you think you would win more converts to atheism if you were less dismissive of religious… Hitchens: I have no idea, but I can't be other than dismissive. I hear someone like that…

Get ready for it: the next battle will be over Stupid Design. All the little details are perfect, like the mangled "facts" they'll use to support it, the arguments from consequences, and the scientists conceding legitimacy in some domain to it.

Another major paper has a story on Conservapædia. I'm sure Andy is proud of his accomplishment — the truly stupid would be proud of promoting stupidity. Schlafly, 46, started small, urging his students to post brief -- often one-sentence -- entries on ancient history. He went live with the site in…

Never underestimate the power of small groups of crazy people. All it takes is motivation, small-mindedness, and persistence, and any group can promote ignorance and limit people's choices. A South Carolina library system has closed down its summer programs for young adults after receiving threats…

Here's another sample of strange creationist email. This one spares the freaky fonts and excessive style changes, and instead we get an abrupt opening with no explanation, and a healthy dose of paranoia. First, a little background: David P. Wozney is basically a dinosaur denialist (and also a…