Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
February 25, 2011
Oh, man, 14 year old articulate atheist kids — I'm feeling old. I don't know if she'd even be allowed to participate in the vulgar and voluble thread.
(Current totals: 11,932 entries with 1,291,666 comments.)
February 25, 2011
This week, the University of Minnesota Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists will be hosting an Ask an Atheist panel discussion on Thursday, March 3, from 7:00pm - 9:00pm. This will take place on the UMTC campus, at:
Amundson Hall B75
421 Washington Avenue SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Here's how it…
February 25, 2011
An Atheist's View On Abortionby Juno Walker
On the drive home from work tonight I was behind a pickup truck that had a rather large white sign with red letters that read: "ABORTION KILLS CHILDREN" taped to the inside of his back window. In addition, he had a bumper sticker with a picture of a…
February 25, 2011
Not that I have much expectation that these charges will be acted upon, but a couple of German lawyers have filed charges against Ratzinger in the International Criminal Court. My sense of justice rises in terrible joy at the accusation, though.
Their charges concern "three worldwide crimes which…
February 25, 2011
There have been some recent controversies in how Catholic hospitals handle ethics — most prominently in the case of the Phoenix hospital that carried out an abortion to save a woman, and got rebuked by the church for it. The Catholic church faces an ethical challenge here, and guess what their…
February 24, 2011
Anthropocentrism: All of God's Special Little Snowflakesby Amy Peters
My four-year-old has a book of science activities. One rainy day not so long ago, my husband and son decided to pull out the book and complete a biology activity on classifying living things. The objective was to cut out…
February 24, 2011
The economy sucks, so why are Republicans making such obnoxious noises over abortion and birth control lately? (That was an entirely rhetorical question, and it's obvious why: they've got no solutions other than feeding the rich some more, so they're carrying out a massive campaign of distraction…
February 24, 2011
I oppose the death penalty, but there are people who challenge my commitment to that principle, and Donald Rumsfeld is one of them. He was on the Daily Show, and I had to watch that evil man with clenched teeth and clenched fists. Here's part of the interview; the rest is available on Salon.
The…
February 24, 2011
After the serious earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, a website popped up that blamed the event on gays and lesbians, prostitution, and baby seal clubbing, a website that has been rightfully denounced by the media and gay and lesbian groups.
But I'm suspicious. There are a couple of things…
February 23, 2011
Little Dougie (aka Ian Murphy) has hit the big time: he punked the Governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, by calling him up and pretending to be über-Rethuglican puppet master David Koch…and Walker believed him and babbled like a little kid on Santa's lap. It's a self-aggrandizing embarrassment, with…
February 23, 2011
The Rethuglican governor of Maine, Paul LePage, has been dismissing the health risks from Bisphenol A, an additive to plastics which is known to be an estrogen mimic. His remarks take "Not even wrong" to whole new levels of crazy:
The only thing that I've heard is if you take a plastic bottle and…
February 23, 2011
Here is the last of Anthony Horvath's ghastly morality tales. This one is the easiest to summarize, because there isn't much to say about it: Richard Dawkins dies, goes to heaven, is judged, and sent to hell. It's short, only seven pages long, and five of them are spent in loving description of the…
February 23, 2011
Polk County, Florida has a public school board that meets in the county school district auditorium to discuss the secular, governmental functions of running the public schools. Despite their purpose, though, they insist on opening with a prayer, a practice which has encountered some criticism and…
February 23, 2011
Hey, this is a really good idea: No Chicks No Excuses is a speakers' bureau that specializes in delivering expert women for speaking engagements. The only catch is that it seems to be entirely full of Australian women, who are spectacularly brilliant, of course, but there must also be plenty of…
February 23, 2011
The theologian John MacArthur has a new book titled Slave: The Hidden Truth About Your Identity in Christ. His premise is that this is what being a Christian is all about: it's about being a slave to your lord.
"Slave" is the word that almost every English translation of Scripture has avoided using…
February 23, 2011
Anthony Horvath is responding to my reviews with some flustery bluster. He's insisting that you must buy his stories in order to have any credibility in questioning them, which is nonsense: I'm giving the gist of his fairy tales, and he could, for instance, clarify and expand on the themes of his…
February 22, 2011
They're getting hard to keep track of — but they do provide fodder for the thread full of fierce heathens.
(Current totals: 11,914 entries with 1,287,918 comments.)
February 22, 2011
Here's a personal testimonial.
Meanwhile, the Republicans play games with women's lives, and Christians build bait-and-switch centers to deny women appropriate health care.
February 22, 2011
I saw the open letter from Anonymous threatening to shut down the Phelps gang and the Westboro Baptist Church. It didn't sound right. WBC is not at all reliant on the web, but they are always on the lookout for more opportunities at promoting themselves through the media…so it seemed to me like a…
February 22, 2011
Lies and threats, that's what Gaddafi is reduced to now. I won't shed a single tear when he's deposed, but I will hope that he isn't removed by impaling his head on a stick. He has just given a blustering speech. I think he's doomed.
Although I wish there were less chanting about Allah, I do…
February 22, 2011
In a too rare fit of quality, our local theater is showing The King's Speech this week, which I keep hearing is wonderfully well made and a serious Oscar contender. I was thinking of going, but now Christopher Hitchens shreds its historicity — it's about yet another royal fascist-sympathizer — and…
February 22, 2011
I'm reviewing a series of three fundagelical short stories about famous people entering a Christian afterlife. Anthony Horvath is going to pretend that his dogma is true, and in the first story place the dead Teresa in his version of heaven to play out events as his puppet. It's not a pretty story…
February 22, 2011
With friends like these…Mudcat Saunders has some advice for the unions in Wisconsin.
In an interview with The Huffington Post, David "Mudcat" Saunders, a longtime Democratic political strategist known for his work with blue-collar voters, had a different take. Rather than worrying about floodgates…
February 21, 2011
How tasteless, tacky, and dishonest can a Christian get? This will do: selling fictional fantasies about what will happen to people when they're dead.
What's going on? Are all universally saved, after all? Did Richard Dawkins become a Christian? Did he... remain an atheist, and STILL go to heaven?…
February 21, 2011
I finally made it through the snow and long detours (I94 was closed!) and have arrived at home, having missed an entire day of broken appointments. Now I better get to work and prepare for tomorrow morning's class.
February 21, 2011
Unbelievable. Look at the first and so far leading choice in this poll: "The unions need to be reined in." What has happened to this country? Aren't the people who are voting in this poll likely to be mostly working class… yet here they are, whining that they aren't whipped and oppressed enough!…