godlessness
pharyngula | May 18, 2008Tune in at 9am for Atheists Talk radio — this week, there will be discussions of genetics and ethics, and just in time for your summer planning, you'll learn more about Camp Quest.
pharyngula | May 16, 2008I wish I hadn't missed this when it come out a few years ago. A professor of sociology and comparative religion asked why women were more religious than men, and he ruled out socialization and cultural differences somehow, to come to a surprising conclusion.
"We looked for an obvious simple explanation, but nothing worked except physiology," said Stark. "People studying crime also have looked at socialization and they can't find a reason that explains the gender difference except a physiological one. Not being religious is similar to any other shortsighted, risky and impulsive behavior that…
pharyngula | May 12, 2008Hey, we've heard theists cite the authority of Einstein in service to their superstitions often enough: practically every colloquial mention of a god by Einstein seems to get reiterated to support a claim that he was a fellow believer. There's an obscure Einstein letter going up for auction that's got some juicy stuff to fire back, though.
Keep this one in mind next time someone tries to tell you that Einstein was on their side:
The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are…
pharyngula | May 11, 2008Now that Atheist's Talk radio is over for today, you can tune in to Non-Prophets Radio and listen to my interview from yesterday.
pharyngula | May 11, 2008This morning at 9am, tune in to Atheists Talk radio for an hour of women and godlessness with Annie Laurie Gaylor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. It's Mother's Day! Free a mom from the shackles of superstition today!
pharyngula | May 8, 2008Minneapolis's own little broadcaster of inanity, the evangelical radio station KKMS (Remember them? These are the guys who hosted a debate between me and Geoffrey Simmons, and when that didn't go so well, let Simmons debate dead air, where he fared better), is having another wacky program this afternoon at 4pm Central, on "Refuting the Arguments of Atheists."
David Aikman, Broadcast Journalist and Author will offer effective ways Christians can respond to the claims of atheists and why the new atheism is a threat to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Listen in and get refuted! Call…
pharyngula | May 5, 2008You'll have to work fast, since the contest closes tomorrow — send in your story about why you are an atheist, and you can win an autographed copy of Why I Rejected Christianity, by John Loftus.
pharyngula | May 4, 2008It's almost time for another episode of Atheists Talk on Air America! Tune in at 9am Central to hear the notorious Greg Laden; he's going to be talking about academic freedom bills…ferociously and profusely. Lois Schadewald will also be on to talk about studies of pseudoscience. Mike Haubrich has more details.
You can listen to AM 950 KTNF; it will ask for a Minnesota zip code to listen direct. If you can't catch it then, subscribe via iTunes or RSS.
pharyngula | April 29, 2008
I don't know about this. All this concentrated wit and venom in one place could be dangerous … and three straight hours of Pat Condell? Whew. Get copies for your local ministers, and either they'll die of fuming apoplexy or they'll give extremely animated and entertaining sermons the next Sunday.
That's right, the Richard Dawkins foundation is selling a DVD containing the distilled, consecutive output of Pat Condell's youtube rants. Get one for your mother. Play them at your atheist group's next meeting. I might just rip out the audio and put it on a CD for my next long drive. Hey, we've got…
pharyngula | April 27, 2008Remember: Atheists Talk radio will be on in a few hours, at 9am Central, from Minnesota Atheists. I have no idea what the subject will be today — it shall be a surprise.
grrlscientist | April 25, 2008tags: Creationism-vs-evolution, fundamentalism, religion, culture wars
A friend, Dave, sent me an interesting article that was published several months ago in Science. This insightful and well-written article by Jennifer Couzin is important because it focuses on one scientist's trauma and ensuing lifelong journey with rejecting his evangelical creationist upbringing to accept evolution as scientific fact. Below the fold is a summary of this article for you to read.
Paleontologist Stephen Godfrey, curator of the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons, Maryland, started out his life incongruously as…
pharyngula | April 20, 2008The views on religion seem much more congenial.
A charity set up by an ardent Christian to fight slavery and the opium trade has identified a new social evil of the 21st century — religion.
A poll by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation uncovered a widespread belief that faith — not just in its extreme form — was intolerant, irrational and used to justify persecution.
Pollsters asked 3,500 people what they considered to be the worst blights on modern society, updating a list drawn up by Rowntree, a Quaker, 104 years ago.
The responses may well have dismayed him. The researchers found that the "…
pharyngula | April 15, 2008I'm late to the party again; only because Hilzoy mentioned it did I see this hilariously inane article by Michael Medved. I don't know what Medved's qualifications are; he seems to be the Clever Hans of the Right Wing chattering classes, the guy who doesn't actually have a functioning mind but is good at stringing random words together. So now he has written an article claiming that it is perfectly reasonable for Americans to discriminate against atheists in politics, specifically that they should resist the possibility of an atheist as president.
This is not a choice I thought we had. I had…
pharyngula | April 12, 2008It's another day for Atheists Talk radio, Sunday at 9am, with yours truly in the first half hour, being interviewed by Kristine Harley about that horrible little movie that I'm getting tired of hearing about. But all right, we'll take another shot at it. Maybe you can liven it up by calling in to 952-946-6205 with something new and interesting to say or ask … that is, no Chris Farleys.
pharyngula | April 7, 2008The governor of Illinois has been playing some games with state money, shuffling a million dollars to benefit a Baptist church, and an atheist dared to testify to the legislature against this. The response from one legislator was unsurprising: she shrieked at the atheist to get out.
Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) interrupted atheist activist Rob Sherman during his testimony Wednesday afternoon before the House State Government Administration Committee in Springfield and told him, "What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous . . . it's dangerous for our children to even know that…
pharyngula | April 6, 2008Tune in to Atheist Talk radio at 9am Central this morning. This week, Peter McGrath and Karen James of The Beagle Project will discuss their attempts to rebuild the HMS Beagle and retrace the voyage to the Galapagos taken by Charles Darwin. I'm afraid I'll be airborne during the show this week, so I'll have to catch it on the podcast.
pharyngula | March 31, 2008
Hey, I said that in an interview last spring, which is getting a little wider circulation now: religions are fairy tales. Somebody slapped it on a billboard over Easter, though, and businesses around it reported a two-thirds decline. It sounds like it was very effective at scaring away fools, and that, unfortunately, fools represent a significant fraction of their customer base.
Maybe they should have prayed it away. Or summoned one of their favorite fairies to poof it out of existence.
pharyngula | March 30, 2008Michael Egnor, that neurosurgeon whose tenuous grip on rationality makes him so popular with the creationists, thinks he has a gotcha moment with some notorious atheist. That rude godless fellow, who is me, said this, which is accurate:
…greater science literacy, which is going to lead to the erosion of religion, and then we'll get this nice positive feedback mechanism going where as religion slowly fades away we'll get more and more science to replace it and that will displace more and more religion which will allow more and more science in and we'll eventually get to the point where…