godlessness
pharyngula | March 29, 2006You all may recall the memorable, late Tito the wonder dog. Hank Fox has done something thought-provoking: he has frozen away some of Tito's cells, on the chance of cloning him.
At 325 degrees below zero, the essence of Tito sleeps.
I got a call today from Genetic Savings & Clone, the company that stores tissue samples of pets, and they told me the culturing of the samples I'd sent them was successful. I now have about 10 million cells waiting for the future moment — if ever — when the technology and the money coincide to allow me to clone him.
This is a personal decision, and I wouldn't…
pharyngula | March 29, 2006Here's an optimistic idea:
Personally, I have a great deal of hope that this is going to start to change in the near future. Indeed, this is one area where the blogosphere could actually prove quite powerful. Ten years ago, I'm not sure there was anywhere that your average Christian American was exposed to openly atheistic viewpoints. These days, I'm constantly amazed how many prominent bloggers profess their atheism on a daily basis. On the list, with the help of The Raving Atheist: Daily Kos, Washington Monthly, The Volokh Conspiracy (Jim Lindgren), Pharyngula, Daily Pundit,…
pharyngula | March 27, 2006Why would a pro-science op-ed give credence to the words of William Dembski?
William Dembski (one of the leading lights of the US intelligent-design lobby) put it like this in an email to Dawkins: "I know that you personally don't believe in God, but I want to thank you for being such a wonderful foil for theism and for intelligent design more generally. In fact, I regularly tell my colleagues that you and your work are one of God's greatest gifts to the intelligent-design movement. So please, keep at it!"
You can guess why: to engage in more atheist-bashing. Yes, Dawkins does much to…
pharyngula | March 24, 2006Hey, who thinks torture is never justified?
Catholics
26%
White Protestant
31%
White evangelical
31%
Secular
41%
Total
32%
I won't chew out all the Christians this time (because I take it for granted that religion, especially a death cult, is not a moralizing influence). Instead, I want to know what the hell is wrong with the 59% of my fellow non-religious people who think torture is sometimes acceptable!
I was also mildly amused by this quote at the National Catholic Reporter article:
During Lent especially, he [David Robinson of Pax Christi] says, the image of Jesus, who was…
pharyngula | March 23, 2006Next time the religious demand respect for their beliefs, remind yourself what they're really thinking. It's implicit in their dogma.
(via Kill the Afterlife)
pharyngula | March 23, 2006
I know that Steve Allen was a lifelong skeptic and freethinker, but was he also a squid worshipper? How else to explain this sign?
Through the Center for Inquiry in LA, which hosts that Steve Allen Theater, there's also a very useful list of dramatic productions of interest to freethinkers, including everything from Agnes of God to Zardoz (sorry: Red Dawn didn't make the cut). Any college students interested in subverting their university's film series might want to recommend some of the movies from this list. Or you might just try adding all of them to your Netflix subscription.
pharyngula | March 23, 2006
I'm staring at that thing, and all I see is some cracks in a flood-damaged wall.
The church was flooded by Hurricane Katrina; causing some drywall in the building to buckle into an image that church members believe is an image of Jesus on the cross.
Touching it causes miracles, they say—the blind see (or, at least, the myopic think their vision is a little better), kidneys start working (maybe), but the most important miracle of all is…
Church leaders say it really doesn't matter if you believe any of the testimonials about people being healed. But what is a fact, is that more and more…
pharyngula | March 21, 2006Why, oh why, did you have to disillusion me, Ebonmuse? And to slap me upside the face with a study from my own university, no less.
From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in "sharing their vision of American society." Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.
Oh. Well. That explains the tears and yelling from the in-laws-to-be 26 years ago last week.
Knowing how most Americans…
pharyngula | March 21, 2006The EO Wilson interview on Salon is worth watching a commercial for; he's an interesting and smart fellow, even where I disagree with him. I've put a few excerpts below the fold just in case you really detest jumping through those capitalist hoops.
I've talked with some atheists who've suggested what they really need is a spiritual atheism. They need the sense of awe. They're competing with religious traditions, with very powerful stories, that have been passed down through the ages.
Yeah, that's true.
Does the scientist, does the non-believer, need that as well? Can the non-believer have…
pharyngula | March 21, 2006What's going on here? It's another non-judgmental and fairly positive story about an atheist in a Florida newspaper!
OK, everyone, let's all join together in a chorus of "We Shall Overcome"…
(via Atheist Revolution)
pharyngula | March 19, 2006Can you take a little more godlessness?
Sean Carroll has a nice discussion of this remarkable article in the San Antonio Star-Telegram. Atheists…in Texas? A newspaper article that writes sympathetically about the godless? How gratifying!
Religion as an addiction—an excellent summary of the real problem.
Yet, if we're going to think clearly about the right-wing juggernaut's use of religion, and not function as its enablers, we must realize that we're dealing with an addict. Right-wing political-religious fundamentalism can destroy us too if we're like the dependent spouse who protects,…
pharyngula | March 19, 2006When I say it, I get a rush of protest proclaiming that not all Christians are like that. I know they aren't, but we ignore the theocratic Right at our peril.
Prophetic Christians, Phillips writes, often shape their view of politics and the world around signs that charlatan biblical scholars have identified as predictors of the apocalypse—among them a war in Iraq, the Jewish settlement of the whole of biblical Israel, even the rise of terrorism. [Phillips] convincingly demonstrates that the Bush administration has calculatedly reached out to such believers and encouraged them to see the…
pharyngula | March 19, 2006There are freethinkers frolicking over at Daniel Morgan's place.
If you've been wondering where the heck I've been, it's been one of those days. I had to drive #2 Son to Minneapolis to catch his bus back to Madison—it's the end of his spring break—and then I had to wrestle with that ugly bloatware called WebCT Vista to take care of stuff my students find important (grades, that kind of thing) for my class. I'm feeling surly and tired, but have no fear: I'll bounce back soon.
pharyngula | March 17, 2006Kansas Citizens for Science has a troll who brought up a post of mine, and a reader asked for a clarification…so I made two short comments in reply. That prompted a comment here from someone named "Dave".
Mr. Myers, at Kansas Citizens for Science we are fighting a tough battle to have the present school board replaced.
When you, and Robert Madison who invited you over (and who is an outspoken atheist) link your atheism to science, going beyond anything science can provide, you are playing in to the hands of our opponents.
The primaries here are coming up, and having atheists swarming our site…
pharyngula | March 16, 2006The money is all in the god racket.
Cambridge University cosmologist and mathematician John Barrow was awarded $1.6 million yesterday to do research into whether God is sitting at the control panel behind the Theory of Everything about the universe.
He won the 2006 Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities, the world's richest individual scholarly research grant. Its initiator, mutual-fund investor Sir John Templeton, specified that it be worth more than the Nobel Prize (which is worth about $1.5 million) so the media would take it seriously.
…and…
pharyngula | March 16, 2006Leon Wieseltier (you remember preacherly, pompous Leon, right?) is getting raked over the coals by the readers of the NY Times, including Dennett himself. It's very entertaining.
(via Butterflies and Wheels)
pharyngula | March 15, 2006It's a battle between the Bible and a secular Constitution.
On Wednesday, March 1st, 2006, in Annapolis at a hearing on the proposed Constitutional Amendment to prohibit gay marriage, Jamie Raskin, professor of law at AU, was requested to testify.
At the end of his testimony, Republican Senator Nancy Jacobs said: "Mr. Raskin, my Bible says marriage is only between a man and a woman. What do you have to say about that?"
Raskin replied: "Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the…
pharyngula | March 14, 2006Atrios was getting some heat (most of it misplaced) for saying he was sick of the Christian whiners on the Left who make up stories of their martyrdom in the Democratic party—the same nonsense I was snarling about. While Atrios can say he's not hostile to religion—he's just apathetic—I can't, and reading some of the other reactions to the whole business just confirms my contempt.
I like Avedon Carol, but she just doesn't get it. Explaining that the Right has successfully portrayed the Left as "godless" and then talking about how wrong they are because the Left is full of good religious people…
pharyngula | March 13, 2006The thin-skinned Religious Left whimpers some more. What is it with Kevin Drum and his constant sucking up to the delusional fantasist wing of the Democratic party? Usually it's Amy Sullivan, but this time it's Steve Waldman who gets to be the representative pantywaist for poor oppressed Christianity. He wants to claim that liberals are hostile to evangelicals.
I had been making a narrower point—that many liberals carry an elitist attitude toward evangelical Christians. Lerner's indictment is far more sweeping. Is he being unfair? I think a distinction should be made between the elites and…
pharyngula | March 11, 2006John Pieret quotes a religious apologist, about which I am rather conflicted:
For a Christian, when science is allowed to be neutral on the subject of God, science can only bolster faith. In contrast, and I imagine without realizing it, ID proponents have become professional Doubting Thomases, funded by Doubting Thomas Institutes. When advocates of ID use the vocabulary of science to argue for God's presence in cellular machinery or in the fossil record, they too poke their fingers through Jesus' hands. In so doing, ID vitiates faith.
This is the conundrum we face when we get a thoughtful…