godlessness
pharyngula | November 23, 2010It's almost Thanksgiving, and you know what that means: the deluge of Christmas carols is about to commence. This is the time of year when I dread turning the radio on, because I know I'll hear the same sets of songs over and over again, and the kind of uniform anti-eclecticism characteristic of Top 40 AM radio gets amplified and expanded and starts to spread everywhere. I'm always pleased to see something new, especially since it doesn't happen very often…Lennon's Happy Christmas (War is Over), Minchin's White Wine in the Sun?
Some people get cranky about anything that isn't sufficiently…
pharyngula | November 19, 2010It's such a petty and trivial one, though, I can't be too concerned. I'm at Skepticon 3, and I just learned tonight that the convention has been a source of dissent…and when I read the argument, I was stunned at how stupid it was. Apparently, Skepticon has too many atheists in it, and is — wait for it — "harming the cause".
I'm not joking. Jeff Wagg, formerly of the JREF, has a long lament deploring that 3 of the 15 talks are explicitly atheistic, and that JT Eberhard, the organizer, emphasizes the problem of religion too much for it to be True Skeptic™ conference. It's utterly batty. Some…
pharyngula | November 17, 2010Oh, man. Christopher Hitchens is going to debate William Dembski at a Christian high school in Plano, Texas.
Dembski is dumber than I ever imagined to have agreed to this. It's like volunteering to take a high dive into a woodchipper.
It's going to be webcast beginning at 8:40am tomorrow, Thursday, 18 November. When I won't be able to see it.
pharyngula | November 12, 2010I have arrived after a long, long series of flights, and have already experienced wonderful Mexican hospitality and Negro Modelo, many thanks to the gang from Masa Critica, so all is right in the world. It's not too late to show up, you can register at the door, just come on out to the Hotel Fiesta Inn Centro Histórico and join us at 8 tomorrow morning for Primer Coloquio Mexicano de Ateísmo. There will be live internet streaming of some of the talks, so let's hope more of the Spanish-speaking world takes advantage of this event, too.
La fe NO mueve montañas, la ciencia sí!
pharyngula | November 11, 2010And I'll be meeting some of them tomorrow. I'm sure I'll see a few people from Ateísmo desde México at Coloquio Mexicano de Ateísmo, and more…I actually get to spend a few days in Mexico City. I hope they'll forgive the fact that I don't have a lick of Spanish, which is a bit embarrassing nowadays…I should probably sign up for a few classes here at UMM sometime.
It's not too late to get yourself to the big city for a great meeting.
Oh, and look: there's a poll! I can guess what it's saying.
Vas a asistir al Coloquio: ¿Cómo te identificas?
Librepensador(a)
17%
Creyente
4%
Deista
2%…
pharyngula | November 10, 2010From the depths of the endless thread, Owlmirror asks an interesting and provocative question, so I thought I'd toss it up top for everyone to take a stab at it.
At what age were you taught about Hell? Was it described as a place of eternal torture, or just being apart from God? Was it taught in a way that you thought was serious, or might there have been some skepticism in the teacher? Were you specifically told that you yourself were in danger of going there unless you met the exacting standards of your religion? Were you told that everyone who did not believe as you were taught was doomed…
pharyngula | November 10, 2010The American Humanist Association is starting a new campaign to increase awareness of reasonable values: Consider Humanism. They have adds that contrast Christian sentiments with humanist ideals, like this one:
Consider Humanism - Richard Dawkins from American Humanist Association on Vimeo.
Probably too shrill and militant, huh? I swear, I heard the horses whinny and stampede at that voice, and I don't know how I'm going to clean up all the saliva and blood splattered all over the inside of my video display after playing that.
Actually, I think it strikes a nice balance of calmly pointing…
pharyngula | November 8, 2010The student freethought group at UMM is having another meeting this evening at 7 in the Moccasin Flower room. The subject tonight is to pin down exactly what "freethought" means!
pharyngula | November 8, 2010I already pointed to a couple of arguments against my assertion that there can be no evidence for god, so now I'll mention that there are a few taking my side: Salty Current and Diaphanitas. Whew. It was feeling kind of lonely.
pharyngula | November 6, 2010Ever since I ferociously asserted that god was not only dead, but never existed and never will exist, and that no amount of hand-waving speculation will convince me otherwise, those thuggish provisionalists have been gunning for me. Jerry Coyne tried, and now Greta Christina pounds on me, trying to convince me I'm wrong. They're not succeeding.
I'm merely being honest here. I read Greta Christina's list of events that would convince her, and I have to say that none of them would sway me. They'd convince me that there are unexplainable phenomena and beings greater than myself, but I already…
pharyngula | November 6, 2010Of course they do, and lots of them — it's a nation with a proud secular tradition.
http://suphecimelek.wordpress.com/
http://materyalistceseyler.wordpress.com/
http://nodrylight.wordpress.com/
http://garajimdakiejder.blogspot.com/
http://pozitifateizm.wordpress.com/
http://brightsturkiye.blogspot.com/
pharyngula | November 5, 2010This is the worst case of atheist buttery I've ever seen. I'm left with this terribly greasy, bloated feeling after going through it, and I think my arteries were clogging up just reading it. This fellow Malcolm Knox is an atheist who happily sends his kids off to the Catholic church, which is just fine (his wife is Catholic)…but he's got to rattle off ten terrible, awful, stupid excuses for why he has to do it. It's embarrassing how pathetic his reasoning is. And my SIWOTI syndrome compels me to take each one apart.
In his 1995 open letter to his 10-year-old daughter Juliet, Dawkins…
pharyngula | November 4, 2010Jen McCreight has published a solid response to the clueless anti-atheist article in Ms magazine…and it's in Ms magazine. It's good stuff, too, with a list of all the godless women the original article ought to have consulted.
pharyngula | November 2, 2010The Ms magazine blog has an awful little article on the New Atheists that completely misses the point. It's about the sexes and atheism, of course, but it has little to say except to whine that the New Atheism is just like the old religion, and gosh, look at all those Old White Guys in the fore. Yes, we know; the visible leadership of atheism right now is largely male, but it's not because they pushed aside the women. The New Atheism is really dominated right now by senior academic types, which means that we are the lucky survivors of the old all-pervasive sexism that we're seeing so well-…
pharyngula | November 1, 2010In case my fellow Americans have forgotten where it is, it's nestled down below Belgium, with borders on Germany and France…and there are Luxembourgian atheists!
pharyngula | November 1, 2010The second meeting of the Morris Freethought Society will be tonight, at 7pm, in the Mocassin Flower room (downstairs in the student union). They're going to share coming out stories tonight, and, I think, discuss plans for future events.
pharyngula | October 31, 2010Atheists aren't just using languages I don't know, they're writing in alphabets I can't read! It's Svobodni.org, which means something, I'm sure.
pharyngula | October 31, 2010Kevin Myers is some wackalooney Irish commentator who, as far as I know and as fervently as I hope, is no recent relation to this Myers — the only thing I can commend him on is that he manages to spell his last name correctly. Oh, we do have one other thing in common: we're both atheists. He's an idiot atheist, though, so I wash my hands of him. He recently made this admission while also acknowledging his flaming hypocrisy.
Now what follows is quite hypocritical. For, on the one hand, I simply don't believe in God, because I am intellectually unable to; but on the other, I prefer a society…