stupidity
pharyngula | June 16, 2011The things that go on during Christian revivals…here's a crazy preacher claiming that conversion changes your DNA. Right.
How does this even work?
(via Joe. My. God.)
Could this be some kind of strange poe? If you look for "onkneesforjesus", there is a blog that features this video, and the tagline for the blog is…
My life is all about getting on my knees and faithfully serving Jesus until He comes.
I find it very hard to believe that was written by someone oblivious to the meaning.
pharyngula | June 16, 2011Don't be surprised, though. It's only natural.
Now consider human males. No doubt you have noticed an alarming trend in the news. Powerful men have been behaving badly, e.g. tweeting, raping, cheating, and being offensive to just about everyone in the entire world. The current view of such things is that the men are to blame for their own bad behavior. That seems right. Obviously we shouldn't blame the victims. I think we all agree on that point. Blame and shame are society's tools for keeping things under control.
The part that interests me is that society is organized in such a way that…
pharyngula | June 12, 2011Amina, the supposed Syrian girl who was mentioned a few times on this blog, was a fake perpetrated by guy named Tom MacMaster in Istanbul.
I never expected this level of attention. While the narrative voıce may have been fictional, the facts on thıs blog are true and not mısleading as to the situation on the ground. I do not believe that I have harmed anyone -- I feel that I have created an important voice for issues that I feel strongly about.
You have not. You have undermined authentic voices. Lies never help.
pharyngula | June 11, 2011Avoid the "I don't want to…but" construction. It always leads to asininities like this:
I don't want to trivialize the inhumane horrors that African slaves endured on slave ships destined for the Americas. But after a recent airplane trip, sitting tightly next to my neighbor in steerage seats, I feel the discomfort and pain endemic to the current air experience has certain curious similarities.
Because once you get past the extremely superficial similarity of an abstract packing problem, you're stuck calling sitting on well-cushioned seats while stewardesses bring you drinks "discomfort and…
pharyngula | June 8, 2011Let's see…Darwin revealed the theory of evolution in 1859, and the United States declared their independence from Britain in 1776 — but our founding fathers were such magical geniuses that they foresaw the whole thing and debated the subject there in Philadelphia and resolved that evolution was a bunch of hooey. Right.
the founding fathers…already had the entire debate on creation/evolution…and you've got Thomas Paine, the least religious of the founding fathers, saying you got to teach creation science in the public school classroom, the scientific method demands it!
Hey, David Barton,…
pharyngula | June 8, 2011I'm going to do it again. You're all about to facepalm once more, just as you did yesterday. By now, you should know this blog and be conscious of the need for deliberation and caution when putting your hand to your face.
I was sent this example of science proving atheism wrong. Perhaps you should gently place your hand on your forehead before you start reading, to forego the possibility of slamming your palm into your face with great force.
So…this clever calculation is contingent on the premise that there has been 6 billion people on the earth for 3 billion years, and, tragically, that…
pharyngula | June 7, 2011Stop writing to me about Mairson and Grossman. I have no respect for their opinions at all.
Grossman is the religion columnist at USA Today; Mairson is some disgruntled ex-employee of National Geographic who has appointed himself guardian of all propriety of anyone associated with NatGeo. Grossman is wondering "if the august Society would try to rein in Myers, just let him quietly bear the coveted NGS brand or whether Myers would high tail it out from under editorial control." Mairson is concerned about my "profanity-laced diatribes and my lack of "civil discourse about religion".
Bugger 'em…
pharyngula | June 6, 2011I, and a number of other people, were sent a link to this goofy picture of Kirk Cameron. I ignored it. Unfortunately, it was followed a little later by the demand below:
To whom it may concern:
I am Kirk Cameron's manager. I would suggest you remove this picture from your sight with the false caption immediately, other wise we will turn over to our attorney to deal with this defamation. It is sad you don't have better things to do with your time.
Mark Craig
Self-righteous pricks piss me off, so I had to post it.
pharyngula | June 1, 2011Man, what is it with Christians? Another one goes after me in an article titled Why P.Z. Meyer is Afraid, and a fellow just has to wonder how deeply they are capable of reading when they so grossly misspell my name all the time. "Myers": it's only five letters long, and it's the most common spelling variant of that name in the US.
Anyway, it's the usual litany: I'm uncivil and rude, I'm popular, I have a brute squad, I'm nasty, and I "attack the person rather than the argument". That last one is particularly ironic because the entire post is nothing but an attack on me, and doesn't even…
pharyngula | May 30, 2011On my last flight, I sat next to a woman who had the worst case of fear of flying I've ever seen. She spent the entire trip clutching the armrests and breaking into frequent bouts of tears; when I asked if there was anything I could do, she said, no, she knew it was completely irrational, but she just felt extreme terror every time she got in an airplane.
I wonder if she'd pass this new ridiculous test Homeland Security is installing in airports?
Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST), a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) programme designed to spot people who are intending to…
pharyngula | May 29, 2011Rabbi Moshe Averick asks, "Seriously, Aren't Atheists Embarrassed by P.Z. Myers?"
Seriously, aren't you? What's the matter with you people?
What prompts his outrage is his discovery of a lecture I gave some time back on the complexity argument from intelligent design creationists. He is appalled at my total lack of logic! Unfortunately for him, his misconceptions arise because he makes some unwarranted leaps about what I was saying.
He specifically objects to the fact that I showed a slide of a wall of driftwood at a beach, and that I explained that it had accumulated by chance and the…
pharyngula | May 27, 2011It's amazing what religion can do. In this case, it motivated some dim old fart who ought to have been loafing about watching Glenn Beck and drowning his anger with a six-pack of Bud to go out and try to murder gynecologists. He didn't actually succeed, fortunately: he was playing with his gun in his cheap room at the Motel 6 when it went off and sent a bullet flying into the room next door…so bad-ass that he is, he called up the front desk to mention that he was worried he might have hit someone else.
Then the police came and found out what he was really up to. He didn't want to accidentally…
pharyngula | May 27, 2011I missed the classiest part of Kirk Cameron's remarks about Stephen Hawking — the source I cited apparently edited out the over-the-top preliminaries as words that should not be witnessed. We don't exhibit such decorum here, so I'm willing to repeat what Cameron said.
To say anything negative about Stephen Hawking is like bullying a blind man. He has an unfair disadvantage, and that gives him a free pass on some of his absurd ideas.
Oooh, he went there. So the only reason physicists pay attention to Hawking is out of pity? Kirk Cameron is so far out of touch, and such a boorish asshole.
pharyngula | May 25, 2011Kansas representative Pete DeGraaf is fighting for a bill that would exclude abortion coverage in cases of rape. He thinks the state should stay out of that problem, and it should just be something that women "plan ahead for":
Bollier asked him, "And so women need to plan ahead for issues that they have no control over with pregnancy?"
DeGraaf drew groans of protest from some House members when he responded, "I have a spare tire on my car."
"I also have life insurance," he added. "I have a lot of things that I plan ahead for."
You heard the man, ladies. You should all just get organized…
pharyngula | May 24, 2011The world didn't end last Saturday (obviously), but Harold Camping and his predictions are just a smokescreen, and everyone is missing the heart of the problem.
Camping has now spoken. He now claims that Jesus did arrive 'spiritually' on the 21st, and that in his generous mercy, God has decided to spare us the 153 days of the tribulation, but that the world will still be ending on 21 October. This is no surprise. This is exactly what these crackpot prophets do: they're never right, but they are great at rationalizing.
His followers are busy readjusting. Here's a radio interview with one bible…
pharyngula | May 23, 2011In addition to being a Republican, a creationist, a bad economist, and a tiresome one-note character actor, he's also a rape apologist. I thought he'd hit bottom with Expelled, but I think he does have a real talent for finding a way to spiral ever downwards.
stoat | May 19, 2011That is what The Grauniad said over the weekend.
Cabinet ministers have agreed a far-reaching, legally binding "green deal" that will commit the UK to two decades of drastic cuts in carbon emissions. The package will require sweeping changes to domestic life, transport and business and will place Britain at the forefront of the global battle against climate change.
We all know what happens to people in the forefront of battle: they get shot dead. My initial reaction is: this is a very bad idea. The cabinet apparently wills the ends, and realises it will have major consequences, but it doesn't…
pharyngula | May 18, 2011Man, I am so jealous. I say stuff like this all the time, but all Stephen Hawking has to do is plainly state the obvious that "There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark," and it's NEWS. I think half the email I got this morning was all about people reacting to that one simple comment.
This one was promising: Michael Wenham objects, and one point he makes is fair enough. He says he isn't afraid of the dark, which I'm willing to accept — he would know best what scares him. But then, like all the critics, he announces that he…
pharyngula | May 18, 2011The Atlantic runs this regular column where they ask people about their reading habits — this time, they asked Aaron Sorkin, who sneers at the web and announces that he reads a couple of newspapers…or at least, he reads the front page and the op-eds in a couple of newspapers.
When I read the Times or The Wall Street Journal, I know those reporters had to have cleared a very high bar to get the jobs they have. When I read a blog piece from "BobsThoughts.com," Bob could be the most qualified guy in the world but I have no way of knowing that because all he had to do to get his job was set up a…
pharyngula | May 18, 2011The essay starts off stupidly enough.
In 1867 Karl Marx dedicated DasKapital to Charles Darwin.
Actually, no, he didn't. It's a fairly common lie in creationist circles, though, just like the others sprinkled throughout the story.
Modern creation science is led by an array of top-flight Ph.D. scientists, including biochemists, paleontologists, astronomers and geologists. It presents a formidable battery of evidence now knocking hundreds of holes in traditional evolutionary arguments. As never before, scientific creationism debunks the contrived "evidence" that evolutionary theory has fed on…