To quote Michael Shermer, I “investigate paranormal claims, pseudoscience and fringe groups, and cults and claims of all kinds between science and pseudoscience, and non-science, and junk science, voodoo science, pathological science, bad science, non-science, and plain old nonsense.”
Say goodbye to freedom in Ireland. They just passed the blasphemy law by a single vote. It is now criminal to criticize a person’s religious views if you cause “outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion” whatever the hell that means. According to Paliban Daily here are some possibilities for how this new law might be interpreted in the future:
Atheists can be prosecuted for saying that God is imaginary. That causes outrage.
Pagans can be prosecuted for saying they left Christianity because God is violent and bloodthirsty, promotes genocide, and permits slavery.
Christians can be prosecuted for saying that Allah is a moon god, or for drawing a picture of Mohammed, or for saying that Islam is a violent religion which breeds terrorists.
. . .
Ireland’s Blasphemy Bill not only criminalizes free speech, it also gives the police the authority to confiscate anything deemed “blasphemous”. They may enter and search any premises, with force if needed, upon “reasonable suspicion” that such materials are present.
Even the homeowner who lets the wrong person know he has a copy of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses could find his door broken in by the Thought Police, his bookshelves ransacked, and his books burning in the front yard!
Satirizing religion in any way, shape, or form, if it “causes outrage”, is now a prosecutable offense in Ireland. Saying anything negative about a religion, if it “causes outrage”, can now be prosecuted as a crime. Just like in Muslim countries.
So I’ve decided to honor this new law by displaying a bunch of visual aids to educate the Irish as to what will no longer be tolerated in their country.
I’ve been blogging a lot lately about the hostility brewing in the comments section of Chris Mooney’s blog The Intersection as well as Mooney’s recent antagonism towards those who criticize faith in the name of science, like PZ Myers in particular. Well for someone who just wrote a book advocating for better communication and less antagonistic discourse in science, Mooney is a failure when it comes to practicing what he preaches.
I’m reminded of Randy Olsen’s hypocritical rants on the Skepticality podcast where he, like Mooney, argued that scientists make bad communicators and touted himself as a great expert in communicating science because he’s not antagonistic, etc, etc. But for such a great communicator advocating against antagonizing the people he’s is trying to persuade, he failed to persuade me and I’m sure failed to persuade the scientists he was trying to convince mainly because he was every bit as antagonistic towards us and our position as he accused us of being. And he, like Mooney, made it all about him. All this talk about “framing” (which for the record, I don’t 100% disagree with) and creating a narrative, but in that narrative Olsen and Mooney try to cast themselves as the saviors and those who happen to disagree as “militants.” And then they innocently shake their heads like they can’t understand why their opponents disagree.
While I’ve heard from many great skeptical minds who criticized Mooney in the past, I still mostly liked him. I read his blog on a regular basis, and when this one issue wasn’t the sole focus, I thought he had a lot of great stuff on his blog. Now he’s begun to behave like a crank by projecting what seems to be his own dogmatism onto those he disagrees with. I recognize that Mooney’s done a lot of good for the promotion of science but now his recent childish behavior has soured me on him significantly.
Now Mooney has written a blog purely to criticize PZ Myers for one particular quote not from Myers but merely left by a commenter on Myers’ site, which Mooney called a “classic quote from PZ’s blog,” misleading readers to believe it came from Myers himself when it hadn’t. Now I’m going to give Mooney the benefit of the doubt (one more time) and just assume that this was just a grevious error on his part and not a diliberate attempt to misrepresent PZ Myers’ position.
It comes off as incredibly childish and possibly vindictive of Mooney after receiving a bad review from Myers who is allegedly specifically singled out in Mooney’s book as being what’s wrong with the public understanding of science. And after being sent a review copy of the book, Myers pretty much left the personal criticisms alone and focused on his legitimate criticisms of the conclusions in the book. Mooney then just basically told people to ignore what Myers says because Myers is just a bitter “New Atheist” who couldn’t take being personally singled out as the problem in the book. But if Mooney was just going to dodge Myers’ substantive arguments anyway with a simple, “he’s just a dogmatic militant atheist” gambit, why bother sending a review copy of the book to Myers in the first place?
I knew Mooney’s position on this issue before but could easily overlook it as a small disagreement. Now, I can no longer do that. I’m sure I’ll continue to read his blog, but now I feel like when I do, there’s just going to be a bitter taste in my mouth.
And I guarantee you that Mooney does not want himself judged by quotes from the commenters on his blog, which are mostly far more childish and asinine than what you’ll find in the comments section of Myers’ blog, particular if you pull any given quote by John Kwok, a very regular commenter on Mooney’s blog.
Since I’m coming on the first birthday of Skepacabra in about 10 days (has it been a year already?), I thought maybe it’d be nice to go old-school Skepacabra and do a “News From Around The Blogosphere” entry like I used too. Also, it saves me a lot of time.
Why does anyone take health advice from Gwyneth Paltrow? Though Paltrow’s “lifestyle” site GOOP.com has been around for awhile, Amateur Scientist did a great little blog about it and her promotion of special the “detox” diet from “detox specialist” Dr. Alejandro Junger:
Why am I putting “detox” in scare quotes? Because it doesn’t really mean anything. Anything you shove down your throat (or up your ass, for that matter) to cleanse toxins from your system does nothing for your health since your body isn’t full of toxins. Like the word “energy”, people with no critical thinking skills use the word “toxin” to mean whatever they want without providing anything like evidence to show what it even is. Regardless, Paltrow just knows she’s full of toxins, so she recently tried out Dr. Junger’s suggested diet of one solid meal a day sandwiched by two liquid ones. Now she says she lost some weight and feels “pure”. I know it seems miraculous that a diet of very little actual food might lead to weight loss, but this is really just science.
Researchers at Ohio University may have found a cheap and abundant source of hydrogen to potentially fuel future hydrogen-powered cars. Yeah, it’s pee pee. Turns out the primary component of urine, urea, has four hydrogen atoms per molecule, as opposed to water’s two. Using a nickel-based electrode, the urea atoms can be easily broken apart with less voltage than it takes to split water. Which means that urine could be a less expensive and more abundant source of hydrogen.
Local parish priest Fr Willie Russell said on radio station Limerick Live 95FM yesterday that people should not worship the tree. “There’s nothing there . . . it’s just a tree . . . you can’t worship a tree.”
. . .
A spokesman for the Limerick diocesan office said the “church’s response to phenomena of this type is one of great scepticism”.
Well, I’m glad they think so, because compared the U.S., Netherlands is practically a utopia in almost every measurable way.
Oh, and in another Fox “News” blunder, Bill O’Reilly is caught red-handed lying about a story I blogged about yesterday about the end of the unconstitutional tradition of military planes doing flyovers above religious festivals (just after the 1:40 mark):
So according to O’Reilly, there is “no specific religion at play” whereas the director of the festival in question has said this:
Organizers don’t deny the explicitly Christian nature of the annual patriotic rally.
“Yes, it’s about as Christian as you can get — we believe in promoting Christianity,” [Director Patti] Syme said. “And we have no plans to change that.”
“…it’s about as Christian as you can get.” Hmm, last I checked, Christianity was a specific religion.
SCIENTISTS FROM Israel’s Technion University have unveiled a tiny robot, made using Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology, purportedly able to crawl through a person’s veins in order to diagnose and potentially treat artery blockage and cancer.The little robot – with a diameter of just one millimeter – has neither engine nor onboard controls, instead being propelled forward by a magnetic field wielded on it from outside the patient’s body.
It’s not quite nano technology, but we’re getting there. There is also work being done to create ant-like robots “to work in urban water distribution systems, to look for any leaks that need plugging.”
“Psychics” claim to have contacted Michael Jackson’s ghost. . .who should have told them to Beat It! Should have seen this one coming. It was only a matter of time before the celebrity “psychics” exploiting the death of such a major celebrity:
You can make up your own mind about James Van Praagh, noted cold reader psychic, who (according to the Palluxo news site) claims to have spoken with Michael Jackson the other day:
“Where are you located now, Michael” asked Van Praagh. “I am surrounded by happiness. I never felt more happier,” said Jackson.
When asked about his children, Jackson started crying. “I miss them a lot. I want them to be happy. I will be with them… in their hearts, will be looking over their shoulders.”
But I guess it was worth it to get some amazing insight that only the REAL ghost of Michael Jackson could have come up with. Sylvia Browne too claims to have contacted the ghost of the self-proclaimed “King of Pop.”
“I asked him to identify himself by moving my desk. The desk started trembling, then it moved a feet or two away from me. He wrote his name on my desk,” she said. “This was Michael’s sign of life.”
Almost a year ago, there was quite the controversy that blew up surrounding the taking of communion wafers, briefly chronicled and compiled here (4th story down). Now it seems that controversy over The Holy Trisket has erupted again, this time over the accusation that Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper took the cracker without eating it, and therefore may have kidnapped the Catholic god.
Wow, two Fox “News” stories in one day! As well as one story that’s only very loosely related because it’s exactly the kind of thing you’d expect to hear on Fox “News.”
This led to Gretchen Carlson of Fox and Friends bringing Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition onto her show to condemn the change in policy and inexplicably blame Obama for this incident and use the event as a platform to call the president an anti-Christian bigot. Carlson didn’t have anyone else on the show to debate the other side because. . .you know, Fox is “fair and balanced. And to give a hint of what an extraordinary idiot (or liar–I report, you decide) Mr. Mahoney is, at one point he says that the Constitution says Americans have the freedom of religion and NOT the freedom from religion. Apparently, he’s never actually read the Constitution.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
Yeah, see liberals! The Constitution says nothing about all about freedom from rel–OH!
One wonders what Carlson’s reaction would be if she heard military planes were doing flyovers at a Muslim festival.
2. Although this story isn’t actually about Fox “News,” it involves such enormous ignorance combined with pure vitriolic hatred for President Obama that you’d swear it was voiced by a Fox “News” pundit.
Now I’ve blogged before about Julia Sweeney, the intelligent and well-spoken former Saturday Night Live star who became an outspoken atheist and even made a one-woman show out of the story of her apostasy. Well, one of her former castmates, Victoria Jackson, kinda went another way since the show ended. She became a batshit insane Religious Right evangelical loon. And Victoria Jackson had this to say about our President in her latest unstructured and erratic blog rant:
Obama legally kills babies and now he can legally kill Grandmas!
Hitler did this. He killed the weak, the sick, the old, and babies and races/religions he didn’t like. Hitler also controlled the media. (Where’s the public debate between scientists on “Climate Change/Global Warming?”) Hitler had the VW bug invented as the state car. What will O’s nationalized car be? So… kill off the weak. That’s the plan. Tax the workers to death. Erase the middle class. Sounds like the evil governments we studied in high school long ago. The evil governments were : kings, oligarchies, facist, socialist, and communist. Now it’s called the Obama Administration. Sounds like candy or a rock band.
And to get a closer look into the strange world that is Victoria Jackson’s mind, here’s how the blog began:
I’d been wondering why the liberals are so passionate about this Health Care thing. It couldn’t be because they actually care about sick, poor people. If they did, they would visit hospitals, and give ten percent of their gross salaries to Compassion International and World Vision, like us stupid church go-ers do. Biden gave $ 62 to charity last year.
No, there’s gotta be a catch. I guess this question was sitting in my brain and during my sleep, my brain was working on it, because when I suddenly awoke at 3 a.m. I had the answer.
Euthanasia!
Social Security and Medicare are broke. Baby boomers, like me, are getting old and will soon be asking for it. Socialized medicine makes people die. You stand in a long, long line with a breast lump, clogged artery, or sharp pencil stuck in your eye, and someone like the DMV person, who can’t speak English, has chewing gum, an attitiude, really long fake nails that curl up at the end, and is talking on a cell phone, enjoying their power trip moment, is finally face to face with you. They mumble something incoherent about paperwork. You die. One less person in line for Social Security and Medicare!
“Socialized medicine makes people die.” And no, that’s not my emphasis. SHE put that statement in BOLD. WOW! Yeah, what’s with all those liberals who are actually concerned about that little “Health Care thing” anyway? Who needs if it makes Victoria Jackson have to wait a little bit longer on a line that no other public health care countries actually have and if it resembles some stereotyped version of the DMV. And let’s not let little details like the fact that the DMV, the U.S. Postal Service, and other commonly cited examples actually work quite well despite some people finding them annoying to deal with–let’s not let all that get in the way of a perfectly good non-sensical criticism. I think the host of The Young Turks said it best: Victoria Jackson is really this dumb.
BRIAN KILMEADE: We keep marrying other species and other ethnics–
GRETCHEN CARLSON: Are you sure they are not suffering from some of the causes of dementia right now?
BRIAN KILMEADE: The problem is the Swedes have pure genes. They marry other Swedes, that’s the rule. Finns marry other Finns; they have a pure society. In America we marry everybody. We will marry Italians and Irish.
Huh. Interesting. Thanks for the insightful biology lesson there, Brian.
Last month, I blogged about one of the REAL scientific controversies concerning evolution that has the scientific community split into 2 distinct camps:
When it comes to how Evolutionary Theory is to be publicly discussed, there has for some time been 2 main schools of thought. The former, perhaps best represented by the likes of Doctors Eugenie Scott, Ken Miller, and Barbara Forrest, believes in reassuring the public that Evolution does not conflict with their religions and can co-exist with the belief in a god. Ken Miller furthers this position by being himself a self-avowed Catholic who fully accepts Evolution.
Then there’s the other camp, perhaps best represented by Doctors Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, and Jerry Coyne, who believe Evolution is necessarily inconsistent with religious beliefs and that its not the role of scientists to sugarcoat the truth by reinforcing the lie that Evolution can co-exist with religious belief. This is the camp that I belong to as well.
Well since then, tensions between the 2 camps have grown tremendously online, particularly on Chris Mooney’s blog, The Intersection, where this rising tension began last month when Mooney criticized an article by Dr. Jerry Coyne.
The conflict became more inflamed when Dr. PZ Myers learned that Mooney singled him out for allegedly furthering the rift between science and religion last year during the Crackergate fiasco (4th story down) and blogged about it as well as not receiving his usual review copy of Mooney’s book. This led Mooney to post his blog response to Myers and probably also prompted this other blog entry discussing the conflict of whether science and religion can co-exist here. But it’s not Mooney or Coyne or Myers, etc who have resumed fighting but the readers of Mooney’s blog. And the comments section of these 2 blogs have fast become a battleground for name-calling, straw men arguments, and just plain irrational behavior, particular on the part of commenter John Kwok, who illustrates perhaps more than anybody how dogmatic and irrational the scientific-minded can become on this one issue, specifically, in my humble opinion, those on the side insisting that science and religion don’t conflict.
But one thing seems to be clear. This issue isn’t going away on its own. And as atheists become more and more outspoken in American society and as creationists further their political agendas, we’re going to be facing this conflict more and more. And if the scientific community can’t find some kind of common ground, we won’t need creationists because we’ll have done their jobs for them.
Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko has signed a new bill into law that bans all pornography:
No longer will any Ukrainian be allowed to legally possess video or photographs of naked humans sticking their body parts in each other. Truly, a victory for sense and freedom. The new law goes on to say that anyone caught with multiple copies of a pornographic image may be charged as a dealer. Also, there is an exemption for “medicinal” porn.
I’d like to see more about this medicinal porn. Does that involve videos of sexy nurses showing up at someone’s door immediately followed by inexplicable screwing?
It’s funny too because I was just saying the other day that all of the Ukraine’s problems would be solved if they could just get rid of all the porn. Why didn’t we see it before. It makes perfect sense. The Soviet Union didn’t have freedom, and look at how great that turned out. Oh…right.
Of course this raises a lot of questions about how porn is defined:
What exactly constitutes “pornography”? Two people having sex? One person having sex? Two people having sex with one person? Three monkeys, a girl, two cups, and a Klondike bar all having sex together?
And to clear up the confusion, the Amateur Scientist makes a suggestion (Didn’t mean to copy so muc of AS’ blog):
The only way to resolve this situation is to mail Viktor Yushchenko every questionable image you can get your hands on so that he may personally tell you whether or not you’re allowed to have it in Ukraine. His address:
President Viktor Yushchenko
12 Shovkovychna St., Kyiv
Ukraine
Say goodbye to freedom in Ireland. They just passed the blasphemy law by a single vote. It is now criminal to criticize a person’s religious views if you cause “outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion” whatever the hell that means. According to Paliban Daily here are some possibilities for how this new law might be interpreted in the future:.
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to teach her class.
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could find his door broken in by the Thought Police, his bookshelves ransacked, and his books burning in the front yard!
Posted by mjr256 
Posted by mjr256 
Posted by mjr256 
Almost a year ago, there was quite the controversy that blew up surrounding the taking of communion wafers, briefly chronicled and compiled 
Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko has signed a new bill into law that bans all pornography:
