Bill Maher: still an anti-medical nut

I’ve already criticized Bill Maher for his religulous views on medicine, particularly after he was awarded the Richard Dawkins Award for allegedly promoting both atheism AND good science (yup, promoting science is in the official rules). But I’d hoped that his growing involvement with such intellectual luminaries like Richard Dawkins, who’s even done a television special on anti-medical quackery, might lead to someone setting Maher straight on how medical science works and why believing in so-called “alternative” “medicine” is no less religulous than believing in an invisible sky daddy. Though I doubted it.

Well, it seems Maher continues to believe in utter nonsense when it comes to medical science:

Wow! Is this Overtime With Bill Maher or Deep Thoughts By Sarah Palin? As usual, Orac does a comprehensive refutation to Maher’s idiocy.

The Rapture has been postponed

Yesterday I reported that today (9/21/09) was to be THE END OF THE WORLD!!!! That was at least according to this website here. Of course, as predicted (by me and other bloggers), the world would continue on past 9/21/09. Now of course one might consider the possibility that The Rapture did indeed happen and that if you’re still here reading this, then you just on Jesus’ naughty list, and thus were not Raptured into heaven.

But then, if The Rapture did happen, who changed the content on the website linked to above to no longer say that the world would end on 9/21/09 but that it would happen some time in the Fall of 2009? Now, depending on which section on the page you read, The Rapture will occur before September 23, 2009. . .or September 23, 2015. I guess it happens twice. I know you’ll all be holding your breath in anticipation.

As with yesterday, I recommend screen capturing this page again, so that you can compare it to what it says on September 24, 2009.

Texas Board of Ed wants to banish Neil Armstrong from history

The Texas Board of Education thinks they can rewrite history. Now some on the Board are trying to take Neil Armstrong out of the social science textbooks because Armstrong “is not a scientist”.

This is just the latest in a series of insane proposals being made in the Texas Board of Ed. Also proposed was taking negative facts about America out of the history books, putting Christmas in schools, minorities must be thankful to majorities, removing the word “propaganda” from U.S. history, and emphasizing GOP civil rights heroes (??).

Neil should ask Buzz Aldrin to go over there to kick ass and take names:

THE WORLD ENDS TOMORROW!!!!!

That’s right. Someone has figured it all out scientifically. The world will end on September 21, 2009!

Now, everyone who sees the page linked to above on September 21, remember to screen capture the page and then check it again on September 22.

Pastafarians, today be Talk Like A Pirate Day! Arr!

Town rejects new Scientology ‘church’

$cientology isn’t wanted in Sandy Springs, Georgia:

In a 3-2 vote, the commission denied the church’s request to rezone a former office building at Roswell Road and Glenridge Drive into its Georgia headquarters.

. . .

The vote is nonbinding but will be considered by the City Council during its vote. The City Council is scheduled to vote on the issue at its Oct. 20 meeting.

The swift vote cheered the 30 residents who showed up to oppose the rezoning, but church leaders and 30 members who showed up in support of the move were undeterred.

Good job, Sandy Springs! Keep those vampires out of your town!

And speaking of $cientology, I recently wrote an article, which I dual-posted over at Examiner and the New York City Skeptics’ new blog, The Gotham Skeptic about a lecture I attended on cults where the lecturer, Paul Grosswald, was a former $cientologist. Now the complete lecture is available online here, and I highly encourage everyone to listen to it. Cults are a real problem and almost anyone is capable of being sucked into a cult if they’re not educated in cult tactics.

News From Around The Blogosphere 9.18.09

1. WWII prisoners get out of jail free thanks to Monopoly - Escape supplies British airmen hostages were smuggled into prison inside the classic Parker Brothers game.

2. FBI outlines retooled scams designed to prey upon people’s trust and greed – It amazes me that the FBI doesn’t even have a “share” icon on their articles to quickly post this valuable information to social networking sites.

3. 8 Myths about the Freemasons debunked – Suck it, Dan Brown!

4.  The new Apple iDouche – Uri Geller now has his own Spoon App on the iPhone.  Ugh!

5. Frank Schaeffer Exposes Fundamentalist Christianity:

News From Around The Blogosphere 9.17.09

1. Flu season’s here. Get vaccinated – Massachusetts is considering mandating them, which will absolutely drive the anti-vaccinationists nuts. And though I usually come down on the side of individual rights, when it comes to vaccines, I have no serious objection to mandating them when deemed medically necessary. That’s because, like with drinking and driving, the decision affects more than just you but everyone around you.

2. Finland deems atheist ads not inappropriate & Idaho gets 3rd atheist ad – After first getting complaints for offensiveness, Finland’s Council of Ethics in Advertising said the ad with the slogan, “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life,” was not inappropriate. Meanwhile Idaho’s putting up its third atheist ad, which will contain the slogan,  “Millions are good without God.”

3. Abstinence proves ineffective again – A new study found that the more religious a state is, the higher the rate of teen pregnancy. Shocker. Of course this study only shows correlation, and not necessarily causation, given everything we know about faith-based, abstinence-only sex education, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if they find that religiosity does cause greater teen pregnancy.

4. Recently, I blogged about an alleged magic broom in Alabama that turned out not to be magic at all. Apparently, no one told these newscasters:

This is why I get so frustrated with the news media. When there isn’t a story, they just make one up. There’s no mystery here at all. Even the local paranormal investigators, after investigating for many, many hours ultimately concluded that the broom is just weighted funny as to stand up on its own. And aside from the store owners, the paranormal investigators have the most to gain from claiming a supernatural explanation.

Kirk Cameron & Ray Comfort to take their lies to college campuses

The latest despicable tactic from the duo who practically invented despicable, Kirk Cameron and Ray “Banana Man” Comfort, is to give away free copies of their own version of Darwin’s Origin of Species with a 50-page introduction filled with creationist nonsense.

What’s amazing is that Kirk couldn’t go even 10 seconds before lying his ass off. Of course kids can pray in public. That’s absurd.

Fortunately, there is a strategy to counter this repulsive tactic. Those students who know better can collect as many of these free books as they can and can remove the offending introduction. In which case, those copies can then be donated elsewhere so that Cameron and Comfort will have unwittingly helped promote Darwin’s work. And that thought makes me smile.

CVS to pay $2.8 mil in AirShield settlement

How many times is the Federal Trade Commission going to have to defeat the same freakin’ product in court?! First, there was Airborne, the bogus cold relief “medicine” that was forced to pay out a $37 million court settlement last year. Then Rite Aid was forced to pay out a $500,000 in refunds to customers for “Germ Defense,” Rite Aid’s version of the same product. Then Walgreens had to pay the consequences for selling their own version of the same stupid, completely ineffective product, Wal-Born (also briefly sold as Wal-Borne).

And now it’s CVS’ turn to pay up $2.8 million in a settlement over their version AirShield. This is ridiculous! If the FTC can’t get a bogus medical product off the shelves completely, what’s the point? They got to know that the amounts these companies are forced to pay are nothing but petty cash compared to the profits made by these products and that these products will continue to be sold in the cold remedy aisles with only slight changes to the packaging. These products need to be stopped once and for all.