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.”
1. Happy 150th Birthday, Origin of Species! - That’s right. The little book that changed the world, single-handedly rendered even a deist god unnecessary, and made it truly possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist has just turned the Big 1-5-0! CNN’s published a brief retrospective from Richard Dawkins. Suck it, Kirk Cameron!
Then again, CNN also published some creationist nonsense from Stephen Meyer. In his bio, they claim the Discovery Institute “supports research challenging ‘neo-Darwinian theory’ and supports work on the theory of ‘intelligent design.’ “ Of course this isn’t actually wrong because it never says the D.I. actually DOES any research; it just supports the idea of research. Of course cdesign proponentsists have yet to ever present a means of properly testing their claims or of showing any practical applications of their “research.” And of course if you limit your “research” to a taking a specific position on a scientific argument, you’ve already exposed your bias. But let’s not quibble over small details like that.
2. LHC creates its first collisions - They grow up so fast, don’t they. It seems like only a year ago that people were freaking out that it’s going to destroy the world and now our boy’s all grown up and smashing shit. Before you know it, it’ll be married and having its own baby colliders.
4. Iraq bribes citizens to get married – American conservative Christians pay attention. THAT’S TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE. But it’s not just any marriage. The Iraqi government is trying to promote interreligious marriage specifically, which is almost kinda progressive when you think about it, as ill-conceived as the overall plan seems to be.
About a dozen mixed couples will take part in a mass wedding Friday and will receive their $2,000 gifts, Mohammed said. An additional 375 same-sect couples will join the celebration, but they’ll receive $750, Mohammed said. The government wants to help those cash-strapped couples in getting their start, he said.
Did they say “same-sex” couples? Oops, my mistake. I misread it. But at least the government sees value in encouraging hetero-sect-ual relationships in an effort to heal tensions.
5. Michael Jackson’s trapped in someone’s womb! – That’s what expecting parents Dawn Kelley and William Hickman see in Dawn’s latest ultrasound. But even though you don’t think it looks like Michael Jackson, they’re not crazy. Even their six-year-old daughter agrees that it looks like Michael Jackson. And who’d know Michael Jackson better than a small child (That’s right. I went there)? But I guess we won’t know for sure until Dawn starts to feel the baby moon-walking.
To improve science and mathematics education for American children, the White House is recruiting Elmo and Big Bird, video game programmers and thousands of scientists.
I think we all know that The Count was born for this job.
1. The European Court of Human Rights has stirred controversy by banning crucifixes from public schools in Italy, which is obviously a very Catholic nation. Now in the U.S. there’s obviously Constitutional precedent for such a ruling but I’m not personally acquainted with European nations’ takes on church and state separation.
Displaying crucifixes also violated childrens’ right to freedom of religion, the court said.
The Italian bishops’ conference denounced the court as “partial and ideological,” saying the crucifix “is not just a religious symbol but also a sign of cultural belonging.”
Riiight. It’s like Chief Justice Antonin Scalia said last month; there’s nothing religious or, say, Christian about a crucifix. Nah. That’s why you see them all over the place in Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, and Hindu cemetaries, right?
Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told Italian television that the ruling had been met “with astonishment and regret” by the Catholic Church.
“The crucifix has always been a sign of God’s love, unity and hospitality to all humanity. It is unpleasant that it is considered a sign of division, exclusion or a restriction of freedom,” he said.
Hold on there, Rico. Didn’t you just hear what the Italian bishops said. It’s not a sign of God’s love; it’s “cultural.” If it were religious, then it would violate childrens’ right to freedom of religion. So what’s it gonna be? Symbol of “God” or two sticks nailed together?
“The staff, being all born-again believers, will see this as a mission,” [founder of Corrections Concepts Inc. Bill Robinson] says. That, he says, is “about changing criminals into citizens.”
The prison would accept only inmates near the end of their sentences who volunteer to attend and sign an agreement to participate, the paper says.
“They don’t have to go to church, or Bible study, but they have to participate in the curriculum, which is Christ-centered,” Robinson says.
But if this prison is receiving even a dime of tax-payer money to fund it, then I feel they should have no right to discrimate against any group in their hiring process.
1. Liberty “University” adopts a liberal – To further illustrate how illegitimate Jerry Falwell’s ridiculous little school is, they decided to launch a new prayer-in-action program called “Adopt a Liberal.” The idea is to choose a liberal authority figure to be the subject of regular, intense prayers:
Here’s How it Works…
Pick one or more of the liberals from the list we have posted online at www.LC.org, or choose your own liberal(s) to adopt. If you are led to choose one or more of the liberals we have selected for consideration, please read their brief biographical statement, including the reasons they stand in need of prayer.
Pray earnestly and intensely for them! Pray that the Lord would move upon them and cause them to be the kind of leaders who will encourage others to lead “a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence.” We encourage you to seek the Lord’s guidance on how to pray for your liberal(s), always allowing Him to temper your prayer with His love and mercy.
An Italian scientist says he has reproduced the Shroud of Turin, a feat that he says proves definitively that the linen some Christians revere as Jesus Christ’s burial cloth is a medieval fake.
3. Grand Unified Theory of Superman – Most superheroes have only one power and you might have thought they all had to be jealous of Superman because he seemed to have so many. I mean, just to duplicate Superman’s powers you’d need: Captain Marvel, The Flash, Cyclops, Colossus, Dare Devil, Ice Man, and Miss Marvel. I think that about covers it. But a scientist has now determined that Superman might only have one superpower:
It is our opinion that all of Superman’s recognized powers can be unified if His power is the ability to manipulate, from atomic to kilometer length scales, the inertia of His own and any matter with which He is in contact.
See True Believers, science can have practical applications! Excelsior!
1. Supreme Court Justices attending ‘Red Mass’ - Six of the U.S. Supreme Court Justices, John Roberts, Sonia Sotomayor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, and Samuel Alito all attended Red Mass — a special service for law professionals that has been held since 1953. Stephen Breye, who is Jewish, has attended this service before and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, also a Jew, attended once but will never attend again:
… Ginsberg said she grew tired of being lectured to by Catholic officials.
“I went one year, and I will never go again, because this sermon was outrageously anti-abortion,” Ginsburg said in the book “Stars of David: Prominent Jews talk About Being Jewish” by author Abigail Pogrebin.
Clarence Thomas, the sixth Roman Catholic on the court, also didn’t attend.
“Mothers and their newborns in an Oregon City church that practices faith healing routinely died during or shortly after birth because medical help was not sought…”
Benny Hinn, from Texas, who draws large crowds to his Pentecostal revival rallies, was turned back at Stansted airport under new rules on visiting ministers of religion.
Many thousands of Pentecostal Christians travelled from across Britain and Europe and booked long weekend breaks in the capital’s hotels for his mission at the ExCeL exhibition centre in Docklands, East London, which had been due to begin on Thursday night.
They were left disappointed after Border Agency officials turned him back when he landed with his private jet because he had failed to obtain a “letter of sponsorship” from a church.
Instead, Mr Hinn flew on to Paris and tried to enter Britain at Luton airport but was again turned back. He was on his way back to France last night.
Maybe now would be the appropriate time for the U.S. to adopt the same policy to keep him out of our country too.
1. Neighborhood Watch Jesus with kung-fu grip – Residents of Columbus, Ohio have decided to fight the rising local violent crime and robberies with. . .wait for it. . .wait for it. . .PRAYER:
The Workmans have joined with the Victorious Life Christian Center Church on Tamarack Circle North to organize a “Circle of Prayer.”
“We want to circle the circle with enough people to pray over the community,” Mrs. Workman said.
…
“We know that with the state of the community right now, the only thing that’s going to change it is prayer,” she said.
Then in that case, why not just keep all your doors unlocked while you’re at it? I mean, since you’ve already got God looking out for you.
In the Canadian province of Quebec, a trial court judge has rejected a challenge by Christian parents to the mandatory new course in grades 1 through 11 in Quebec schools that teaches about a broad range of world religions. The Ethics and Religious Culture course covers Christianity, Judaism, aboriginal spirituality, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism… It replaces parents’ choice of one of three separate courses that focused on Catholic or Protestant thought, or moral instruction.
The story is SuperGod by Warren Ellis and Garrie Gastonny and you can see a preview of it here.
… In the world of SUPERGOD, superhumans are the ultimate expression of the Messiah complex, and scientists can build Messiahs who will fly down from the skies to save the world. No-one thought about how they’d do it — or even if they’d want to. So begins the apocalyptic tomorrow of SUPERGOD — the story of how supermen killed us all and ended the world just because we wanted to be rescued by human-shaped things from beyond Science itself! Take every superhero comic ever published, shove them into a nuclear-powered blender, soak it in bad vodka and set the whole thing alight — and SUPERGOD will crawl out and eat your brain!
1. Israel’s richest woman now claiming to be psychic – Businesswoman Shari Arison, who’s worth $2.7 billion, is claiming she can see the future. But I actually think this is a case where she actually believes she can see the future. Here’s why:
Armed with the insight gained through work with Florida-based psychiatrist Brian Weiss, a proponent of regression therapy and the exploration of (take your pick) deep memories or past lives, she says she is ready to go public with her visions and bring together her spiritual and business goals.
Yup, you talk to some wacky past life regression guru and the next thing you know, they get you believing that your own thoughts are messages from the future. I tell ya, if I had a nickel for every time. . .
We have … an entire party, the Democrats, whose primary constituency, besides the teachers’ unions, is homosexual men and lesbian women. I hope it won’t come as a surprise to anyone that a big part of male homosexual behavior is interest in young boys.
And hope it won’t come as a surprise to anyone that a Ben Stein holds such ignorant views on gay people. C’mon Ben. It’s 2009. You’re not fooling anyone. It’ll be okay. Just come out of the closet, Ben.
Ayatollah Khamenei said this week that the study of social sciences “promotes doubts and uncertainty.” He urged “ardent defenders of Islam” to review the human sciences that are taught in Iran’s universities and that he said “promote secularism,” according to Iranian news services.
“Many of the humanities and liberal arts are based on philosophies whose foundations are materialism and disbelief in godly and Islamic teachings,” Ayatollah Khamenei said at a gathering of university students and professors on Sunday, according to IRNA, the state news agency. Teaching those “sciences leads to the loss of belief in godly and Islamic knowledge.”
Chimpanzees in the Congo have developed specialised ‘tool kits’ to forage for army ants, reveals new research published today in the American Journal of Primatology. This not only provides the first direct evidence of multiple tool use in this context, but suggests that chimpanzees have developed a ’sustainable’ way of harvesting food.
“A species of crustacean with no eyes and venom-injecting fangs has been discovered in an underwater volcanic cave in the Canary Islands off the coast of North Africa.”
That is so freakin’ cool! That’s the most interesting fauna I’ve heard about in a while. It’s been named Speleonectes atlantida.
Bradley says he’s felt no pressure to change anything about his course, and says bluntly that he doesn’t plan to turn his class into a theological seminar, or to present evolutionary theory only to then dismantle it for students. While he’s fine with helping students work through struggles of faith, Bradley says he won’t undercut decades of peer reviewed scientific research in the interest of religious consistency.
“I am not OK with getting up in a science course and saying most science is bullshit,” he said.
The school, however, has other plans. The administrators want the scientific evidence taught to the students so they can reject it, because the school’s official mission is to eventually lead them back to biblical superstition. So they want to undermine their own teacher’s teaching by brainwashing the students to reject science. In the above link, PZ Myers links to one of the creationist students’ actual papers where he attempts to debunk major chunks of accepted science. The student says he intends to get a PhD in Molecular Biology. With his incapacity to understand basic science, the only degree I see him getting is a BS.
1. Kentucky no longer protected by Yahweh – The state had somehow managed to pass a law requiring the Dept. of Homeland Security to recognize that Kentucky relies on the protection of the Christian god, making many wonder why they would even need the Dept. of Homeland Security. But it no longer matters because that law has now been overturned due to its extreme unconstitutionality.
2. Senator Ted Kennedy’s 1983 speech at Liberty “University” – Yes, that Liberty “University.” Of course Kennedy gave a very different kind of speech than what one would typically expect at the school, emphasizing church/state separation and liberal causes.
3. Those anti-healthcare reform protesters at the town hall meetings are classy folks:
Last week, I posted a blog where I called Islam evil. A few days later, I revised and said religion was evil when Christianity illustrated how it could be just as repulsive. But it’s one thing to post that on an internet blog. It’s quite another thing, however, to show up to a public school wearing a shirt that says, “Islam is of the Devil.” This of course led to the student who did this being sent home from school, which I feel was an entirely appropriate punishment.
When the kid was interviewed, she admitted to not even really having any contact with any Muslims and that she doesn’t know why that is. Really? You can’t figure that one out?
Then Wayne Sapp, the senior pastor at Dove World Outreach Center and the man responsible for making the shirts, gives a completely ridiculous false analogy where he attempts to compare a shirt calling the religion of others of the devil to a hypothetical shirt declaring that your mom is really your mom. Cause obviously those 2 ideas are comparable in terms of their appropriateness in school.
And here’s Pastor Terry Jones of Dove World Outreach Center talking about the shirts:
Now the Friendly Atheist asks exactly the same question I would. You think these guys would defend a person’s right to wear a shirt in school that reads “Jesus is of the Devil”? Given how many times I’ve seen evangelical Christians overreact to even billboards that simple tell non-believers that they’re not alone, I find it very, very hard to believe these guys would so passionately defend the rights of someone to wear a “Jesus is of the Devil” shirt in school.
Now as much of a defender of free speech that I am, I wouldn’t defend either shirt. I agree with the hosts of the first video above. Promoting your love of Jesus is fine with me. Attacking someone else’s beliefs in school is unnecessarily divisive and can reasonably be censored within a school setting.
1. Happy 150th Birthday, Origin of Species! - That’s right. The little book that changed the world, single-handedly rendered even a deist god unnecessary, and made it truly possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist has just turned the Big 1-5-0! CNN’s published a brief retrospective from Richard Dawkins. Suck it, Kirk Cameron!
2. LHC creates its first collisions - They grow up so fast, don’t they. It seems like only a year ago that people were freaking out that it’s going to destroy the world and now our boy’s all grown up and smashing shit. Before you know it, it’ll be married and having its own baby colliders.
3. Study finds cannabis little more than placebo in cancer patients – This will no doubt come as an even bigger disappointment to the 4/20 crowd.
4. Iraq bribes citizens to get married – American conservative Christians pay attention. THAT’S TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE. But it’s not just any marriage. The Iraqi government is trying to promote interreligious marriage specifically, which is almost kinda progressive when you think about it, as ill-conceived as the overall plan seems to be.
5. Michael Jackson’s trapped in someone’s womb! – That’s what expecting parents Dawn Kelley and William Hickman see in Dawn’s latest ultrasound. But even though you don’t think it looks like Michael Jackson, they’re not crazy. Even their six-year-old daughter agrees that it looks like Michael Jackson. And who’d know Michael Jackson better than a small child (That’s right. I went there)? But I guess we won’t know for sure until Dawn starts to feel the baby moon-walking.
6. Pennsylvania Avenue turns to Sesame Street to promote math and science -
Posted by mjr256 
Posted by mjr256 
Posted by mjr256 
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La Sierra “University” is a Seventh Day Adventist college that officially supports a literalist interpretation of the Bible and a 6-day creation. 