News From Around The Blogosphere 7.20.11

Okay, it’s been awhile so this is going to a long one.

1. Campus Crusade for Christ is changing their name – In an attempt to change their image, the CCC has finally decided to get rid of that pesky “Crusade” in their name to avoid offending people and are now calling themselves the very inoffensive “Campus Holocaust for Christ.” Just kidding. From now on they’ll be known as the “cru”, cause strange lowercase acronyms are hip, chill, and groovy with the kids these days. Though if they really want to be more popular with the kiddies, maybe they should just call themselves Lady Gaga, and then put out announcements that Lady Gaga is coming to their campus. Can I solve image problems or what? I expect my check in the mail later this week.

2. Deepak Chopra, the videogame! Rated M for Moron – You know, for years I’ve listened to Jack Thompson shamelessly blaming video games for just about every atrocity in human history from the Crusades (probably) to the Virginia Tech shootings. But now Deepak Chopra is making me realize video games really can be harmful to society due to his new game called “Leela” (I’m assuming because he’s a huge Futurama fan) involving “seven different interactive exercises based on the seven ‘chakras,’ the points along the body that Chopra says serve as energy centers. No, Chopra has no background in actual human anatomy; I guess this is what he means by willing things into existence. If you believe in nonsense long enough and you can invent your own biology. In related news, Phil Plait has penned an short piece published in Playboy magazine that chastized Chopra for massacring science with his mouth.

3. Ireland vs. Vatican –

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny condemned the Vatican for continuing to downplay the rape and sexual torture of children in order to protect the image of the Catholic church.

Kenny’s condemnation comes in response to last week’s release of the Cloyne report, a scathing expose of current and ongoing Vatican efforts to cover-up the ever-present sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy.

Kenny claimsthe Cloyne report “tells us a tale of a frankly brazen disregard for protecting children;” and, “exposes an attempt by the Holy See to frustrate an Inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago, not three decades ago.”

PZ Myers also wrote about this story here. And retired Bishop of Cloyne, John Magee, has been in hiding since the Cloyne report exposing his poor handling of child sex abuse allegations was published.

And speaking of the Catholic Church…

4. Catholic bishop bans fund-raising for breast cancer research –

A bishop from Toledo, Ohio will not allow parishes and parochial schools to raise money for the Susan G. Komen Foundation (which helps fund the fight against breast cancer) because there’s a chance they may one day fund embryonic stem-cell research.

Glad to see they have their priorities in place.

5. Austrian officials allow Pastafarian to wear colander in drivers license photo – Austrian Niko Alm is being given permission to wear a colander, the official headwear for Pastafarians, on the license, which is clearly a far superior fashion statement than the Jewish yarmulke. Blessed be the Flying Spaghetti Monster and his noodly appendages.

6. Child Holocaust-denying nazi musicians renounce much of their former beliefs – The Olsen Twin look-alikes who form the Hitler-admiring pop band Prussian Blue have now publicly rejected the views that made them famous and for which their band was named after.

7. Jesus appears on Walmart receipt – Either that or Charles Manson, though that’s not really a very meaningful distinction.

Related articles

• Deepak Chopra – Leela – more details (gonintendo.com)
• Dear Playboy: Deepak Chopra is wrong (blogs.discovermagazine.com)
• Campus Crusade for Christ is No More… (patheos.com)

Sam Harris & Michael Shermer crush Deepak Chopra & Jean Houston on Nightline

Although PZ Myers thinks watching the latest Nightline debate is a waste of time, I highly recommend it, particularly because Sam Harris in particular simply demolishes Deepak Chopra and the other woman. Actually, aside from a few needlessly drawn out stories that go nowhere, Jean Houston was almost nonexistent in this debate and I almost even liked her.

The real debate though was between Sam Harris and Michael Shermer against Deepak Chopra, who couldn’t have made more of a fool of himself. Even a guy in the audience during the Q & A session exposed Chopra’s ignorance.

The common theme in the debate seemed to be exposing Deepak as hack who incorrectly co-opts terminology from both science and religion in order to formulate his own brand of meaningless New Age gibberish. The debate was about whether or not the god concept has a future and Deepak refused to actually address the very topic he was invited to discuss, ignoring the god concept that 99.999999% of the world means when they talk about god in order to promote his own “god” in name only that has no resemblance to what almost everyone on the planet would consider “god.” So then why did you agree to the debate in the first place, Deepak?

This is like if I were invited to debate free will versus determinism and instead demanded that we discuss homeopathy, which I renamed “determinism.”

Deepak was also frequently corrected on his constant misuse of quantum physics as a justification for his incoherent magical claims.

Anyway, it’s a fun debate to watch, so check it out. Here’s the first part:

Oh, and check out Shermer’s post-debate debate with Chopra here. No, I didn’t accidentally type “debate” twice. Chopra and Shermer have continued debating a particularly idiotic claim Chopra made on their blogs.

Billy Zane or inzane?

Holy crap! Mr. Zane, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone watching this video is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may the Flying Spaghetti Monster have mercy on you.

I haven’t heard incoherent rambling like that since Miss North Carolina:

I mean good Zeus. Did anyone understand what the hell Billy Zane is talking about? And are there even lead characters in film and television who aren’t going through transitions in their lives? That’s sort of the definition of drama and narrative, Billy. But bravo on that vacuous answer to the god question. There’s a whole lot of brain dead morons out there who eat that stuff up.

This also makes a great example of what’s the harm in nonsense. Billy Zane helps only one charity and it’s going towards total garbage that helps no one. Good job, Billy.

Deepak Chopra: ‘Only Spirituality Can Solve The Problems Of The World’

Deepak Chopra has written another fluff piece in the Huffington Post called “Only Spirituality Can Solve The Problems Of The World.”

How you might ask?

If there is anything that will at this moment heal our wounded planet with its immense problems of social injustice, ecological devastation, extreme economic disparities, war, conflict and terrorism, it is a deeper experiential understanding and knowledge of our own spirit.

How you might ask again?

If there’s anything that WILL heal this planet? I would like Deepak to name one problem in the world HAS BEEN solved by spirituality. Just one will do. Then I’d like him to explain how spirituality will give us practical solutions to human trafficking, third world poverty, heart disease, the sky-rocketing unemployment rate, the AIDS crisis in Africa, the crisis in Haiti, or any of the millions of real problems we face in this world.

Sorry Dee, but the answer to our problems is science, reason, and education. Science delivers the goods, not ancient superstitions repackaged as New Age Mysticism.

If ever I doubted the fact that Deepak Chopra has no clue how to address the practical concerns we face in our modern world and is nothing but a life-sized fortune cookie handing out a bunch of trite, easy answers, I will never doubt this again.

Dr. Oz returns to my shit list

The great and powerful Oz decided to have both Deepak Chopra and Joseph Mercola on.

Now I can forgive him for Chopra, who while delusional, isn’t all that dangerous. But Mercola is a total quack and a disgrace to the medical profession, far more than Mehmet Oz.

After all, Mercola is a supporter of some of the most blatant quackery out there. The worst example of his support of quackery occurred when he promoted the cancer quackery of Dr. Tullio Simoncini, the Italian “oncologist” who believes that all cancer is caused by fungus and that he can cure it using baking soda. He’s also claimed that baking soda can cure H1N1, making it the all-purpose cure-all. Add to that Mercola’s support for homeopathy and anti-vaccine views, and Mercola is rapidly approaching Mike Adams territory.

Ozzy might as well have invited Andrew Wakefield on too while he was at it.

News From Around The Blogosphere 2.25.10

1. A new study suggests acupuncture is good for depression in pregnancy. . .or does it? –

In other words, acupuncture specific for depression produced an effect that was not different from that of one of the controls. But by creating a group that combined non-specific acupuncture (ineffective) with massage (effective), they were able to create a composite that was ineffective, and then they compared the experimental group with the composite. But that doesn’t change the fact that acupuncture for depression was no better than massage.

Have the authors shown that acupuncture specific for depression is effective for treating depression in pregnant women? I don’t think so. If it offers no advantage over massage, we can forget about acupuncture and simply offer depressed pregnant women a day at the spa. It is no less effective and probably far more enjoyable.

2. Smile or Die:  How positive thinking fooled America and the world – In her new book, Barbara Ehrenreich presents the evidence of numerous studies demonstrating that positive thinking has no effect on survival rates. She also provides testimonies that suggest that possibly great harm comes from this false hope.

Pity, for example, the woman who wrote to the mind/body medical guru Deepak Chopra: “Even though I follow the treatments, have come a long way in unburdening myself of toxic feelings, have forgiven everyone, changed my lifestyle to include meditation, prayer, proper diet, exercise and supplements, the cancer keeps coming back. Am I missing a lesson here that it keeps re-occurring? I am positive I am going to beat it, yet it does get harder with each diagnosis to keep a positive attitude.”

New Age mysticism may sound harmless enough but here is a great example of how dangerous such irrational beliefs are.

3. A gene mutation is linked to autistic symptoms in mice – Once again, this is research that would not exist if J.B. Handley, Jenny McCarthy, and their anti-vaccine cohorts were making the decisions because they have zero interest in exploring the genetic basis for autism.

4. Stem Cells restore sight to blind mice – I feel like this news story is a rerun. Anyway though, once again this is research that might not have existed if George Bush was president.

An international research team led by Columbia University Medical Center successfully used mouse embryonic stem cells to replace diseased retinal cells and restore sight in a mouse model of retinitis pigmentosa. This strategy could potentially become a new treatment for retinitis pigmentosa, a leading cause of blindness that affects approximately one in 3,000 to 4,000 people, or 1.5 million people worldwide.

News From Around The Blogosphere 2.4.10

1. 1000 rabbis warn against gays in the military – Their claim is that gays in the military will lead to more natural disasters. Well, considering that natural disasters have occurred throughout human history, that seems like a pretty unfalsifiable claim. Are they suggesting then that if gays are kept out of the military that there will never be another natural disaster again? I’d love to see them put their nickel down on that claim. Ugh! Silly rabbis. Trix are for kids. But I am curious. Do you think if a 1000 rabbis were typing on a 1000 typewriters, they could reproduce the Bible?

Alternate title: How to profit off friends and kill people

2. Motivational speaker James Arthur Ray, guru of The Secret, has finally been officially charged with manslaughter over the three people who died after a northern Arizona sweat lodge ceremony he led last year.

Ray has built a multimillion-dollar empire as a self-help superstar who teaches people about financial and spiritual wealth, and uses free seminars to recruit followers to more expensive events. He soared in popularity after appearing in the 2006’s Rhonda Byrne documentary “The Secret,” and he promoted it on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and “Larry King Live.”

The Oct. 8 sweat lodge ceremony was intended to be the highlight of Ray’s five-day “Spiritual Warrior” event at a retreat he rented near Sedona. He told participants, who paid more than $9,000 each to attend, that it would be one of the most intense experiences of their lives.

Well, he can’t be sued for false advertising. It was intense all right.

About halfway through the two-hour ceremony, some began feeling ill, vomiting and collapsing inside the 415-square-foot structure. Despite that, Ray urged participants to push past their physical weaknesses and chided those who wanted to leave, authorities and participants have said.

Two people – Kirby Brown, 38, of Westtown, N.Y., and James Shore, 40, of Milwaukee – passed out inside the sweat lodge and died that night at a hospital. Liz Neuman, 49, of Prior Lake, Minn., slipped into a coma and died a week later. Eighteen others were hospitalized.

According to his attorney, this was all just a freak accident, an isolated incident. Yeah, I bet.

3. Anti-evolution bill in Mississippi proves unfit for survival –

Mississippi’s House Bill 586, which if enacted would have required “scientifically sound arguments by protagonists and antagonists of the theory of evolution” to be presented in the state’s schools, died in committee on February 2, 2010, according to the legislative website. In 2009, the bill’s sponsor, Gary Chism (R-District 37), introduced a bill, HB 25, requiring biology textbooks in the state to include a hybrid of two previous versions of the Alabama evolution textbook disclaimer; that bill also died in committee.

Suck it, creationists!

4. More Catholic child buggery – Only a few short months after the final report came in about the Catholic conspiracy to cover up decades of child rape in a Catholic-run reform school in Ireland, now comes news of numerous accounts of child rape in a top German school run by Catholics:

Almost 30 alleged victims have come forward with claims against three Jesuit staff, saying that they were abused in the 1970s and 1980s at Canisius college in Berlin, alma mater of some of the country’s political, business and academic elite.

Peter Riedel and Wolfgang Stab left the school in 1981 and 1979 respectively while the third alleged perpetrator, named as Bernhard E (70), was suspended from the Jesuit order yesterday after admitting one case of sexual abuse.

Stab (65), a former gym teacher, now living in Chile, has confessed to the allegations and last week wrote an open letter of apology, while Riedel has denied the allegations.

You’re telling me that a guy with a name as innocent-sounding as “Stab” has committed heinous crimes? I’m shocked. Again, I’m forced to wonder how the world would respond to Coca Cola Co. if hundreds, if not thousands of its employers were found to have raped children? Why is the Catholic corporation treated any differently?

5. Lancaster, California Mayor claims to be “growing a Christian community” – Both Muslim and atheist groups have condemned Mayor R. Rex Parris’ comments:

Parris made the remarks last week during his annual state of the city address before an audience of mainly clergy and their spouses.

“We’re growing a Christian community, and don’t let anybody shy away from that,” he said, according to the Antelope Valley Press. Parris is also promoting a ballot measure that supports prayer at public meetings with reference to a specific deity such as Jesus.

Someone has already come up with an awesome name for a website critical of him:  www.parrisites.com.

Religious morons of the week 1.3.09

1. Rick Warren is a parasite – Despite having one of the best-selling books in history, the times have been tough for Warren and he’s down a cool million dollars. So what did he do? Begged his less privileged followers for money. In a single weekend, he raised $2.4 million in donations, which he’s touting as a miracle after having simply attributed his financial shortfall to a poor economy. And sadly, I don’t know if he’s even deliberately taking advantage of people. This is how these douchebags think. They ascribe all their opinions to an unknowable god, build up huge flocks of credulous people willing to believe, and then see any exploitation of those people as god’s will. Maybe Warren’s next book should be titled The Profit-Driven Life.

My gift to you, Anne

2. Is it wrong for me to wish an agonizing death by cancer for Anne McNerney? – This woman has written a New Age book called The Gift Of Cancer: A Call To Awakening, where this cancer survivor describes the horrible disease thusly:

“cancer is your ticket to your real life. Cancer is your passport to the life you were truly meant to live.”

. . .

“Cancer will lead you to God. Let me say that again. Cancer is your connection to the Divine.”

Go fuck yourself and fuck this insane “positive-thinking” bullshit!

3. Brit Hume tells Tiger Woods to find Jesus –

The extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith. He is said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So, my message to Tiger is, ‘Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.’

Wow, this guy needs medication.

Deepak Chopra childishly attacks his critics…again

Last time Deepak Chopra wrote an insipid piece in the Huffington Post attacking his skeptical critics, I blasted him as did everyone else. Now after being challenged by Michael Shermer on Larry King’s show, he’s written yet another rant in the Huff Po against what doo-doo heads us skeptics are. Oh Dee, you’re so cute when you’re agitated.

And amusingly, PZ Myers just reported about a speech Chopra apparently gave at an Astrology conference (Yes, that’s astrology, NOT astronomy). Sadly, I think that was the more rational of the two instances. That’s why I decided it’s more fun to respond to his dopey Huff Po piece:

Dee, show a little self-respect. You’re a grown up & seen by many as some sort of guru. Yet one would never guess this by reading your pieces in the Huff Po, which simply fling vitriolic insults at your critics. Are you twelve?

For some1 who touts himself as “open-minded” & a person seeking understanding, you make an awfully bad attempt to understand where your critics are coming from or, you know, even what their criticisms are. Instead of accepting the possibility that you may not understand science as well as you think you do or even show a willingness to take some responsibility for being misunderstood, you act like a child screaming that he only got an F because his teacher hates him. The skeptical community has gone into great length to explain where you’re wrong on the science on countless occasions & you’ve yet to ever offer a legitimate rebuttal.

Instead of even considering that they may have some valid points or have good reason to be unconvinced by your arguments, you irrationally declare they’re just close-minded zombies who wouldn’t accept your claims no matter how much evidence you present. It’s a classic gambit used by those w/ no evidence at all. But appeals to hypothetical evidence that may arrive in the future is not a legitimate form of argument, nor legitimate science.

Whether some sort of spiritual realm exists no one can definitively say. The only realm that can be verified empirically to exist is the material one. & if you’re rejecting materialism then I challenge you to prove it by leaping out of the nearest 30-story window. I suspect you won’t accept just as I suspect that you enter buildings through doorways instead of by trying to walk through the walls. I suspect you lock your doors at night, see a doctor when you’re sick, look both ways before crossing the street, use a seat belt, & any number of behaviors that are entirely pointless within your non-materialist ideology.

News From Around The Blogosphere 12.3.09

1. Men may be doomed by their sperm –

Men carry the seeds of their own destruction in the genes present in their sperm, research suggests.

Scientists working on mice have highlighted a specific gene that, although carried by both sexes, appears to be active only in males.

They believe it allows males to grow bigger bodies – but at the expense of their longevity.

2. Roger Ebert gives both creationists and New Agers the thumbs down – Ebert is growing awesome in his own age. First, he panned both the style and the science of Ben Stein’s awful mockumentary last year. Then earlier this year he wrote about his atheism. And now he’s done it again. This is up there with your review and follow-up remarks regarding The Brown Bunny.

3. Age of Autism has removed their entry with the controversial Thanksgiving image – But it’s still available thanks to Google’s cache. Suck it, Handley, Crosby, Wright, Stagliano, and the rest!

4. NY state senate says no to gay marriage –  Wow, this is disappointing. It’s New York, dammit! Home of Greenwich Village and Broadway. How is it possible that NY can’t pass gay marriage?

5. Dating site ‘True’ screens out “marrieds & felons & atheists” – I think Friendly Atheist nails all the obvious questions that come to mind:

How exactly do they screen for atheists? For that matter, how would they know who’s married or a felon? They’re assuming a lot of honesty in these online profiles…

6. Rick Warren doesn’t just know the mind of ‘God’ but the mind of every atheist –

“People become atheists because of hurt, then seek intellectual arguments to validate their desire to live without God.”

That’s an interesting hypothesis there, Rick. Care to back that little gem up with demonstrable evidence.

7. Religious classes count for GPA in Poland –

The Constitutional Tribunal has ruled that grades awarded for religion classes in school can count towards a pupil’s grade point average.

Two years ago the Democratic Left Alliance asked the Tribunal to look into the case, believing that it was discriminatory towards schoolchildren who came from atheist families or who had other beliefs.