Amanda Knief asks him a question.
He’s just writing off electoral demographics right and left, isn’t he?
Although I have to give him credit for being right, for once. Atheists don’t care for him.
I spent the weekend at Gateway to Reason in St Louis, and I’m sorry, Iowans, but the worst part of the event was Iowa. I had to drive through it.
It was like Minnesota, only worse. Long drives from nowhere to nowhere through endless tunnels of corn, decorated with anti-choice signs, anti-government signs (Iowa farmers really, really hate the government — they must not get any subsidies at all), pro-Jesus signs, and nothing but Christian/far right talk radio being broadcast. It’s bizarre that this place is the first stop on the presidential campaign trail, and it’s no wonder we’re screwed up if this is the atmosphere of our politics.
It’s a bad sign when you feel relief the instant you cross the border into Missouri.
The conference was excellent. It was very well attended — they filled a large auditorium on the Washington University campus. The talks were diverse, and everything moved smoothly.
The press coverage was surprisingly good, too. That’s a substantial article in the Post Dispatch, and I read the comments: of course there’s the usual small group of know-nothings babbling about atheism being a religion, and of course a few of my chronic harassers show up, but for the most part there are a fair number of commenters being open-minded and expressing an interest in finding out what these atheists are all about.
That’s a good result.
I’m going to be taking off for the Gateway to Reason conference this weekend, and will be speaking on Sunday morning. The title of my talk is “Evolution and Cooperation: A Historical Perspective”, and I kind of suspect that the audience, what few of them show up, will be either a) mildly bored, because too many atheists are uninterested in history and philosophy of science, or b) mildly pissed off, because I’m going to show them that the history of evolutionary theory isn’t as clean and tidy as they imagine, because it got hijacked by conservatives from day one.
Its’ the 38th annual FFRF convention, on 9-11 October. It’s got Ron Reagan (the only good Reagan) as a keynote speaker, and Madison in the Fall is a lovely place to visit.
The Smithsonian has a traveling exhibit based on the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins. It’s going to be put up at libraries all across the country (but nowhere in Minnesota!), so lots of people will get a look at some of the evidence for human evolution. Can you guess who is not happy about this? Of course you can. Ken Ham has declared it a propaganda campaign for atheism.
This is nothing but a propaganda campaign attempting to indoctrinate people to believe they are nothing but animals evolved from ape-like ancestors! To the Smithsonian, that’s what it means to be human! And what they are doing in reality is trying to impose their religion of naturalism (atheism) on the culture. Interestingly, in complementing community events, they also plan to have some people (who come from liberal backgrounds) supposedly representing the religious community. Of course, the entire exhibit is religious—it is promoting the religion of atheism using evolutionary beliefs. And for this exhibit, there are special invitations for clergy to try to influence them!
An Australian creationist made this video 3 years ago.
I guess they thought it was so good that they made a remake this year.
They haven’t improved it at all — it’s still a terrible awful argument.
Let’s be honest here. If the Satanists weren’t being incredibly useful in undermining Christian hegemony in the US, we’d find this statue, and the mystical ideas behind it, repugnant.
And sometimes, it’s even interesting and thoughtful! So I thought I’d put it here for your considerations as well.
One of the common tactics of believers in Young Earth Creationism, and devotees of Answers in Genesis, is to reply to statements about evolution with the question, “Were you there?” Ken Ham has been pushing this approach since at least 1989, and it’s dishonest horseshit, as I’ve explained at length.
It really is a stupid question, but now my eyes have been opened, as Roger Patterson of AiG explains exactly what the question is intended to do.
Jim Lippard brings up an example of a difficult phenomenon we’ve all encountered with increasing frequency in recent years, as atheism/skepticism have become ‘cool’ and more people jump on the bandwagon…but the problem has been here for a long time.
This is, I think, a good case study in how the problem of “affiliate fraud”–being taken in by deception by a member of a group you self-identify with–can be possible for skeptics, scientists, and other educated people, just as it is for the more commonly publicized cases of affiliate fraud within religious organizations.
The case is the story of Al Seckel, self-proclaimed physicist, molecular biologist, cognitive neuroscientist, research associate, colleague of Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, and Murray Gell-Mann, and who was none of those things, but managed to schmooze his way into persuading the skeptic community that he was all of them.
He sounds like a very interesting person, but not at all trustworthy. In the words of his second wife (maybe his current wife…it seems he’s always been a bit dodgy about these marriage and divorce things, too):
“And he was really sweet, and I enjoyed talking with him a lot. He’s really intelligent. He’s just a liar.”
Well worth a read, as a warning to us all.
