Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
First thing when I landed at SeaTac: it started raining, as I’d hoped.
Second thing at the airport: we were taking a shuttle bus, and this guy started talking at his friend. I learned many things.
It’s obvious that cell phones cause cancer. They radiate energy. Energy causes cancer. QED.
The only reason we don’t have proof is that all us old guys use them sparingly. Just wait: a few more years, and all those kids going around with phones glued to their head will be getting brain cancer! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
The best part: he got sort of quantitative. At low energies, they don’t cause cancer, but as the power goes up, the cancer-causing effects go up exponentially. Therefore, don’t use your cell phone when you got 4 or 5 bars! That’s when they’re most dangerous!
I’m imagining this guy wandering through life, using his cell phone to avoid places with “high energy radiofrequencies”, and refusing to take calls unless he’s got a perfect medium strength signal.
There is woo in Seattle, I can testify.
One of the nice things about being blacklisted by a large segment of the atheist community is that I don’t have to be shy about criticizing…oh, hey, wait a minute, I’ve always been a pain in the ass. OK, I can be even more obnoxious now.
The latest troubling event in the world of atheist leadership is that Edwina Rogers has amended her lawsuit against the Secular Coalition of America. She’s now suing Richard Dawkins directly.
Ben Seewald, whose only claim to fame is that he’s married to Jessa Duggar, tries to stake out his own domain of stupid in a conversation with Dante Berry, another evangelist. He does not do well. But in the topsy-turvy world of American fanatical Christianity, that might mean he succeeded.
“If you check it out, what they’re trying to do with America, is basically have us going against each other while the Devil can sneak in real clearly and destroy what he’s trying to destroy,” Dante explains to Ben, adding that “if we’re fighting against each other, the Devil can sneak in and do what he want to do.”
“That’s right,” Ben agrees, “there’s no room for racism in Christianity. That all comes from the Devil. That all comes from, like, this false religion out here, evolution, that stuff? Teaching that, like, some people are ‘more evolved?,’ and different stuff.”
He’s making YouTube videos! Lots and lots of YouTube videos, several per day, it appears. If you’re concerned about the volume — how will we ever keep up? — don’t be. It’s all exactly the same old tired Young Earth apologetics and Bible babble that he’s always done.
His latest topic is WOE: What On Earth is about to happen? He expects Jesus to return in 10-15 years. Right.
The Rev. Dan Erickson, Senior Pastor at Chisholm Baptist Church, has managed to publish an op-ed in the Hibbing, Minnesota Daily Tribune titled “It’s not easy to be an atheist.” Apparently, the Daily Tribune is so desperate for content that they’ll publish tired religious cliches, and Rev. Erickson has never actually talked to an atheist.
In his book, “When God Goes to Starbucks,” Paul Coppan notes that there is plenty of evidence we, as human beings, have a disposition to believe in some type of deity or spiritual reality. Thus, he says, if someone wants to overcome this predisposition to believe in God and be an atheist, it may be necessary to make some intentional choices in order to avoid being a “default theist.”
Creationists (and poes), it doesn’t help the conversation at all when you pretend to believe something you do not — your complete lack of understanding of the others’ positions makes your sham obvious from the very onset.
For example, I got this request from an “atheist” to help spread a rational understanding of the universe…like this.
We as atheists are sick and tired of having religious people laugh at us. We’re sick and tired of defending the most ridiculous theory in the world . . .
The truly delusional Big-Bang theory.
The universe did not originate out of “nothingness” via some stupidly insane Big-Bang theory ! For pity sake, even a moron knows that “nothingness” cannot experience a bang. And so what’s reality ? What’s the alternative ? Well look closely and please think deeply. Pure Logic is the alternative, it’s very very simple;
The universe has “always existed” . . . Period.
The evolution of TIME is what deceives us
into thinking the universe must need a beginning.
I’ve been reading the obituaries. So many people, friends and foes alike, have expressed their confidence that Freethoughtblogs is dooooooomed, because Ed Brayton has left. It’s all going to fall apart without his iron hand ruling this motley crew! Without him, no one could possibly be interested in reading anything on this network! They only ever read the old white men here anyway, so losing one is an irreparable loss!
Let me explain a few things about how FtB works. These people don’t have a clue.
Ed never actually “ran” this place — no one did, or does. This is one of those pinko commie anarchies. He managed the books, arranged for the ad services, that sort of thing, but all of the blogs here are autonomous. No boss. Get it? If you’re an authoritarian, maybe not.
The kind of minimal, managerial oversight needed to keep the lights on has fallen into the hands of the executive committee, a small subset of the people here who handle mundane issues that affect the whole network. Just to let you know how busy the executive committee is, we initially proposed to meet once a month. I don’t think we’ve met in over a year.
The network is not a vanity project for the white men who set it up. It’s an anti-vanity project. The whole purpose of the network was to leverage our traffic into creating a space for a diverse group of bloggers. They’re still here! Ed and I could drop dead on the spot, and it’ll still keep ticking along.
Building a diverse network also produces a robust network. There is no single point of failure. By design and by diffusing the leadership all along, there’s no way to take it out with loss of a single blogger (we’ve lost and gained bloggers all along, you know).
We do have to worry about maintaining a volume of traffic to maintain ad rates. But this is a group that does not prioritize making money off their writing (although it sure would be nice…) but on maintaining independence. I’d be writing for free — I was writing for free years ago — and what money we do make is distributed among the bloggers by traffic. There is no central authority skimming off the profits.
I do have one serious worry about an ongoing failure. That’s all you people who say you only came here for the PZ and Ed show. You’re doing it wrong — I’m not going to object to you reading my stuff, but the whole point of the network is to give all those other voices a platform. You should go read them.
So here’s some suggestions.
Go look at the main page. See all those bloggers?
Go look to the left, at the sidebar. See all those bloggers?
Scroll down on the sidebar, and look for the “Latest Posts Around FtB”. See all those bloggers who have recently posted stuff?
Broaden your horizons a bit. Go read one or more of those links.
Don’t trust me. Go read Miri, who is saying exactly the same thing.
You can also stop annoying us all with the ill-informed doom-talk.
Atheists neither need nor want martyrs, so could the mindless fanatics of the world please stop creating them? Niloy Neel has been hacked to death with machetes in Dhaka.
Imran H Sarkar, head of the Bangladesh Blogger and Activist Network, told the BBC that Mr Neel had been an anti-extremist voice of reason.
“He was the voice against fundamentalism and extremism and was even a voice for minority rights – especially women’s rights and the rights of indigenous people,” he said.
