This is curious: apparently, the DVD of Expelled now comes with a little book of quotes which are supposed to support its thesis. Only they don’t. Somebody ought to scan these in so we could all share the hilarity.
Not me, alas. Not only didn’t I get to see the movie, the makers haven’t even had the courtesy to send me a complimentary copy. Maybe they’re anticipating that I’ll be able to get one in my goody bag at the Oscars.
Feel my pain. Listen to this ignorant young woman lie and lie and lie about evolution: Charles Darwin was a theologian who just guessed and didn’t do any science, there are no transitional fossils, the cell is very complex and therefore could not evolve, yadda yadda yadda. She has been grossly miseducated, and she’s parroting creationist dishonesty with extreme smugness.
There. Now I’ve ruined your morning.
My teaching schedule this semester is a major time-suck; I’m teaching genetics and all of its associated labs (you really don’t want to know how much prep time goes into setting up fly labs), I’m doing some major revision of the content this year, and I’ve got this asymmetric schedule that packs everything into the first half of each week. So I simply have to protest when those evil (Stein was right!) scientists announce a major discovery on a Tuesday, which just happens to be the very worst day of the week for me. They’ve gone and found another important whale transitional fossil, Maiacetus, and I’m just going to have to tell you to go read a bunch of other fine blogs that already have it covered.
(A, B)- Dorudon atrox (5.0 m; 36.5 Ma) based on UM 101222 and 101215 [11] in lateral and dorsal views, respectively. (C, D)- Maiacetus inuus (2.6 m; 47.5 Ma) based on male specimen GSP-UM 3551 in lateral and dorsal views, respectively.
It’s beautiful. It’s clearly adapted for aquatic life, but it has another revealing feature: this specimen was pregnant at death, and the fetus is oriented for a head-first birth, which is not good for birth at sea (the head would pop out, baby would take its first breath, and drown before the tail emerged), so this animal would have had to give birth on land.
But like I said, you’ll have to read Carl Zimmer, Ed Yong, Brian Switek, or Greg Laden this time around for all the details. Or read the paper yourself! It’s freely accessible.
Stein has a little tantrum over outcry against his address at the University of Vermont. It’s not at all notable, except for one little comment.
Stein said he has spoken at many universities, including Columbia, Yale, Stanford, and American University, “and no one has said boo. Somehow at UVM, it has become a big issue.”
I recommend that we make it a big issue at every university where he speaks. The man who said flatly that “science leads you to killing people” should not be honored at any university.
Well, OK, he would fit right in at Liberty University and such places as that. But no real university.
This is Samira Jassam. She is not a nice lady.
She was responsible for sending men out to rape women, so that in their despair and shame she’d be able to recruit them as suicide bombers. She’s a monster. The cowards who would do her bidding and assault innocent women are also creatures of contempt.
This is where a pathologically religious culture can end up: with parasites like this who exploit the fear and hatred to create more fear and hatred.
You’ll have to think about this one. There probably is no teapot.
A nurse on a home visit decided to offer her services as a personal intermediary to a deity and pray for her patient. The patient objected and complained to the health organization — after all, the patient may not like her nasty bronze age god, and may feel put upon that a presumed professional is proposing to waste her time on chanted magic spells. It’s also a matter of courtesy: when I’m teaching, I don’t hector my students on matters outside the course content, like atheism, and when I’m being treated by a nurse or doctor, I expect them to leave irrelevant superstitions out of the examining room.
Anyway, poor suffering Nurse Petrie, martyr of the Baptist faith, is currently under disciplinary review for springing hare-brained mysticism on a patient in her care. Good. I don’t think she should lose her job over one infraction (although apparently she’s done similar things before), but she ought to be disciplined and taught what is appropriate.
But no, that’s not enough for the deranged dingbat Melanie Phillips, who declares that “This is the way society dies“.
I am a Jew; but when my mother was in the last stages of her terminal illness she was cared for by deeply devout Christian nurses who regularly prayed for her. Far from being offended by this, I was touched and comforted by this signal that they cared so much about her.
They cared so much that they bowed their head and babbled to an imaginary being while doing nothing. If someone wants a litany of nonsense recited nearby, sure, go for it…but purveyors of such useless fairy-stroking wastes of time think they have the privilege of pushing it on others, they’ve got another thing coming. And then she plays the Muslim envy card.
Demonstrating ‘a personal and professional commitment to equality and diversity’ apparently means that offering Christian solace to anyone at all, even if they don’t belong to another faith, somehow damages ‘equality and diversity’. Would the same action be taken, one wonders, against a Muslim nurse offering to pray for a Muslim patient?
First of all, “Christian solace” is only solace if you share a belief in the virtue of prayer; to rationalists, it’s all humbug and noise and not comforting at all. And secondly, yes, it doesn’t matter what religion the looney person is practicing. If they’re bowing on a prayer mat, ululating, waving burning incense over my head, sacrificing a chicken, clicking magic beads, or hollerin’ for god to come down and smite the devil in me, get them the hell out of my hospital room.
By the way, there is a poll on the odious Phillips’ screed.
Would you object to a nurse offering to pray for you?
Yes 11%
No 89%
Needs fixin’.
For those of you who think atheists are being too touchy, here are two additions.
Put yourself in the position of the patient. You are sick and dependent on this person to help you get better, and she declares that your belief in her god is important. What do you do? There is an element of coercion here that should not be ignored.
If the nurse were sincere in her faith, there’s something very easy she could do. Don’t ask, just go quietly off by herself and pray for the patient. The request is an unnecessary element that is little more than a ploy for attention, a declaration of her piety.
It’s getting hot and nasty in the battle over the Texas science standards. Donna Garner, one of the members of the forces of darkness, has distributed a letter in which she claims that the atheists are winning Texas (I wish!), and that those of us who are working to teach evolution must be opposed more fiercely. And, of course, any accusation levied against scientists is perfectly fair. The kicker in her letter is a bit of slander:
Jeffrey Dahmer, one of America’s most infamous serial killers who cannibalized more than 17 boys before being captured, gave an [sic] last interview with Dateline NBC nine months before his death, and he said the following about why he acted as he did: “If a person doesn’t think that there is a God to be accountable to, then what’s the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges? That’s how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we died, you know, that was it, there was nothing….” (Dateline NBC, The Final Interview, Nov. 29, 1994).
Well, yes, of course! Why didn’t we think of consulting a convicted and confessed sexual sadist and serial killer on matters of ethics and science? I guess this is one perspective in which the religious have an advantage over us atheists — they’re already accustomed to regarding the clergy as authorities.
There are days when you just want to slap a few journalists. The latest absurdity comes from the LA Times, in which an ignorant reporter waxes snarky over the fact that the vice president’s wife is addressed as “Dr. Biden”, since she has a doctorate in education, and snootily claims that:
Newspapers, including The Times, generally do not use the honorific “Dr.” unless the person in question has a medical degree.
And then she trots out Bill Walsh of the Post and the vapid little god-bunny, Amy Sullivan, to agree that you only call medical doctors “Dr.”
Yeah, right. How many appendectomies have Dr Kissinger, Dr Condoleezza Rice, and Dr Martin Luther King done, huh?
They claim that this is the convention. Step onto any college campus. Look at the directories and ask around. You’ll find that the formal title for faculty and staff with doctoral degrees is “Dr.” (although you’ll also find that many of us prefer not to be addressed quite so formally). All I can assume is that these lazy journalists are completely unfamiliar with higher education…and I am not surprised.
You can find more reactions from Mike Dunsford and Wesley Elsberry. I anticipate more — this is a fine example of media contempt for intellectuals.
They just don’t get it. Here’s a beautiful example: Kurt Warner, the hyper-pious quarterback for some football team, has a number 13 on his jersey. Why?
“A lot of people believe 13 is an unlucky number,” Warner said, “but I’ve kind of embraced it.”
He added: “A lot of negative things come with the No. 13. My life is never dictated by superstitions. My faith is first and foremost. If you believe that God’s in control, there is no reason to believe in superstitions.”
Believing in bad luck is superstition, but thinking that rituals dedicated to a great hairy ju-ju in the sky will let you carry a football across a chalk line in the grass is not? Bwahahahahaha!
Man, I’m glad the magic space man made him lose his big ball game on Sunday.
