New Yorkers: you really don’t want to miss the upcoming appearance by James Randi on 10 October. He’ll be at Rockefeller University that evening, and he’s always entertaining and fun.
The rest of the country will be getting a small consolation prize. If you can’t make it to NY, you can all go to Springfield, Missouri instead, where Richard Carrier and PZ Myers will be rockin’ the house with their godless stylings at MSU that weekend. I’ll post more details on that, later.
Forgive me if this amazing tale of ego and inanity makes you recoil in disgust.
And O’Reilly cites himself as proof there is a God:
“Next time you meet an atheist, tell him or her that you know a bold, fresh guy, a barbarian who was raised in a working-class home and retains the lessons he learned there.
“Then mention to that atheist that this guy is now watched and listened to, on a daily basis, by millions of people all over the world and, to boot, sells millions of books.
“Then, while the non-believer is digesting all that, ask him or her if they still don’t believe there’s a God!”
Mmm-kay. Let’s see…do I still believe there is no god? Let me ponder on it.
I think…no. Definitely not.
Was that exercise in pomposity supposed to persuade me?
Just more eliminationist rhetoric from a good Catholic. Fortunately, this stuff is ebbing right now.
The ScienceBlogs Book Club has started up again, and this time around the book under discussion is Paul Offit’s Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). Offit has an entry over there right now, and more will be piling on soon.
This is a good subject to tackle, too: the anti-vaccination clowns are yet another outbreak of lunacy and innumeracy and anti-science nuttery, and Offit’s book fights the good fight. Expect howls of outrage from the clowns.
(By the way, one of the circuses full of clowns is trying to oppose our poll-crushing. If you haven’t voted for Amanda and science yet, get on over there and make them cry.)
Even though it’s actually 1,037,696 comments on ScienceBlogs right now, and they’re a little slow, the New Yorkers are finally getting it together for a big shindig in the Big Apple. If you’re somewhere near Manhattan on 7 October, stop by and party with the nerds.
Now that it is October, it is time to finally announce the winner of the August Molly award: our first non-human primate wins by a landslide, the Rev. BigDumbChimp. There may have been a few irregularities in the voting, since his backers were able to raise twice as many thumb-like appendages in approval compared to the others, but we will accept it as a reasonable consequence of biological diversity.
Now let’s move on to September. State who you think was the most interesting, insightful, amusing, thoughtful, or attention-seeking commenter for the past month in the comments below.
Texans can stand a little taller now — their scientists have organized into the 21st Century Science Coalition and are speaking out loud and clear.
The 21st-Century Science Coalition is putting politicians on notice that the science community in Texas will accept nothing less than the best education for our kids. We will not allow politics and ideology to handicap the future of our children with a 19th-century education in their 21st-century classrooms.
Any other scientists in Texas should sign their statement. The rest of us should give a clenched fist salute and promise to be as forthright with our local politicians as Texas scientists are with theirs.
It’s happened: craven YouTube has pulled all of the eucharist desecration videos. Click on one and you’ll just get the message, “This video has been removed due to terms of use violation.” FSMdude’s account has also been suspended. There is no description of what rule was violated; I guess we must presume that YouTube is now in the business of defending religious dogma.
Catholicism seems to breed natural censors and cowards, doesn’t it?
We’re worried about the current financial crisis — in fact, the whole world is concerned. Most of us have simple explanations for the mess we’re in right now, such as excessive deregulation, lenders raking in short term profit at the expense of long term stability, a weakening economy, and the misrule of George W. Bush and his gang of Rethuglican cronies, but we’re missing the real root cause: it was the gays. Some big flaming homo flaunting his ungodly desires one time too many finally tipped God over into a big snit, and as we all know, God’s aim sucks, so when he tossed that lightning bolt of righteous indignation down upon Broadway, he missed and hit Wall Street instead.
No, seriously.
In a September 25th blog post titled ‘The Nation Will Right Itself If It Fixes Sex’, Christian Civil League of Maine Executive Director Michael Heath writes that the financial crisis facing Wall Street is a symptom of America’s sinful sexual culture, including the acceptance of gay unions.
“Our crisis is a symptom, not the cause,” writes Michael Heath. “I am not saying I know whether this financial crisis is God’s judgment or not. It is not for me to know that definitively.”
He doesn’t know for sure, but he does seem to have some rather definitive notions about exactly what would tickle God’s funny bone.
Heath goes on to list policy changes that would make God “crack a smile,” including: End abortion rights and defund non-profit groups supporting it, amend state constitutions to ban gay marriage and eliminate domestic partnerships and civil unions for gay and lesbian couples, and end discrimination against private religious schools and homeschools.
Whoa, that god sure has some specific and sweeping policy proposals for an ineffable being. And for all of his aw-shucks disavowals, Mike seems to have some inside knowledge on God’s quirks.
But wait! He has missed some. It’s not just those gay people…
A related post by Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director Mark Krikorian at the National Review’s website pushes a similar theme, this time focusing on Friday’s failure of WaMu.
Krikorian suggests the big bank failed because it was too accommodating to minorities, including gays, African-Americans and Hispanics.
Right. It’s the fault of those minorities, the swarming leeches who take and take and take and don’t compliment my golf game and who don’t pay me bonuses and who want me to pay for their cheap little dreams and not my big important dreams (my Lexus my Rolex my mistress’s boob job my condo my implants my home theater system the good booze the cubans the stuff they can’t have it’s mine), profiting like parasites off the hard work of upper echelon MBAs who barely got what they deserved for distributing the wealth to the little people via all their costly purchases of yachts and beemers and rare wines and priceless artwork and ski vacations in Aspen and indulgent jewelry and new consumer electronics every week and goddamn but it makes me angry to see good white male alumni of Yale and Princeton and Harvard forced to bear the blame for the weakness and lack of vision of little brown people and degenerates who threw away the whole American economy because they just had to buy some ticky-tacky cheap ranch-style lath-and-particle-board piece of crap in the suburbs, and then they don’t even worship the True God, the God of prosperity, the God of the moneychangers and the Pharisees, the God who tells me I’m His Number One, the One God who is God who is His Own Son, who is white dammit white and nicely groomed like an American and not one of those dingy off-color immigrants but a Real American with a pinky ring and a good suit and a little cologne so He doesn’t reek of cabbage or whatever other ungodly stinking rubbish the foreigners gobble down, and God Jesus Lord has a good tan and nice abs (but He only likes girls) and a nice firm manly butt (but only leers at cheerleaders) and He’s big and firm down there (maybe He’ll let me watch) and He wants to hold me and run his fingers through my hair (like I was His beloved no like I was His best friend no like I was His best salesman yeah that’s it that’s safe.) God only loves those who look like Him who looks like me. Amen.
Whew. I have to stop trying to imagine how these people think — it’s just too dangerously weird. And those guys are nuts.
(via Greta Christina)
That is, Jenny McCarthy, ditzy mummy who opposes vaccinations because she thinks they cause autism, and Amanda Peet, smart woman who knows that inoculation is a great benefit. McCarthy has just sniped at Peet:
“(Peet) has a lot of [nerve] to come forward and be on that side, because there is an angry mob on my side, and I like the fact that I can say she’s completely wrong. I look at (Peet) now and say to myself, ‘That was me before I had autism in my life,’ and until she walks in our shoes, she really has no idea.”
Oh ho — so Jenny McCarthy’s great logical defense of her position is that she fronts an angry mob? Well, two can play that game. Pharynguloid mob, get over there and support science and intelligence in their poll. Amanda is down, 46% to 54%!
