I’m going to be on Atheists Talk radio on Sunday morning to talk about the Galápagos, and as long as I’m in the big city, I was also going to join the godless gang at Q. Cumbers at 11:00am Sunday for a little brunch. If you want to join us, come on down!
Watch him demolish the Republicans with their own hypocritical words.
This is a danged ugly poll, accompanying an interview with the slimy Ken Ham. It asks,
Regarding creation and evolution, I believe:
The universe was created in six days as described in Genesis.
Evolution is true, but God began and/or directs it.
Evolution is true, and religion has nothing to do with it.
Answer 2 is winning, with answer 3 dead last. Can you all fix that, please?
Cindy McCain is not running for high office, fortunately…but this still seems to be the predominant attitude among the Republican leadership.
Couric: How do you feel about creationism? Do you think it should be taught in schools?
McCain: I think both sides should be taught in schools. I think the more children have a frame of reference and an opportunity to read and know and make better decisions and judgments when they are adults. So, I think you know I don’t have any problem with education of any kind.
What about miseducation, Ms McCain? Do you have a problem with that? Apparently not.
(via Atheist Media Blog)
As part of an exercise in shredding Steve Fuller, AC Grayling makes several felicitous comments. Fuller makes the “tired argument that modern science is the kindly gift of 16th-century religion,” and claims that “atheism has done precious little for science”. He’s got a few good answers to that one.
And what has atheism done for science? Well, let’s see: it removed the risk of scientists being burned at the stake for controverting the divinely revealed truth that “the lord hath laid the foundations of the earth so that it shall not be moved for ever” (Psalm 102, beloved of Bellarmine in his efforts to shut up the astronomers and philosophers of the era of Descartes). It removed the necessity of having to distort observations, facts, experimental results and observations to fit an antecedent doctrine as far from what observation and experiment revealed as one could possibly get. (Think about seeing the moons of Jupiter through a telescope in an age when the earth was – by order! – at the centre of the universe and man and his man-made religion was the most important thing in it, with the Pope and the Office of the Inquisition daring you to think otherwise.) In short, it liberated the mind and enquiries of mankind. Decreasing religious hegemony and rapidly increasing scientific and technological knowledge have gone pari passu during the last four centuries, in mutually reinforcing tandem: the less religion, the more science; the more science, the less religion. And this is a universal phenomenon (see the Pew polls on the decline of religion, even in the USA).
Some guy up in Moorehead wrote a letter to the local paper explaining why we don’t have to worry about global warming. You can just picture the gears jerking haltingly around in his head as he tries to explain how a planet works while he doesn’t even understand why Australians don’t fall off the earth.
When God sent the rain on this Earth for 40 days and nights, all this water had to go someplace so the Earth would be dry again.
Remember, God is the Creator and controls the universe.
God tilted the Earth from its original position and caused all the excess water to rush to the poles, and there he instantly froze the water into the ice formations that exist today.
Time is ticking down on God’s time clock. With all the nuclear bombs that are made and stored for the fast-emerging last battle, this Earth would burn up when these nuclear bombs are set off.
We are not creating global warming – God is tipping the Earth back to its original position on its axis and thus getting all this ice to get ready to move and extinguish the nuclear destructive fires man will create.
So the Arctic and Antarctic are just our local firefighting reserves? Let ’em melt, then, I guess.
Palin scares me, but what worries me more is that we will screw up again and hand the executive office over to another gang of losers, and we can’t afford that anymore. Now look at the open thread I set up last night, and you’ll see why I’m concerned. What did people do? They got distracted by irrelevancies, such as the opportunity to exercise a little macho sexism, and then that turned into a nasty, full-blown knife fight with everyone snarling at each other. This is exactly what the Republicans want, writ small on this little tiny island of the blogosphere.
That’s not how we’re going to beat back the troglodytes.
Palin is a stalking horse for failed social and economic and military policies. We don’t want to get drawn away from the important message of defeating those bad policies by the temptation of cheap shots at her appearance and sex, especially because those cheap shots make her look like a sympathetic victim and help advance the Republican agenda.
So please, think. Casual sexism plays into the hands of the bad guys on both sides. What frightens me most is that Palin got up and lied and said nothing of substance, and people are so distracted by the fact that she has breasts that the lies were allowed to slide by. This is how the Democrats can self-destruct, once again.
OK, I see people are talking about it anyway in other threads, so here you go: say what you think of Palin’s speech at the RNC. I caught a few minutes of it, and found it unbearable…so I won’t be contributing. When I heard her declare that Obama doesn’t want to find new energy sources and wanted to surrender in Iraq when we were on the verge of winning, I gave up.
You think you’re tired of these? Boy, am I tired of them. The irony is relentless, the cluelessness indefatigable, the obliviousness all-encompassing. Fortunately, I’m down to only 5-10 emails and an average of less than 1 written letter from outraged Catholics now…but still, they’re just so looney. Here’s one from Richard Riley of Oregon who does an exceptional job of hitting several common themes all in one place.
Professor Myers: Your intentional desecration of the Eucharist is the most dispicable act that i have ever witnessed or learned of in my 70 years. You act is far more deplorable than Hitlers’ Holocaust or the terriorists on 9-11 . You sure showed those Catholics, huh ? Now why don’t you go after others such as the Muslims , or the Jews, perhaps the Mormans while you are at it. I am sure you can find something to desecrate along the way.
Shame on the University of Minnesota for allowing you on campus much less on staff . Their failure to act on your despicable act is a clear failure on their part and a horrible reflection on the administration at the U.O.M.
You will answer to a higher authority some day for your despicable desecration of the body of Christ, and your suffering will be for eternity and so will those that allowed you to do so.
How about that? Throwing a cracker in the garbage is more deplorable than murdering 6 million Jews.
