Steven Pirie-Shepherd discovered the next generation of chemistry professors at the aquarium in Santa Barbara. I am impressed, and will more eagerly join the next search for new chemistry faculty at my university — I have a recommendation in mind.
Together with my prior observation, we clearly need to expand our saltwater generation facilities.
The Center for Inquiry has sponsored a new student-run initiative, Edger, a kind of group blog for young secularists.
Edger presents hard-hitting and reasoned news, views, and event promotion on issues pertaining to secularism, atheism, science, humanism, and the cosmos, and actively promotes and celebrates international freethought activism. Written in a youthful tone, but mature in content, Edger is sure to be a driving force in the new intellectual enlightenment.
MISSION
To create an outlet for prominent young freethought leaders to express their views and get them heard. Blogs are becoming very commonplace, and alone many blogs fail, but together, with the proper direction and an engaging and professional site, these blogging leaders can come together to make an impact far beyond what they could have achieved on their own.
It sounds interesting, check it out.
By the way, the Center for Inquiry is also sponsoring me for a talk. I’ll be in Toronto on Halloween this year, speaking on “Science Education: Caught in the Middle in the War Between Science and Religion” (you can guess which side I take). Nobody will want to hear that, though — the real treat is that they also invited Skatje to speak at a panel discussion the day afterwards. I’ve already told her that if she wants to use her time to critique my talk, that’s OK, so there is a potential for fireworks.
This clip is of a caller to the Atheist Experience who makes a series of assertions common among creationists.
Matt Dillahunty answers her well, but at the end he doubts that the caller was for real. Sorry, guy, I’ve heard those arguments a thousand times — they represent a kind of universal creationist ground state. It’s why we have Poe’s Law: because there are sincere people who actually promote this nonsense.
I just received this email from some communications group trying to publicize the virtues of the Democratic Party. It had the opposite effect on me — I am appalled. It’s the usual Democratic strategic inanity of pushing to ape the Republicans instead of even trying to be a party of progressive ideas, so they’re going to promote futile religious bullshit at their convention. This just makes me furious.
DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION TO HIGHLIGHT DIVERSE COMMUNITY OF FAITH LEADERS WORKING TOWARD COMMON GOOD
First-Ever Faith Caucus Meetings to be Held at Democratic Convention
Invocators and Benedictors to Include Pastor Joel Hunter, Rabbi David Saperstein, Sister Catherine Pinkerton, Reverend Cynthia Hale, Archbishop Demetrios, Cameron Strang
Plus Coloradans Polly Baca of Greeley, CO, Reverends Kang of Aurora, CO
Interfaith Gathering to Open Convention Week on Sunday, Aug. 24th, featuring Local Clergy Imam Abdur-Rahim Ali, Rabbi Steve Foster, Reverend Lucia Guzman, University of Colorado Student Kathryn Ida
DENVER – In keeping with Barack Obama’s personal commitment and the commitment of the Democratic Party to put faith in action, the Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) and the Obama for America campaign today announced that the 2008 Democratic National Convention will recognize the tireless efforts of those in the faith community working
toward the common good.“Senator Obama is a committed Christian, and he believes that people of all faiths have an important place in American life,” said Joshua Dubois, Obama For America Director of Religious Affairs. “He’s proud to work with the Democratic National Convention Committee on a Convention that fully engages people of faith in dialogue, celebration and prayer. We are honored that so many religious leaders are reaching across partisan and ideological lines in this Convention to address the values that matter to Americans.”
“Democrats have been, are and will continue to be people of faith – and this Convention will demonstrate that in an unprecedented way,” said Leah D. Daughtry, CEO of the DNCC. “As Convention CEO and a pastor myself, I am incredibly proud that so many esteemed leaders from the faith community will be with us to celebrate this historic occasion and honor the diverse faith traditions inside the Democratic Party.”
Each night of the Convention, the official program will begin with an invocation and end with a benediction delivered by a national faith leader or an individual who is active in their local faith community. Among the group selected to deliver these opening and closing prayers are a Republican pastor of a leading Evangelical church in central Florida, a major young Evangelical leader, a nun from a diocese in Cleveland and a Methodist couple, both ordained ministers from Arvada, CO.
National leaders from a range of denominations will host the Convention’s first-ever Faith Caucus meetings during the week where they will discuss bringing people of faith together to address some of the most pressing issues of our time.
On Tuesday, August 26, the Faith Caucus will hold two panel discussions – “Common Ground on Common Good,” an opportunity to discuss finding common ground on the moral issues of the day, and “Faith in 2009: How an Obama Administration will Engage People of Faith.” On Thursday, August 28, the Caucus will convene for “Moral Values Issues Abroad,” a panel on how the faith community can work together to address pressing moral issues around the world, and “Getting Out the Faith Vote,” a session on how to appropriately engage communities of faith in the 2008 election.
In addition, a first-ever Democratic National Convention interfaith gathering will kick off the week, bringing delegates, elected officials, local residents, musical guests and spiritual leaders from many communities of faith together for a unique gathering. In addition to keynote remarks, the program will include readings from diverse religious texts, prayers and musical selections.
There are more details that follow, with day-by-day announcements of invocations and benedictions and meetings led by people like the vapid Jim Wallis, that I’ve cut off. You don’t want to go, anyway.
I am particularly annoyed by the claim that “Democrats have been, are and will continue to be people of faith” — which I take as a declaration that I can’t be a Democrat. I notice, too, that the roster of speakers is nothing but a list of religious con artists, people of dumb, blind, pointless faith, with no representation from the people of reason. I can understand why, though.
If they actually invited an atheist to join in the “dialogue, celebration and prayer”, he would be obligated to rebuke the assembled crowd. The dialogue would consist of informing them all that the United States has a secular government, the Democrats are obligated to fill the role of a secular party, and there should be no place for superstitious nonsense in the hard work of governing. There is also nothing to celebrate. Our country has been wracked by an assemblage of idiots ruling in the name of greed and god, and the time has come to restore rational Enlightenment values to the United States of America, not return to benighted medievalisms, and that people of faith ought to confine their silly hobbies to the halls of their churches and keep them out of the state. As for prayer … what a waste of time and effort and imagination. Take your useless pleading to a nonexistent and unresponsive deity and go hide away in shame and do it in private — it’s the equivalent of masturbation, only it provides an even lesser sense of accomplishment.
People of faith are welcome to contribute to politics. In order to do so, however, they will have to get off their knees, unclasp their hands, and do something productive. Enshrining the prating rubbish of the religion racket as an important element of secular administration, as Obama seems to want to do, is a catastrophic betrayal of good government.
And that’s why they haven’t invited any godless rationalists to their party of pandering to fools.
So…Do you believe God has intervened to revive patients that doctors ruled were hopeless cases? 63% of the respondents in Eastern Iowa say “yes”. Maybe we can disillusion them.
There was something familiar about this article on the colossal squid. It seems that when they’re young and small, they’re long, lean, and equipped with vicious hooks on their arms, but as they get older and larger, they get shorter, wider, and become slow-moving “giant gelatinous blobs”.
So…squid get tenure, too?
Even the lovely island of Malta is infested with creationists…who have somehow acquired positions of authority in private schools.
Far from becoming extinct 65 million years ago, the dinosaurs actually co-existed with early humans, and even helped in the construction of the pyramids.
This is the word of Vince Fenech, Evangelist pastor and director of a fully licensed, State-approved Creationist institution which admits children aged between four and 18.
I have to wonder what the point of licensing schools is when the process is so porous that flaming incompetents like Fenech can run them.
Claire O’Quin sent me this photo with a little story.
While taking a fish ecology and morphology class out at University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Labs, we came across this little Stubby squid, Rossia pacifica, while collecting one day. He soon became our mascot during the 5 week class. I know the picture isn’t that super, but he was a cool little guy and I thought you might like him too.
How can you resist a sweet little story like that?
This is another wonderful example of the sloppy scholarship of the creationists. The always pretentious Berlinski made the interesting claim that John Von Neumann, the deservedly famous mathematician, thought that Darwinian theory was ridiculous. Douglas Theobald crushes that claim. Von Neumann was clearly on the side of evolutionary theory … but of course, whether he was or wasn’t is actually irrelevant, since we don’t judge ideas in modern biology by the authority of mathematicians from 50 years ago.
