People really don’t like me very much.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I guess now he’ll be able to sit down and have a little chat with Hitler and find out if he really was a godless atheist who got all his ideas from Darwin. I doubt that he’ll be able to ask Darwin directly, though — I’m pretty sure they’re in very different places.
At least, that would be the case if his beliefs were anywhere near correct. Personally, I think he’s erased.
Want to see Freeman Dyson and Richard Dawkins butt heads? It begins with a talk Dyson gave to an Edge conference in which Dyson (watch the whole talk) made these comments:
“By Darwinian evolution he [Woese] means evolution as Darwin understood it, based on the competition for survival of noninterbreeding species.”
“With rare exceptions, Darwinian evolution requires established species to become extinct so that new species can replace them.”
Dawkins rightly objects. Those are weird claims: the first is, I think, a misreading of Darwin. Darwin says something very different.
Next time you hear the tornado-in-a-junkyard argument (almost as common as the why-are-there-still-monkeys argument!), remember this rebuttal:
Creationists seeking to argue against evolution often liken the evolution of complex organisms by natural selection to the building of a DC-10 by a hurricane blowing through a junkyard. Their conclusion? Since such an event is staggeringly unlikely, a special sentient hurricane must have built the plane deliberately.
That’s going to be handy!
This is a photo of a Mr Potatohead stuffed with fish, and an octopus gnawing the tasty treat out of its head.
I just want to know who has been leaking our training and conditioning procedures from the submarine labs. Do we have a mole in the organization?
If I were a passenger, I don’t think I would find Nepal Airlines’ maintenance procedures at all reassuring.
Officials at Nepal’s state-run airline have sacrificed two goats to appease Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god, following technical problems with one of its Boeing 757 aircraft, the carrier said Tuesday.
At least the in-flight meals must be fresh and tasty.
Perhaps you thought the Poor Man Institute was making up the stereotype, but here it is made manifest: a man living in his parents’ basement attacks father with a bag of Cheetos. One nice touch in the police report is that his shirt was covered with orange Cheeto dust.
What’s missing? No word if the guy has a blog yet.
Especially since some of the creators of these ideas seem to have confused “theory” for “brain fart”. The latest example: Zygote Theory!
Dr. Mario Beauregard and Denyse O’Leary have come out with a new book, The Spiritual Brain, that Ms O’Leary has announced on her blog. I asked if she’d send me a review copy, and oh, boy, she’s going to. This could be interesting.
It’s received accolades from such stellar reviewers as Andrew Newberg, Michael Egnor, Michael Behe, and Jeffrey Schwartz, and it apparently concludes that “spiritual experiences are not a figment of the mind or a delusion produced by a dysfunctional brain”. See? It’s getting fun already.
Even better, I’m currently re-reading Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain–and How it Changed the World(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) — we’re using the book in my neurobiology course — and I can’t help but notice that the Beauregard/O’Leary thesis seems to be one that we were moving away from in the 17th century. A comparison of these two books might be entertaining, too.
Of course, book reviewing can be a risky business. I might get sued again, or worse, converted to Catholicism. Tune in in a few weeks and find out!
