Gather ’round, children, and dear old Unca Jack will explain to you how the dinosaurs went extinct. It’s not how you think. There were no meteors or comets, no egg-eating mammals, no saurian pandemics. It’s because so many plants died in the great flood.
For a blogger, it’s like winning a contest by breathing. All you have to do is link to THE TRUTH, and some lucky linker will win a 30G iPod in a drawing.
Read the rules. SCQ also has a new monthly writing contest, you can enter that too.
The story of the Robert Marks debacle has now made the pages of The Chronicle of Higher Education. If the account is accurate, I’m going to do something you’ll only rarely see: I’ll take the side of the creationist.
Uncommon Descent must have noticed ERV’s comment that no one reads their site, because now they seem to be frantically chumming the waters with bizarre bait. I’ll bite; like a shark, I’m a mindless eating machine, exquisitely sensitive to the thrashing of victims and the scent of blood. And it makes for great street theater!
The Rational Response Squad has a “competitor”: a group calling itself the Righteous Response Squad. I think we can already see a problem—we can expect a dearth of originality and imagination from this new gang. And to fulfill that prediction, this collection of fundies decided to declare the Bible literally true and internally consistent, and issued a challenge: “Do you have bible contradictions? Do you think you can prove the bible false?”
Some local godless heathens got mentioned in the Mankato Free Press, in an article titled “Becoming atheist akin to finding religion”. It highlights August Berkshire of Minnesota Atheists and an attorney, Jim Manahan, who say pretty much the exact opposite of what the title suggests. The article itself is good and explains a little bit about how one comes to abandon religion, but I suspect the title is an example of an editor doing some editorializing.
Here’s some useful local information from the Minnesota Atheists, too: A brief history of disbelief is being broadcast next week in the Twin Cities. Check the website for specific times.
We also have a couple of distinguished speakers coming to the big city: Steve Pinker on the 20th of September (Skatje will probably go “oooh” and tell me I have to take her), and Ian McKellen will be speaking in October (Skatje might just go “squeee!” and tell me to take her to that one, too.)
Oh, and big news: the Twin Cities will be hosting the American Atheists National Convention on March 21-23, 2008. I shall have to be there.
This Canadian Cynic tells me I have to recommend this new blog, Progressive and Cynical. I think it’s because they’re Canadian and cynical too … I’ll go along with it since they bear the mark of the scarlet A.
I knew this was going to happen, but I’m no prophet — it’s just what the creationists always do. Frank Pastore follows the lead of our national news media and declares evolution debunked because of recent discoveries in paleontology. You can probably guess which ones.
He gets to live to enjoy his Darwin award!
