When it comes to the Catholic church, I have gone somewhat easy on the nuns. It is true that they have had a history of terrible cruelty and abuse towards the young ‘fallen’ women who were consigned to their care but in more recent times, at least in the US, they have been some of the more progressive voices within the church and not involved the horrific sexual abuses that have been exposed. [Read more…]
When Ken Ham opened his Creation Museum in Kentucky, it defied skeptics by drawing nearly 400,000 visitors in its first year of 2007, well above the targeted 250,000. This initial success may be one reason for his organization Answers in Genesis to embark on an even more grandiose plan to build a supposedly life-size replica of the fabled Noah’s Ark, to show people how it could have contained all the animals. “The 800-acre amusement park is supposed to feature a life-size Noah’s Ark built by Amish craftsmen, a walled city, a zoo featuring Noah’s animals, a Ten Plagues Ride, a Tower of Babel, a first-century village, an aviary and a children’s area.” [Read more…]
When Australia toured England last summer, they were beaten 3-0 in the five Test series, with two no-decisions (‘draws’ in cricket-speak), one of which could easily have been an additional loss. Then six months later, England toured Australia and just received a massive drubbing, losing 5-0. Such clean sweeps are rare. I do not recall a previous time when dominance between two teams switched so overwhelmingly in such a short time and I am at a loss to explain it, though to be fair, I have mainly been following the top-line scores and not in detail. I am sure that England and Australian cricket fans can probe more deeply. [Read more…]
I have written before about the secret COINTELPRO spying program that was set up by the FBI in 1956 against those people the government considered enemies, although they were mostly engaged is legitimate political activities. As now, the covered up its spying and other wrongdoing in thick layers of secrecy that enabled it to brazenly lie to the public about its activities, while simultaneously saying that they had to protect the country from its enemies, which in those Cold War days were the Dirty Reds. One feature of authoritarian states is that they need an enemy, external or internal, all the time in order to justify their policies and will manufacture one if necessary. [Read more…]
Satanists, who proposed putting their own symbol on the Oklahoma State Capitol grounds next to the Ten Commandments monument that legislators already put there, have submitted their design for the monument. [Read more…]
I have been invited by to speak at third annual Pennsylvania State Atheist/Humanist Convention to be held in Pittsburgh on August 29-31, 2014 and have accepted. The invitation is quite flexible. The conference has no theme as such and they are giving me the freedom to pitch my own topic, although suggesting that one based on an earlier talk based on my series Why Atheism is Winning may be suitable. [Read more…]
You know when you are at a talk and it turns out that no one has brought a laser pointer or the one that is available is not working? If New York state’s director of homeland security is the speaker, this might be a good time to get the hell out of the room. [Read more…]
Some of you may remember Lee Atwater. He was a Republican political operative, a wunderkind, known for his vicious, ruthless style who would do anything to help his candidate win, especially using racist messages in overt and coded language. He worked for George H. W. Bush and ran a particularly vicious campaign against Michael Dukakis in the 1988 election. He was diagnosed with aggressive form of brain cancer in 1990, converted to Catholicism, and tearfully issued apologies to all he had harmed in his slash-and-burn career, though it is suspected that even those apologies were fake and manipulative. He died in 1991 at the age of 40. [Read more…]
Or rather a cold day. My university has decided to close today because of the frigid temperatures that are all across this part of the country. It actually is a bright sunny morning with the kind of clear blue sky that one gets in winter and is quite beautiful, with white snow covering everything and glistening in the morning light. As long as one is indoors looking out, it is gorgeous but deceptive. For anyone outdoors it is brutal. It is the clear skies overnight that allow for heat to radiate away more rapidly, resulting in early morning temperatures of -8oF and today’s daytime high will only reach 4oF. [Read more…]
Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow provides a good example of the form monomania takes, in this case with one particular Republican obsession.