The Texas State Supreme Court last week ruled that a church member had no right to sue a church for damages inflicted to her in the course of “church activities for which members adhere.” The case involved a 17-year-old girl who happed to be a victim of a “spiritually charged” garage sale preparation in which [...]
Archive for June, 2008
Synchronicity
June 25th, 2008
heicart Sometimes the brain makes connections between things that are seemingly unconnected or only distantly or abstractly related. Recently, a series of oddly related events came together for me in a way that I wanted to share. First, I came across a comment in another forum last week that mentioned a model known as Morton’s Demon. [...]
Home from TAM6…
June 24th, 2008
Martin Wagner …and boy, are my arms tired. (rimshot) It was a perfectly wonderful experience, even my lunatic decision to make a road trip out of it — which totaled over 2600 miles in the end. But as I’ve already told many folks, it was just my desire to gafiate* for a while, and by taking a [...]
Money and thermodynamics
June 23rd, 2008
tracieh Here’s an addendum to Sunday’s show on financial scams. It’s a thought that I had while preparing the topic, but didn’t wind up using while on the air. Your financial situation is a lot like the second law of thermodynamics — a concept which creationists frequently and (perhaps) deliberately misunderstand. The second law of thermodynamics [...]
Carlin has blasphemed his last
June 23rd, 2008
tracieh So long, George. If it turns out you were wrong, and Pascal’s Wager was a good bet, be sure to tell God a few good jokes before he yanks the lever and you drop through the trap door.
Today on the show: Financial scams
June 22nd, 2008
tracieh Sometimes I like to mix up the topics to avoid just being “the show that talks about how there is still no God.” Because of this, I’m returning to one of my favorite critical thinking subjects: financial scams. I’ll be discussing three examples of scams that I’ve spent time discussing in the past: Chain letters, [...]
50 reasons to contribute to Iron Chariots
June 18th, 2008
tracieh PZ Myers just posted an email he received entitled “50 reasons to believe in god.” While the apologetics contained therein are the usual unremarkable tripe, I thought this was a good opportunity to renew enthusiasm for Iron Chariots, the counter-apologetics wiki. The mission of Iron Chariots is to collect in one handy reference guide an [...]
Prince Caspian is Anvilicious
June 16th, 2008
tracieh Anvilicious, adj:In media, the state of conveying a particular message so unsubtly that they may as well etch it onto an anvil and drop it on your head. Okay, so I’m late in seeing this movie. Ginny and I don’t get out enough. I always liked the Narnia books, even after I knew that Aslan [...]
Teach the controversy
June 16th, 2008
tracieh An alert Non-Prophets listener named Matt writes: I tend to prefer shirts without text over shirts that consist of nothing but text which makes finding good atheist t-shirts rather difficult. Most of the time they are nothing more than a block of text on an otherwise plain shirt. These shirts are not only fairly well [...]
Tammity-tam-tam-TAM!
June 15th, 2008
Martin Wagner Sweet! TAM 6 is coming up this week, so I’m heading out to Sin City for the skeptical festivities. This will mean a slowdown in my own posts between now and the time I get there — gotta prep and all — so hopefully Kazim and the others will take up some of the posting slack [...]




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