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Monthly Archive: May 2011
May 21 2011
So long, and thanks for all the kitsch
This will be my last post. I expect to be taken up to heaven shortly at 6:00 pm eastern time with all the other true believers. Some of you will be surprised that I will be among the select few, since I have been making the case for atheism and making fun of all religions, …
May 21 2011
God and the US constitution
There is a person named David Barton who has been pushing the idea that the US was founded as a Christian country and that the separation of church and state was not intended to be a guiding principle. He is widely quoted in evangelical circles as an authority on this topic and has been influential …
May 20 2011
Rapture update
Today’s Doonesbury cartoon continues his series on the Rapture I also received this link from reader FuDaYi about people having fun with the Rapture with parties planned for the big day tomorrow. One person (an atheist, of course) is even offering pet care insurance for people who want to make sure that the pets that …
May 20 2011
Probe into banks by New York Attorney General
The Attorney General of New York state has opened an investigation into the practice of mortgage loan packaging by the big banks and investment firms like Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs. It was these practices that led to the real estate bubble and subsequent collapse. This is a hopeful sign since we …
May 20 2011
How religion warps thinking
The many widespread and massive evil acts that god commits in the Bible (the story of Joshua being one) should logically undercut any religious belief in such a god. But the desire to believe is so ingrained in some people that they are willing to abandon the logic and evidence that they use in other …
May 19 2011
The McGurk effect
Blog reader Henry sent me the link to this clip from the BBC program Horizon of what is known as the McGurk effect, that shows that when the brain receives two different inputs, one aural and one visual, the brain forces you to register just one. Lawrence Rosenblum of the University of California, Riverside explains …
May 19 2011
More Rapture humor
It looks like the comic strip Doonesbury is going to spend this week on the Rapture, with a series leading up to the big day on Saturday. Here are the strips from Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and today.
May 19 2011
The real lessons from the story of Joshua
The lack of historicity of the Bible is rampant. To take just one example, there is no evidence for the triumphalist story of Joshua leading the Israeli soldiers, just returned from their (also fictitious) captivity in Egypt, in one victory to another over the various towns in Canaan. The most famous battle is the one …
May 18 2011
The motives of the Templeton Foundation
The June 21, 2010 issue The Nation has a good article by Nathan Schneider titled God, Science and Philanthropy that looks at the work of this wealthy foundation that dangles generous grants and a cash prize every year that is larger than the Nobel prize that goes, as Richard Dawkins says, “usually to a scientist …
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