Carnivalia, and an open thread


In other news, Atheism Online is back in version 2.0. All heathens should report for registration at once.

The Tangled Bank

I’ll mention again that there’s a new Tangled Bank at Salto Sobrious. Any volunteers for future hosting duties? We have slots open starting in April—drop me a note if you’re interested.

Comments

  1. quork says

    The York Dispatch reports on the one year anniversary of the Kitzmiller trial. Behe still doesn’t “get it”:

    “(Testifying) was daunting and at once exhilarating. I very much enjoyed the back and forth in the courtroom. … I felt my own testimony went very much better than the opinion reflects.

    Behe said he continues to find evidence for intelligent design.

  2. says

    Last weekend on NPR’s All Things Considered program they had a nice interview with Katharine Jefferts Schori, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church (which of the main Christian denominations in the US is probably the one most friendly toward science and free thought). They mention in passing that before she became a priest, she had been a marine biologist and studied squid evolution!

  3. says

    Has anybody else blogged about the extinction of the baiji dolphin? I read about the baiji in Last Chance to See, by Douglas Adams, my second favorite athiest (the first being Carl Sagan, sorry PZ) and was saddened to read that it’s been declared extinct.

  4. quork says

    I’d like to see someone tear into this, someone giving Christianity credit for the Enlightenment:
    Katherine Kersten: Culture wars over Christmas — how about a cease-fire?


    It’s useful here to think back to what the world was like before the dawn of the Christian era. In ancient times — from Egypt and Mesopotamia to Greece and Rome — the idea of human equality was utterly foreign. Then the baby was born in the manger. The gospels say that there was no room at the inn, and that the news was first given to poor shepherds. Christ’s birth was a glimmer of light in history, which became a tectonic shift whose consequences have changed the world.
    .
    Jesus’ teachings introduced a new idea into European history — that every individual, no matter how lowly, has inherent dignity. This notion, and related ideas of equality and personal freedom, coalesced over the centuries to form the foundation of democracy. They fundamentally shaped America — from the Declaration of Independence’s “self-evident” truths, to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, to Martin Luther King Jr.’s ringing “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”