Critical thinking? On the left? Keep it up!

The right wing media usually makes the most egregiously false claims about science, but I have to confess…on many science subjects, the lefty media is about as bad. I cringe when I see anything about the autism scares in print from either side, and Robert Kennedy Jr’s credibility went poof for me when I saw him peddling absurd terror tactics about thimerosal. So I was pleasantly surprised at this article on Salon that pulls no punches. It slams David Kirby and Andrew Wakefield hard.

It was pleasing to see, for a change.

We are all screwed, aren’t we?

Now that I’ve had the current banking disaster explained to me (short answer: the people responsible will be receiving a huge handout from the taxpayers), I can understand why Obama has decided to quit. It makes sense. Whoever wins the election is going to be in for a world of pain and hard work, if they take the job seriously.

Oh, wait…McCain has already signaled that he won’t be taking it seriously.

Our god is an awesome thixotropic blob of goo

This is what happens when you can’t comprehend the ordinary physical properties of fluids: you start hailing grungy old bottles of gloppy stuff as your salvation. Naples has gotten all excited about a bottle of “liquifying saint’s blood” — it’s incredibly silly. And just as silly, there is an online poll: Do you believe in miracles?. So far, 64% of the respondents say they do.

They should have asked, “do you believe in gullible people?”, because then I would have voted yes.

Gearing up for the War on Christmas…already?

Well, we’ve got to start early, you know. When you’ve got a lot of godless skeptics who love the human celebration of family and tradition that is Christmas, yet are accused of trying to destroy the holiday by refusing to bow our heads to an imaginary sky fairy, you’ve got to add the job of shouting down the blustering Christianist idiots to the usual tasks of baking cookies and shopping for presents. Happy London is getting a show: well-known atheists will be at the Bloomsbury Theatre on 19 December, presenting Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People. Now that is a Christmas I wish I could attend! I hope there will be a recording made to share with the world.

Radio reminder

It’s almost time for Atheists Talk radio!

This week, they are going to talk about secular wedding ceremonies. I have a personal interest; my own wedding was not at all secular, but was instead officiated by a full-of-himself Christian priest who felt such an arrogant sense of privilege that he ignored our request to keep it as non-sectarian as possible to instead preach at us a full-blast come-to-Jesus sermon.

It always seemed to me that if you enter a contract in which one of the parties is entirely imaginary, it would weaken the bond. Fortunately, we wrote our own vows that we said to each other in private, and that was our commitment — the old fool bellowing that our marriage was blessed by heaven and made in the eyes of a dead Jewish rabble rouser was entirely irrelevant, except as a delaying tactic interfering with our escape to our honeymoon.

Atheists Talk radio is streamed live online to listeners who can provide a Minnesota zip code (like 56267) at the following time:

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Those inconsistent Turks

First they ban Richard Dawkins’ website, then they buy out the entire print run of the Turkish translation of The Ancestor’s Tale in a day. Clearly, we need to start making smuggling runs, bringing in copies of The God Delusion and printed pages of the daily commentary on richarddawkins.net, so we can make a fabulous profit.

There’s a certain romance to the idea of being a grim, scruffy smuggler, braving the rugged Aegean coast in daring midnight runs to bring atheist literature to underground freethinker salons of swarthy, hard-bitten raki-guzzling Turks.

Afflicted with angels

Maybe we need to start smuggling seditious rationalist literature into America, because look at the state of our fellow citizens’ minds:

More than half of all Americans believe they have been helped by a guardian angel in the course of their lives, according to a new poll by the Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion. In a poll of 1700 respondents, 55% answered affirmatively to the statement, “I was protected from harm by a guardian angel.” The responses defied standard class and denominational assumptions about religious belief; the majority held up regardless of denomination, region or education — though the figure was a little lower (37%) among respondents earning more than $150,000 a year.

It’s a weird little article in the interpretation department, too. It keeps saying these numbers indicate something more than belief, and are experiential, whatever that means. It sounds like they are trying to imply that this is something more substantial than just a goofy delusion.

If you ask whether people believe in guardian angels, a lot of people will say, ‘sure.’ But this is different. It’s experiential. It means that lots of Americans are having these lived supernatural experiences.

No it doesn’t.

It means that a lot of Americans are experiencing ordinary, natural chance events and are after the fact, and with no evidence whatsoever, crediting fortunate outcomes to invisible, intangible men with wings in diaphanous robes. It means the culture is so saturated with magical thinking that millions of people are seeing the mundane as the supernatural, in a nicely self-reinforcing lunacy that makes reality a supporting prop for their hallucinations.

The McCain record on the environment

John McCain made some pleasant noises about supporting science in his Science Debate 2008 responses. They were outright lies, however. If you want to get pissed off at a politician, read the analysis of McCain’s voting record on environmental and alternative energy issues. His voting record is nearly indistinguishable from James Inhofe’s — he has routinely either skipped out on crucial votes or voted against renewable energy and environmental conservation.

And it’s not just the environment! If you want to be really frightened, read what he said about health care:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

He wants to do to health care what the Republican party has done to the economy!

Judge him by what he has done, not what he says he has done, because the straight-talk express seems to be a twisty bunch of lies and detours that never gets to its promised destination.

Now to drive back across two states

All the fun is over now, and it’s time for me to get on I94 and drive back across Wisconsin and Minnesota, and to get back to work. At least you can read about the excellent party, which was excellent, and share in one of the pleasant memories. You’ll have to wait to hear about last night’s AHA-sponsored talk, which was well-attended by an enthusiastic audience, and which was taped by both Karl Mogel and 3D Science News (the scene where I suddenly jump forward through the screen and bite the head off a creationist in the audience will be spectacular, I’m sure).

Since this is going to be a travel-and-writing day for me, you’re going to have to settle for this open thread for a little while. Be sure to make it entertaining: go ahead, break into a knife fight, I know I’ll have some mess to clean up when I get back home.