Octopus just wants to be on youtube!

Over on stuff.co.nz, there is a spectacular video of an octopus that grabs a diver’s video camera and swims off with it. Much of the video is a surreal blur, because the octopus is all wrapped around the camera, but that just adds to the charm…and there are also plenty of shots of the beautiful animal as it and the diver wrestle.

I’d imbed the video here, too, but that site doesn’t make it easy to extract the code, tangling it all up in javascript. That’s when I realized the octopus’s real intent: he wanted to make videos that were shareable and publicly accessible.

Let the fireworks begin!

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has won a significant court case: the National Day of Prayer has been declared unconstitutional. The judge made a cautious and conservative judgment, but you know the right-wing is going to freak out.

Crabb wrote that her ruling was not a judgment on the value of prayer. She noted government involvement in prayer may be constitutional if the conduct serves a “significant secular purpose” and doesn’t amount to a call for religious action. But the National Day of Prayer crosses that line, she wrote.

“It goes beyond mere ‘acknowledgment’ of religion because its sole purpose is to encourage all citizens to engage in prayer, an inherently religious exercise that serves no secular function in this context,” she wrote. “In this instance, the government has taken sides on a matter that must be left to individual conscience.”

This is going to be so much fun.

This is what happens when your artist doesn’t pay attention in anatomy class

A church in Oklahoma is actually losing members over a crucifix on display. The problem is the artist has painted Jesus with a ‘distended abdomen’, or perhaps a six-pack (actually a four-pack in this case), that is making all the filthy-minded Catholics think of something else.

i-52efc6c0898d678f8b94880ed684aec7-jesus_abs.jpeg

I’m looking at the dimensions of that thing and thinking that they also seem to have a highly unrealistic expectation of Jesus’ endowment. Also that he gets aroused in very peculiar circumstances — who knew Jesus was a masochistic sub?

Hobby Lobby poll

The Hobby Lobby craft store apparently flogs Christianity fairly heavily during the Easter season — not just because it’s a crafty time of year, but because by their own admission, they are using the stores to proselytize. A customer named Sarah complained that it was “exclusive and insensitive”. She got the run-around by some utterly oblivious service representative, who among many other things, said Since we know that Christ is the only way to heaven; it would truly be insensitive for us not to share Christ with the world.

Of course, they have the right to do that…just as godless consumers of craft products should now be looking around for an alternative source. But first, we get to slam a poll!

Whose side are you on in this situation?

Hobby Lobby 44%
Sarah 34%
John Locke 22%

The John Locke answer is going to split the vote, I’m afraid.

Quantum Everything

When anyone other than a particle physicist talks about “quantum”, it is almost always a magic word used to project a pseudoscientific aura onto sheer raving lunacy. “Quantum” as a prefix is almost universally used to signify that the noun it modifies is about to be made crazy stupid. So you know when you see something called the Quantum Bible, it’s not going to be refined, elegant, coherent, or intelligent.

Here are the first bits of this rewritten version of the Bible. I’m being kind and sparing you the associated annotations, which are even longer than the text.

1 And behold the Great Singularity is everywhere and nowhere. 2 Without form nor mass and without space and time – It is, has been and will be, eternal. 3 An Eternity in space, an Eternity in time incorporating all that is known and then some. 4 But eternally restless and driven to manifest in form, time and space.
5 And so it is that manifestations cyclically occur and our worlds gain their existence. 6 But we are manifestations of the Cycle of the Great Singularity for we emanate from Its bosom and return thence in accordance with Its Universal Order.

7 And so it comes to pass that the Great Singularity becomes pregnant with the energy for manifestation and in accordance with the Great Universal Order that lies at the heart of its existence there follows a mighty cataclysmic manifestation. 8 In that instant all the parts of matter materialize, each to become the building blocks of all form yet to be. 9 For at that instant the quarks, electrons, protons, neutrons, neutrino’s and all their anti-matter shall give rise to a world of form, a world of time and a world of distance; but yet all are imbibed with the stuff which is the Great Singularity – timeless, formless and Eternal.

10 And lo the great Illusion is initiated ; and for they who are blinded by form and distance and time there is no merging eternally of the form and the formless. 11 And wretchedly shall they live their days in the half truth and never connect with the Great Singularity which is their birthright and from whose bosom they emanate and exist and to whence they return unconsciously.
12 And so it is that the particles of form receive their kernel which shall determine all their interactions and all form that shall yet follow. 13 Indeed the kernel shall support the breadth of all form and being, all of the sea and the great land masses, all of life and of death. 14 For each kernel is complete as it imbibes all of the Great Singularity and indeed so is it also with the collective of all kernels of all particles of form. 15 Such is the completeness of the manifestation in form that no adjustment nor interference nor correction is required nor will be forthcoming by the Great Singularity.

16 In the restlessness of the Great Singularity has a need arisen – to create consciousness of Itself. 17 And so form is manifest so that consciousness shall ultimately arise and lo the consciousness shall feed upon the great environments which are none other than the manifestation of the Great Singularity! 18 In this way shall the Great Singularity create consciousness of Self through the manifestation and they that shall be conscious of the manifestation shall be the consciousness of the Great Singularity in form. 19 And so shall they passage with consciousness as they de-form and reconnect at physical death with the Great Singularity. 20 For this passage of return has the Great Singularity manifest the black holes of de-materialization; both in form and in consciousness shall these be as a portal for passage from form to formless, and so shall consciousness disconnect from form to merge with the eternal formlessness which is the Great Singularity. 21 And so shall it come to pass that those who access true consciousness of all things will prepare their passage through the black hole, as they shed form and mass, time and distance, and disconnect their consciousness from that domain – so shall they pass through the portal and inherit eternity within the bosom of the Great Singularity.

In case you missed it in that great wallow of babble, the guy (who is a neurosurgeon! What is it with neurosurgeons and goofiness?) also doesn’t like evolution, and has a weird deterministic theory in which all the potential in every species was set within it at the instant of its creation by the Great Singularity. I am unable to bear the thought of reading any more of any of Ian Weinberg’s essays, though: my kernel is incapable of coping with any more Quantum.

Pope poll

Here’s what we’re used to: crazy poll choices that make the right answer obvious.

Do you support attempts by atheists Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens to have Pope Benedict XVI arrested over his handling of child sex abuse claims?

Yes, what happened to these children is horrific and the Pope should be held accountable for his role in the cover-up.

71%
No, they are using the terrible tragedy of child sex abuse to pursue their vendetta against religion.

29%

Next, we’ll have a poll about adult rape cases in which one question tries to distract everyone from the guilty by deploring the terrible tragedy of what happened to the women and the vendetta feminists have against men.

Witless wanker peddles pablum for CFI

It looks like Michael De Dora is calling me out. The wishy-washy, sloppy-thinking director of the NY CFI, whose main claim to fame lately is a series of blog articles notable only for their fuzziness and willingness to accommodate any nonsense from religious BS artists, is now taking me to task for my post arguing that the Tennessee case of a creationist objecting to a textbook calling creationism “the biblical myth that the universe was created by the Judeo-Christian god in 7 days” was a) an example of a true twit peddling ignorance, and b) that the textbook phrasing was accurate and justifiable.

De Dora disagrees. He thinks it is inappropriate for a biology text to directly address a damaging social trend that is hurting the teaching of science — and that we shouldn’t refer to religious stories as myth. He even has the gall to call what he wants to promote a “science only approach,” and in a remarkably weasely bit of wording, tries to imply that I think that just teaching science would “negatively impact the quality of public school education”. Interesting move. Sometimes, lying about your opponent’s position does work.

But he forgets what we’re fighting against.

Why is it that our biology classes — or even public schools in generally — must reject religious beliefs to educate children? I think we will find that, even if decided that our children would be better off hearing critique of their parents’ religious beliefs, this question is irrelevant, as according to our laws we cannot do such a thing. In turn, the answer seems to be that we should ensure our high school science teachers are instructing students on how to think like a scientist, and imparting to students the body of knowledge scientists have accrued (and that all of our teachers generally are doing similar in their respective fields).

Oh, let us confine our discussion to the nebulous vagueness of “religious beliefs”, that we may continue to pretend that charlatans are not lying to our children. There should be nothing special, nothing privileged about calling a falsehood a “religious belief”. When religious ideas directly contradict the scientific evidence, we must be able to point out that they are wrong…and please note, the textbook in question did not even slam creationist foolishness that hard, but merely pointed out that it is the product of a religious myth.

This isn’t simply about religious freedom. It’s about a loony-tunes popular bogosity that explicitly claims the earth is 6,000 years old and was created in six days, both assertions false, unsupported by any credible evidence, and contradicted resoundingly by the body of evidence discussed in the textbook. Those are “beliefs” that must be rejected by any scientist, by any textbook purporting to describe how science works and what conclusions it reaches — anything less is cowardly intellectual dishonesty.

i-1dedeecd642589de98491a43a8261698-religious_principles.jpeg

I am not opposing a “science only approach”. I am saying that a science only approach has a story to tell that must contradict the ridiculous myths our Sunday schools are feeding our children. We don’t need pablum-pushers like De Dora helping the pious frauds further gut our science curricula.

I haven’t even reached the worst part of De Dora’s quisling approach. He has a footnote.

It is important to note that creationism and related ideas like intelligent design do belong to the field of religion, not science; they are theology and philosophy (bad theology and philosophy, but that’s another matter). Hence, science cannot reject them in full — for how does the scientist answer the claim that God made it look like there’s been evolution, and that we are merely natural products, to test our faith? Or that God has been the hand behind the process of evolution? A scientist must here put on the philosopher’s cap to continue.

Great. Creationism? Can’t criticize it in our science classes. Somebody says the universe appeared magically a few thousand years ago, I guess that has to be a valid answer on the test question, “How old is the universe?”. To actually state that it is about 14 billion years old, and make such an answer a necessary part of the student’s grade…why, that is philosophy or theology, and not to be discussed in science class.

And here’s ever-helpful Michael De Dora, reassuring the creationists that “science cannot reject [their ridiculous ideas] in full”. Thanks heaps. Did I mention “cowardly intellectual dishonesty”? Yes, I did. And that’s what De Dora is endorsing.

And a special thanks to CFI. What the hell were they thinking when they gave this milquetoast marshmallow a soapbox? Does CFI stand for the Church of Fatuous Incompetence now?