Stop the Stoning of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani

If you do nothing else. Please take a moment and sign the Petition.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/stop…
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/s…

Contact information for e-mailing the White house.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

And the President of Iran
http://cp.president.ir/en/

His e-mail (possibly)
dr-ahmadinejad@president.ir
http://www.siawi.org/article882.html

And some other details that might help
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/s…
Currently there are only 427 signatures on this site. I am sure there are other Petitions out there. I think making people aware is the most important thing. That and voicing our condemnation of this sentence.

This woman needs to be released.

124 days to Skepticon 3

The lineup for SkeptiCon 3 just keeps getting better and better — James Randi and Sam Singleton are going to be there now, too. One other important feature of this meeting: every time I mention one of these posh meetings with the fancy-pants speakers, someone looks at the registration fees and swoons theatrically at the cost. That won’t happen here.

It’s free.

You’ll have to get there somehow, but that shouldn’t be a problem. There are lots of flights into Springfield, Missouri because it’s the gateway to Branson, the old-timey c’ntry western entertainment capitol. Just think, you’ll get to rub shoulders with happy families on their way to watch wholesome entertainment like Debby Boone and the Gatlin Brothers and Michael Bolton, and when they chirpily ask watchoo doin’ this weekend, you can glower under your sinister cloud of doom and intone, “I’m going to curse God and Jesus in the heart of the Assemblies of God church, while destroying the blithe delusions of quacks and frauds.” Fun!

You’ll also have to pay for a room, and here’s the deal: if you book your room at the University Plaza Hotel, not only will you get a good room rate, but every 50 rooms booked means they’ll comp a room for a speaker, which is one of the tricksy things they’re doing to get the costs down. Do it now. You’ll want to stay there. One of the features of this con is the all-night conversation and partying with the speakers. You are expected to keep DJ Grothe and Richard Carrier and Dan Barker and Rebecca Watson and Debbie Goddard and Amanda Marcotte up all night. James Randi might vanish in a puff of smoke whenever he feels like it, but the rest of us…fair game.

So no excuses. Mark 19-21 November on your calendars now. Make plans.

What is it with the Sacred Lube?

It’s just one of those freakish religious practices I cannot comprehend, this strange “anointing” of heads and objects with oil. Why? Does their god just like his targets greased up? It’s especially inappropriate when a teacher regularly rubs magic lubricants onto her students.

A Norfolk teacher has resigned after it was discovered she was rubbing “holy oil” on students and their desks during school, a Norfolk Public Schools spokesperson said.

How stupid. Everyone knows that, in order to be effective, the proper way to bless the students is to decapitate a chicken at the lectern, and then swing it around your head by its feet to splatter the kiddies. At least the ones who aren’t crying afterwards will be very focused on everything you do.

Field Guide to Biologists

Now, at last, with this handy reference and a pair of binoculars, you too will be able to identify biologists.

i-3f6cbc7f199a1b164a699bfcfdb82a11-definitions.jpeg

Notice the unusual markings. These varieties of biologists are clearly wearing no pants, one of the characteristics of the bench biologist, a delicate breed that favors air conditioned environments and wilts if not well-watered with money. The hardier subspecies of field biologists usually do wear pants, although it may be difficult to tell if they are also wearing hip waders.

I knew this was coming

Remember that horrible, stupid, no-good article about chickens and eggs, the one that used the identification of a protein important in egg shell formation to claim chickens had to have come before eggs, with no comparative data, no appreciation of the logic of evolutionary theory, and absolutely no respect for the evidence? Yeah, that one. The article that ought to have embarrassed both the journalist and the scientist involved.

Well, somebody liked it. They liked it a lot. Guess who?

Ken Ham.

He likes it because he thinks it means that chickens couldn’t have evolved, that their putative non-chicken ancestors wouldn’t have been able to lay eggs, so his god had to have abracadabraed them into existence. Then he makes this prediction:

I wouldn’t be surprised if atheist scientists will loudly complain that this study actually supports the creation account in Genesis and then try to attack the research.

No, we’re complaining about this study because its interpretation was mangled beyond belief by the reporter and scientist. It says nothing about the ancestors of chickens or their closest relatives, and so can’t really come to the conclusion that the protein examined appeared de novo in Gallus gallus. It can’t support Genesis. It can’t support anything, because it is bad science.

So that’s why they call it the dismal science

Let’s see more charts and graphs to suck the joy out of your life! Here are 15 Appalling Facts About Wealth And Inequality In America — the rich-poor divide is growing. One graph summarizes it all: If you aren’t in the top 1% of America’s earners, you’re pretty much screwed.

There’s a lot of class warfare going on right now, only it mostly consists of the victims lying back and voting for the officials who will then help the plutocrats mug them some more.

Flashy graphic illustration of the creationism problem

There have been some recent surveys of attitudes towards evolution and the state of science education in the US, and I’ve mainly used tables in presentations — so it’s nice to see some eye-catching graphical representations of the data. Use these!

One thing surprised me — usually, this datum is presented in a positive light, but it’s always bugged me. 28% of science teachers accept that evolution occurred, and god had nothing to do with it; 47% of science teachers accept evolution, but believe that god guided it. That 47% is typically presented as no problem, these are the teachers on our side. Not in this graph!

i-f7f7806b699070e7e21ca83cf32f8178-believe_in_id-thumb-500x251-53227.jpeg
(Click for larger image)

Those are teachers who believe in Intelligent Design.

Yes, they are. And complaining that they aren’t those Discovery Institute frauds because they believe it is their god that does the designing doesn’t get them off the hook, it just makes them plain old creationists.

The only difference is that usually the teachers in that 47% aren’t actively trying to undermine the science they present in the classroom, so the situation isn’t quite as dire as the chart implies — but they’re still afflicted with a superstition that is grossly unscientific and an obstacle to embracing the concepts of science. And it’s probably a factor in the graph on the page just above this image, which shows how little time is spent on classroom teaching of evolution: in all of high school, half of the students get less than an hour or two of exposure to the ideas of human evolution.

I can testify to that. Most of my freshman students are remarkably naive about evolution, and from personal experience…I’m one of the percentage of students that had absolutely no instruction in evolution in high school. It wasn’t even mentioned, and I was one of those kids who was largely self-taught in grade-school biology, and was looking for it.

Uh-oh. I think I’ve been naughty again.

Michael Zimmerman, the guy behind the Clergy Letter Project and Evolution Sunday, in which ministers are encouraged to endorse science and evolution, is unhappy with those danged New Atheists who refuse to support his efforts. Jerry Coyne excerpts Zimmerman’s complaint.

Oddly enough, although these Clergy Letter Project members are often among the first to fight for all forms of creationism to be removed from our public schools and for evolution to be taught, they have also been relentlessly attacked by “New Atheists.” The crux of these attacks seems to take two forms. In the first, clergy members are ridiculed simply for having religious faith. In the second, supposedly intelligent people pretend they are unable to distinguish these clergy members from the fundamentalists with whom they share very little theologically and they are then tarred with the brush of unthinking literalism.

Oooh, “relentlessly attacked”. I like that. Funny thing is, though, that I’ve been kind of cranky about the Evolution Sunday nonsense for a few years, but have been disappointed to see very little other dissent from it. Even Coyne has said it’s “harmless at worst”. Who could be making these relentless attacks?

Maybe it’s me. I’ve been hard-pressed to find anyone else who criticizes that Clergy Letter project, but I know I have. I did a search on my site and found four whole articles on the Clergy Project/Evolution Sunday, and it’s true — I don’t like it much at all. Here’s the full history of my vicious mad-dog barking at Zimmerman.

Feb 2006: I say that I found it orthogonal to my views, but since I found fundies frothing at the mouth over it, I’ll look on it charitably for a bit.

Feb 2007: A grudging acknowledgment of the event, but I suggest a better use of everyone’s time would be to stay home and read a good book.

July 2007: I read some of the Evolution Sunday sermons. Gag a maggot, they’re bad. Really, read some sometime — this is what happens when you invite scientifically ignorant people to pontificate on biology and pretend to have some authority…and they’re always using their mangled version of evolution as a parable to urge greater faith in god.

Then there are a few years where I ignore them altogether.

Feb 2010: My strongest criticism yet, I mention that I despise the Clergy Project, and that they were sponsoring an awful debate in Minnesota between a nicey-nice but airheaded apologist for religion and a flaming young earth creationist.

That’s it. I’d be interested in hearing if someone else has a more consistent and ferocious history of savaging the Clergy Letter Project/Evolution Sunday stuff. So I can shake their hand.

Relentlessness has a whole new meaning in the minds of the faithful. Kinda like “militant”.

Telly alert for American audiences

Fresh from American Atheists:

MAYBE TONIGHT (FRIDAY, JULY 16)
OR MONDAY, JULY 19, 2010
KAGIN, ATHEISM, CAMP QUEST
AND MORE SLATED FOR ABC NIGHTLINE

The long awaited segment called “Faith Matters” of ABC’s “Night Line” may air tonight (Friday, July 17, 2010) or on Monday, July 21. We apologize for the confusion, but this is the latest news we are receiving from ABC. The program did not air last night as originally anticipated.

We cannot guarantee this, but we believe it to actually be true this
time. The show may cover Camp Quest, American Atheist’s De-Baptism, and perhaps interviews with Amanda of Camp Quest, Edwin Kagin (National Legal Director, American Atheists) , Edwin’s son Stephen the minister in Kansas, among other things.

WHAT & WHO: Edwin Kagin, Legal Director for American Atheists and co-founder of Camp Quest on ABC NIGHTLINE.

WHEN: According to ABC, maybe tonight — Friday, July 16, 2010 11:30 PM ET, or Monday, July 19, check your local listings.

WHERE: ABC Nightline

MORE INFO: http://abcnews.go.com/nightline

Tune in!