Please do not use science to justify your superstitious, magical views

I really should avoid looking at these atheists against abortion sites — they just fill me with righteous rage at their stupidity and pretentious abuse of science…as with this promotional image.

But that’s an 8-cell zygote. It hasn’t even gone through compaction yet; it hasn’t so much as formed a blastocyst. This thing was only fertilized perhaps two days before — it would have been tumbling through the fallopian tubes still, wouldn’t have reached the uterus yet, and definitely wouldn’t have gone through implantation. Implantation is one of those critical phases in development: one half or more of fertilized zygotes fail to implant and are spontaneously aborted, and the woman wouldn’t have even known fertilization had occurred, her body wouldn’t have begun the physiological changes of pregnancy, and if the process ended here, she wouldn’t have even noticed a delayed menstruation.

The odds favor this zygote ending here or shortly afterwards, even without any intervention. Nature spawns these embryos freely, and throws them away casually, almost with the wild abandon that we produce gametes in general. It is not a precious little person, it is an experiment, a trial run, a test probe, a pilot study, a beta run. No one should care if it aborts or not; most of them do, and we are completely unaware of most of them.

No one does abortions at this stage. The woman isn’t technically pregnant until implantation occurs, and she wouldn’t be going in for an abortion two days after insemination. The only time this would be an issue is in the case of in vitro fertilization, which would yield a dish with a dozen or a score of zygotes at this stage, which would be evaluated for implantation. Are they really arguing that women getting IVF should be compelled to carry every single conceptus to term?

And the wording is just bizarre and misleading. No “one” ever ends at this stage; because any spontaneous abortion at this point would not produce a “one”, in the sense of an autonomous, aware individual. You might as well be looking at a field of ejaculated human sperm and insisting that NO ONE SHOULD END HERE! It makes about as much sense.

Gah. It makes no sense. And worse, it’s atheists indulging in ridiculous magical thinking.

(via Beth Presswood)

Think of it as culling the herd

Uh-oh, atheism is in trouble. We keep losing our great leaders, seduced away by the entirely reasonable arguments of Christianity.

We have lost Patrick Greene.

The Christian news media is all excited about winning over this “longtime atheist activist” to Christ. Not only has he become a follower of Jesus, but he’s planning to study to become a Baptist pastor.

There’s one catch to this fabulous story of recovering a lost soul: who the hell is Patrick Greene? Atheist activist? I had no idea who this entirely forgettable person was, until I did a little digging to remind myself.

He’s a crank.

He’s a somewhat notorious kook in the atheist movement, best known for calling into The Atheist Experience show and threatening to sue Ray Comfort over a bumper sticker he found offensive. His “activism” consisted of making ill-founded accusations and getting thoroughly chewed out by the real atheist activists, like Matt Dillahunty and Russell Glasser.

The real story is that Patrick Greene is getting old and having medical problems, and a local congregation raised money to help him out. He’s been bought, in other words. Even in his “atheist activism”, he was simply a litigious fool who clearly had his own self-interest in mind, so it’s no surprise that he’d cheerfully flip sides at the first sign of personal gain.

They’re welcome to him. He’s an idiot who was repudiated by atheists for his actions.

Why I am an atheist – David Bramblett

Or more specifically why I am not a believer in baseless unsubstantiated authoritarian truth claims on penalty of unending unendurable permanent agony and immolation on behalf of an all knowing all powerful father figure whose love and compassion for me is rivaled only by his plans to punish me for the most vanishingly small signs of disobedience. I don’t believe, not as a matter of blind faith but because nothing substantial has been presented upon which I can make a conscious choice. My “belief” is a conclusion not jumped to. I’m am not unconvinced, rather there is nothing present to be convinced by one way or the other. My “belief” in God is exactly equal to the belief that I am God and the creator of all that is and exactly as valid as any other such truth claim.

David Bramblett

White people need saving?

I had no idea. Suddenly, the fact that a black teenager can be gunned down and his white assailant goes unpunished and unhindered means the entire white race is under assault. O Lord, I hope no one threatens these fearful trembling innocent white Americans by shooting more black people! They can’t possibly bear more oppression.

The photograph is of the lovely John King, who has been protesting events in support of Trayvon Martin in Indiana. Apparently, Martin was a ghetto hoodlum, and therefore deserved to be shot. It’s going to lead to an interesting cycle: every black boy wearing a hoodie needs to be murdered, and when people protest the execution, white people like King will claim their views are being oppressed, so they need to lash out and kill more black boys, which means privileged white people will be blamed even more. How dare they say such mean things about us gentle people of European descent!

Too bad about the black kids. But what’s more important, a few lives of the wrong color, or the precious white sense of entitlement?

I don’t think that word means what you think it means

The parasites are crawling out in Australia, anticipating the Global Atheist Convention (next week! Ack!). The latest is a Christian group that is trying to put together some kind of counterdemonstration in Melbourne, called Undeniable.

I deny Jesus. Well, that was a quick and easy refutation.

Also, this is being put together by the son of the guy who published that ridiculous rag, the Regal Standard. I don’t have high hopes for this crowd, given the quality of their work so far. Apparently, they’re just going to mill about expecting people to ask them to evangelize.

And so I’m boldly asking every man, woman and child from every church and denomination to come to Federation Square on Sunday 15th April. Come wearing a white T-shirt (or top) and bring your glow sticks. We will also have a limited number of printed T-shirts with the words “ASK ME MY STORY.” Our message to the media is that there are thousands of us with a unique story to tell. Our testimonies are evidence that there is a God, because He has changed our lives.

Now I’m going to have to make sure to pack a black t-shirt. Fortunately, that seems to be the most popular color in the atheist crowd.

Oh, no, the hipsters shall be even more insufferable!

I rather like the idea of this next generation of networking technology, Google's Goggles of the Future, but why did they have to cast this video with a couple of extras from Portlandia?

Give me a better demo. Let’s see people using them for something other than showing off their amateur ukulele playing, ’cause that crap will just scare me away. I’m in Minnesota. I’d have nightmares about my glasses going bleep-bloop, and then someone starts broadcasting their accordion practice at me.

What a deal!

You’re all looking forward to Skepticon (9-11 November, in Springfield, Missouri), but did you know you could preorder your very own Skepticon5 t-shirt right now?

And because we’re special, the Pharyngula Horde gets a special code: enter “CrocoduckLives” in the box, and you will get a free surprise gift with your t-shirt order. It probably won’t explode or shower you with razor-sharp shrapnel or stab you or poop on you. Probably. But does it matter? It will be a surprise!

Counter-gishing

The Gish Gallop is a notorious tactic used by creationists: spew out lots and lots of bad arguments at a rapid fire pace, and mire the poor scientist in efforts to refute them one by one…which she can do, but only at a slower pace than the creationist can assert them. For a perfect example, Don Batten has 101 arguments for a young earth, every one of them stupid and dishonest. Imagine a debate in which your opponent rattles off all of those at you!

Fortunately, there’s this thing called the interwebs, where people at their leisure can organize and refute such nonsense. I recommend to you this rebuttal to 101 evidences for a young age of the Earth and the universe. Start reading.