OK, World, you’re making some of us Americans feel bad. The Brits are gloating.
The majority of Brits are atheist or agnostic, a poll has found, with only 30% of the population describing themselves as religious.
And the Swedes are even worse: they’re crowing about being the least religious nation in the Western world.
I had it all planned out. I was gonna get a spiffy name — how about the “Establishment Atheist Establishment”? — and a website, and then I was going to sign up my cat as the first member, because she’s a cat and an atheist and everyone loves cats and she’s evil, and then I was going to put my zebrafish on the roster to pad it out, and then with all those credentials established, I was going to lecture everyone else from my lofty perch on how to be a True Atheist™…
I thought Expelled was the king of creationist Godwins, but a new challenger has stepped forward: a biography titled “Kent Hovind : An Atheist’s Worst Nightmare”. The trailer has to bee seen to be believed: it’s all Hitler, interleaved with shots of Obama (what?) and George W. Bush (double what?). HE EXPOSED THE LIES OF ATHEISM AND EVOLUTION. HE IS IN PRISON FOR PREACHING THE TRUTH. HE OBEYED ALL LAWS AND THEY STILL THROUGH [sic] HIM IN PRISON. Shrill music. Hitler Hitler Hitler.
Cody Carson is an inventor, and he’s also one of those weird fundamentalists who believes in that load of unbiblical nonsense that is the Rapture (this is not to imply that if it were Biblical, it wouldn’t be nonsense). He has invented a device to detect when Christians magically disappear.
A Spring Clamp Switch was the type of vanishing sensor I built to demonstrate a working model of a Rapture Alarm in a demonstration given to a church congregation a few years ago. I used this type because it is easy to understand and can be built for less than $7. I purchased a medium size spring clamp and a pull chain switch from a local home center. I then drilled two holes in the handle of the clamp. I mounted the switch in one hole and mounted the pull chain in the other hole. Squeezing the clamp once cocked the switch. Releasing the handles cause the chain to be pulled, thus activating the switch. I then hooked the switch up to a light and placed the clamp onto a broom handle. When I snatched the broom handle out of the clamp, the light came on. When mounted to an arm or leg of a deceased Christian, the sensor would activate when the body vanishes, thus detecting the rapture.
In my demonstration, I clamped the sensor to a cow’s leg bone to represent a bone surgically removed from a Christian organ donor. This was to demonstrate that rapture related devises could be constructed in controlled lab settings and would not require the use of a grave or tomb. That sensor was wired to a computer tower and when the bone was removed from the clamp, the congregation heard an audible alarm.
Ken Ham is such a disappointment. He has this regular series of short radio-style bits of apologetics, and they are dreary and boring. I had hopes for this one, about “Carnivores Before the Fall (Leopard Seals)” — I expected some juicy stories about what these big, large-fanged predators ate before the Fall. This, for example, is what a leopard seal looks like before it bites your face off. (But don’t worry, there are very few examples of them attacking people.)
Big, hungry, sharp-toothed animals — what did they eat if all animals were vegetarians, once upon a time? Let’s ask Ken Ham!
Stephanie Zvan attempts to untangle the knotty history of this whatever-it-is secular organization. I’m still confused, but at least I’m happier that I’m not a member!
The Secular Policy Institute has now flexed its mighty muscles and done something. You might be wondering “who?”, so I’ll remind you: this is the vaporous think tank that used to be called the Global Secular Council, or Secular Global Institute, but then underwent a few confusing rearrangements of the chairs on the poop deck to reorganize under this new name. Their specialty seems to be attempting to strong-arm feminists into supporting them, listing celebrity atheists on the masthead, getting together for photo-ops, and otherwise…doing nothing at all. They’ve lately discovered a latent ability to wag their fingers, though, so they’re going to try to do that with this announcement.
There’s usually no point to complaining when some odious business announces that they are “sponsoring” soft drinks or whatever — it’s meaningless. My university has Coca-Cola machines downstairs, which doesn’t imply sponsorship either way. It means we have a contract with the local distributor to service and supply the machines. So when I heard that Pepsi and the Creation “Museum” were teaming up, I shrugged. So what? They’ve got an overpriced cafe, they need to supply it with food and beverage, they’ve got a deal with a local company. Just as gay people have a right to demand equal service from their local bakery, creationists can’t be prohibited from accessing necessary services.
(Sorry, gay readers, if that sounds like I’m comparing you to creationists. I’m not, you’re much better than that.)
However, this image crosses the line.
Today we celebrate the collapse of a stupid idea: Paul Nelson’s “ontogenetic depth”, which was supposed to be a concrete metric that would disprove evolution. Nelson was so confident that he had a solid angle on questioning evolution that he presented it on a poster at the Society for Developmental Biology meetings in 2004 — a poster that was so empty of substance that I asked him for his protocols, and he then waffled for years before finally admitting he had nothin’ in 2010.
A chemical
You know, I hear a lot of noise about the internet’s “outrage culture” and how everyone needs to be more polite and stop making people, especially white male people, so uncomfortable. The latest was a disappointing rant by Patton Oswalt who wants everyone to stop criticizing comics (dealt with well by Joe Garden, another comedian).
They never seem to factor in the fact that there is also a lot to be outraged about, and that complacency isn’t a solution, it’s a potentiator of problems. It can be racism, it can be the growing divide between classes, it can be the abuse of women…it doesn’t matter how big the problem is, someone will be whining that you aren’t allowed to complain.
At least we can find unity in one thing: The “Food Babe” Blogger Is Full of Shit. This is the latest expose of her bad science, and it’s damning. It’s written by someone who knows what they’re talking about.
