Anything but the “E” word!

Carl Zimmer wrote a good article on bedbugs as an example of evolution. In their shift to human victims, they’ve acquired a new morphology and new physiological requirements, and are distinctly and clearly different from their ancestors that fed on bats.

Answers in Genesis, though, has this idea that their perspective is just as valid as that of scientists: they claim to be viewing the same evidence just as fairly, but through the lens of the Bible rather than those crude human-made texts (I think you can see a problem right there).

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A frog that could fly

A song that could be silent. An ocean that could be dry. How about a book that could be nothing but deepities? That last one exists: it’s called A God That Could Be Real: Spirituality, Science, and the Future of Our Planet by Nancy Ellen Abrams, and it’s one of the more empty-headed collections of glib clap-trap I’ve seen in quite a while. It’s also really hard to describe, because the contents are so slippery.

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So…then fecal transplants could be a kind of mind control?

This is an amazing “discovery”! Someone named JA Tetro has been selling interviews and articles to women’s magazines and other credulous sources, claiming that your microbiome is the key to compatibility.

Tetro says that when you kiss your date, his or her germs make their way into your mouth’s ecosystem. And if it’s a match, you’ll want to keep smooching.

This study does one amazing thing, it shows you that kissing is the best way to find a mate for the long term. It might sound really gross but if the bacteria from the other person harmonizes with your bacteria, your immune system is all good. You feel a sense of calm and happiness, maybe even addiction, he explained.

But if the bacteria don’t align with your microbes, you actually feel disgust and revolt. Your immune system is rejecting that person as a possible mate.

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Another killing over trivial insults

Breaking news: an attack on a cartoonist who had drawn a picture of Mohommed has led to another death.

Gunmen stormed a Copenhagen building Saturday where controversial cartoonist Lars Vilks and his supporters had gathered, killing one man and wounding three police officers before driving away from the scene, police and witnesses said.

People killing people over bad ideas…it’s got to stop.

Some atheists get it

Next October, the People of Color Beyond Faith Network, Black Skeptics Group, Houston Black Non-Believers, Black Freethinkers, the American Humanist Association and African Americans for Humanism are sponsoring the second Moving Social Justice conference, to be held in Houston, Texas. These are people who are as godless as it gets, and somehow they’re able to recognize that social justice issues can and ought to be front and center in a secular, rational, religion-free community.

I am perpetually baffled by other atheists who think it shouldn’t even be on the map.

Own it

It’s been a long busy day, and I am exasperated that I get online now and discover that my fellow atheists have been desperately gleeful to have discovered excuses to justify evading any responsibility for the murders of Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha. The killing was over a parking spot; he was one of those crazy gun-fondlers. Let’s sieze any excuse to deflect an obligation to think. It’s just like with Elliot Rodger: he didn’t shoot those people because he hates women, it was because he was mentally ill.

That he was a member of my group is just a coincidence, we’re blameless, it’s his membership in some other group that is at fault!

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