The John Kwok saga is getting very serious. He threatened to decimate my facebook friends, and has now gloated that the number of mutual friends of Kwok and Myers has now diminished by…3 (out of my current total of 4,793, which is actually a net gain of about 350 since yesterday).
You can imagine my shock and dismay. No, you don’t have to imagine — I had the computer record my reaction on hearing the news.
Forget clickers and powerpoint, I want these.
I am sometimes accused of having a sense of humor. This base canard is completely unfounded; I merely have great material sent to me. For example, this is an actual abstract for a paper given at the 2004 Baramin Study Group conference. Just try to read it without laughing out loud.
Collectable card games are evil: if they get you hooked, you find yourself throwing money at little foil packets of randomized bits of cardboard, feeding the variable reinforcement schedule. The New Humanist has stumbled onto compounded evil, combining collectable card games with religion. Fortunately, they’re giving the images away for free. If they ever start selling booster packs, though, it will be time to descend on their offices with pitchforks and torches and root out the wicked.
Billy Graham has a column in which he answers letters — he’s a kind of evangelical agony aunt, I guess. A recent letter will make you laugh.
DEAR BILLY GRAHAM: Why do people get involved in cults? My cousin has gotten involved in one, and no matter what we say to him, he refuses to listen. He says we are the ones who are in the dark, and he alone in our family has found the truth. — S. McM.
That’s a real problem, and I’m sure we all know someone who has gone off the deep end with some weird belief. That’s not the funny part; the good bit is Graham’s oblivious reply.
DEAR S. McM: One characteristic of cults is that they strongly believe they alone are right in their beliefs and everyone else is wrong. Thus they reject the central truths of the Bible that Christians have held in common for almost 2,000 years and substitute their own beliefs for the clear teaching of Scripture.
Shorter Billy Graham: The difference between their cult and mine is that they think they have the absolute truth, when I know that I do.
Do you want 50 reasons you shouldn’t believe in evolution? I think the list pretty well covers all the real reasons people are creationists.
It’s true…it’s a webcomic that jests at the expense of Pharyngula and you readers. We must be offended! Are there any legislatures we can fire up to condemn webcomics?
Our local school boards tend to be institutions of endless tedium punctuated by madness. One bold innovator seeks to change this situation by increasing the insanity.
“Our schools are orderly, sanitary places where students dwell in blissful ignorance of the chaos that awaits,” West said. “Should our facilities be repaired? No, they must be razed to the ground and rebuilt in the image of the Cyclopean dwellings of the Elder Gods, the very geometry of which will drive them to be possessed by visions of the realms beyond.”
I like it! It definitely beats the usual creationist lunacy.
It’s hard, you try it: it’s the Religion 101 final exam. I sure hope they post the answer key sometime.
Although…if it’s evaluated in the same way religion is, maybe any answer will do, and I’ve actually aced it.
Oh, wait — I answered it the atheist way, which is to leave it blank. That’s probably the one way you’re guaranteed to get stern angry looks from the teacher and expulsion from the whole school.
