Somewhere south of San Francisco, there is a billboard that declares that there is physical proof of the existence of a god, and which suggests that you read their website. A reader sent it to me, and being the sort of open minded fellow who doesn’t believe in any gods but is happy to look at any evidence someone might find, I looked.
I’m still an atheist. You can stop here if you want.
Sorry, California. After the plague of migratory, mammal-eating pythons, we now have independent testimony that God doesn’t like you.
God is disgusted with California legislators – at least some of them, according to an evangelical chaplain who ruffled feathers this week in the same Capitol where he leads Bible studies for lawmakers.
No, I don’t accept his personal claims about the desires of the Great Cosmic Poobah, but the evidence from the situation that 1) this bozo gets paid $120,000/year to evangelize to politicians, and 2) weepy-eyed politicians are stumbling all over themselves to reassure the electorate that God does too like them. You lose whether this god exists or not.
There was a lecture at UCL recently by Dr Oktar Babuna and Ali Sadun Engin. They spilled the beans, and we’re all in trouble now.
He then showed just how “insightful” the folks at Harun Yahya can be by quoting from one of their books, The Dark Clan, which explains that evolutionary science is inspired by “a dark clan behind all kids of corruption and perversion, that controls drug trafficking, prostitution rings”. Evolution is the “greatest deception in the history of science”.
The Dark Clan actually isn’t bad — nice moody music about vampires and such. I was just listening to a couple of their tracks and was enjoying them.
Oh, wait — they’re referring to this Dark Clan, which is just stupid. I’ll have you know I had to get out of the prostitution business when the Discovery Institute moved in and outcompeted us — they were so much better at it than we were. I’ve had to focus on the squid porn niche instead, which is nowhere near as lucrative, but at least the clientele is less creepy than the Dominionists they cater to.
And that quote from the lecture isn’t in error. Here’s what they say on their web site:
The purpose behind choosing the term “dark clan” is to convey the sense of a web-like structure with offshoots in every country, orchestrating the moral degeneration of today’s world. Even though it presents itself as highly modern, its structural design is reminiscent of the historical totemic clans. This dark clan is to be found behind all kinds of despicable deeds, corruption and perversion. It controls drug-trafficking operations, prostitution rings and promotes immorality. The members of this clan manage to portray themselves in a positive light through their collaborators in the media. They enjoy the de facto protection of their collaborators in the security forces and succeed in using the law to their own advantage through their collaborators in departments of justice. They also display a powerful unity against those perceived as enemies. Their greatest enemies are the believers who want to destroy their corrupt business networks, who struggle to make morality, harmony and justice dominant in the world and who strive tirelessly on the ideological battlefield to bring seriousness of the situation to people’s attention.
Oh, yeah, that is so me.
The Colorado NPR station KUNC recently ran a credulous fluff piece by some guy named Marc Ringel, touting “healing at a distance”, some sort of magic handwaving that he claims is “scientifically” supported. The Colorado skeptical community, of course, has expressed their scorn in email to the station, and also brought it to my attention. They also mentioned an excellent website reviewing the evidence for intercessory prayer.
The most interesting revelation to me: I’ve heard of tests of intercessory prayer, where people pray or don’t pray for a patient and then the outcomes are evaluated to see if it helped (it never does), but there’s another weird version of these improbable experiments.
Retroactive intercessory prayer.
It’s what it sounds like. The investigators took old hospital records, from patients who had been treated 4-10 years before, and asked subjects to pray for one group, and not pray for the other group. They then looked again at the old records to see if the patients that were prayed for now had gotten better then … and they did.
Think that through for a moment. It really is that insane.
So if ever you learn that I’ve gone into the hospital and died, I want you all to get together and pray really, really hard and change the past so I come back to life.
Oh, wait. I’m talking to the wrong people, aren’t I? I need to get a more devout readership who will have the true magic ju-ju to pull off time travel.
The makers of Expelled have just issued an “online media alert” in response to a critical review of their movie, as some readers have forwarded to me. It’s hysterical.
We already had our first security breech [sic] and are asking YOU now for your support to stand up for EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed. Hosted by Ben Stein, EXPELLED contains a critical message at a critical time. As an underdog in Hollywood right now, we need your support.
Recently Robert Moore, a film critic from The Orlando Sentinel pretending to be a minister, snuck into a private screening, did not sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement, and criticized the film the next day in his article.
Moore compared Stein, who is Jewish, to Holocaust Deniers and charge that Stein’s linking of Darwinism to the Holocaust was “despicable.” Stein states, “The only thing I find despicable is when reporters sneak into screenings by pretending to be ministers. This is a new low even for liberal reporters.”
That someone who saw their movie and panned it is now a “security breach”? That’s funny. That they set up a private screening for the religiously devout in expectation that they would receive their seal of approval is just plain pathetic. At least they aren’t pretending that their movie is anything but a desperate pander to the religious right.
If you read the review, you’ll see that Moore received an email invitation that was sent to the Orlando Sentinel, and took advantage of it. If they allowed someone to see their movie without signing an NDA, that’s their problem. They don’t get to complain and call it a security breach, especially when they built their movie around interviews obtained from me, Eugenie Scott, and Richard Dawkins, and others under entirely false pretenses. After all, if they can disguise themselves as serious documentarians to land an interview, what’s wrong with a critic attending a screening tailored for conservative ministers?
I do note Stein’s hypocrisy and lack of proportion. Joining a group of ministers to watch a movie: very despicable. Implying that Darwin and the scientists who recognize the value of his theory are responsible for the murder of millions of people and the instigation of a war that shook the whole world: not despicable. I’m probably going to go see their dreadful bit of dreck when it comes out, but now I’m tempted to commit a crime against humanity by putting on a fake clerical collar when I do so.
Some of you may be reluctant to delve into the fiery melee that are the Pharyngula comments, but you’re missing a very entertaining battle. We had a creationist named Steven pop by last night to offer his, um, opinions. Here’s a brief summary of some of his sillier claims.
Darwin was a racist.
Christianity never supported slavery.
The 15th and 16th century slave trade was driven by the Dutch and Portugese, who were not Christian.
Scientists were responsible for the slave trade, not Christians.
Robert E. Lee converted to Christianity late in life — he was an atheist! He became an abolitionist after he became a Christian.
Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson ran for the presidency of the Confederate States of America on the platform of abolition.
Georgia was an abolitionist state.
American slaves were better off here than they were in Africa. Slavery was good for them.
Hitler was an atheist. The Holocaust was the product of Darwinist teaching.
Oh, yeah…evolution is false. The infall of cosmic dust to earth means that, if the earth were millions of years old, it ought to be touching the sun. Sedimentary layers at Mt St Helens. Snail shells give incorrect carbon dates. Nebraska man. Cro-Magnon man looks human. Harris and Klebold, those famous biologists, were bad people. Bombardier beetles. It’s like the Index to Creationist Claims was written for this guy.
Oh, and he’s very confident of his claims, and is bragging about how he’s defeating all of us mental midgets.
The stupid is radiating off that thread in eyeball-melting waves, but we so rarely get the classic creationists with IQs that limbo that low in here anymore that I thought some of you might want to join in the feeding frenzy.
Apparently, I was challenged by some functional illiterate who demanded that I address some unstated complaint by 5:30 today, or I will “forever be cast as having no credibility.” , and accusing me of hiding some “skeletons”.
Those skeletons aren’t mine, they’re the department’s, and really, they’re right out in plain sight. I do have a few bones of my own in my office, but they’re all fossilized, and tens of millions of years old — I have an alibi!
I think I’ll let that deadline slide on by.
Holy crap. This Matthew guy has finally spelled out the shocking revelation, the horrific skeleton in my closet, the disturbing fact that he was demanding I admit.
Brace yourselves. My credibility is going to be a shambles after this.
The horrible, terrible, no good wicked fact that I’ve concealed is … that I’m going to be in the Expelled movie!
Seriously. That’s it.
The tidbit was that PZ was in the movie. This was news to me and hence reported as such. I’m a bit surprised that it did not come out during the escapades in January but c’est la vie I guess.
Wow. That is some world-class stupid. It’s been all over Pharyngula, but perhaps he doesn’t read this site; but it’s also been all over the Expelled movie site. We’ve been talking about this since around August, and now, in the last weeks of February, a small squeaky voice pipes up to say, “I got you now Myers, you’re in that movie, ha haaaa!”, and the sad little gomer acts as if he’s made an astonishing discovery.
I have been warned that portents of my personal doom have been issued.
I predict that within one year of this date, Pharyngula, Panda’s Thumb, EvC, RichardDawkins.net and Uncommon Descent will all have so completely degenerated as to become nothing but embarrassing footnotes in the history of internet communication. I also predict that P.Z. Myers and Richard Dawkins will have so embarrassed their home institutions that overt attempts will have been initiated to have their tenures revoked on the grounds of moral terpitude and seeking to overthrow the government. Public institutions like the University of Minnesota and Oxford cannot continue much longer to tolerate representatives so lacking in moral and ethical fiber as these two pathetic products of a “prescribed” and now terminated organic evolution. They make Ward Churchill look like Shirley Temple. Unlike Churchill who was never a threat to anyone, these two actively seek to destroy Western Civilization. I also predict there will soon be an Atheist Political Party. We already have an Atheist Political Action Committee (APAC) and a professed atheist member of the House of Representatives.
It is hard to believe isn’t it?
Fortunately for them, by that date, February 9, 2009, the physical destruction of our civilization will have proceeded to such a degree that thinking people will no longer be concerned about intellectual trash like Richard Dawkins and P.Z. Myers.
You should all be worried. This time next year, you’ll all be huddled in your bunkers as civilization collapses around you, while I’ll be off flaunting my moral turpitude in an opium den with a pair of contortionist twins and a tank of squid, giggling maniacally over my brilliant schemes that have Destroyed the World! Bwahahahahahaaha!
After all, John A. Davison could never be wrong, could he?
It’s been yet another long, long day — I was one of many invited speakers at a conference on Networks and Neighborhoods in Cyberspace at the Twin Cities branch campus of the University of Minnesota Morris, and I got to make an early morning drive there and a late afternoon drive back. Drive, drive, drive. It gets old. Especially on those mornings when it is -15°F (around -25°C for those of you who insist on more civilized measurements.) If you’ve seen the movie Fargo you know what the scenery is like: endless snow-covered fields, endless rows of posts for barbed-wire fences, a succession of teeny-tiny farm towns. There is one thing I watch for — and this is a measure of how boring the drive is — and that’s the anti-abortion signs.
Doesn’t it make you happy to see people wanting to help other people?
“This is a service which is sorely needed,” said Jankowski, who holds a doctorate in spiritual theology. “The number of people who need help is intensifying right now.”
What service is Jankowski providing? That he claims to have a doctorate in “spiritual theology” is one clue. That he claims theological support from the Vatican and his Catholic archbishop is another.
Yeah, he’s an exorcist. A professional expert at casting out imaginary demons.
The article goes on to claim that this is a growth industry. They’re busy building a new Exorcism Center to treat the flood of people who need evil spirits dispelled.
I’m feeling a little sick myself — maybe I’ve caught a wee little ghostie.
