Religion’s voice is that of a spoiled child having a temper tantrum.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
The University of Minnesota Twin Cities is to be blessed with a visit from Brother Jed on 16 September…and the Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists plan to be waiting for him with a special event:
As a counter protest to the preacher Brother Jed, we want to get as many people as we can to share a kiss with their significant other. Our goal is to get many same-sex couples, but all couples are encouraged to partake in the event. We want to show Brother Jed and the rest of the campus that we don’t support the hatred we portrays and that all people deserve to be with the ones they love.
Meet on the Northrup Mall around noon (it will go on all day) and spread the love.
Who says Christianity doesn’t have the power to inspire?
Teach the controversy! Who would have thought geocentrists would still be around? They’re having a conference even: Galileo Was Wrong: The Church Was Right, the first annual Catholic conference on geocentrism. They’re also arguing that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old. No word yet if any flat-earthers will be in attendance.
I think it’s cute that they call it a “Catholic conference” and make a point of it being held near Notre Dame, even if it is extraordinarily unlikely that they have any official Catholic status.
(via Unreasonable Faith)
Stephen Hawking was on Larry King Friday night, and here’s a little video of the event. Through no fault of his own, Hawking isn’t exactly a dynamic stage presence — he’s a bag of bones in a wheelchair with a computer voice speaking for him — and Larry King is…well, King is a genuinely dumb interviewer whose weak-minded talents are better suited to celebrity airheads.
That isn’t the whole thing. There’s also part 2 and part 3, which includes Leonard Mlodinow (who’s good, but sucks up too much to the other panelists), and a couple of people whose intelligence is a better match to King’s: Deepak Chopra, who is so far out of his depth in a discussion of physics that he feels the need to overcompensate by babbling buzzwords, and Robert Spitzer. Spitzer? Who? He’s a Catholic apologist, and even more annoying than Chopra.
This is the gist of his argument: it’s the tiresome old first cause claim.
Father Robert J. Spitzer, president and founder of the Magis Center of Reason and Faith in Irvine, says he believes that both physics and philosophy offer proofs of the existence of God.
“No metaphysician I know of believes that nothing can give rise to something,” Spitzer, a philosophical metaphysician and a Jesuit priest, said in an interview Thursday. “Nothing can only come from nothing. If it was nothing, it didn’t bring itself out of nothing.”
He hasn’t been following along, apparently. Something does emerge out of nothing all the time, and even if you did need some specific causal event, it is neither necessary nor sensible to invoke a supernatural intelligence. Hawking’s whole point seems to be that natural causes, all that stuff physics is good at examining, seems to be sufficient for all.
I think I’ll trust a physicist over a Jesuit any day, especially when the subject is physics.
After brutally splicing the insane Oprah thread to the perennially random thread, it is now my intent to infuse it more deeply with the crazy: Catholics and Oprah.
Mwahahahahahahahahahahahahaahaaaa!
Don’t cry, Sven.
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I think this will go over well with rudeness here: bluntcard.com. One could easily get sucked into long reveries here, contemplating exactly who you would send that card to.
Not me, though. I’m off to do a little exercise, then I’m off the internet for a while to get some work done.
I’m going to come back online to a lot of rudeness sent my way, aren’t I?
That’s the usual excuse we here from defenders of Catholicism — that the accusations of pedophilia and sexual abuse are only the work of a tiny minority of rotten people. I can accept that it’s a small minority that are the actual perpetrators, but the culture of the church protects its own…and the privileged, special, precious people aren’t the congregation, it’s the priesthood.
Belgium has plumbed the depths of its own local apple barrel, and made a horrifying discovery.
“We can say that no congregation escapes sexual abuse of minors by one or several of its members,” the commission concluded.
The 200-page report, published on Friday, contains testimonies from some 124 anonymous victims, revealing that abuse for most began at the age of 12.
It noted a “high number of suicides” with 13 deaths and six attempts attributed to “sexual abuse by a cleric”.
Every congregation has a horror story about an abusive priest. That says something. This isn’t about a rare event — it’s about a common risk associated with growing up Catholic in Belgium.
Mark (Monty) Montague was an occasional commenter here, and a major contributor at TONMO with a passion for cephalopods. I’m sorry to report that he died in in a diving accident this summer. There will be a memorial service on 2 October at Caltech.
My lukewarm support for this president is cooling fast. First he’s making absurd excuses to kowtow to the easily inflamed sensibilities of Islam, and now, apparently, he’s forgotten that this is a secular nation.
Obama said he was proud the country had rallied around the idea that we can’t be divided because of religion or ethnicity – and hopes that is something that can continue.
“We are all Americans, we stand together,” Obama said. “I think it is absolutely important now for majority of Americans to hang onto that thing that is best in us: a belief in religious tolerance. We have to make sure we don’t start turning on each other.”
“We are one nation under God. We may call that God different names, but we are one nation.”
Tolerance is a good idea. But Obama has just divided the nation, forgetting all of his previous brief, superficial mentions of non-believers, into those who are part of his one nation under God, and the rest of us, who are…what? Not part of the nation?
Although it is true that we do call his god many different names. Maybe that’s how Oblivious Obama can consider us godless folk part of his name-calling nation — we do call on god with words like abhorrent, abominable, absurd, acrimonious, appalling, asinine, atrocious, awful, bad, bad-tempered, bananas, barbaric, barbarous, batty, bitter, bloodthirsty, bonkers, brutish, callous, certifiable, childish, cold-blooded, concocted, contemptible, corrupt, cracked, crackers, crazed, cruel, cuckoo, cutting, dangerous, demented, deplorable, depraved, deranged, despicable, detestable, disagreeable, disgusting, dishonest, dishonorable, disreputable, distasteful, disturbed, dreadful, dreamed-up, evil, execrable, fanciful, fatuous, ferocious, fictional, fictitious, fiendish, fierce, foolish, foul, foul, frightful, frivolous, harsh, hateful, heartless, homicidal, hostile, idiotic, inane, inhuman, iniquitous, insipid, insufferable, intolerable, invented, loathsome, loco, loony, loopy, ludicrous, mad, made-up, make-believe, malevolent, malign, malignant, mean, merciless, monstrous, murderous, mythical, mythological, nasty, nauseating, nefarious, noisome, nonexistent, nuts, objectionable, obnoxious, obscene, offensive, pettish, petty, poisonous, pretend, psycho, psychotic, quarrelsome, querulous, rancorous, raving mad, remorseless, repellent, reprehensible, repugnant, repulsive, ridiculous, ruthless, sadistic, savage, schizophrenic, screwy, senseless, sickening, spiteful, storybook, stupid, terrible, unbalanced, unconscionable, unhinged, unpalatable, unpleasant, unprincipled, unsavory, unscrupulous, unspeakable, unstable, vapid, venomous, vile, vile, villainous, vindictive, violent, wicked, and wrongful. I could go on, but I thought I’d be nice and leave out the more scatological and pornographic terms we apply to “that God” and his batty believers.
One diverse nation, yes. Under the thumb of a god, no.
Freshwater turtles are in serious trouble: about a third of the world’s species are on the edge of extinction, and others are facing all kinds of problems. It’s the usual litany: habitat destruction, over-hunting, the exotic pet trade, and of course, Chinese medicine (traditional Chinese medicine: where ignorance and superstition lead to gratuitous extinction events).
Turtles are an ancient clade — and the cause of their decline is clear and inarguable. It’s us. I think I need to die before I have grandchildren so I don’t have to explain to them how we screwed up their planet.
