Acknowledging True Belief™

Atheist Ireland is handing out a monthly award to the Really, Really True Believer™, and this month it goes to the anti-boobquake gang of Iran. Some Iranian clerics have sicced the vice police on department store mannequins, where they saw off the breasts of the shameless but inert hussies.

Muslim men do have a serious problem (as the clerics tell us) of sinful animal desires that they cannot control, since the purpose of the shapeless trash bag fashions imposed on women is justified as an anti-lust measure. How much more effective it will be if we’re led to think the trash bag is wrapped around some mutilated meat!

Uh, I don’t think those credits will transfer anywhere

Glenn Beck really is certifiable. He’s now pushing his own “university”, staffed by a trio of right wing incompetents, with a tuition of $9.95 per month.

His introductory curriculum is Faith 101, Hope 101, and Charity 101, titles which don’t seem to have much to do with their contents. I look forward to the first student to show up my university with a transcript and ask for transfer credits — normally, we just give no credit for inappropriate or bad coursework, but this is one case where I think negative credits are warranted.

Let us count the ways the Catholic church is like the mob

After their recent raid to expose information about child-raping priests, the Belgian police are facing another problem.

Officials say that police are also looking into threats to the lives of some witnesses and magistrates connected to the case.

Jean Marc Meillure, a spokesman for the public prosecutors office, confirmed that an investigation was under way.

“There are some threats against certain people around the case, and the prosecutors office is investigating that,” he told the BBC.

He said the threats had been made against people who gave the authorities information or made a complaint, or against some magistrates.

Nobody rats out the head Ratzi. If the stool pigeons can’t be bought, they can be disappeared.

Attempted intimidation by a quack

I don’t envy Stephen Barrett at all, but this is going to be good. Barrett is the doctor behind QuackWatch a wonderful resource for exposing bogus medical claims. Among the many subjects of common charlatanry he’s taken apart, one is the use of invalid tests to justify useless treatments, like chelation therapy, which is a goldmine for quacks. Do the doctory thing of drawing a little blood while wearing a white lab coat, send it off to a ‘lab’ that does a few tests and sends back a very official looking mass of data, and then the quack gazes into it and announces that you need powdered newts’ eyes, or whatever nostrum he’s peddling that day.

Barrett explained in thorough detail how the reports of one such ‘lab’, called “Doctor’s Data”, were jiggered to create unnecessary fears in patients.

Now Doctor’s Data is suing him.

This is going to be such a hassle for Barrett—a pointless, frivolous suit by con artists who don’t like the fact that he has publicly exposed their scam. But it is also deliciously ironic, because the suit will also make Doctor’s Data more widely known as a fraud. Everyone should go read the relevant articles on QuackWatch:

Spread the news far and wide. Make sure everyone knows Doctor’s Data is a fraud.

And if you want to help out monetarily, Quackwatch accepts donations.

The Joys of Homeopathy

The video below will hurt your brain, but don’t worry, the pain will make you stronger. This is a mashup of a few homeopaths rationalizing their baloney, mixed in with Star Trek technobabble. One worry is that it might have the side effect of making you hate Trek, which isn’t that bad — Star Trek in all of its versions has been saturated with a woo version of science, anyway.

Wait, don’t cry, don’t curl into a fetal ball and whimper. There is a corrective: good news. British skeptics have been working hard to fight homeopathy, UK doctors have called for a ban on homeopathic ‘medicines’, and the doctors have voted to make homeopathy unsupported by the national health service! Reason triumphs for once!

At least, it triumphs on the other side of the Atlantic. The University of Minnesota still supports homeopathy. I am so embarrassed.

If you don’t understand why rational people oppose homeopathy, maybe you need to read a cartoon about it.

Jerk of the Day

Why, oh why do I despise Christianity so much? Look to George Berkin to understand why. And if you can’t understand, you’re probably one of those Christians.

He’s got a long article up arguing that God is being good to Christopher Hitchens by afflicting him with a lingering disease, because it will give him a chance to repent. And then it suggests that everyone pray for a deathbed conversion. Hallelujah.

First, Hitchens is not dead. He has cancer. There’s a difference. Learn it, or next time I see you I’m going to point out that you’re aging and start talking about you in the past tense, with lots of pitying looks.

Second, your god is clearly a dick, and so are you. I don’t see why you’re worshipping him, except that dicks seem to like other dicks an awful lot. Fortunately, your god is entirely imaginary, so I can’t get pissed off at him, but you are supposedly a civilized and rational human being, so I do get to regard you with deserved contempt.

Third, I have enough respect for Hitchens’ integrity and personal courage that even if he were on his deathbed, hopefully many, many years from now, I’d expect him to remain true to his principles…unless he were dying of Alzheimer’s disease, or major head trauma. Stop begging him to be weak and cowardly.

Most annoyingly of all, Berkin is addressing Hitchens and writes, “But now, let’s talk, one grownup to another.” Berkin, you condescending twit, someone is excluded from the conversation by that restriction, and it isn’t the guy who refuses to believe in magic wish fulfillment fantasies involving a dead charlatan who’ll poof you into a celestial candyland if you believe in a woman cursing humankind for eternity by eating bad fruit.

God is not great. But his followers are worse.