We just have our own special traditions.
I love the phylogenetic tree. They left out roasting creationist chestnuts over an open fire, though, and the wild monkey sex.
Every time a religious nitwit says something stupid, you turn around and another one has topped him. The head of the Catholic Church in Australia, Cardinal Pell, endorses cancer quackery.
“Yes obviously (cancer can be cured by prayer),” Cardinal Pell told ABC Television on Monday.
“And there are quite a number of examples in the books.”
Cardinal Pell says that won’t give sick people a false sense of security because they realise cure by prayer is a “very long shot”.
Obviously?
Obviously?
Obviously not. There are no mechanisms, there are no data, only biased anecdotes from pious delusionists. There aren’t any sensible examples on the books. These stories are easy to find, and they always have the same trajectory: person is diagnosed with cancer, they pray and pray and pray while getting the best medical treatment possible, and then if they get better, all the credit goes to the prayers. For example, Angela had throat cancer, and had several rounds of increasingly aggressive chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant, and when the disease goes into remission, who is responsible? A dentist she visited who believed in angels!
I’d really like to know why Pell thinks prayer is a long shot, though. Is god busy? Does he dislike some people? Does it only work for good Catholics? Is there a certain secret magic wiggle you have to do during the prayer for it to be effective? Or is it just that he knows deep down that all these cures are are rare fortunate chance events that the Catholics take advantage of to steal credit?
It’s coming up on the end of another year, so of course we need top ten lists. I’m impressed with the ambition of The Onion, which reports on the Top 10 Stories of the Last 4.5 Billion Years. My favorites are Woman Domesticated, Evolution Going Great, Reports Trilobite, Fire, Setting Everything in Sight on Fire Discovered, Rat-Shit-Covered Physicians Baffled By Spread Of Black Plague, and Dinosaurs Sadly Extinct Before Invention Of Bazooka, but really, the top prize has to go to Sumerians Look On In Confusion As God Creates World.
According to the cuneiform tablets, Sumerians found God’s most puzzling act to be the creation from dust of the first two human beings.
“These two people made in his image do not know how to communicate, lack skills in both mathematics and farming, and have the intellectual capacity of an infant,” one Sumerian philosopher wrote. “They must be the creation of a complete idiot.”
And modern creationists are made in his image.
Probably not safe for work. But you’re not working now, are you?
What kind of idiot decided to put this poll on CNN?
Should information about women who get abortions be posted online?
No 93%
Yes 7%
What kind of information are they thinking of? Home addresses, phone numbers, that sort of thing?
If you read the associated article, you discover that an even bigger idiot in the Oklahoma senate, Todd Lamb, wants women in his state to fill out a 10-page, 37-question questionnaire before allowing them to get an abortion, and that information would be published online.
It’s good to see the poll is going the right way, but jebus…this is another low in the long and sordid history of anti-choice intimidation.
Well, this is an odd project:
Though the Bible is an ancient book, full of beautiful prose, timeless stories, and great truths, there has long been a barely spoken of dissatisfaction over the one element it sorely lacks: zombies. At Zombible, we hope to remedy the situation by carefully inserting lovingly crafted zombie-oriented text into the Bible, for the enjoyment and enlightenment of all.
It’s odd because when I read the Bible, I see a great big zombie story already. The central figure in the New Testament is a zombie, and the chief function of the book is to turn people into zombies. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to clean up the metaphors and make it a little more explicit.
Here’s the entire known universe in 6 minutes:
Isn’t this what the global warming debate is actually all about?
The Joliet Jackhammers, a baseball team in Illinois, have put up an interesting sign to get people to buy tickets.
Some people are unhappy and want it taken down.
“It’s in very poor taste,” Councilwoman Jan Hallums Quillman said. “To have God tell you to buy tickets? Give me a break.”
I wonder if Quillman felt the same way about the serious billboard campaign that had God announcing his will and intentions? There was one that read, “Let’s Meet At My House Sunday Before the Game -God.” Was that in poor taste? It seems to me that many people think it’s perfectly alright to put words in their imaginary deity’s mouth as long as it sounds serious and respectful, no matter what it may be.
Anyway, there’s a poll at the team website.
Should the JackHammers take down the current I-80 billboard?
56%: yes
44%: no
Since it appropriately trivializes the foolishness of claiming that a god speaks, I had to vote no. Keep it up!
