Guess who’s next in line to get a certain famous fossil? The Pacific Science Center will be exhibiting Lucy between October and March. Even if I can’t arrange it, I expect you lucky Pacific Northwest residents to all make the pilgrimage.
For another example of the religious expressing absurd beliefs, you must listen to this conversation between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox — it’s astonishing. Dawkins just probes with a few pointed questions, and Lennox, a theologian, babbles on and on and on, asserting the most amazing things. All those miracles in the bible? They literally happened — he doesn’t hide behind metaphor and poetry. Water into wine, resurrections, walking on water…it all actually happened, exactly as written, and further, he claims that all of these accounts represent historically valid evidence. This is the sophisticated theology we godless atheists are always skipping over, I guess.
Oh, he does start to waffle when Genesis is brought up. Those aren’t literal, 24 hour days, but still, he claims, the account is compatible with the scientific understanding of the origin of the world and life. He also trots out the ridiculous claim that he made in a prior debate that because Genesis describes a beginning, rather than a universe of infinite existence, it actually got the physics right.
Dawkins played it right, letting Lennox just run off at the mouth and expose the inanity of the theological position.
Never mind that, though — Hybrid Medical Animation has a lovely demo reel of cells and molecules bouncing around.
We have a new blog here: Next Generation Energy, a temporarily active blog discussing alternative energy. It’s a bit of an odd duck and an experiment, with a team of bloggers focused on this one issue and exploring it for a limited term, but check it out.
One concern I can predict: it’s sponsored by Shell Oil (what next? A blog on the virtues of vegetarianism sponsored by McDonalds?). To allay concerns a bit, we’ve been assured that Shell will not be imposing editorial constraints — although, of course, there is always the indirect pressure caused by the fact that displeasing your patron may mean they will not fund future ventures — and the blogging team they’ve put together has a history of independence on this subject. I also think that the commenters here can play a role in keeping the discussion honest, since Shell isn’t paying you.
If you live in Edmonton, Alberta, which is somewhere up north in Canada (and if you live there, I presume you know where), you might want to get in touch with the newly formed Society of Edmonton Atheists. They’re looking to expand!
Here’s a much more serious issue than a goddamned cracker: it’s the steady accumulation of military power in religious hands. It’s not overt policy, but we should be worried that there is an increasing association between religiosity and military service — an association between credulity and obscene amounts of physical power. Jeremy Hall is discovering this first-hand.
There are days when it is agony to read the news, because people are so goddamned stupid. Petty and stupid. Hateful and stupid. Just plain stupid. And nothing makes them stupider than religion.
Hello, Seattle! Look what just went up on Denny, near the Stewart Street intersection:
Everyone might want to donate to this cause, too: a group is trying to buy ad space on London buses, saying “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and get on with your life.”
Whew. We’re getting uppity.
I’ve been outclassed. Every scientist in the world is a modest little mouse in comparison. All of you readers: humble, demure, and retiring. Ray Comfort has just compared himself favorably to Einstein, saying that he has made a discovery more important than E=mc2. He even has a painfully vainglorious animated image on the page showing his face morphing into Einstein’s.
I think Ray Comfort tried to look up “humility” in a dictionary once, but after slowly sounding out as far as “h – u -“, he got stuck and settled for “hubris” instead. Close enough for a brain-dead Christian, after all!
Some days, my mailbox overflows with hilarity…like today. I got the new Roy Zimmerman CD! You should, too! It’ll cheer any liberal to realize that you aren’t alone, and you’ve got a theme song.
But I also get other mail that’s almost as funny, although not intentionally so. For some perverse reason, there are some of you readers out there who think you are making a statement and causing me grief by signing me up for conservative magazines and newsletters. You really shouldn’t. You know what happens? It comes in the mail, I flip through it, I laugh, and I toss it in the trash. Then when the phone call comes later, dunning me to pay for their magazine, I tell them that I don’t read it and I didn’t order it, and they get to eat the cost…and I laugh again. All you’re doing is contributing to the local landfill and hurting my mailman’s back, and that isn’t nice.
But you’re a conservative, so what the hell do you care.
Anyway, so far today I’ve received:
Assurances from a wattled, snake-eyed Newt Gingrich that Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana is the great future hope of American Conservatism.
An advertisement from Human Events telling me that my lungs are dying and I have to stop exercising (it’s bad for you!) and buy their supplements.
Ann Coulter tries to sell me stock tips better than the Marxist tripe the Wall Street executives are peddling.
The Zimmerman CD had some real competition on the humor side, but wins in the talent department.
