But I dislike McDonald’s!

This is horrible news. Some faction of the religious right has called for a boycott of McDonald’s fast-food — because they were a sponsor of the 2007 San Francisco gay pride parade. They claim it’s not about hiring homosexuals, or allowing homosexuals to eat at McDonald’s, or about how homosexual employees are treated, but is instead:

It is about McDonald’s, as a corporation, refusing to remain neutral in the culture wars. McDonald’s has chosen not to remain neutral but to give the full weight of their corporation to promoting the homosexual agenda, including homosexual marriage.

Oh. They don’t object to homosexuals being served food in the restaurant, they just object to promoting civil rights for gay people in the whole dang culture at large. Homosexuals can have the right to consume greasy fast food and work at low wages, but that’s it, we’re drawing the line at allowing them to be treated as full human beings.

And this is horrible news because now I’m going to have to stop by my local McDonald’s and order something. Maybe it’s enough if I just get a diet Coke there.

Dawkins/Lennox round 2

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.

Seed has a new blog

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.

Keep that sword out of the hands of the Lord

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.

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Nobody gets to call me arrogant ever again

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!