Dawkins vs. Quinn

As some of you might have heard, the Raving Atheist has been getting increasingly wacky and wobbling towards some weirdly irrational beliefs. The latest turn in the saga is that his disaffected readers have jumped ship and have started a brand new site, Raving Atheists. It’s a shame, really: the Raving Atheist was one of the earlier blogs where godlessness was loudly and proudly expressed, and he had a strong community of atheist readers who congregated there, and who are now off on their own site. If nothing else, we can all thank RA for stimulating an interesting group of people.

Another thing I’ll thank him for is that he has a transcript of the radio exchange between David Quinn and Richard Dawkins (mp3 here). I listened to that a while back, and was appalled at the foolishness Quinn was spouting, yet apparently a number of people think Quinn mopped the floor with Dawkins. Shouting dogma does not a victory make, I don’t think, and that’s all Quinn did.

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Hovind saga continues

The latest in the Hovind trial: a local lawyer recounts his conversations with Kent.

Gibbs said Hovind tried to persuade him he had no obligation to pay employee income taxes and explained with “a great deal of bravado” how he had “beat the tax system.”Gibbs said Hovind also told him he preferred to deal in cash and that when you are “dealing with cash there is not way to trace it, so it wasn’t taxable.”

O Lord, please, this I pray: that Kent Hovind himself will testify at his trial. Jesus, fill Your devoted follower with True Christian hubris, that he will mount the witness stand to testify to Your glory and his special, privileged place as Your annointed representative on Earth. Amen.

P.S. Lord, don’t hold this against him.

During an IRS raid at the home, agents found cash stashed “all over the place.” About $42,000 was seized. During the search, more than a half-dozen guns were discovered at the Hovind’s home, including an SK-S semiautomatic.

I know it doesn’t sound very Christian, but especially good Christians are exempt from the principles that define good Christians, as we all know.

Stupid people shouldn’t be allowed to run for the state board of education

A candidate for state superintendent of eduction in Oklahoma has finally figured out what those things called “textbooks” are for: they’re good body armor. His solution to school violence is to explain to kids how they can use a supply of old textbooks to stop bullets.

He is a Republican, of course.

He has a video of himself firing an arsenal at various books. It’s brilliant: he’s going to appeal to all the gun-nut voters, all the voters who hate books, and every idiot in Oklahoma. That’s a big slice of the population.

One flaw: true Republican patriots might wonder why he isn’t shipping all his excess bullet-stopping books to Iraq to protect our troops.

Would anyone be interested in a Pharyngula chat room?

So I got some email a while back about this free and easy to use web-based chat room service…and heck, it’s so simple I thought I’d give it a whirl. Here’s a link to a Pharyngula chat room—try it out and let me know how it goes. I’ll plan on checking in myself now and then, but don’t wait up for me, talk among yourselves.

I will definitely plan on popping in at 8pm Central time tonight (Friday), if you really want to yell at me online. We’ll see how it goes; I don’t know how well it will hold up if ten people are trying to converse at once, and I also notice that there doesn’t seem to be any way to authenticate identities, so it’s not clear to me how much noise will be generated.