Because, honestly, The Atheist Delusion sounds exactly like the usual argument from real theistic apologists.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Because, honestly, The Atheist Delusion sounds exactly like the usual argument from real theistic apologists.
Where can I find this “Nature Store”?
I get a badge!
There’s a bit of chagrin involved in being nominated for one of these Weblog Awards, since if you look at the finalists in “Best Blog”, you’ll see Malkin, LGF, Power Line, InstaPundit, and The Corner listed…you have to figure, whoa, standards are awfully low here.
However, I am not nominated for Best Blog! I am in the Best Science Blog category. This makes me feel much better, because my fellow nominees are all a fine bunch of deserving people.
Pharyngula
John Hawks Anthropology Weblog
RealClimate
Deltoid
Good Math, Bad Math
Mixing Memory
The Panda’s Thumb
In the Pipeline
Bad Astronomy Blog
SciGuy
The next hurdle is the voting, which starts tomorrow. They’ve got a strange voting scheme over there, in which you get to vote every day or something, so it may still end up weird, and who knows, Michelle Malkin might win my category anyway.
The direct confrontation between Bérubé and Horowitz has been recorded for posterity at the CHE—I think Bérubé handled it perfectly, not taking the reactionary clown seriously, and getting a free lunch out of it.
Next, though, he’s going to be on the Dennis Prager radio show. I’m beginning to think he’s trawling very deep for the pallid, slimy worms that dwell in the abyssal darkness…but hey, whatever satisfies your appetite, I say.
Now we just need the Chronicle of Higher Ed to sponsor my free lunch with Deepak Chopra…or perhaps I could someday aspire to locking horns with Prager.
Everyone must go welcome Omni Brain, the newest addition to the Seed blog empire. Go ahead and bring Sandra and Steve a little blogwarming gift, like a comment or a link or something.
Synthesis is a good thing: Mark Chu-Carroll finds a similarity between Notch signaling and something mysterious called The Itai-Rodeh solution. It’s not surprising that similar algorithms might arise by design and by evolution—which is why the IDists have to demonstrate something unique to their assertions for which a mechanism without a designer cannot account.
Since Orac is confessing to a stupid thing, I thought I’d repeat my own public admission of stupidity.
Public Service Announcement: Things Not to Do
Don’t carry batteries in your pocket.
This evening, I was stretched out on my recliner, enjoying a little light reading, when I smelled something odd—an odor of burning, and a faint chemical reek. I looked around and saw nothing, but the odor was getting stronger. I set my book aside, looked down, and saw something no man likes to see: tendrils of smoke rising from my fly. Then, I felt searing pain from my thigh. I jumped up and danced around (to the amusement of my daughter), and frantically tried to fish all the loose change out of my pocket. The coins were flaming hot. I was caught in the dilemma of letting my leg burn, or burning my hands trying to get these things out. I ended up throwing sizzling bits of money around the room.
I had tossed a couple of spare NiMH AA batteries in my pocket earlier, when I was out doing some photography. A pair of them had apparently jostled into exactly the right configuration to short out against the coins in my pocket, leading to the surprisingly rapid and intense generation of heat.
I don’t think I’ll carry batteries that way anymore. I now have the imprint of a pair of quarters scorched into my palm, and feel a bit like Belzig, the fat sadistic Nazi from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. And my kids are laughing at me for dancing around with my pants on fire.
And now I tell you this cautionary tale, O Gentle Reader, to spare you the humiliation of repeating my error. See how much I care?
Whether I’m admitting this to make Orac feel a little less alone, or whether it’s because I have reason to worry that he might be about to do the same thing and needs a warning, is left to the interpretations of the reader. You may also argue among yourselves which of us is more foolish.
I posted that about two years ago, and I’m pleased to say that I haven’t carried batteries in my pockets since. See? I can still learn! It’s so much more sensible and safer to stick them up your nose.
Ouch, this is painful to watch. It starts with pictures of kittens and Bambi and bagpipers (bagpipers?), and then this 12 year old kid comes on to declare evolution invalid. He throws up a list of objections to evolution culled from some creationist website somewhere—among them, for instance, is that there is no inheritance of acquired characters—and then he spends most of his time babbling incoherently about how evolution is impossible.
Warning: it also ends with a bagpiper.
The 8 year old atheist sounded much more intelligent.
(via DoubleViking)
All-too-common-dissent finds another crazy creationist engineer. This one opens a molecular biology and genetics text, discovers that it doesn’t talk about “Darwinism” (not surprising), and concludes that biology doesn’t need evolution.
My hypothesis is that the field of molecular biology is simply not understood by the majority of biologists and thus pretty secure from rational debate by laymen. By claiming that this discipline (which they probably don’t understand either) proves Darwinism and that Darwinism is vital to understanding molecular biology, the Creationists can be silenced, humiliated and put in their place by simply invoking superior knowledge.
This is a rather extravagant claim coming from someone who knows no biology and who’s impression of the field is derived from one specialist text that I suspect he didn’t understand. I’d argue the other way: that there’s a trend towards emphasizing molecular biology at the expense of other aspects of biology in undergraduate education. However, even so, it’s extremely silly to claim that molecular biology isn’t being driven in substantial part by evolutionary ideas, or that molecular biology isn’t providing huge amounts of new information in support of evolution.
I don’t need to say more—Doppelganger piles on.
Now you can take
tour of Darwin’s sandwalk, too, by way of a video from the AMNH. Don’t expect high drama, though—it’s a series of shots of a path, trees, and brush—but look for restfulness and contemplation.
(via the Sandwalk, of course)
