Kooks
pharyngula | July 9, 2010I've got a little inside information on Premise Media, makers of Expelled — despite all the bragging about what a successful movie they had, they still haven't fully paid contractors they'd hired, and the company appears to be dead. It was a kind of zombie company anyway, with a fake website filled with fake projects to trick people into taking it seriously, and now it's simply decaying. All that's left is a collection of clips.
However, the writer, Kevin Miller, has found employment working on something even schlockier — the poor guy's career is sinking so fast, he's going to end up writing…
pharyngula | July 8, 2010It's easy. Bait your hook with stupid.
It's true, we're a sucker for that stuff, although it does have a downside. We'll come up, swallow the bait, follow the line to its source, devour the poor fool holding the pole, and then waddle off, all fat and smug. It's our nature, we can't help it.
So, for instance, an Indiana politician who is considered a potential presidential candidate, Mitch Daniels, talks about atheism.
People who reject the idea of a God — who think that we're just accidental protoplasm — have always been with us. What bothers me is the implications — which not all such folks…
pharyngula | July 7, 2010Alex Pareene jumps on the anti-HuffPo bandwagon:
Giving a space to quacks to sell vitamin supplements to morons is insulting enough, but actually allowing a shameless asshole like Klinghoffer to use the Holocaust to promote his right-wing crusade to teach children lies is beyond the pale. Platform or no, there's no reason for anyone rational or even anyone with a sense of shame to continue giving Huffington free content.
Orac is going to be peeved that his jeremiads against quackery at the HuffPo didn't prompt this response, but what can I say? Jenny McCarthy killing kids with bad advice is…
pharyngula | July 7, 2010There once was a gigantic blow-up of accusations that fed into Chris Mooney's self-righteous crusade against atheists as harming the cause of science education. Remember "Tom Johnson", the mysterious scientist who told stories of outrageous bias against Christians in academia, driven by people like me and Richard Dawkins? Mooney was very grateful for his brave willingness to speak up.
Well, the fallout from the collapse of the 'You're Not Helping' blog continues. "Tom Johnson" was the same sockpuppeteering undergraduate, "William". The entire episode was a contrivance built up into a mountain…
pharyngula | July 5, 2010The last time I got a glimpse of the wretched new book from Marilynne Robinson, the review was sufficient to dissuade me from bothering to ever read it. Now we have a positive review from Karen Armstrong, and I am now convinced that if ever I am confronted with this work, the only appropriate response would be to unzip my fly and piss on it, on the spot. Only my deeply ingrained social conditioning would hinder me. Dammit, why can't I live freely and express my primal impulses without these nagging voices in my head?
Once again, her thesis is that her own twisted version of science, which is…
pharyngula | July 4, 2010Glenn Beck really is certifiable. He's now pushing his own "university", staffed by a trio of right wing incompetents, with a tuition of $9.95 per month.
His introductory curriculum is Faith 101, Hope 101, and Charity 101, titles which don't seem to have much to do with their contents. I look forward to the first student to show up my university with a transcript and ask for transfer credits — normally, we just give no credit for inappropriate or bad coursework, but this is one case where I think negative credits are warranted.
pharyngula | June 27, 2010I actually listened to a little bit of that Chopraesque blithering about the Gulf from "Evolutionary Leaders" — I really, really despise them for taking that name — and you can, too, at this link. I don't recommend it: the incompetent boobs who set it up had created a two-way conference call with swarms of people, and configured it so every time someone dialed in, there was a chime…a horrible, awful piercing chime. So throught the whole thing you get to hear 'ping - ping - ping - ping' at about the same volume as the speakers. It will drive you insane, if listening to Chopra doesn't do that…
pharyngula | June 23, 2010I got email just now from Evolutionary Leaders. The source sounds promising on the surface, so I opened it. Big mistake. Bad for my blood pressure.
Are you tired of sitting around while our environment is being destroyed?
Yes! Yes, I am!
Do you feel helpless, angry or powerless to make a difference
as you watch millions of gallons of oil pouring into the Gulf every day
with no end in sight and thousands losing their lives and their livelihoods?
Yes!
Join The Gulf Call to Sacred Action!
Yes! Wait…"sacred" action? Huh?
The Evolutionary Leaders: In Service to Conscious Evolution have joined…
pharyngula | June 22, 2010Ophelia Benson is having a giggle over the Texas Republican Party Platform, which you can download, too. It's the usual: guns, US out of the UN, immigrants must be controlled, etc. They really don't like homosexuals.
We believe that the practice of homosexuality tears at the fabric of society, contributes to the breakdown of the family unit, and leads to the spread of dangerous, communicable diseases. Homosexual behavior is contrary to the fundamental, unchanging truths that have been ordained by God, recognized by our country's founders, and shared by the majority of Texans. Homosexuality…
pharyngula | June 22, 2010Some fundamentalists have a weird obsession with animals. One in particular is Bryan Fischer, disturbing homophobe, who is outraged at the latest tragedy in which a man was killed by a grizzly bear. It shouldn't have happened. Why? Because in a god-fearin' country, animals will be tamed by god.
History reveals that God's covenant with an ancient nation suggests that one of the consequences for a nation which walks in his statues is that it will have nothing to fear from wild animals. "If you walk in my statutes...I will remove harmful beasts from the land" (Lev. 26:3,6).
…
Earlier this year…
pharyngula | June 22, 2010One of the things I failed to mention when I discussed the Bergman-Enyart dialogue was that the spent some time talking about whether Adam had a navel or not, and the general historicity of Adam and Eve. I did not mention it because it was stupid, and that discussion already had a surfeit of stupid.
But now I discover that BioLogos is also carrying on about the historicity of Adam and Eve, with their usual load of waffle and metaphor and vague ways of trying to say it was really true, and God made us really, really special anyway.
There are such things as stupid questions. Stupid questions…
pharyngula | June 22, 2010I was cured of any interest in debating creationists by Jerry Bergman, that astonishingly awful whiny young earth creationist I crushed last November. It was embarrassingly bad — Bergman wandered all over the place, made absurd claims (did you know the periodic table of the elements was irreducibly complex — even Behe says it isn't), and spent more time bragging about his many degrees and his evangelical history than he did on the topic at hand. Everyone I talked to, including the creationists, thought Bergman's performance was dreadful. And you know that the hosting organization, the Twin…
pharyngula | June 14, 2010Grandpa Simpson is that old character in the animated show who tells odd, rambling stories. "We can't bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere - like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. 'Give me five bees for a quarter,' you'd say."…
pharyngula | June 13, 2010Is Mary Midgley supposed to be the epitome of philosophical confusion and bungling incomprehension? She's like the Emily Litella of science criticism, always going off on harebrained tangents of her own invention, but unlike Litella, nothing ever compels her to offer a meek "Never mind". Midgely has done it again with another tirade against the New Atheists.
Science really isn't connected to the rest of life half as straightforwardly as one might wish. For instance, Isaac Newton noted gladly that his theory of gravitation gave a scientific proof of God's existence. Today's anti-god warriors,…
pharyngula | June 11, 2010Bill Donohue was looking awfully silly demanding that the Empire State Building celebrate Mother Teresa's birthday, so I guess he needed a new cause. He found one. The Catholic League is outraged by Lady Gaga's new video.
Lady Gaga is playing Madonna copy cat, squirming around half-naked with half-naked guys, abusing Catholic symbols--they're always Catholic symbols--while bleating out "Alejandro" enough times to induce vomit. Dressed occasionally as a nun in a glossy-red habit, the Madonna wannabe flashes the cross, swallows a rosary and manages to get raped by her S&M boyfriends. Hence…
pharyngula | June 10, 2010Oh, sure, this strategem may have given the LA Dodgers an edge for a few seasons:
Frank and Jamie McCourt, the multi-millionaire owners of the LA Dodgers, have been revealed to have employed a Russian scientist to beam thought waves to boost the team's chances.
That's over now, though. I urge all loyal readers to close your eyes, face LA, and beam baseball hatred at them. To really potentiate the effect, you can also wiggle your fingers and go "Nnnn-nna-nna-naaaaa" or speak in tongues while doing it. We're also going to pray for the New York Yankees*. Dodgers are dooooomed!
Although……
pharyngula | June 10, 2010So, England, how does it feel to have a hereditary moron like Prince Charles fluttering about the country?
The Prince of Wales has blamed a lack of belief in the soul for the world's environmental problems, and said that the planet cannot sustain a population expected to reach 9 billion in 40 years.
He said he found it "baffling" that so many scientists professed a faith in God yet this had little bearing on the "damaging" way science was used to exploit the natural world.
The Prince pinned part of the blame on Galileo. Criticising the profit imperative behind much scientific research, he…
pharyngula | June 7, 2010The folks over at the Urban Dictionary have battened upon the word "atheist", and much hilarity follows. There is one reasonable definition in the bunch, and the rest are mostly indignant complaints by theists.
A worshipper of the self or the god of science, often unknowingly religious.
An atheist can speak of moral relativism, but not live it.
A person who denies the reality of God (particularly Jesus Christ, despite historical proof of His otherworldly being), and lives life 'free' trusting in science and 'logic'. This despite the fact that may be able to point out when and how the…
pharyngula | June 4, 2010I mentioned earlier this week that sometimes I get positive email, and that it actually outnumbers the outright hostile hate mail. But both classes are greatly outnumbered by the most common kind of email I get, the cranks and crazies. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce Woolsey, Stephen D Mr CIV USA — a perfectly representative exemplar of the crap clogging my in-box.
Yes, he's posting from an army.mil email address, which may account for some of the strange stuff inserted in the text, but not all of it.
Skeptic..? (UNCLASSIFIED)
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: FOUO
Dear Sir…
pharyngula | June 2, 2010We've got 'em. A St Cloud minister took out an ad:
Oooh, it's the usual fear-mongering. I had to do a double-take when I saw Dennis Campbell's summary of the Islamic Strategy, though…
Moslems seek to influence a nation by immigration, reproduction, education, the government, illegal drugs, and by supporting the gay agenda.
…because when I think "gay friendly", I picture the Taliban.
I'm also wondering if Pastor Campbell thinks that a good way to oppose the influence of immigrating Muslims would be to counterbalance it with more immigration from those Catholics south of the border.