Kooks
pharyngula | January 9, 2011That loopy homeopath, John Benneth, is bragging now that he is the most widely read homeopath in the world, and that his blog has broken all previous viewership records. He's quite proud of this "accomplishment".
One of the last John Benneth Journal entries for 2010, IN ONE YEAR, has broken all previous viewership records and sparked more commentary and outrage amongst the pharmaceutical company stooges than any previous Journal entry, enlisting the usual fury and nasty responses.
He seems to be aware of how it happened: I linked to that one article. What he doesn't seem to appreciate,…
pharyngula | January 8, 2011Some of the email I get is simply crackpots trying to give me information. I received a lovely example this morning, and since he wants to share, I'm willing to help him.
Dear Dr. Myers, When God said He stretched out the Heavens in the Old Testament, and will fold them back again in the New Testament, He was using Hebrew and Greek to explain Planetary Orbital Jumping. Our four gas giants behave like electrons in that they can pivot in relation to each other. Jupiter will soon migrate back to it's original orbit farther from the Sun as the other three gas giants return to their original…
pharyngula | January 7, 2011David Silverman appeared on Bill O'Reilly's show this week, and brought out the stupidity in dopey ol' Bill. He gave his usual justification: "The tides go in, the tides go out. The sun goes up, the sun comes down." The clip below is notable for two things: it contains the multiple examples of O'Reilly dragging out this non-explanation, and it's got Neil deGrasse Tyson explaining tides.
The Colbert Report
Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Bill O'Reilly Proves God's Existence - Neil deGrasse Tyson
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes
Political Humor & Satire Blog</a>…
pharyngula | January 5, 2011He's so angry with me, he's demanding that I be fired right now, and worse, he's drawn a picture of me.
It's a stunning likeness. I should have it framed and sent to my mom.
pharyngula | January 3, 2011If you're disappointed in CNN, you can always turn to MSNBC…ooops, never mind, they're solemnly reporting on the end-of-the-world nonsense from the Harold Camping Cult. They're predicting the Rapture will come on 21 May.
I would like to propose a novel version of Pascal's Wager for the news media. When apocalyptic cults come along and announce disaster and doom, ridicule them. Just rip into them, send your most sarcastic, cynical reporters to cover the story, and just shred all the followers as loons and gullible freaks. There will be two possible outcomes.
One, they're right, and the world…
pharyngula | December 31, 2010What is it with these loons? They've got nothing, but they're continually telling us what they could accomplish, if only they…what? I don't know.
The latest trend in kook blogs is to tell us all the things that would happen if we only accepted their weird premises. Here, for example, is Terry Hurlbut, explaining what America would be like if creationists controlled science.
This hypothetical creation-oriented society would take scientific education, research, and investigation in a new direction. Astronomers would stop looking for "dark matter" and "dark energy," and instead develop a uniform…
pharyngula | December 28, 2010Lawrence Murphy was an evil man. He was a Wisconsin priest who molested over 200 boys, and just to make the story particularly deplorable, they were deaf children. Preying on the weakest and most vulnerable was apparently his life's mission. Furthermore, this was the scandalous case that was reported directly to then Cardinal Ratzinger in his role as the Vatican enforcer; his enforcement involved shuffling the guilty around to hide their crimes and give them fresh opportunities in new hunting grounds.
Well, the Vatican has finally found it in its black (but gold-plated!) and shriveled husk of…
pharyngula | December 23, 2010You know who really hates Christmas?
MUSLIMS!
I bet you didn't know that if you converted to Islam you'd get immunity to STDs, your debt would disappear, rapes, teen pregnancy, and abortions would never occur, the rave would be canceled, you'd stop making that silly claim that god had a son, there'd be no exploitation or promiscuity or crime, the night clubs would shut down, nobody would have sex with 9 year old girls (oh, wait a minute…), you wouldn't be a pagan anymore (duh), you'd get a house, but you wouldn't drink alcohol or do drugs in it. Amazing stuff. The Muslim world must be a…
pharyngula | December 22, 2010Oh, actually, shaved apes would be an upgrade from Josh Brecheen, who is more like a shaved and bipedal member of the subgenus Asinus. He's a new legislator who has announced his intention to introduce creationism into Oklahoma schools (or, as perhaps I should refer to them, "skools") for a set of reasons he laid out in a notably ignorant column in the Durant Daily Democrat.
His column is amazing. The faculty of Southeastern Oklahoma State University are covering their eyes in shame right now, since apparently this creationist-cliche-spewing plagiarist and professional goober managed to…
pharyngula | December 22, 2010
Maybe someone will be offended by that, though. They need to take a lesson from Bill Donohue, who has a simple solution to any conflict between religions: everyone should convert to Catholicism. He calls that "inclusion". I don't think he knows what the word means.
Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com
pharyngula | December 21, 2010The Council of Conservative Citizens is very angry, and is calling for a boycott of an upcoming movie that offends their values. The CofCC is a paleoconservative organization which has as its first principle the myth that the United States is a Christian country, so you might think that the reason it objects to the Marvel superhero movie Thor is that it promotes a pagan religion. You'd be wrong. They're upset because Marvel Studios has declared war on Norse mythology, which you'd think they'd consider a good thing, except that it violates another of their principles, that America is supposed…
pharyngula | December 19, 2010Ah, screw it, I'm not even going to try to unravel this one.
Chose you from many Atheists on the marching band War...
Speaking with many about this act, "its" strange that these atheists would do this, when they spend months organizing their gays parades and atheists events no christians show up with a marching band playing drop your pants and bend over, they were offensive in this act while acting meekly obident to law and Christians as some of said their presents there was offensive knowing they believe not in the Lord, but believe in touching each others rear end while pretending to be of…
pharyngula | December 19, 2010Creationists say the weirdest things. Every once in a while, someone sends me a creationist quote that reveals exactly how clueless and ignorant these guys are, because they start lecturing people on biology, a subject they clearly know nothing about. We've got a local boy named Brock Lee in Owatonna who is fond of writing amazing letters to the newspapers — I've mentioned him before — and here's a remarkable example of creationist inanity. Look at the conclusions he draws from the biological species concept:
What is a species? The evolutionary answer seems simple enough: a species is an…
pharyngula | December 17, 2010Sorry, fellow atheists, but if you thought you could just get away with sitting quietly and not making a noise, you're doomed. The situation is worse than simply some silly believers flying into a snit because horribly militant, aggressive, obnoxious atheists put up signs that say something offensive and vile, like "you can be good without god" — you thought if you just avoided confronting people with such criminal sentiments, you'd escape their notice and condemnation.
But soon, they'll be coming for you if you are insufficiently fervent in cheerleading for god. Look at this: a group of…
pharyngula | December 15, 2010Poor Ken Ham is getting mocked everywhere for his Creation "Museum" and proposed Disneyland for Dummies, so he has put up a post defending Kentucky. It's a remarkably weak argument (no surprise there, that's all he can do), which mainly lists famous people who have been born there and occasional connections and horse racing. Whoop-te-doo. He also left off a few important merits to the state.
PZ Myers had ancestors who lived in Kentucky!
PZ Myers has a son who lives in Kentucky right now!
Ken Ham is not from Kentucky!
Ham did find one relevant piece of information: he dug up one study…
pharyngula | December 14, 2010You've probably been wondering. Who in their right mind would declare war on a family holiday? Who would be crazy enough to think such a thing was actually happening? You might have the impression that it's all a delusion erupting from the fevered brain of blowhard Bill O'Reilly, but it goes deeper than that, back to the 1950s, when the Cold War fostered a whole generation of destructive nuts. Here's a lovely summary of the history of the War on Christmas, which finds its roots in paranoia about Communists:
In 1959, the John Birch Society, a far-right organization that sees anti-American and…
pharyngula | December 13, 2010You just can't shut this crank up. You may recall that he earlier published a paper in an Elsevier journal claiming that all of genetics is wrong, oh, and by the way, the Quran and Bible are right because chromosomes look like ribs. He has a new paper out (only it's actually the same old word salad, freshly tossed), Molecular genetic program (genome) contrasted against non-molecular invisible biosoftware in the light of the Quran and the Bible.
The current perception of biological information as encoded by a chemical structure (genome) is critically examined. Many features assigned to the…
pharyngula | December 12, 2010It's escalating. Now it's not just defending Jesus, it's about…well, you'd be surprised.
The West Village YMCA in NY is replacing Santa Claus with Frosty the Snowman. Guess who's mad about that now? Bill Donohue:
"Christmas is not about Jack Frost; it's not about snowmen," fumed Bill Donohue of the Catholic League.
"We're not talking about some secular organization that has no religious roots. If they can't celebrate Christmas, then they should check out. What a bunch of cowards."
Hey, Bill! It's not called Santamas, you know.
pharyngula | December 9, 2010Time for another stream-of-consciousness response to yet another slimy Christian.
Interesting blog
But I beg for just a few moments of your time. You are obviously an intelligent individual, considering you're a prof and all [Flattery alert: diverting warp power to shields. I can guess how this will end up], but consider this for one second. Could our few years on this planet be all that there is? [Yes.]
You are born, live, then die and that's it? [That's what I said. Yes.]
All of you loved ones that have died are no more? [What? It's not enough to have lived and to have loved ones? These…
pharyngula | December 7, 2010We've all been sitting around wondering what big questions would ever completely stymie science — we've been just knocking 'em down right and left, and scientists have been completely baffled about what good question they could possibly ask next. We've all had serious concerns that maybe we were all done, and we'd have to go work for a living or something terrible like that.
But we've been saved by Oprah. She, or rather the scientifically deep team of scientific and philosophical experts on her staff, have come up with a challenging list of Humongous Questions that we'll have to address in…