Showing posts with label religious nutjobs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religious nutjobs. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Christianity explained
Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. Clearly we can't have a President who doesn't believe this stuff.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
The best take on Orson Scott Card's departure on the 9:15 to Crazy Town
Surprisingly, by Cracked. Probably my favorite line:
"I mean, I understand a devout Mormon having some issues with gayness, but when your brain tells you that it’s an important enough issue to divide the country in a bloody coup, it’s time to get a new brain."
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Friday, July 11, 2008
Louis Theroux and the Phelps
Wow...want to take a serious trip through the looking glass? See what it's like inside the Westboro Baptist Church.
I take some solace in that they're essentially a doomsday cult where the children do not marry or reproduce, so they will eventually die out. But damn...it's surprisingly painful to watch that 21-year-old girl, who probably in other circumstances would have been kind and lovely, denied her right to an actual life.
Someone has been seduced by the devil, but it's not us. :(
I take some solace in that they're essentially a doomsday cult where the children do not marry or reproduce, so they will eventually die out. But damn...it's surprisingly painful to watch that 21-year-old girl, who probably in other circumstances would have been kind and lovely, denied her right to an actual life.
Someone has been seduced by the devil, but it's not us. :(
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
Talking Jesus!
I can't figure out who the voice of Jesus is. Not quite James Earl Jones, not quite Christopher Walken...hmm...
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
The atheist's banana nightmare revisited
I pointed out how Kirk Cameron so devastatingly refused my atheism with the design obvious in a banana previously. Turns out, while there was some design to it, it wasn't really divine:
P.S. Remember this? Oh, it still makes me laugh. Then cry. But laugh first!
P.S. Remember this? Oh, it still makes me laugh. Then cry. But laugh first!
Friday, April 25, 2008
Monday, April 07, 2008
Erotic Jesus
From the article:
It got me thinking though. Having a bunch of biblical figures jerking each other off is just cheap attention-whoring (although still awesome, don't get me wrong...I approve of the transgression of any and all lines of propriety). And frankly, it's not that erotic.
So what if you really did make a truly erotic Jesus? You know, like a Jesus in seductive poses, winking at the camera, showing cleavage. Now _that_ would be an erotic Jesus. A quick Google search for "sexy Jesus" reveals a comic entitled, "The Adventures of Sexy Jesus," which is a start, but I think there's far more marketability here. Anyone want to start a business and get rich?
"But the most disputed work was 'Leonardo's Last Supper, restored by Pier Paolo Pasolini' which showed cavorting Apostles sprawling over the dining table and masturbating each other."You know, I can see why some people might be a wee upset about that...
It got me thinking though. Having a bunch of biblical figures jerking each other off is just cheap attention-whoring (although still awesome, don't get me wrong...I approve of the transgression of any and all lines of propriety). And frankly, it's not that erotic.
So what if you really did make a truly erotic Jesus? You know, like a Jesus in seductive poses, winking at the camera, showing cleavage. Now _that_ would be an erotic Jesus. A quick Google search for "sexy Jesus" reveals a comic entitled, "The Adventures of Sexy Jesus," which is a start, but I think there's far more marketability here. Anyone want to start a business and get rich?
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Friday, February 08, 2008
Jon Stewart's choice words for Mitt Romney
Lest you labor under any delusion that Mitt Romney is anything but an utter and complete douchenozzle:
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Totally hetero
Ted Haggard has realized he is totally hetero.
Well, my fears are assuaged. How many of us breeders _haven't_ considered repeatedly hiring a gay prostitute?
Well, my fears are assuaged. How many of us breeders _haven't_ considered repeatedly hiring a gay prostitute?
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Have a merry fucking Christmas
You'll have the joy and love of the lord in your heart, Michael, or god help me I'll beat it into you!
(wonder why Michael's not too keen on religion at the moment?...)
Also, Merry Christmas. :-D
(wonder why Michael's not too keen on religion at the moment?...)
Also, Merry Christmas. :-D
Peanut butter: an atheist's nightmare!
Apparently the culinary arts continue to pose an enduring threat to those that would foolishly oppose Creationist thinking. First it was the banana, now it's peanut butter.
(Wow. Just...wow.)
This is perhaps a better summary of Creationism:
(Wow. Just...wow.)
This is perhaps a better summary of Creationism:
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Being a skeptic for fun and profit
Supposedly haunted Chinese building: $6500
Supposedly haunted Chinese building after haunting has been debunked: $133,000
Look on former owners' faces when they find out their dumb, superstitious asses could have made six figures by removing 10 catfish: priceless.
Supposedly haunted Chinese building after haunting has been debunked: $133,000
Look on former owners' faces when they find out their dumb, superstitious asses could have made six figures by removing 10 catfish: priceless.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Please, for the love of god, stop taking the Bible literally
Jesus. Tapdancing. Christ. Evangelicals are stupid. Wow are they stupid...
Thursday, December 20, 2007
A quick defense of the anthropic principle
I have touched on the anthropic principle before; a concise metaphor occurred to me while watching a documentary on the formation of the solar system. (aside: did you know that all the water on Earth is believed to have accumulated from rocks displaced from the asteroid belt by Jupiter and hurled at Earth in the early solar system? Or that the moon was formed from the aftermath of a collision with some other nameless proto-planet? Crazy shit...)
Anyway...anthropic principle. Design arguments always seem so...anthropocentric. Narcissistic, even. They claim that the universe seems to be profoundly well-tuned exactly to support life. You start hearing the facts and it starts to sound compelling: tweak the weak nuclear force just a tiny bit, and atoms either collapse on themselves or fly apart. Tweak the gravitational force a bit, and the universe itself does the same thing. The universe has just enough mass, produced just enough carbon, etc. etc. etc.
But then you have to step back. Isn't this all a bit self-centered? Why are we so surprised? Let's use a simple metaphor: Imagine you just won the lottery. 6 numbers, each between 1 and 30. Right there are more than 400 million possible combinations, and YOU WON! Holy shit! How could this be?! 400 million possibilities and you got exactly the single combination that would win you a million dollars?! Surely it can't just be luck. That's so profoundly improbable, someone must have chosen you to win. God! God must have chosen you to win! There can't be any other explanation. God designed the game so that you won! How else could such a fantastically improbable event have come to pass?
See the logical fallacy yet? It feels very personal, but if you step back for a minute, something doesn't jive. Look at the lottery as a whole. Any single number, including the winning one, is highly improbable. But remember: there are millions upon millions of people playing, so _someone_ is going to win. And someone always does. There's always some excited woman with a bad hairdo who goes ballistic when they tell her she won. Every time. And indeed, that's the point: _someone is going to win_. The fact that the chance any single person is going to win is astronomically small doesn't change the fact that someone, somewhere, is going to win the lotto. It is a near certainty.
In fact, wouldn't it surprise you if you heard someone _hadn't_ won? It does happen every so often; they occasionally have to roll over the jackpot, which is when you get those really big lotto drawings. But what if the lotto went 10 times without a winner. Or 100. Wouldn't that freak you out way more than hearing some particular person had won?
Well, of course, the same analysis applies to the Design theory. I've said before that there's no reason to believe all arrangements of physical laws are equally probable, and hence the whole argument is relatively meaningless, but let's pretend for a second. What if bazillions of universes without the finely tuned physical constants existed before this one? Or what if there are other such universes existing in parallel to ours? Remember, a Design argument implicitly presupposes that all such universes are equally viable and, in some sense, equally probable, hence the excitement about being in the one where all the physical constants work out.
So, again, what about all those other universes? Well, there wouldn't be anyone there to see those other universes, now would there? They'd be lifeless voids, most of which would destroy themselves in short order. Not only would there be no life, there'd be no stars and perhaps no anything. Just a whole lot of nothing. Imagine it: a flotilla of parallel universes floating out there, dead. But remember: we know there's one combination of physical laws that does result in life. So somewhere out there, life crops up. On one of those myriad universes floating in that sea of nothingness, exactly the right combination of constants exist to foster life. Suddenly, that life wakes up. It looks around. Its eyes get wide, and it exclaims, "Holy shit! We won! God must really love us!"
Nope. Just probability. Combinatorics. Your little blue globe had to exist somewhere. We're happy for you and all, but it's just another lotto drawing. Someone had to win. And someone did. Yay. You want a cookie?
Anyway...anthropic principle. Design arguments always seem so...anthropocentric. Narcissistic, even. They claim that the universe seems to be profoundly well-tuned exactly to support life. You start hearing the facts and it starts to sound compelling: tweak the weak nuclear force just a tiny bit, and atoms either collapse on themselves or fly apart. Tweak the gravitational force a bit, and the universe itself does the same thing. The universe has just enough mass, produced just enough carbon, etc. etc. etc.
But then you have to step back. Isn't this all a bit self-centered? Why are we so surprised? Let's use a simple metaphor: Imagine you just won the lottery. 6 numbers, each between 1 and 30. Right there are more than 400 million possible combinations, and YOU WON! Holy shit! How could this be?! 400 million possibilities and you got exactly the single combination that would win you a million dollars?! Surely it can't just be luck. That's so profoundly improbable, someone must have chosen you to win. God! God must have chosen you to win! There can't be any other explanation. God designed the game so that you won! How else could such a fantastically improbable event have come to pass?
See the logical fallacy yet? It feels very personal, but if you step back for a minute, something doesn't jive. Look at the lottery as a whole. Any single number, including the winning one, is highly improbable. But remember: there are millions upon millions of people playing, so _someone_ is going to win. And someone always does. There's always some excited woman with a bad hairdo who goes ballistic when they tell her she won. Every time. And indeed, that's the point: _someone is going to win_. The fact that the chance any single person is going to win is astronomically small doesn't change the fact that someone, somewhere, is going to win the lotto. It is a near certainty.
In fact, wouldn't it surprise you if you heard someone _hadn't_ won? It does happen every so often; they occasionally have to roll over the jackpot, which is when you get those really big lotto drawings. But what if the lotto went 10 times without a winner. Or 100. Wouldn't that freak you out way more than hearing some particular person had won?
Well, of course, the same analysis applies to the Design theory. I've said before that there's no reason to believe all arrangements of physical laws are equally probable, and hence the whole argument is relatively meaningless, but let's pretend for a second. What if bazillions of universes without the finely tuned physical constants existed before this one? Or what if there are other such universes existing in parallel to ours? Remember, a Design argument implicitly presupposes that all such universes are equally viable and, in some sense, equally probable, hence the excitement about being in the one where all the physical constants work out.
So, again, what about all those other universes? Well, there wouldn't be anyone there to see those other universes, now would there? They'd be lifeless voids, most of which would destroy themselves in short order. Not only would there be no life, there'd be no stars and perhaps no anything. Just a whole lot of nothing. Imagine it: a flotilla of parallel universes floating out there, dead. But remember: we know there's one combination of physical laws that does result in life. So somewhere out there, life crops up. On one of those myriad universes floating in that sea of nothingness, exactly the right combination of constants exist to foster life. Suddenly, that life wakes up. It looks around. Its eyes get wide, and it exclaims, "Holy shit! We won! God must really love us!"
Nope. Just probability. Combinatorics. Your little blue globe had to exist somewhere. We're happy for you and all, but it's just another lotto drawing. Someone had to win. And someone did. Yay. You want a cookie?
Evangelical hypocrisy
A nice little Washington Post op-ed pointing out the obvious: that Christian politicians aren't behaving like Christians (much like the supposedly Christian KKK members weren't behaving terribly Christian either).
Why Democrats get defensive when accused of being "anti-Christian" or even "anti-religious" is beyond me. The right response is, "We represent mainstream Christianity. You represent a fear-mongering cult that doesn't represent Christian values. Fuck off." Obama has done a little bit of this, but damn...those not on the Religious Right have the most remarkable ability to cede the terms of the debate to the other side.
Ees redeeeculous.
Why Democrats get defensive when accused of being "anti-Christian" or even "anti-religious" is beyond me. The right response is, "We represent mainstream Christianity. You represent a fear-mongering cult that doesn't represent Christian values. Fuck off." Obama has done a little bit of this, but damn...those not on the Religious Right have the most remarkable ability to cede the terms of the debate to the other side.
Ees redeeeculous.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Your daily douchebag (12/11/07)
What an asshole.
More generally, of course, I don't even know what it means to do biological research if you're not using evolutionary theory. It's like doing physics when you question the validity of math. It's a meaningless concept. "Un-evoluationary biology" is roughly equivalent to "pixie-based optics research," and yes, those closed-minded assholes at Caltech are going to "discriminate" against you and your pixie-based theory of light just as well as the guys at Woods Hole are not going to be happy about trying to perform Jesus-based pseudoscience inside their doors.
(Idiots! This country is full of idiots! And I'm trying not to think about the fact that Liberty enjoys tax-exempt status...)
"Abraham said this condition [that he accept the scientific basis of evolution] was never spelled out in the advertisement for the job and that his dismissal led to severe economic losses, an injured reputation, emotional pain and suffering and mental anguish."I...he...gah! I don't even know where to start. Frankly, I think this sounds like a ploy to me. You can't tell me he didn't know that he might, just might, be expected to apply evolutionary principles in his job at Woods Hole. Anyone competent enough to be hired to work there knows that. I think he got himself hired to provoke them into firing him just to fan the flames of controversy. The fact that he is now employed at Liberty University only confirms this fact, as far as I'm concerned.
More generally, of course, I don't even know what it means to do biological research if you're not using evolutionary theory. It's like doing physics when you question the validity of math. It's a meaningless concept. "Un-evoluationary biology" is roughly equivalent to "pixie-based optics research," and yes, those closed-minded assholes at Caltech are going to "discriminate" against you and your pixie-based theory of light just as well as the guys at Woods Hole are not going to be happy about trying to perform Jesus-based pseudoscience inside their doors.
(Idiots! This country is full of idiots! And I'm trying not to think about the fact that Liberty enjoys tax-exempt status...)
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