NOTE: I’ve been trying to move for the past week even while the East Coast has been dealing with an string of blizzards. Yeah, it sucks. And before that I was trying to get everything together for settlement on our place. That’s why I haven’t been posting much. Sorry about that. Too many problems hitting all once.
AUDIO: How Stuff Works-Ghost Hunting Technology
This podcast is told from a skeptic’s viewpoint. The link takes you right to the mp3.
Hear the rumble of Christian hypocrisy
The evangelist who says the Haiti earthquake is retribution for sin is at least true to his religion
That one comes from Richard Dawkins.
It’s idiotic to blame God, the devil, or anything other than geology for the Haitian earthquake.
On a related theme, we have one from Christopher Hitchens. Go Hitch!
Bowling for Atheists: Haiti Proves that Nonbelievers Care Too
On Friday, January 15, I received in email from Richard Dawkins explaining that his Executive Director Elizabeth Cornwell has organized a campaign to raise money on behalf of the victims of the Haitian earthquake-induced tragedy, and he wanted to know if the Skeptics Society would like to participate, which of course I unhesitatingly agreed. The campaign is called Non-Believers Giving Aid and is set up through PayPal. Richard Dawkins has generously offered to cover all the PayPal fees (up to $10,000) and the Skeptics Society got things started off with a bang with a $1000 donation. Within minutes of it’s launch on Saturday morning, tens of thousands of dollars started pouring in as members of the other participating groups (Sam Harris’ The Reason Project, The James Randi Educational Foundation, Atheist United, Atheist Alliance International, and many others) jumped in without hesitation. (All monies go to Doctors without Borders and the International Red Cross—you choose.)
Michael Shermer joins the fray, though on a more positive note. It’s almost as if skeptics can be nice and charitable too. Hmmm… If skepticism had it’s own four horsemen, Shermer would be one of them. (Hmmm. Can you guess who those four horsemen would be?)
Leaked climate change emails scientist ‘hid’ data flaws
A shame something like this had to happen. This is one of the reasons I and others find it so hard to believe the “factual” claims made by creationists and other hard core believers. They often use disinformation to try to bolster their claims. When people figure out a few of their misleading assertions, they start to doubt everything that comes from those sources and feel the need to check them. Some people skip right to the doubting.
As far as I know, the case for climate change is still plenty strong, but now those who don’t want to believe it will use these headlines as an affirmation. Most won’t even bother listening to the fact that life threatening climate changes are still a real concern to scientists and that this is a minor, isolated incident.
And now the antivaxxers’ humiliation is complete
This one’s by Phil Plait. Another candidate for the four horsemen of skepticism? Anyone, I know a few people who are hot on the “don’t get vaccinated” bandwagon. Hope they read this article. There are a lot of links in it to other sources, so this one kinda sums them up. Follow the links if you want more on this.
VIDEO: Loophole Allows Gays To Marry
No comment. You figure it out.
How sad that yet another medium has been given press approval. I could write a post on a different medium or phony psychic every week and never run out of material. This week’s entry into the never-ending cycle of mediums I predicted would be coming (see my post “ESP Boot Camp” of 23 Feb. 2009) is Rebecca Rosen. I will hopefully not catch all the flack I caught two weeks ago when the Internet press release I quoted from was taken down, making the points I tried to make un-verifiable. This time, you can read all about Mrs. Rosen here:
Why Atheists Don’t Turn to Religion When Faced with Death or Disaster
The notion that ‘there are no atheists in foxholes’ isn’t just mistaken, it’s bigoted and ugly; a denial of atheists’ humanity and the reality of our experience with death.
No, really. It’s true. Stop looking at me like that. Oh, just deal with it already!
Word salad lunacy Bible babble blah blah blah
I’ve often noticed a tendency for some people to host a whole gnarly syndrome of denialist symptoms: some people are creationists+HIV denialists+global warming denialists+ant-vaxers+whatever. They stand out in the crowd as hyper-intense paragons of idiocy; I often wonder how they get around at all, since the power of their disbelief is so strong that they probably deny their shoelaces as soon as they get up in the morning, yet at the same time they believe a magic man in the sky will soon make them float up into the air to a rapturous eternal congress of their fellow reality deniers.
I’ve found an amazing example of this syndrome. You’ll be able to recognize the problem from just the title of his blog post:
Creation is an indie movie about Charles Darwin.
Pink Ouija Board Targeting Young Girls Riles Critics – FOXNews.com
I’m not real big on Freethought Radio myself. It seems like more of an acquired taste to me. But they are interviewing Dawkins, which I’m always interested in.
