NevadaGayAtheist

FINDING MY RELIGION / Julia Sweeney talks about how she became an atheist

Brilliant at Breakfast: Here's what we're dealing with, folks: "Now, this is not even REMOTELY like the Terri Schiavo case. This is a soldier with a living will stating explicitly what his wishes were -- and the wingnut lunatics STILL won't leave his family alone after they did what he would have wanted.

These people are despicable. They are not Christians, they are fascists. They believe that their will overrides that of the person who created the living will. They would impose their insane wishes on the rest of us, and they have to be stopped. And we cannot rely on Republicans, who refuse to speak out against their bullying tactics, to stop them."

I couldn't agree more with what Jill says here except for the statement, "They are not Christians". Stop trying to "reclaim" religion as really a good force hijacked by evil and assign it to the dustbin of history. Good or bad it's still mistaken about reality, and since there are no external empirical facts to measure against what really is and is not a Christian, the statement is meaningless rhetoric.

Nod to TBogg.

I love The Onion
The Onion | Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory
Nod to Chris Mooney

Yeah, Dammit!
One of the patron saints (to use a religous metaphor) of those of us who are sick to death of the religious fanatics destroying this country, Eugenie C. Scott, and Glenn Branch, both from the National Center for Science Education write a badly needed op-ed in USA Today.

USATODAY.com - Evolution: Just teach it: "What ought to be taught in high school science class? The basic methods and results of the consensus view of the scientific community. Evolution is part, and a vital part, of this consensus; creation science and intelligent design are not. Students should understand evolution, both if they are going on to college and for general scientific literacy. But in too many places across the country, students are not learning it.

And that's a problem, because it is widely recognized that the 21st century will be the century of biology, in which genomic, medical and biotechnological discoveries are bound to revolutionize our economy and our lives - and those of our children. America needs to produce the scientists who will pioneer in these fields, which means maintaining and improving the quality of science education - including a healthy dose of evolution, uncompromised by sectarian dogma, bad science and fake 'critical analysis.' Because those high school kids in India, China, Korea and Singapore are learning evolution, even if ours aren't."

Nod to Pharyngula

August J. Pollak is good here: xoverboard.com - 8/8/2005 - Confederate Victory Theory

Sadly, No!: Mike Seaver Finally Loses It

Nod to Atrios.

And I couldn't agree more.
AlterNet: Widespread Ignorance

The column is originally from Huffington Post.

Pharyngula::D. James Kennedy and the foulness of the Religious Right: "A single tree is a greater marvel than the thousand bibles that could be printed from its pulped-up trunk; if we mulched every Bible published to foster the growth of a single blade of grass, we'd be the richer for it."

Paul Krugman: Design for Confusion - New York Times: "You might have thought that a strategy of creating doubt about inconvenient research results could work only in soft fields like economics. But it turns out that the strategy works equally well when deployed against the hard sciences.
The most spectacular example is the campaign to discredit research on global warming. Despite an overwhelming scientific consensus, many people have the impression that the issue is still unresolved. This impression reflects the assiduous work of conservative think tanks, which produce and promote skeptical reports that look like peer-reviewed research, but aren't. And behind it all lies lavish financing from the energy industry, especially ExxonMobil.
There are several reasons why fake research is so effective. One is that nonscientists sometimes find it hard to tell the difference between research and advocacy - if it's got numbers and charts in it, doesn't that make it science?
Even when reporters do know the difference, the conventions of he-said-she-said journalism get in the way of conveying that knowledge to readers. I once joked that if President Bush said that the Earth was flat, the headlines of news articles would read, 'Opinions Differ on Shape of the Earth.' The headlines on many articles about the intelligent design controversy come pretty close.
Finally, the self-policing nature of science - scientific truth is determined by peer review, not public opinion - can be exploited by skilled purveyors of cultural resentment. Do virtually all biologists agree that Darwin was right? Well, that just shows that they're elitists who think they're smarter than the rest of us.
Which brings us, finally, to intelligent design. Some of America's most powerful politicians "

Oh fuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! George W. Bush is absolutely the worst leader this country has ever had. Those who support him are hopeless and beyond redemption. History will overindulged judge him as a dunce, and all of the idiots who think he's great will be exposed for the stupid assholes they are. This isn't the straw that breaks the camel's back. This is the wrecking ball that crushed the entire poor camel. And the country is that camel.
Pharyngula::Bush endorses Intelligent Design creationism