Buddhist word salad
I’m pretty sure that I’ve discovered the love child of Andrew Brown and Mark Vernon (he of The Holy Rabbit fame). His name is Ed Halliwell and his piece in today’s CiF, “Buddhism in education: Buddhist meditation is justified in schools by its practical benefits. But there’s more to it than that” is a big [...]
Ben Stein = total Juggalo
Check out Ben “Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place- science leads you to killing people” Stein’s 4th of July commentary (which aired on CBS’s Sunday Morning), in which he informs us that American democracy is now completely free of racism, sexism, discrimination based on economic class, etc. [...]
Friggin’ vuvuzelas, how do they work?
Although I’m not a sports fan (to say the least), I really enjoy the World Cup. At first, the vuvuzelas of DOOOOOM annoyed the hell out of me, but I’ve since become so accustomed to them that I can almost tune them out. And now I know their secret!: (Via Fake Science)
Prioritizing FAIL
Today’s lesson from the Vatican: lecturing scientists about “ethical responsibility” is SO much more important than fixing their own corrupt mess of an institution: Catholic Church officials said Friday that the recently created first synthetic cell could be a positive development if correctly used, but warned scientists that only God can create life. Vatican and [...]
Stop the servile deference, please
I’m really, really tired of skeptics who are committed to investigating and criticizing irrationality unless that irrationality is of the religious sort. I certainly commend anyone who devotes their time to combating irrational and baseless paranormal/supernatural claims, but there’s absolutely no excuse for excluding religious beliefs/assertions/practices from that inquiry and criticism just so that the [...]
Francis Collins. Ugh. (The Sequel)
Because of the health care bill’s passage (again, YAY!), Francis “Waterfall Jesus” Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, has popped up in the media this week. Here’s a question from an interview with Collins on The Washington Post‘s site: Have the people at the NIH adjusted to having a believer in their midst? [...]
Francis Collins. Ugh.
Oh, ugh. Francis Collins has edited a new collection of essays on religious belief and its relationship to reason. Before I get to that, some background: Last summer, when Collins was appointed as the new Director of the National Institutes of Health, many people, myself included, were understandably very concerned, as he is an evangelical [...]
Inclusion for inclusion’s sake
I’m opposed to the idea of inclusion for inclusion’s sake. This morning, a blog post at hgg caught my eye: “Anthology of science writing: now almost 4 % with ovaries!” The title references The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing, edited by Richard Dawkins. This book: contains almost one hundred writings on many topics from [...]
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