DEBUNKING NEWS

DEBUNKING NEWS HEADCASE SECTION:
Often, just reporting what they say is enough!

May 22, 05: Ken Ham has spent 11 years working on a museum that poses the big question —-when and how did life begin? Ham hopes to soon offer an answer to that question in his still-unfinished Creation Museum in northern Kentucky. The $25 million monument to creationism offers Ham's view that God created the world in six, 24-hour days on a planet just 6,000 years old. The largest museum of its kind in the world, it hopes to draw 600,000 people from the Midwest and beyond in its first year.
. . Ham, 53, isn't bothered that his literal interpretation of the Bible runs counter to accepted scientific theory, which says Earth and its life forms evolved over billions of years. Ham is ready for a fight over his beliefs —-based on a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament. Among Ham's beliefs are that the Earth is about 6,000 years old, a figure arrived at by tracing the biblical genealogies, and not 4.5 billion years, as mainstream scientists say; the Grand Canyon was formed not by erosion over millions of years, but by floodwaters in a matter of days or weeks and that dinosaurs and man once coexisted, and dozens of the creatures —-including Tyrannosaurus Rex-— were passengers on the ark built by Noah, who was a real man, not a myth.
. . Mainstream scientists worry that creationist theology masquerading as science will have an adverse effect on the public's science literacy. "It's a giant step backward in science education", says Carolyn Chambers, chair of the biology department at Xavier University, which is operated by the Jesuit order of the Catholic church.
. . The Rev. Mendle Adams, pastor of St. Peter's United Church of Christ in Pleasant Ridge, takes issue with Ham's views —-and the man himself. "He takes extraordinary liberties with Scripture and theology to prove his point", Adams said. "The bottom line is, he is anti-gay, and he uses that card all the time." Ham says homosexual behavior is a sin. But he adds that he's careful to condemn the behavior, not the person.

THE MOST COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ON EVOLUTION.
. . Fifteen Answers to Creationism (in Scientific American): See the file.

DEBUNKING NEWS
[a clip] "Textbooks usually make the triumph of a scientific theory seem inevitable and uncontestable. But at the time that a theory is being forged, the reality is not nearly so tidy. An experimental result is only clear-cut if researchers agree on how to interpret it. Individuals may have conflicting hunches about what nature is up to, however, and a finding that is conclusive to one scientist may be unimpressive to another. In some cases the ideal experiment is not yet possible. In others only one or a few data points exist. Disagreement is productive, though. It forces each side to clarify its views and to find experiments that will distinguish one idea from another. And in the end, researchers generally come to a new consensus. Experiments corroborate each other. Theories make defensible predictions. And new students come along who lack the prejudices of their predecessors. Science marches ahead, in other words, erasing m any records of dissent along the way."
So often, no comment is needed, because just what they say is comedy enough!
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July 7, 09: A UK exam board has scrapped a GCSE biology question about creationism after admitting it could be misleading. The paper asked pupils how the Bible's theory of creation seeks to explain the origins of life. AQA stressed that pupils taking its biology GCSE were not required to study creationism as a scientific theory. But it admitted that describing it as a "theory" could be misleading, and said it would review the wording of papers.
. . In a statement, AQA said: "Merely asking a question about creationism and intelligent design does not imply support for these ideas. "Neither idea is included in our specification and AQA does not support the teaching of these ideas as scientific. The use of the term 'theory' was intended in its common, everyday sense. However, we accept that in the context of a science examination this could be misleading and we will be addressing this issue for any future questions."
July 4, 09: What happens when you put a Muslim imam, a Christian priest, a rabbi and a Buddhist monk in a room with 10 atheists?
. . Turkish television station Kanal T hopes the answer is a ratings success as it prepares to launch a gameshow where spiritual guides from the four faiths will seek to convert a group of non-believers.
. . The prize for converts will be a pilgrimage to a holy site of their chosen religion -- Mecca for Muslims, the Vatican for Christians, Jerusalem for Jews and Tibet for Buddhists.
Some of the years of "end of the world".
. . 1000: just a round number.
. . 1284: Pope Innocent III does the math: It's been 666 years since Islam ramped up. Time for the Second Coming, right? Right?
. . 1533: Anabaptist prophet Melchior Hoffman claims Jesus will return -—to Strasbourg, Germany. Hoffman dies in prison, 1543.
. . 1844: Across US, 50,000 Millerites prepare for Second Coming on October 22, now known as The Great Disappointment.
. . 1910: Imminent return of Halley's Comet sparks fears that nasty tail gases will snuff out humankind. Mark Twain dies instead.
. . 1914: Battle of Armageddon is upon us, Jehovah's Witnesses say. Rain dates (1925, 1975) also pass uneventfully.
. . 1982: According to The Jupiter Effect, rare planetary alignment threatens massive quakes. Result: High tide up by 0.04 mm.
. . 1997: With Earth about to be "recycled", 39 Heaven's Gate cultists catch ride on comet Hale-Bopp -—via mass suicide in new Nikes.
. . 2000: New millennium once again inspires countless visions of religious apocalypse. Not even Microsoft Windows crashes.
. . 2012: Mayan calendar's 5,125-year cycle ends December 21—along with human civilization. We're doomed for sure!
Mar 25, 09: There are reportedly 67.1 million Catholics in the U.S., according to The Official Catholic Directory 2008. Compared to the 2007 number of 67.5, that's about a 400,000 decrease in one year. And the Pew Forum found that approximately a third of its survey repondents who were raised in the Roman Catholic Church no longer attend the church.
. . In 2004, within months of the Archdiocese of Boston announcing it would pay a settlement of $85 million to more than 500 alleged sex abuse victims, 83 parishes were put on the chopping block.
Mar 24, 09: A Tunisian pilot who paused to pray instead of taking emergency measures before crash-landing his plane, killing 16 people, has been sentenced to 10 years in jail by an Italian court.
Mar 19, 09: The number of people who call themselves Christian is 76%, down 10 points since 1990. 30% of married couples did not have a religious ceremony.
. . Better than one in four Americans do not expect a religious funeral.
. . In 1990, 8.2% (about 14 million) of us said "none" when asked to specify their religion. Last year, 15% (34 million) did.
Mar 18, 09: People with strong religious beliefs appear to want doctors to do everything they can to keep them alive as death approaches, a US study suggests. Researchers followed 345 patients with terminal cancer up until their deaths. Those who regularly prayed were more than three times more likely to receive intensive life-prolonging care than those who relied least on religion. The researchers in this latest study stressed that religion had been widely associated with an improved ability to cope with the stress of illness. But "because aggressive end-of-life cancer care has been associated with a poor quality of death and caregiver bereavement adjustment, intensive end-of-life care might represent a negative outcome for religious copers", defined as those who regularly used prayer or meditation for support.
Jan 21, 09: Acupuncture prevents headaches and migraines, but faked treatments when needles are incorrectly inserted appear to work nearly as well, German researchers said.
Dec 8, 08: Attitudes to nanotechnology may be determined by religious and cultural beliefs, suggest researchers. They say religious people tend to view nanotechnology in a negative light.
. . The researchers compared attitudes in Europe and the US and looked at religious and cultural backgrounds. They say the findings have implications for scientists and politicians making policy decisions to regulate the use of nanotechnology.
Dec 4, 08: Police have arrested 49 people this week in a northern Iranian city during a crackdown on "satanic" clothes, IRNA news agency reported.
Nov 21, 08: A Catholic priest convicted of indecent exposure for jogging naked around a track at a high school has been sentenced to five years probation.
Dec 5, 08: A recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found 23% of Washingtonians said they were unaffiliated with a religion and 7% said they didn't believe in God.
Nov 7, 08: In general, you might expect people in less God-fearing countries to be a lot less kind to one another than Americans are.
. . The "We need God to be good" case falls apart. Countries worthy of consideration aren't those like North Korea and China, where religion is savagely repressed, but those in which people freely choose atheism. In his new book, Society Without God, Phil Zuckerman looks at the Danes and the Swedes -—probably the most godless people on Earth. They don't go to church or pray in the privacy of their own homes; they don't believe in God or heaven or hell. But, by any reasonable standard, they're nice to one another. They have a famously expansive welfare and health care service. They have a strong commitment to social equality. And—even without belief in a God looming over them—they murder and rape one another significantly less frequently than Americans do.
. . Denmark and Sweden aren't exceptions. A 2005 study by Gregory Paul looking at 18 democracies found that the more atheist societies tended to have relatively low murder and suicide rates and relatively low incidence of abortion and teen pregnancy.
. . The Danes and the Swedes, despite being godless, have strong communities. In fact, Zuckerman points out that most Danes and Swedes identify themselves as Christian. They get married in church, have their babies baptized, give some of their income to the church, and feel attached to their religious community—they just don't believe in God. Zuckerman suggests that Scandinavian Christians are a lot like American Jews, who are also highly secularized in belief and practice, have strong communal feelings, and tend to be well-behaved.
. . American atheists, by contrast, are often left out of community life. The studies that Brooks cites in Gross National Happiness, which find that the religious are happier and more generous then the secular, do not define religious and secular in terms of belief. They define it in terms of religious attendance. It is not hard to see how being left out of one of the dominant modes of American togetherness can have a corrosive effect on morality. As P.Z. Myers, the biologist and prominent atheist, puts it, "[S]cattered individuals who are excluded from communities do not receive the benefits of community, nor do they feel willing to contribute to the communities that exclude them."
. . The sorry state of American atheists, then, may have nothing to do with their lack of religious belief. It may instead be the result of their outsider status within a highly religious country. Religion may not poison everything, but it deserves part of the blame for this one.
Oct 28, 08: London's iconic red buses could be plastered with the slogan "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life", in an atheist advertising campaign responding to a set of Christian ads.
. . Comedy writer Ariane Sherine, 28, objected to the Christian adverts on some London buses, which carried an Internet address warning that people who rejected God were condemned to spend eternity in "torment in hell".
. . Professor Richard Dawkins said: "This campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think -- and thinking is anathema to religion."
Sept 19, 08: An Italian comic who said Pope Benedict would be punished in hell for the church's treatment of homosexuals was spared possible prosecution on Thursday when the government blocked an investigation against her. Sabina Guzzanti, one of Italy's most biting political satirists, made the remarks before a cheering crowd of thousands gathered at Rome's Piazza Navona in July.
. . The treaty, signed by fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, required government approval before the investigation could go forward. Justice Minister Angelino Alfano decided to block it.
Sept 16, 08: Head of education at the Royal Society quits after saying creationism should be discussed in science lessons.
Sept 16, 08: The Vatican said today the theory of evolution was compatible with the Bible but planned no posthumous apology to Charles Darwin for the cold reception it gave him 150 years ago.
Aug 18, 08: The Gods Must Be Crazy: Since people have been people, experts figure, they have believed in the supernatural, from gods to ghosts and now every sort of monster in between.
. . "While it is difficult to know for certain, the tendency to believe in the paranormal appears to be there from the beginning", explained Christopher Bader, a Baylor sociologist and colleague of Mencken. "What changes is the content of the paranormal. For example, very few people believe in faeries and elves these days. But as belief in faeries faded, other beliefs, such as belief in UFOs, emerged to take their place." Figuring out why people are this way is a little trickier.
. . "It is an artifact of our brain's desire to find cause and effect. That ability to predict the future is what makes humans 'smart' but it also has side effects like superstitions [and] belief in the paranormal." "Humans first started believing in the supernatural because they were trying to understand things they couldn't explain", says Benjamin Radford, a book author, paranormal investigator and managing editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine. "It's basically the same process as mythology: At one point people didn't understand why the sun rose and set each day, so they suggested that a chariot pulled the sun across the heavens."
. . It might lead one to assume religion and paranormal beliefs are intertwined. But in a 2004 survey, at the researchers at Baylor found just the opposite. "Paranormal beliefs are very strongly negatively related to religious belief", study team member Rod Stark said this week.
. . Another study, of 391 U.S. college students done in 2000, found that participants who did not believe in Protestant doctrine were most likely to believe in reincarnation, contact with the dead, UFOs, telepathy, prophecy, psychokinesis, or healing. Believers were the least likely to buy into the paranormal. "This may partly reflect opinions of Christians in the samples who take biblical sanctions against many 'paranormal' activities seriously", the Wheaton College researchers wrote.
. . Cronk, the psychologist, did a small survey of 80 college students and found no connection between religiosity and paranormal belief. But a 2002 study in Canada did find a correlation between religious beliefs and paranormal beliefs, Cronk notes. "Perhaps amazingly, [paranormal beliefs] are not related at all to education", Stark said. "Ph.D.s are as likely as high school dropouts to believe in Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster, ghosts, etc."
July 30, 08: An evangelical preacher killed his wife several years ago and stuffed her body in a freezer after she caught him abusing their daughter, according to police and court documents.
Jun 26, 08: Most American Muslims are Sunnis, if they care to make the distinction. A 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center found that among the several million Muslims in America, 20% are native-born African-Americans. Among those black Muslims, half identified themselves as Sunni and another third said they had no affiliation.
May 7, 08: The niece of the conservative head of Spain's Catholic Church has bared her breasts in a bestselling Spanish soft porn magazine in protest at the "hypocrisy" of her uncle. Magdalena Rouco Hernandez appears topless on the cover of Interviu as well as in eight full-sized photos inside, including one were she is wearing nothing but a necklace of green beads and a red flower.
. . "I wanted to lay bare the hypocrisy of my uncle", the 27-year-old mother of two told the magazine. "Through my uncle, I discovered the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church which preaches one thing and does the opposite. My uncle does not stop repeating that the family is sacred, that you must respect it and fight for it, but then he scorns and abandons his own."
. . Rouco Varela, who is close to Pope Benedict XVI, has been an outspoken critic of the progressive social reforms introduced by Spain's socialist government such as the legalization of gay marriage and the relaxation of divorce laws.
The Supreme Court finally struck down miscegenation laws in 1967; if Barack Obama's parents had traveled with him in Virginia when he was a baby, their mere existence as a family would have put them in legal jeopardy. And now a man who's the product of a marriage that would have been illegal in the majority of states is poised to be the Democratic nominee for president.
May 5, 08: Philippine churches that allow cross-dressing homosexuals to play female saints in religious festivals are insulting the Virgin Mary and must be punished, the nation's top cleric warned.
Apr 12, 08: About 1,267 Catholic schools have closed since 2000 and enrollment nationwide has dropped by 382,125 students, or 14%, according to the National Catholic Education Association. McDonald notes Catholic schools have been closing since their peak in the 1960s, when there were 12,893 schools with about 5.25 million students. Today, there are 7,378 schools with 2.27 million students. The decline in enrollment is accelerating, fueling further school closures. The recent economic downturn is being blamed for some of them, but McDonald said dioceses' huge payouts to settle sex abuse lawsuits could have played a role too.
Apr 10, 08: A Boston priest apologized in a New York court for stalking U.S. television host Conan O'Brien and his family and accepted an order to stay away from the comedian's home and office for two years.
Mar 31, 08: A Russian doomsday cult sheltering in a bunker say credit cards and food packaging bar codes are satanic, the official negotiating the release of children from the group said. Around 30 followers, including four children, from across Russia and neighboring Belarus met last October and barricaded themselves into a hillside to escape an apocalypse their preacher says is looming in either April or May.
. . The entrance to the bunker partially collapsed after rain and melting snow soaked the muddy hillside and the ground gave way. Seven women were isolated from the rest of the group by the mudslide, and had to emerge from their shelter and seek refuge in a nearby home.
. . The splinter sect of the Russian Orthodox church was formed by preacher Pyotr Kuznetsov, who convinced members the world would end in April. Kuznetsov did not join his followers underground, saying God had given him different tasks. He was arrested but psychiatrists determined he was unfit to stand trial. Kuznetsov was freed temporarily from a psychiatric hospital to return to Nikolskoe to be with the women who left the bunker.
Police say a pastor who was reported missing from his home in western New York has been found at an Ohio strip club.
Mar 27, 08: Police are investigating an 11-year-old girl's death from an undiagnosed, treatable form of diabetes after her parents chose to pray for her rather than take her to a doctor. An autopsy showed Madeline Neumann died Sunday from diabetic ketoacidosis, a condition that left too little insulin in her body, Everest Metro Police Chief Dan Vergin said. She had probably been ill for about a month, suffering symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst, loss of appetite and weakness, the chief said.
Mar 4, 08: The biblical Israelites may have been high on a hallucinogenic plant when Moses brought the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai, according to a new study by an Israeli psychology professor. Benny Shanon of Jerusalem's Hebrew U said two plants in the Sinai desert contain the same psychoactive molecules as those found in plants from which the powerful Amazonian hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca is prepared.
. . The thunder, lightning and blaring of a trumpet which the Book of Exodus says emanated from Mount Sinai could just have been the imaginings of a people in an "altered state of awareness", Shanon hypothesized. "In advanced forms of ayahuasca inebriation, the seeing of light is accompanied by profound religious and spiritual feelings", Shanon wrote.
. . He said one of the psychoactive plants, harmal, found in the Sinai and elsewhere in the Middle East, has long been regarded by Jews in the region as having magical and curative powers.
Feb 28, 08: Lawmakers in Scotland are being asked to push for a posthumous pardon of everyone found guilty under ancient witchcraft laws, including a spiritualist who was convicted during World War II.
Feb 19, 08: U of Oxford researchers will spend nearly $4 million to study why mankind embraces God. The grant to the Ian Ramsey Center for Science and Religion will bring anthropologists, theologians, philosophers and other academics together for three years to study whether belief in a divine being is a basic part of mankind's makeup.
. . "There are a lot of issues. What is it that is innate in human nature to believe in God, whether it is gods or something superhuman or supernatural?"
Jan 31, 08: Pope Benedict said today that embryonic stem cell research, artificial insemination and the prospect of human cloning had "shattered" human dignity. [Say WHAT?! Curing their diseases and allowing infertile people to have kids offends their "dignity"?!]
Jan 23, 08: People who feel lonely are more likely to believe in the supernatural, whether that is God, angels or miracles, a new study finds.
. . Humans have evolved as social creatures, so loneliness cuts to the quick. Living in groups was critical to the survival and safety of our ancient ancestors, and "complete isolation or ostracism has been tantamount to a death sentence", said U of Chicago researcher Nicholas Epley, who led the study.
. . While group living isn't critical to survival in the modern world, feeling socially connected is. Feeling isolated and lonely is a very painful emotional state for people, Epley said, and can lead to ill health, both physically and mentally.
. . When people feel lonely, they may try to rekindle old friendships, seek out new ones or, as Epley's study suggests, they may create social connections by anthropomorphizing nearby gadgets, such as computers or cars, pets, or by believing in supernatural events or religious figures.
. . Epley and his colleagues plan to probe the issue further to see if anthropomorphizing pets or believing in anthropomorphized supernatural agents is what is responsible for alleviating feelings of loneliness. If it is, it could provide alternate means for people to feel socially connected when connecting to humans isn't an option. "There are health benefits that come from being connected to other people, and those same benefits seem to come from connection with pets and with religious agents, too", Epley said.
Jan 18, 08: A Texas museum that teaches creationism is counting on the auction of a prehistoric mastodon skull to stave off extinction. The founder and curator of the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum, which rejects evolution and claims that man and dinosaurs coexisted, said it will close unless the Volkswagen-sized skull finds a generous bidder.
. . Claims on the museum's Web site include that Noah took dinosaurs aboard his ark!
. . Taylor said he's been financially crippled by about $136,000 he's been ordered to pay in a legal dispute over finder's rights to an Allosaurus skeleton unearthed in Colorado. About $141,000 has also been put into the mastodon skull's restoration, he said. If the mastodon auction doesn't cover the judgment, Taylor said local authorities will seize his 10-year-old museum and sell off its contents in February.
Dec 11, 07: The translation of the Bible into English marked the birth of religious fundamentalism in medieval times, as well as the persecution that often comes with radical adherence in any era, according to a new book.
. . The 16th-century English Reformation, the historic period during which the Scriptures first became widely available in a common tongue, is often hailed by scholars as a moment of liberation for the general public, as it no longer needed to rely solely on the clergy to interpret the verses.
. . But being able to read the sometimes frightening set of moral codes spelled out in the Bible scared many literate Englishmen into following it to the letter, said James Simpson, a professor of English at Harvard. "Reading became a tightrope of terror across an abyss of predestination", said Simpson, author of "Burning to Read: English Fundamentalism and its Reformation Opponents" (Harvard University Press, 2007). "It was destructive for [Protestants], because it did not invite freedom but rather fear of misinterpretation and damnation," Simpson said.
. . It was Protestant reformer William Tyndale who first translated the Bible into colloquial English in 1525, when the movement away from Catholicism began to sweep through England during the reign of Henry VIII. The first printings of Tyndale's Bible were considered heretical before England's official break from the Roman Church, yet still became very popular among commoners interested in the new Protestant faith, Simpson said.
. . "Very few people could actually read", said Simpson, who has seen estimates as low as 2%, "but the Bible of William Tyndale sold very well -—as many as 30,000 copies before 1539 in the plausible estimate of a modern scholar; that's remarkable, since all were bought illegally."
. . Persecution and paranoia became the norm, Simpson said, as the new Protestants feared damnation if they didn't interpret the book properly. Prologues in Tyndale's Bible warned readers what lay ahead if they did not follow the verses strictly. "If you fail to read it properly, then you begin your just damnation. If you are unresponsive … God will scourge you, and everything will fail you until you are at utter defiance with your flesh", the passage reads. Without the clergy guiding them, and with religion still a very important factor in the average person's life, their fate rested in their own hands, Simpson said.
. . The rise of fundamentalist interpretations during the English Reformation can be used to understand the global political situation today and the growth of Islamic extremism, Simpson said as an example. "Very definitely, we see the same phenomenon: newly literate people claiming that the sacred text speaks for itself, and legitimates violence and repression, and the same is also true of Christian fundamentalists."
An entire California diocese of the U.S. Episcopal Church voted to secede on Saturday in a historic split after years of disagreement over the church's expanding support for gay and women's rights. 32 of its 7,600 congregations had left.
. . There is also disagreement over the role of women. San Joaquin is one of only three U.S. dioceses that do not consecrate female priests.
. . A few liberal parishes within the diocese are expected to stay with the church. "It's a giant step toward the past", said the Rev. Charles Ramsden, a vice president of the church-owned Church Pension Group, who was a nonvoting observer. "It's about property, it's about millions of dollars and it's about power."
. . Both sides are prepared for a protracted and expensive legal battle over church assets and other issues.
Dec 7, 07: Our Founding Fathers literally hated the Catholics. Samuel Adams, for instance, wrote that "much more is to be dreaded from the growth of popery in America, than from the Stamp Act or any other acts destructive of civil rights." John Jay, the nation's first chief justice, attempted to have the right to the free exercise of religion open to all "except the professors of the religion of the Church of Rome." And when the Quebec Act was passed in support of the (Catholic) government in neighboring Canada, the Continental Congress wrote in protest to the people of Britain, complaining that Catholicism was "a religion that has deluged your island in blood, and dispersed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder and rebellion through every part of the world."
Dec 5, 07: A Former Evangelical Minister Has a New Message: Jesus Hearts Darwin. Michael Dowd believes in both Christianity and evolution, and he's traveling the country in a van to share the good news.
Nov 19, 07: According to evangelical pastor and former NFL linebacker Ken Hutcherson, Microsoft is totally gay. He is rallying his megachurch, which has 3,500 worshipers, to buy stocks in Microsoft to vote down their gay-friendly policies. He hopes to get homophobes from all religions —-Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Miscellaneous-— to join him on his crusade.
. . The Reverend Ken Hutcherson, a former Dallas Cowboys linebacker, heads the Antioch Bible Church in Redmond, home of Microsoft. He told Microsoft executives at a shareholders' meeting last week that he would be their "worst nightmare" if they continued to defy him.
. . Antioch Bible Church attracts around 3,500 worshippers for its services and Mr Hutcherson is a powerful figure in the Christian conservative movement. His church, which emphasizes racial diversity and a strict moral code, grew from a bible study class for just 15 people in 1984. An advocate of a "biblical stance" against divorce and homosexuality, Mr Hutcherson, 55, is asking millions of evangelical activists, as well as Orthodox Jewish and other allies, to buy up Microsoft shares and demand a return to traditional values.
. . "There are 256 Fortune 500 companies alone pouring millions upon millions of dollars into pushing the homosexual agenda", he told The Daily Telegraph.
. . Mr Hutcherson's office is decorated with the heads of deer, elk and a buffalo –-"when I run into animals, I kill them and bring them home and eat them"-– as well as invitations to the White House and signed pictures of himself with President George W. Bush.
. . Microsoft has some 79,000 employees in 102 countries and an annual revenue of more than £25 billion. At the shareholders' meeting, Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, said it was up to shareholders to continue their longstanding support of Microsoft's diversity policy, which includes an internal "affinity employee group" called the Gay and Lesbian Employees At Microsoft (GLEAM).
. . Mr Hutcherson, who grew up in segregated Alabama and played football to "hurt whites" before he became a Christian, believes homosexuality is a sin rather than a biological phenomenon. He rejects comparisons between the black civil rights movement and calls for gay rights.
Nov 15, 07: At least 30 members of a Russian doomsday cult have barricaded themselves in a remote cave to await the end of the world and are threatening to commit suicide if police intervene, officials and media said.
. . The cult members, who include 29 adults and four children, are hidden inside a snow-covered hillside in the Penza region of central Russia. A Penza police spokeswoman said they had moved into the dug-out on November 7. Media reports said the cult members believed the world would end sometime in May next year. Police expected them to emerge when their supplies ran out.
. . After decades of state-enforced atheism under Soviet rule, many Russians and other ex-Soviet nationals have come under the influence of homegrown and foreign sects. Many Russians have refused new passports and taxpayers' personal identification numbers, saying the figures contained "satanic" combinations of numbers.
. . Izvestia newspaper said the leader of the cult, Pyotr Kuznetsov, had been detained by police. It said he was a 43-year-old who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and that in the last few months he had been sleeping in a coffin.
Oct 4, 07: Europe's main human rights body voted today to urge schools across the continent to firmly oppose the teaching of creationist and "intelligent design" views in their science classes.
Oct 1, 07: A Vatican astronomy conference seeks to prove the Church has nothing to fear from science.
Sept 25, 07: Europe's main human rights body will vote next week on a resolution opposing the teaching of creationist and intelligent design views in school science classes. The Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly will debate a resolution saying attacks on the theory of evolution were rooted "in forms of religious extremism" and amounted to a dangerous assault on science and human rights.
. . If passed, the resolution would not be binding on its 47 member states but would reflect widespread opposition among politicians to teaching creationism in science class.
A book of letters written by Mother Teresa of Calcutta reveals for the first time that she was deeply tormented about her faith and suffered periods of doubt about God.
Aug 4, 07: Tibetan living Buddhas are no longer allowed to be reincarnated without permission from the atheist Chinese government, state media reported.
Jun 7, 07: Disgruntled Italian Catholics are increasingly turning to the internet to leave the Church by getting "debaptized" --but typically, the Pope isn't making the process web friendly.
. . Cyberspace is one of the few places lapsed Catholics can get a copy of the formal letter called "actus defectionis" that is required by Church officials to leave the faith. One such letter, downloaded 30,000 times, is the main attraction at the Italian Union of Rationalists and Agnostics, or UAAR, website.
. . The 2,000-member group, which won a David-and-Goliath legal battle over debaptism in 2002, has no brick-and-mortar office. It relies on e-mail and the occasional phone call to keep things moving. "We see a traffic spike every time the Pope says something unpopular", said UAAR site manager Raffaele Carcano, who is also a banker, adding that the site recently hit new heights during a recent fray over civil unions.
. . Church officials, however, view debaptism as a matter of bookkeeping. Priests are incapable of washing off the holy water that tots were dipped in for the rite. The actus defectionis must be snail-mailed to the parish where baptism took place. Priests note in the register that the flock member has permanently strayed --and that's one less believer to bulk up statistics.
. . The pool is a potentially large one: 90% of Italians are baptized but only a third are churchgoers. Debaptists have their anti-evangelizing work cut out for them. Reaching computer-shy lapsed Catholics may be the biggest challenge --just 31% of Italians regularly use the internet.
May 30, 07: A museum that tells the Bible's version of Earth's history —-that the planet was created in a single week just a few thousand years ago-— attracted thousands to its opening as protesters rallied outside.
. . The dozens of demonstrators argued that the Creation Museum's central tenets conflict with scientific evidence that the Earth is several billion years old. Overhead, an airplane pulled a banner with the message: "Thou Shalt Not Lie." "It's really impressive —-and it really gives the impression that they're talking about science at some point", Krauss said. On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being best, "I'd give it a 4 for technology, 5 for propaganda. As for content, I'd give it a negative 5."
. . Some exhibits show dinosaurs aboard Noah's Ark and assert that all animals were vegetarians until Adam committed the first sin in the Garden of Eden!
May 25, 07: Pope Benedict is coming under mounting criticism from his former German theologian colleagues who liken the Catholic Church's doctrinal office, which the pontiff once headed, to a 19th century censorship bureau.
. . Its censure in March of Father Jon Sobrino, a leading liberation theology proponent, prompted an appeal for a thorough overhaul of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the modern-day successor of the Inquisition.
. . About 130 theologians in Germany and Austria have backed the appeal and messages of support are starting to come in from other countries as it gets translated. The protest amounts to a vote of no confidence in the way Benedict, who headed the CDF for 24 years before becoming pope in 2005, deals with critical thinkers in the Church. Huenermann launched the protest wave in April by publishing an article in the German Catholic monthly Herder Korrespondenz calling for "modern quality control" for Church theology.
. . The European Society for Catholic Theology, based in Leuven, Belgium, has also protested against the CDF censure, saying it was badly argued and had ignored "the theological developments of the last 50 years."
. . The CDF, now headed by Cardinal William Levada from the United States, said Sobrino's "Jesus the Liberator" and other writings contained "erroneous or dangerous" passages that stressed Christ's humanity more than his divine nature. In his article, Huenermann disputed the criticisms the CDF made and said some were wrong, unsubstantiated or "based on a hasty reading" of Sobrino's books.
. . He said the CDF should work like an academic review board, using modern methods such as peer review for publications to allow theologians to test out new ideas. He said he and some colleagues were considering drawing up a proposal for reforms.
An elderly Indian husband and wife were burnt to death after villagers accused them of practicing black magic, tied them together on a pyre and set them on fire, police said.
Mar 25, 07: With creationism now coming in Christian and Muslim versions, scientists, teachers and theologians in France are debating ways to counteract what they see as growing religious attacks on science.
. . Bible-based criticism of evolution, once limited to Protestant fundamentalists in the US, has become an issue in France now that Pope Benedict and some leading Catholic theologians have criticized the neo-Darwinist view of creation.
. . An Islamist publisher in Turkey mass-mailed a lavishly illustrated Muslim creationist book to schools across France recently, prompting the Education Ministry to proscribe the volume and question the way the story of life is taught here.
. . Theoretical debates became a pressing issue in France last month when schools unexpectedly received free copies of an "Atlas of Creation" by Turkish Islamist Harun Yahya that blames Darwinism for everything from terrorism to Nazism.
Mar 6, 07: In a major victory for right-to-die advocates in Roman Catholic Italy, prosecutors cleared a doctor of wrongdoing after he switched off the life support of a terminally ill patient who had asked to die.
Feb 28, 07: A former Canadian defense minister is demanding governments worldwide disclose and use secret alien technologies obtained in alleged UFO crashes to stem climate change, a local paper said.
Feb 17, 07: People in the U.S. know more about basic science today than they did two decades ago, good news that researchers say is tempered by an unsettling growth in the belief in pseudoscience such as astrology and visits by extraterrestrial aliens.
. . In 1988, only about 10% knew enough about science to understand reports in major newspapers, a figure that grew to 28% by 2005, according to Jon D. Miller, a Michigan State U professor. He presented his findings at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
. . The improvement largely reflects the requirement that all college students have at least some science courses, Miller said. More recent generations know more factual material about science, said Carol Susan Losh, an associate professor at Florida State U. But, she said, when it comes to pseudoscience, "the news is not good."
. . One problem, she said, is that pseudoscience can speak to the meaning of life in ways that science does not. For example, for many women having a good life still depends on whom they marry, she said. "What does astrology speak to? Love relationships," Losh said, noting that belief in horoscopes is much higher among women than men.
. . Raymond Eve of the U of Texas at Arlington had mixed news in surveys of students at an unnamed Midwestern university. The share that believed aliens had visited Earth fell from 25% in 1983 to 15% in 2006. There was also a decline in belief in "Bigfoot" and in whether psychics can predict the future.
. . But there also has been a drop in the number of people who believe evolution correctly explains the development of life on Earth and an increase in those who believe mankind was created about 10,000 years ago.
. . Miller said a second major negative factor to scientific literacy was religious fundamentalism and aging. People even confusing astrology with astronomy. In one European study, about 25% of people said they thought astrology was very scientific. But when the question was rephrased to horoscopes that fell to about 7%.
Feb 15, 07: The biggest general science conference in the world is shaping up to be unusually political this year, with an emphasis on global warming and sustainability. There's even a workshop on how scientists can fight anti-evolutionists on local school boards. "The purpose of science is to tell us about the nature of the world whether we like the answer or not", said Alan I. Leshner, CEO of the AAAS.
Feb 13, 07: The Kansas Board of Education today threw out science standards deemed hostile to evolution, undoing the work of Christian conservatives in the ongoing battle over what to teach U.S. public school students about the origins of life. It is the fourth time in eight years that science standards have been rewritten in Kansas.
. . The board in the central U.S. state voted 6-4 to replace them with teaching standards that mirror the mainstream in science education and eliminate criticisms of evolutionary theory.
. . "I'm glad we've taken this step. If we are going to have a well-educated populace, this is important", said board member Sue Gamble.
. . Kansas' struggles have been widely lampooned and were depicted in a documentary film entitled "Flock of Dodos." A traveling exhibition, "Explore Evolution," was created by science museums at universities in Kansas, Nebraska and other states to explain, among other things, how children and chimpanzees are "cousins in life's family tree".
. . John West, senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, said that evolution supporters were "anti-religious". The institute says Darwin's theories about the survival of the fittest have led some scientists to embrace eugenics and practices such as forced sterilization. [ SAY WHAT?!! It's a ridiculous twist of (nazi) history to lay that on science!]
Feb 13, 07: For the fourth time in eight years, the Kansas Board of Education is preparing to take up the issue of evolution and what to teach --or not teach-- public school students about the origins of life.
. . After victory at the polls in November, a moderate majority on the 10-member board in the central U.S. state plans to overturn science standards seen as critical of evolution at a board meeting [good thing]. New standards would replace those put in place in 2005 by a conservative board majority that challenged the validity of evolution and cited it as incompatible with religious doctrine.
. . The 2005 action outraged scientists across the United States, with the National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Teachers Association refusing a request by Kansas to use copyrighted material in textbooks.
. . Adding fuel to the debate, the Seattle-based Discovery Institute issued a press release y'day protesting the board's planned move. "You have a board in Kansas that is so extreme", said John West, senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, a think tank focusing on science education and intelligent design.
. . "I'm very much hoping that history repeats itself ... and the 2007 school board makes the right decision for Kansas students to restore the valid standards", said National Center for Science Education executive director Eugenie Scott. "These are standards that reflect science, rather than a politicized curriculum that miseducates students."
Feb 6, 07: Turkana Boy, as he is known, the most complete skeleton of a prehistoric human ever found. But his first public display later this year is at the heart of a growing storm — one pitting scientists against Kenya's powerful and popular evangelical Christian movement. The debate over evolution vs. creationism —-once largely confined to the US-— has arrived in a country known as the cradle of mankind.
. . "I did not evolve from Turkana Boy or anything like it", says Bishop Boniface Adoyo, head of Kenya's 35 evangelical denominations, which he claims have 10 million followers. "These sorts of silly views are killing our faith."
. . Against him is one of the planet's best-known fossil hunters, Richard Leakey, whose team unearthed the bones at Nariokotome in West Turkana, in the desolate, far northern reaches of Kenya in 1984.
. . Followers of creationism believe in the literal truth of the Genesis account in the Bible that God created the world in six days. Bishop Adoyo believes the world was created 12,000 years ago, with man appearing 6,000 years later. He says each biblical day was equivalent to 1,000 Earth years.
. . Leakey fears the ideological spat may provoke an attack on the priceless collection, one largely found during the 1920s by his paleontologist parents, Louis and Mary Leakey, who passed their fossil-hunting traditions on to him.
. . The museum, which attracts around 100,000 visitors a year, is taking no chances. Turkana Boy will be displayed in a private room, with limited access and behind a glass screen with 24-hour closed-circuit TV. Security guards will be at the entrance.
Feb 5, 07: Pope Benedict was baptized at birth and will most likely be baptized again one year after his death, not by his Roman Catholic Church but by a Mormon he never met. The Mormons encourage members to baptize the dead by proxy in the belief they are helping the deceased attain full access to heaven.
. . So many now perform the rituals for celebrities, heroes and perfect strangers that the practice has spun out of control. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Zedong, King Herod, Al Capone and Mickey Mouse have all appeared for a short time in the International Genealogical Index for proxy baptisms, said Helen Radkey, a researcher specialized in the IGI.
. . The IGI also accepts names for rites that "seal" spouses in eternal marriage or parents and children in eternal families. This has outraged Jews and baffled Christians who see it as usurping the memory of their departed relatives. The Church says it cannot stem the tide of dead baptized in its own temples.
. . Pope Pius XII was baptized three times and also "sealed" in eternal marriage to a fictional Mrs Eugenio Pacelli. Saint Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order of priests, was also "sealed" to a bogus wife.
Jan 21, 07: [not a debunk, but it's the closest file...] A tiny group of worshippers plans a rare ceremony today to honor the ancient Greek gods, at Athens' 1,800-year-old Temple of Olympian Zeus. Greece's Culture Ministry has declared the central Athens site off-limits, but worshippers say they will defy the decision.
. . Peppa said the ceremony will be held in honor of Zeus, king of the ancient gods, but did not give other details. The daily Ethnos newspaper, citing the group's application to the Culture Ministry to use the site, said the 90-minute event would include hymns, dancers, torchbearers, and worshippers in ancient costumes.
. . Greece's archaic religion is believed to have several hundred official followers, mainly middle-aged and elderly academics, lawyers and other professionals. They typically share a keen interest in ancient history and a dislike for the Greek Orthodox Church.
. . Ancient rituals are re-enacted every two years at Olympia, in southern Greece, where the flame lighting ceremony is held for the summer and winter Olympic games. But the event is not regarded as a religious ceremony.
. . Those who seek to revive the ancient Greek religion are split into rival organizations which trade insults over the Internet. Peppa's group is at odds with ultra-nationalists who view a revival as a way to protect Greek identity from foreign influences. They can't even agree on a name for the religion: One camp calls it Ancient-Religion, another Hellenic Religion.
. . The worshippers also face another obstacle: Greece's powerful Orthodox Church. About 97% of native born Greeks are baptized Orthodox Christian, and the church regards ancient religious practices as pagan. Representatives of the church in the past have not attended flame ceremonies at Olympia because reference is made to Apollo, the ancient god of music and light.
. . "Christianity did not prevail without bloodshed", said Peppa, a novelist and historical writer. "After 16 centuries of negativity toward us, we've gotten something in our favor."
. . Ellinais is demanding government approval for its downtown offices to be registered as a place of worship —-a move that could allow the group to perform weddings and other ceremonies. They threaten further court action unless that permission is granted.
Jan 13, 07: If you're an undiscovered psychic, soothsayer, dowser or medium, time may be running out for you to put your supernatural powers to the test and claim a million dollar prize. But you already knew that, didn't you?
. . Ten years after stage magician and avowed skeptic James Randi first offered a seven-figure payday to anyone capable of demonstrating paranormal phenomenon under scientific scrutiny, the 79-year-old clear-eyed curmudgeon is revising the rules of his nonprofit foundation's Million Dollar Challenge to better target high-profile charlatans, and spend less time on unknown psychics, who too often turn out to be delusional instead of deceptive. "We can't waste the hundreds of hours that we spend every year on the nutcases out there.
Nov 6, 06: The Church of England has sent a message of annoyance to the Royal Mail over this year's Christmas stamps, which feature festive fun rather than a Christian theme. [horrors!]
Nov 1, 06: British PM Tony Blair said in an interview that he would be worried if creationism entered mainstream teaching in British schools. A row broke out in Britain earlier this year after a private foundation that funds several schools in northern England was accused of teaching creationism in science classes.
. . Blair said talk of some British schools teaching creationism was sometimes hugely exaggerated. "If we do not take the opportunities that are there for us in science then we are not going to have a successful modern economy", he said. "We will be out-competed on labor costs. We've got to give the country a great deal more confidence about science and its place in the future", he said.
Oct 27, 06: Australia's top Muslim cleric, suspended from preaching after describing women who do not dress modestly as "uncovered meat", rejected calls to resign. Hilaly said sexual assaults might not happen if women wore a hijab and stayed at home.
. . Sheikh Taj El-Din Hamid Hilaly, the mufti of Australia's biggest mosque in Sydney, angered community and political leaders and divided Australia's 280,000 Muslims over the comments, made in a Ramadan sermon a month ago but only reported this week.
. . Howard said Hilaly, who courted controversy two years ago by glorifying martyrdom and calling the September 11 attacks the work of God, was now an Australian citizen and could not be deported.
. . Muslim leaders in the southern state of Victoria issued an open letter condemning Hilaly's comments and called for him to be sacked. Australia's United Muslim Women Association also condemned his comments.
Oct 10, 06: The Michigan State Board of Education today approved public school curriculum guidelines that support the teaching of evolution in science classes —-but not intelligent design.
. . Intelligent design instruction could be left for other classes in Michigan schools, but it doesn't belong in science class, according to the unanimously adopted guidelines. If a district or teacher chose to include intelligent design in a science class, they could face a court challenge from opponents of teaching intelligent design.
[This is kinda long, but I'll pass it on anyway...]
. . Can one be a conservative Christian and a Darwinian? Yes. Here's how.
. . 1. Evolution fits well with good theology. Christians believe in an omniscient and omnipotent God. What difference does it make when God created the universe--10,000 years ago or 10,000,000,000 years ago? The glory of the creation commands reverence regardless of how many zeroes in the date. And what difference does it make how God created life--spoken word or natural forces? The grandeur of life's complexity elicits awe regardless of what creative processes were employed. Christians (indeed, all faiths) should embrace modern science for what it has done to reveal the magnificence of the divine in a depth and detail unmatched by ancient texts.
. . 2. Creationism is bad theology. Calling God a watchmaker is belittling. The watchmaker God of intelligent-design creationism is delimited to being a garage tinkerer piecing together life out of available parts. This God is just a genetic engineer slightly more advanced than we are. An omniscient and omnipotent God must be above such humanlike constraints. As Protestant theologian Langdon Gilkey wrote, "The Christian idea, far from merely representing a primitive anthropomorphic projection of human art upon the cosmos, systematically repudiates all direct analogy from human art." Calling God a watchmaker is belittling.
. . 3. Evolution explains original sin and the Christian model of human nature. As a social primate, we evolved within-group amity and between-group enmity. By nature, then, we are cooperative and competitive, altruistic and selfish, greedy and generous, peaceful and bellicose; in short, good and evil. Moral codes and a society based on the rule of law are necessary to accentuate the positive and attenuate the negative sides of our evolved nature.
. . 4. Evolution explains family values. The following characteristics are the foundation of families and societies and are shared by humans and other social mammals: attachment and bonding, cooperation and reciprocity, sympathy and empathy, conflict resolution, community concern and reputation anxiety, and response to group social norms. As a social primate species, we evolved morality to enhance the survival of both family and community. Subsequently, religions designed moral codes based on our evolved moral natures.
. . 5. Evolution accounts for specific Christian moral precepts. Much of Christian morality has to do with human relationships, most notably truth telling and marital fidelity, because the violation of these principles causes a severe breakdown in trust, which is the foundation of family and community. Evolution describes how we developed into pair-bonded primates and how adultery violates trust. Likewise, truth telling is vital for trust in our society, so lying is a sin.
. . 6. Evolution explains conservative free-market economics. Charles Darwin's "natural selection" is precisely parallel to Adam Smith's "invisible hand." Darwin showed how complex design and ecological balance were unintended consequences of competition among individual organisms. Smith showed how national wealth and social harmony were unintended consequences of competition among individual people. Nature's economy mirrors society's economy. Both are designed from the bottom up, not the top down.
. . Because the theory of evolution provides a scientific foundation for the core values shared by most Christians and conservatives, it should be embraced. The senseless conflict between science and religion must end now, or else, as the Book of Proverbs (11:29) warned: "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind."
Aug 29, 06: The human brain does not contain a single "God spot" responsible for mystical and religious experiences, a new study finds. Instead, the sense of union with God or something greater than the self often described by those who have undergone such experiences involves the recruitment and activation of a variety brain regions normally implicated in different functions such as self-consciousness, emotion and body representation.
. . "The main goal of the study was to identify the neural correlates of a mystical experience", said study leader Mario Beauregard of the University of Montreal in Canada. "This does not diminish the meaning and value of such an experience, and neither does it confirm or disconfirm the existence of God."
. . In the study, 15 cloistered Carmelite nuns, ranging in age from 23 to 64, had their brains scanned while asked to relive the most intense mystical experience they had ever had as members of the religious order.
Aug 9, 06: Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have performed the first brain-scan study on a group of Pentecostal practitioners while they were speaking in tongues, a practice also known as glossolalia.
. . It turned out that activity in the language centers of the Pentecostals' brains decreased during the tests, "although the practitioners spoke in a coherent language-like way." The results seem to simply suggest that speaking in tongues is not related to language.
. . The glossolalia work will soon be published in a psychology journal, Waldman said. Newberg and Waldman's book, Why We Believe What We Believe, is due out in September.
June 21, 06: The world's top scientists have joined forces to call for "evidence-based" teaching of evolution in schools. A statement signed by 67 national science academies says evidence on the origins of life is being "concealed, denied, or confused" in some classes.
. . It lists key facts on evolution that "scientific evidence has never contradicted". These include the formation of Earth 4.5 billion years ago, and the onset of life at least 2.5 billion years ago.
June 5, 06: Saudi Arabia's powerful morality police is launching a witch hunt in the birthplace of Islam. The Authority for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is setting up special centers in all cities to "register complaints on sorcerers and charlatans, track them and terminate them." Islam forbids magic and practicing it is considered blasphemy.
. . The religious police have wide powers in Saudi Arabia, which imposes a strict version of Sunni Islam, to prevent the spread of drugs, alcohol and prostitution as well as stop unrelated men and women mixing in public.
The Other Intelligent Design Theories
. . Intelligent Design is only one of many "alternatives" to Darwinian evolution
. . by DavidBrin
. . If students deserve to weigh ID against natural selection, then why not also expose them to…
. . 1. Guided Evolution
. . This is the deist compromise most commonly held by thousands --possibly millions-- of working scientists who want to reconcile science and faith. Yes, the Earth is 4.6 billion years old and our earliest ancestors emerged from a stew of amino acids that also led to crabs, monkeys and slime molds who are all distant relatives. Still, a creative force may have been behind the Big Bang, and especially the selection of some finely tuned physical constants, whose narrow balance appears to make the evolution of life possible, maybe even inevitable. Likewise, such a force may have given frequent or occasional nudges of subtle guidance to evolution, all along, as part of a Divine Plan.
. . It is compatible with everything we see around us —all the evidence we’ve accumulated— and it is utterly impossible to prove or disprove.
. . 2. Intelligent Design of Intelligent Designers (IDOID): Mormons, for example, hold that the God of this universe —who created humanity (or at least guided our evolution)— was once Himself a mortal being who was created by a previous God in a prior universe or context.
. . 3. Evolution of Intelligent Designers: Any advocate of completeness would have to extend this evolutionary process beyond achieving mere sapience like ours, all the way to producing intelligence so potent that it can then start performing acts of creation on its own, manipulating and using black holes to fashion universes to specific design.
. . In other words, there might be an intelligent designer of this world … who nevertheless came into being as a result of evolution.
. . 4. Cycles of Creation: Perhaps the whole thing does not have a clear-cut beginning or end, but rolls along like a wheel? Shall Hindu gurus and Mayan priest kings step up and demand equal time for their theories of creation cycles? How can you stop them, once the principle is established that every hypothesis deserves equal treatment in the schools.
. . 5. Panspermia --posits that life on Earth may have been seeded from elsewhere in the cosmos.
. . There are other possibilities, and I am sure readers could continue adding to the list, long after I am done, such as…
. . * We’re living in a simulation…
. . * We’ve been resurrected at the Omega Point…
. . * It’s all in your imagination … and so on.
Dr. Dennett contends that the “belief in belief” has fogged any attempt to rationally consider the existence of God and the relationship between divinity and human need.
. . His new book: Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.
May 26, 06: If you're just a bit more cautious on a Friday the 13th, wouldn't fly on 9/11 or could never live in a house numbered 666, you are not alone. {However, if you ignore such stupidity because you have a brain, you're in better company!]
. . With 06/06/06 looming (June 6, 2006), authorities in some cities are worrying prophecy theorists or hate groups might read something ominous into the date and use it as an excuse to stir tension. Some expectant mothers are making birthing appointments to ensure they avoid the date, according to the Sunday Times in London.
. . And for others, it is a marketing opportunity. 20th Century Fox's remake of "The Omen" and Ann Coulter's book, "Godless: The Church of Liberalism", will both come out June 6.
. . When former President Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy retired to their last home in California thirteen years later, they forced officials to change their address from 666 to 668 St. Cloud Road, Livio said. No word on whether the former president whose full name is Ronald Wilson Reagan, was bothered by the number of letters in each of his first, middle and last names.
Consider the ratio in salaries between top-tier CEOs and their average employee: in Britain, it is 24 to 1; France 15 to 1; Sweden 13 to 1; in the United States, where 83% of the population believes that Jesus literally rose from the dead, it is 475 to 1. Many a camel, it would seem, expects to squeeze easily through the eye of a needle.
[Not that we're advocating this viewpoint below. Just a thot-provoker --that's always good...]
. . For Sam Harris, it’s simple: Atheism is not a philosophy or a view of the world; it’s simply a refusal to deny the obvious.
. . http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/200512_an_atheist_manifesto/
. . "When asked why he thinks that there is a diamond in his yard that is thousands of times larger than any yet discovered, he says things like, 'This belief gives my life meaning'', or 'My family and I enjoy digging for it on Sundays', or 'I wouldn’t want to live in a universe where there wasn’t a diamond buried in my backyard.'
. . "Epistemological Ponzi schemes won’t do. To believe that God exists is to believe that one stands in some relation to his existence such that his existence is itself the reason for one’s belief.
. . There is no society in recorded history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.
Religion is the one endeavor in which us/them thinking achieves a transcendent significance. If a person really believes that calling God by the right name can spell the difference between eternal happiness and eternal suffering, then it becomes quite reasonable to treat heretics and unbelievers rather badly. It may even be reasonable to kill them. If a person thinks there is something that another person can say to his children that could put their souls in jeopardy for all eternity, then the heretic next door is actually far more dangerous than the child molester. The stakes of our religious differences are immeasurably higher than those born of mere tribalism, racism or politics.
. . Religion is only area of our discourse in which people are systematically protected from the demand to give evidence in defense of their strongly held beliefs. And yet these beliefs often determine what they live for, what they will die for, and --all too often-- what they will kill for.
. . One’s convictions should be proportional to one’s evidence. Pretending to be certain when one isn’t --indeed, pretending to be certain about propositions for which no evidence is even conceivable-- is both an intellectual and a moral failing."
http://www.slate.com/id/2137743/
. . In Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Daniel Dennett promises to break the impasse, or at least to map a course for research that would redraw the traditional boundaries between science and religion.
. . Evolutionary theory, he says, can tell us why religion evolved and what it was meant to achieve, which means it can explain why the religious act the way they do. In an age of growing fanaticism, this seems a claim worth paying attention to. And Dennett seems the man to make good on it. A philosopher of mind -—he has written acclaimed books on consciousness and evolutionary theory—- Dennett knows how to argue about science and how to argue from within it. A militant atheist, he doesn't promise to keep an open mind about religion.
. . Religions, he says, are "social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought."
. . Dennett's definition should give pause to anybody who has ever gone to church or synagogue without being sure why. How does Dennett account for all the people who practice religion without ascertaining whether or not they believe in God?
. . Dennett has to invent another concept: "belief in belief." He devotes an entire chapter to this troublingly attenuated notion. People who believe in belief, he says, believe that civilization needs myths to live by, so we mustn't examine religious ones too closely. Belief in belief is the compromise formation of those who can't bring themselves to evince a naive belief in a supernatural being but think religion is a useful construct that ought not to be toppled.
. . He rules out deism, the view that God acts through natural laws, and incidentally Charles Darwin's credo for much of his later life.
. . What kind of people don't kid themselves, according to Dennett? People who practice folk religions, not theological sophistry. Shamans, not priests, imams, or rabbis. Real religion, according to Dennett, makes you do real things with real consequences (sacrifice an ox to ensure rain, for example). Modern religions only make you do inconsequential things, such as profess the proper doctrine.
May 16, 06: "The Da Vinci Code" has undermined faith in the Roman Catholic Church and badly damaged its credibility, a survey of British readers of Dan Brown's bestseller showed. People are now twice as likely to believe Jesus Christ fathered children after reading the Dan Brown blockbuster and four times as likely to think the conservative Catholic group Opus Dei is a murderous sect.
. . A prominent group of English Roman Catholic monks, theologians, nuns and members of Opus Dei, who commissioned the survey from leading pollster Opinion Research Business (ORB) and have sought to promote Catholic beliefs at a time when the film's release has provoked a storm of controversy.
. . ORB interviewed more than 1,000 adults last weekend, finding that 60% believed Jesus had children by Mary Magdalene --a possibility raised by the book-- compared with just 30% of those who had not read the book.
May 8, 06: A hoax that "fooled the world." Well, not exactly: Skeptical Inquirer magazine was on to the 1995 "Alien Autopsy" film from the outset. But now the reputed creator of the fake extraterrestrial corpse used for the "autopsy" has publicly confessed.
. . The film -—purporting to depict the post mortem of an extraterrestrial who died in a UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947—- was part of a "documentary" that aired on the Fox television network [of course!]. Skeptics and many UFOlogists quickly branded the affair a hoax.
. . Among numerous observations, they noted that the film bore a bogus, non-military codemark, that the injuries sustained by the extraterrestrial were inconsistent with an air crash, and that the person performing the autopsy held the scissors like a tailor rather than a pathologist (who is trained to place his middle or ring finger in the bottom of the scissors hole and use his forefinger to steady the blades).
. . Belatedly, a Manchester sculptor and special-effects creator, John Humphreys, now claims the Roswell alien was his handiwork, destroyed after the film was made. He made the revelation just as a new movie, "Alien Autopsy", was being released, a film for which he recreated the original creature. As he told the BBC, "Funnily enough, I used exactly the same process as before. You start with the stills from the film, blow them up as large as you can. Then you make an aluminum armature, which you cover in clay, and then add all the detail." The clay model was used to produce a mold that yielded a latex cast.
. . Humphreys also admitted that in the original autopsy film he had himself played the role of the pathologist, whose identity was concealed by a contamination suit.
. . Among the hoaxes were the following:
. . • A 1949 science fiction movie, "The Flying Saucer", purported to contain scenes of a captured spacecraft; an actor actually posed as an FBI agent and swore the claim was true.
. . • In 1950, writer Frank Scully reported in his book "Behind the Flying Saucers" that the U.S. government possessed no fewer than three Venusian spaceships, together with their humanoid corpses. Scully had been fed the tale by two confidence men who had hoped to sell a petroleum-locating device allegedly based on alien technology.
. . • In 1974, Robert Spencer Carr began to promote one of the crashes from the Scully book and to claim firsthand knowledge of where the pickled aliens were stored. But as the late claimant's son admitted, Carr was a spinner of yarns who made up the entire story.
. . • In 1987, the author of a book on Roswell released the notorious "MJ-12 documents" which seemed to prove the crash-retrieval story and a high-level government coverup. Unfortunately document experts readily exposed the papers as inept forgeries.
. . • In 1990, Gerald Anderson claimed that he and family members had been rock hunting in the New Mexico desert in 1947 when they came upon a crashed saucer with injured aliens among the still-burning wreckage. Anderson released a diary his uncle had purportedly kept that recorded the event. Alas, forensic tests showed that the ink used to write the entries had not been manufactured until 1974.
May 7, 06: A confidential Ministry of Defence report on Unidentified Flying Objects has concluded that there is no proof of alien life forms. In spite of the secrecy surrounding the UFO study, it seems citizens of planet Earth have little to worry about. The report, which was completed in 2000 and stamped "Secret: UK Eyes Only", has been made public for the first time. His findings were only made public thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, after a request.
. . The four-year study --entitled Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK-- tackles the long-running question by UFO-spotters: "Is anyone out there?" The answer, it seems, is "no". "
. . Never in thirty years of working out of doors at all hours have I seen anything that cannot be explained by a few seconds reasoned thought." Barry Havant, UK.
. . "Evidence suggests that meteors and their well-known effects and, possibly some other less-known effects are responsible for some unidentified aerial phenomena", concludes the report. "Considerable evidence exists to support the thesis that the events are almost certainly attributable to physical, electrical and magnetic phenomena in the atmosphere, mesosphere and ionosphere. They appear to originate due to more than one set of weather and electrically-charged conditions and are observed so infrequently as to make them unique to the majority of observers."
. . People who claim to have had a "close encounter" are often difficult to persuade that they did not really see what they thought they saw. The report offers a possible medical explanation. "The close proximity of plasma related fields can adversely affect a vehicle or person", states the report. "Local fields of this type have been medically proven to cause responses in the temporal lobes of the human brain. These result in the observer sustaining (and later describing and retaining) his or her own vivid, but mainly incorrect, description of what is experienced."
. . An unnamed defense official replied: "While we remain open-minded, to date the MOD knows of no evidence which substantiates the existence of these alleged phenomena and therefore has no plans for dealing with such a situation."
Feb 18, 06: American scientists fighting back against creationism, intelligent design and other theories that seek to deny or downgrade the importance of evolution have recruited unlikely allies --the clergy. And they have taken their battle to a new level, trying to educate high school and even elementary school teachers on how to hold their own against parents and school boards who want to mix religion with science.
. . "It's time to recognize that science and religion should never be pitted against one another", American Association for the Advancement of Science President Gilbert Omenn told a news conference. The AAAS has held several sessions on the evolution issue at its annual meeting in St. Louis.
. . "The faith community needs to step up to the plate", agreed Eugenie Scott, Executive Director, National Center for Science Education. Scott said many people held the "toxic" idea that "you are either a Christian creationist or you are a bad-guy atheist."
. . Recent court and electoral battles have made clear that judges and voters will reject efforts to sneak creationism into the classroom under the guise of making a scientific curriculum clearer or fairer, Scott said. Last year in Pennsylvania, a federal court ruled the theory could not be taught in a public school and the school board in Dover, Pennsylvania, which approved the teaching, was voted out. "As a legal strategy intelligent design is dead. It will be very difficult for any school district in the future to successfully survive a legal challenge", Scott said. "That doesn't mean intelligent design is dead as a very popular social movement."
. . But pastors are speaking out against it. Warren Eschbach, a retired Church of the Brethren pastor and professor at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania helped sponsor a letter signed by more than 10,000 other clergy. "We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests", they wrote.
. . Catholic experts have also joined the movement. "The intelligent design movement belittles God. It makes God a designer, an engineer", said Vatican Observatory Director George Coyne, an astrophysicist who is also ordained.
Jan 17, 06: Believe it or not, higher education is linked to a greater tendency to believe in ghosts and other paranormal phenomena, according to a new study. Contrary to researchers' expectations, a poll of 439 college students found seniors and grad students were more likely to believe in haunted houses, psychics, telepathy, channeling and a host of other questionable ideas.
. . The results are detailed in the Jan-Feb issue of the Skeptical Inquirer magazine. The survey was modeled after a nationwide Gallup Poll in 2001 that found younger Americans far more likely to believe in the paranormal than older respondents.
. . While 23% of college freshmen expressed a general belief in paranormal concepts -—from astrology to communicating with the dead—- 31% of seniors did so, and the figure jumped to 34% among graduate students.
. . The media are likely responsible for some people's beliefs in alien abductions and other paranormal concepts, the scientists write, based on their survey of existing studies. And some people tend to selectively confirm whatever ideas might be in their heads. Even smart people might believe in something offbeat because, in part, they're good at defending whatever they believe.
Jan 11, 06: A rural high school teaching a religion-based alternative to evolution was sued Tuesday by a group of parents who said the class should be stopped because it violates the U.S. Constitution.
. . Frazier Mountain High in Lebec violated the separation of church and state while attempting to legitimize the theory of "intelligent design" by introducing it as a philosophy class, according to the federal lawsuit filed by parents of 13 students. The teacher is also a minister's wife.
. . In October, "Kansas biology teacher" made the top 10 in Popular Science magazine's annual list of the "Worst Jobs in Science." It came in at No. 3, surpassed only by animal "manure inspector" and the worst job of all: "human lab rat".
. . On Dec. 7, Kansas earned an F-minus for its science standards--the worst in the nation--in "The State of State Science Standards 2005," a report published by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a non-profit group supporting research and reform in K-12 education.
Jan 6, 06: Forget the U.S. debate over intelligent design versus evolution. An Italian court is tackling Jesus --and whether the Roman Catholic Church may be breaking the law by teaching that he existed 2,000 years ago. The case pits against each other two men in their 70s, who are from the same central Italian town and even went to the same seminary school in their teenage years.
. . The defendant, Enrico Righi, went on to become a priest writing for the parish newspaper. The plaintiff, Luigi Cascioli, became a vocal atheist who, after years of legal wrangling, is set to get his day in court later this month.
. . Cascioli says Righi, and by extension the whole Church, broke two Italian laws. The first is "Abuso di Credulita Popolare" (Abuse of Popular Belief) meant to protect people against being swindled or conned. The second crime, he says, is "Sostituzione di Persona", or impersonation.
Jan 6, 06: The use of magnetic devices to cure a variety of ills has soared in recent years but there is no evidence they work, according to an editorial in the British Medical Journal. The market for magnetic bracelets, knee pads and the like may now be worth about one billion dollars a year, but two American scientists argue in the journal on Friday that many people are being fooled as to their therapeutic benefits. They said that even theoretically, magnet therapy appeared unrealistic given that human tissue does not appear to be affected when it is subject to the massive fields generated by resonance imaging (MRI).
Dec 20, 05: In one of the biggest courtroom clashes between faith and evolution since the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, a federal judge barred a Pennsylvania public school district today from teaching "intelligent design" in biology class, saying the concept is creationism in disguise.
. . U.S. District Judge John E. Jones delivered a stinging attack on the Dover Area School Board, saying its first-in-the-nation decision in October 2004 to insert intelligent design into the science curriculum violated the constitutional separation of church and state. Jones decried the "breathtaking inanity" of the Dover policy and accused several board members of lying to conceal their true motive, which he said was to promote religion.
. . A six-week trial over the issue yielded "overwhelming evidence" establishing that intelligent design "is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory", said Jones, a Republican and a churchgoer appointed to the federal bench three years ago.
. . The judge said: "We find that the secular purposes claimed by the board amount to a pretext for the board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom."
. . "ID is not science." Among other things, the judge said intelligent design "violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation"; it relies on "flawed and illogical" arguments; and its attacks on evolution "have been refuted by the scientific community." ... "The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources", he wrote. "It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."
. . The new school board president, Bernadette Reinking, said the board intends to remove intelligent design from the science curriculum and place it in an elective social studies class.
Dec 14, 05: Could a teenage boy, meditating in a jungle in Nepal, represent a challenge to science? As evidence that he may be the reincarnation of the Buddha, his followers claim he has taken no food or water since May 17, 05.
. . The claim is therefore one of inedia, the alleged ability of some mystics to forgo nourishment. (In Catholicism, usually the taking of Communion is excepted.)
. . Catholic inedics have included Therese Neumann, who was also an alleged stigmatic (suffering the wounds of Christ). Church authorities investigated her claims and found grounds for "suspicion." Monitoring of her urine revealed that, while she was under surveillance for fifteen days, she was probably abstaining, but when surveillance was discontinued for a fortnight, the urine tests indicated a return to normal intake of food and drink.
. . In another case, an Italian woman named Alfonsina Cottini gulled busloads of credulous pilgrims throughout the 1970s. Eventually, church authorities were alerted by stories that circulated in the area, alleging that Alfonsina was surreptitiously eating and that her sister was amassing large sums of money. Investigation by a special commission revealed that the suspicions were correct: At night Alfonsina left her bed, ate her fill, and performed other bodily functions. Among the investigators' discoveries was that the beatific Alfonsina's eliminations were "of a remarkable potency."
. . A more modern and comic example is described in the delightful book, High Weirdness by Mail. A man named Wiley Brooks, the guru of a health cult known as the Breatharians, claimed one could forego food and drink, living off merely light and air. Alas, members' faith was challenged when Brooks was revealed to have been making secret nighttime forays to convenience stores for junk food.
. . Joe Nickell, Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and "Investigative Files" columnist for the organization's science magazine, Skeptical Inquirer. His Web site is www.joenickell.com.
Dec 1, 05: Seth Shostak, SETI Institute: "You may remember the episode of "Cheers" in which Cliff, the postman who's stayed by neither snow, nor rain, nor gloom of night from his appointed rounds of beer, exclaims to Norm that he's found a potato that looks like Richard Nixon's head.
. . This could be an astonishing attempt by taters to express their political views, but Norm is unimpressed. Finding evidence of complexity (the Nixon physiognomy) in a natural setting (the spud), and inferring some deliberate, magical mechanism behind it all, would be a leap from the doubtful to the divine, and in this case, Norm feels, unwarranted. Cliff, however, would have some sympathizers among the proponents of Intelligent Design (ID).
. . SETI: the credibility of the evidence is not predicated on its complexity. If we detected a signal, it would be on the basis of artificiality. An endless, sinusoidal signal --a dead simple tone-- is not complex; it's artificial. Such a tone just doesn't seem to be generated by natural astrophysical processes. Pulsars flash over the entire spectrum. No matter where you tune your radio telescope, the pulsar can be heard. That's bad design, because if the pulses were intended to convey some sort of message, it would be enormously more efficient (in terms of energy costs) to confine the signal to a very narrow band.
. . In short, the champions of Intelligent Design make two mistakes when they claim that the SETI enterprise is logically similar to their own: First, they assume that we are looking for messages, and judging our discovery on the basis of message content, whether understood or not. In fact, we're on the lookout for very simple signals. That's mostly a technical misunderstanding. But their second assumption, derived from the first, that complexity would imply intelligence, is also wrong. We seek artificiality, which is an organized and optimized signal coming from an astronomical environment from which neither it nor anything like it is either expected or observed: Very modest complexity, found out of context. This is clearly nothing like looking at DNA's chemical makeup and deducing the work of a supernatural biochemist."
Nov 29, 05: LIMBO --the place where the Catholic Church teaches that babies go if they die before being baptized-- may have its days numbered. According to Italian media reports today, an international theological commission will advise Pope Benedict to eliminate the teaching about limbo from the Catholic catechism.
. . The Catholic Church teaches that babies who die before they can be baptized go to limbo, whose name comes from the Latin for "border" or "edge", because they deserve neither heaven nor hell.
Nov 21, 05: Creationism and intelligent design are going to be studied at the University of Kansas, but not in the way advocated by opponents of the theory of evolution.
. . A course being offered next semester by the university religious studies department is titled "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies."
. . "The KU faculty has had enough", said Paul Mirecki, department chairman. "Creationism is mythology", Mirecki said. "Intelligent design is mythology. It's not science. They try to make it sound like science. It clearly is not."
Nov 18, 05: The Vatican's chief astronomer said today that "intelligent design" isn't science and doesn't belong in science classrooms, the latest high-ranking Roman Catholic official to enter the evolution debate in the United States.
. . The Rev. George Coyne, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, said placing intelligent design theory alongside that of evolution in school programs was "wrong" and was akin to mixing apples with oranges.
. . "Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be. If they respect the results of modern science, and indeed the best of modern biblical research, religious believers must move away from the notion of a dictator God or a designer God, a Newtonian God who made the universe as a watch that ticks along regularly." Rather, he argued, God should be seen more as an encouraging parent.
Nov 16, 05: Katherine Harris, then Florida's Secretary of State -—and now a member of the U.S. House of Representatives—- ordered a study in which, according to an article by Jim Stratton in the Orlando Sentinel, "Researchers worked with a rabbi and a cardiologist to test ‘Celestial Drops', promoted as a canker inhibitor because of its ‘improved fractal design,' ‘infinite levels of order,' and ‘high energy and low entropy.'"
. . The study determined that the product tested was, basically, water that had apparently been blessed according to the principles of Kabbalic mysticism, to "change its molecular structure and imbue it with supernatural healing powers."
Nov 8, 05: Revisiting a topic that exposed Kansas to nationwide ridicule six years ago, the state Board of Education approved science standards for public schools Tuesday that cast doubt on the theory of evolution.
. . The board's 6-4 vote, expected for months, was a victory for "intelligent design" advocates who helped draft the standards. Intelligent design holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power.
Nov 3, 05: A Vatican cardinal said today the faithful should listen to what secular modern science has to offer, warning that religion risks turning into "fundamentalism" if it ignores scientific reason.
. . Cardinal Paul Poupard, who heads the Pontifical Council for Culture, made the comments at a news conference on a Vatican project to help end the "mutual prejudice" between religion and science that has long bedeviled the Roman Catholic Church and is part of the evolution debate in the United States.
. . The Vatican project was inspired by Pope John Paul II's 1992 declaration that the church's 17th-century denunciation of Galileo was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension." Galileo was condemned for supporting Nicolaus Copernicus' discovery that the Earth revolved around the sun; church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe.
. . "We know where scientific reason can end up by itself: the atomic bomb and the possibility of cloning human beings are fruit of a reason that wants to free itself from every ethical or religious link", he said. "But we also know the dangers of a religion that severs its links with reason and becomes prey to fundamentalism", he said.
Oct 24, 05: Cory Burnell wants to set up a Christian nation within the United States where abortion is illegal, gay marriage is banned, schools cannot teach evolution, children can pray to Jesus in public schools and the Ten Commandments are posted publicly.
. . To that end, Burnell, 29, left the Republican Party, moved from California and founded Christian Exodus two years ago with the goal of redirecting the United States by "redeeming" one state at a time. First up for redemption is South Carolina.
. . Burnell hopes to move 2,500 Christians into the northern part of the state by next year and to persuade tens of thousands to relocate by 2016. His goal is to fill the state legislature with "Christian constitutionalists." Since then, five families and two individuals have relocated.
. . The organization's Web site says if it does not meet its goal of change, it will work to secede from the United States.
. . State Sen. Mike Fair, a Republican who described himself as "a narrow-minded, right-wing, fundamentalist fanatic", said he was suspicious of Christian Exodus.
Sept 26, 05: A large part of the confusion stems from the fact that there is a big difference between how the word "theory" is used in science and how it is used in ordinary conversation. A hunch, conjecture or an educated guess can become a hypothesis. But a theory is much more.
. . In science, a theory is an explanation that binds together various experimentally tested hypotheses to explain some fundamental aspect of nature. For an idea to qualify as a scientific theory, it must be established on the basis of a wide variety of scientific evidence. Its claims must be testable and it must propose experiments that can be replicated by other scientists.
. . "[Evolution is] a theory in a special philosophical sense of science, but in terms of ordinary laymen's use of language, it's a fact", said Richard Dawkins, a biologist from Oxford University, in a recent radio interview. "Evolution is a fact in the same sense that it's a fact that the Earth is round and not flat, [that] the Earth goes round the Sun. Both those are also theories, but they're theories that have never been disproved and never will be disproved."
Sept 22, 05: Selling ID as a viable alternative to evolution is proving difficult. In modern science, a theory must first undergo the gauntlet of peer-review in a reputable scientific journal before it is widely accepted.
. . Measured by this standard, ID fails miserably. According to the National Center for Science Education, only one ID article by Stephen Meyers (Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, 2004) has passed this test and even then, the journal that published the article promptly retracted it. The journal also put out a statement that said "there is no credible scientific evidence supporting ID as a testable hypothesis to explain the origin of organic diversity." the wizard behind the curtain.
. . "The objective is to convince people that Darwinism is inherently atheistic, thus shifting the debate from creationism vs. evolution to the existence of God vs. the nonexistence of God", Johnson wrote in a 1999 article for Church and State magazine. "From there, people are introduced to 'the truth' of the Bible and then 'the question of sin' and finally 'introduced to Jesus.'" The 'Wedge': Also in 1999, a fund raising document used by the Discovery Institute to promote the CSC was leaked to the public. Informally known as the "Wedge Document", it stated that the center's long-term goals were nothing less than the "overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies", and the replacement of "materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God."
. . The means for achieving these goals was explained using a simple metaphor: "If we view the predominant materialistic science as a giant tree, our strategy is intended to function as a 'wedge' that, while relatively small, can split the trunk when applied at its weakest points." After watching and analyzing the CSC's strategy for years, Barbara Forrest, a philosopher at Southeastern Louisiana University, was reminded of another metaphor, one she used for the title of her book, "Creationism's Trojan Horse." Like the hollow wooden horse the Greeks used to enter the city of Troy, ID is being used as a vehicle to sneak Creationism into public schools.
Sept 14, 05: At the end of his weekly general audience today, Pope Benedict greeted Italian exorcists who, he disclosed, are currently holding their national convention.The Pope encouraged them to "carry on their important work in the service of the Church."
. . The Roman Catholic Church has shown growing interest in exorcism in Italy. In 1999, the Vatican issued its first updated ritual for exorcism since 1614 and warned that the devil is still at work. [Ye gods... so to speak... what century IS this?! ]
Voice of Reason: Exposing the Da Vinci Hoax --By Joe Nickell from the Skeptical Inquirer website; posted: 24 May 2005 The record bestseller, Dan Brown’s 2004 The Da Vinci Code, has renewed interest in the quest for the Holy Grail, restyling the medieval legend for a public that often gorges itself on a diet of pseudoscience, pseudo-history, and fantasy.
. . Unfortunately, the book is largely based on obscure, forged documents that have now deceived millions.
. . The adventure tale begins with Paris police summoning Robert Langdon, an Indiana Jones type, to the Louvre to view the corpse of curator Jacques Saunier. Saunier has been murdered in bizarre circumstances. Soon Langdon and beautiful cryptanalyst Sophie Neveau lead readers on a page-turning treasure hunt across France and England, propelled by a series of puzzles and clues. Along the way, the pair search for a hidden "truth" that challenges mainstream Christianity. Brown drew heavily on the 1982 bestseller, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, written by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln (1996), with Lincoln as the conceptual author.
. . Brown’s novel is predicated on a conspiracy theory involving Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Supposedly the old French word sangreal is explained not as san greal ("holy grail") but as sang real ("royal blood"). Although that concept was not current before the late Middle Ages, Holy Blood, Holy Grail argues that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, with whom he had a child, and even that he may have survived the Crucifixion. Jesus’ child, so the "non-fiction" book claims, thus began a bloodline that led to the Merovingian dynasty, a succession of kings who ruled what is today France from 481 to 751.
. . Evidence of the holy bloodline was supposedly found in a trove of parchment documents, discovered by Bérenger Saunière, the priest of Rennes-le-Château in the Pyrenees. The secret had been kept by a shadowy society known as the Priory of Sion which harked back to the era of the Knights Templar and claimed among its past "Grand Masters" Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, and Victor Hugo.
. . Brown seizes on Leonardo—borrowing from "The Secret Code of Leonardo Da Vinci", chapter one of another work of pseudo-history titled "The Templar Revelation." This was co-authored by "researchers" Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, whose previous foray into nonsense was their claim that Leonardo had created the Shroud of Turin—even though that forgery appeared nearly a century before the great artist and inventive genius was born!
. . Among the "revelations" of Picknett and Prince, adopted by Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code, is the claim that Leonardo’s fresco, Last Supper, contains hidden symbolism relating to the sang real secret. They claim, for instance, that St. John in the picture (seated at the right of Jesus) is actually a woman —Mary Magdalene!— and that the shape made by "Mary" and Jesus is "a giant, spreadeagled ‘M’", supposedly confirming the interpretation. By repeating this silliness, Brown provokes critics to note that his characterizations reveal ignorance about his subject.
. . Alas, the whole basis of The Da Vinci Code --the "discovered" parchments of Rennes-le-Château, relating to the alleged Priory of Sion-- were part of a hoax perpetrated by a man named Pierre Plantard. Plantard commissioned a friend to create fake parchments which he then used to concoct the bogus priory story in 1956. (See Carl E. Olson and Sandra Miesel, The Da Vinci Hoax, 2004.)
. . Of course, Dan Brown -—with the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Templar Revelation-- was also duped by the Priory of Sion hoax, which he in turn foisted onto his readers. But he is apparently unrepentant, and his apologists point out that The Da Vinci Code is, after all, fiction, although at the beginning of the novel, Brown claimed it was based on fact. Meanwhile, despite the devastatingly negative evidence, The Da Vinci Code mania continues. Perhaps Brown should go on his own quest --for the truth.
Design is not needed to get design-like.
June 14, 05: The ability to take in visual cues and basically fill in the blanks allows humans to process information very quickly, but new research shows that it also can lead to misperceptions --like seeing things that are not there.
. . "It's a manifestation of over-learning, such as when we find a man's face on Mars' surface or in a forest or on a cloud, said Takeo Watanabe of Boston University. "We've over-learned human faces so we see them where they aren't." In 1976, NASA's Viking 1 Orbiter spacecraft photographed a small patch on the surface of Mars. The shadows from one of the mesas gave many the impression of a human face - a face that has taken on a certain life of its own.
. . To study how our eyes may sometimes fool us, Watanabe and his colleagues have studied perceptional learning - the increased sensitivity to a stimulus due to repeated exposure.
DEVOLUTION --by H. ALLEN ORR Why intelligent design isn't.
. . Issue of 2005-05-30
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050530fa_fact
. . Excerpts:
. . There are several different ways that Darwinian evolution can build irreducibly complex systems. In one, elaborate structures may evolve for one reason and then get co-opted for some entirely different, irreducibly complex function. Who says those thirty flagellar proteins weren’t present in bacteria long before bacteria sported flagella? They may have been performing other jobs in the cell and only later got drafted into flagellum-building. Indeed, there’s now strong evidence that several flagellar proteins once played roles in a type of molecular pump found in the membranes of bacterial cells.
. . Suppose a part gets added to a system merely because the part improves the system’s performance; the part is not, at this stage, essential for function. But, because subsequent evolution builds on this addition, a part that was at first just advantageous might become essential. As this process is repeated through evolutionary time, more and more parts that were once merely beneficial become necessary.
. . Biologists understand why these proteins are so similar. Each gene in an organism’s genome encodes a particular protein. Occasionally, the stretch of DNA that makes up a particular gene will get accidentally copied, yielding a genome that includes two versions of the gene. Over many generations, one version of the gene will often keep its original function while the other one slowly changes by mutation and natural selection, picking up a new, though usually related, function. This process of “gene duplication” has given rise to entire families of proteins that have similar functions; they often act in the same biochemical pathway or sit in the same cellular structure. There’s no doubt that gene duplication plays an extremely important role in the evolution of biological complexity.
. . When you’re looking at a bustling urban street, for example, you probably can’t tell which shop went into business first. This is partly because many businesses now depend on each other and partly because new shops trigger changes in old ones (the new sushi place draws twenty-somethings who demand wireless Internet at the café next door). But it would be a little rash to conclude that all the shops must have begun business on the same day or that some Unseen Urban Planner had carefully determined just which business went where.
. . The most serious problem in Dembski’s account involves specified complexity. Organisms aren’t trying to match any “independently given pattern”: evolution has no goal, and the history of life isn’t trying to get anywhere. If building a sophisticated structure like an eye increases the number of children produced, evolution may well build an eye. But if destroying a sophisticated structure like the eye increases the number of children produced, evolution will just as happily destroy the eye. Species of fish and crustaceans that have moved into the total darkness of caves, where eyes are both unnecessary and costly, often have degenerate eyes, or eyes that begin to form only to be covered by skin—crazy contraptions that no intelligent agent would design. Despite all the loose talk about design and machines, organisms aren’t striving to realize some engineer’s blueprint; they’re striving (if they can be said to strive at all) only to have more offspring than the next fellow.
. . Most evolution is surely co-evolution. Organisms do not spend most of their time adapting to rocks; they are perpetually challenged by, and adapting to, a rapidly changing suite of viruses, parasites, predators, and prey.
. . Intelligent design looks less and less like the science it claimed to be and more and more like an extended exercise in polemics.
One trick psychics use is to give very vague information open to later interpretation (most missing persons are likely to be found "near water", even if it’s a lake, puddle, river, drainage pipe, etc.). They also use information already available through normal means, and make so many different guesses that some will almost certainly be right. Police must follow up on all tips, including those from dubious sources, thus wasting precious hours and police manpower.
Jan 14, 05: Can there be a predisposition for fundamentalism? Do the faithful cope more easily with pain? Are they faster to recover from illness? Such are the questions scientists and theologians will attempt to answer at a new study center which starts experiments into human consciousness in the next few months. "Saying you're interested in the brain but not in consciousness is now like saying you're interested in the stomach but not in digestion."
. . She highlighted the rise of fundamentalist beliefs as a concern. "We are very mindful as to the state of the world as to the strength of beliefs and what that can do for world peace and well-being", she said.
. . "What is it in the brain that, in the presence of evidence, refutes that evidence?" Beliefs can be remarkably resilient, even against logic, added Oxford theologian, professor John Brooke, and this merits study.
. . Scientists will use chili pepper to burn volunteers' skin. Then, religious icons or other symbolic artifacts will be shown to them to see if they make a difference in pain perception. "What we'll [do] is exploring consciousness and particularly how consciousness is shaped and substantiated in the brain, how a belief can trigger or change your consciousness, and how one can affect the other."
. . Although scientists won't be looking to isolate a propensity for religious fundamentalism, Greenfield said they would be looking for what happens in the brain when people have strong beliefs. "What we'll be looking for is the brain organization --not the genetics."
Jan 13, 05: A U.S. judge ordered a Georgia school district to remove stickers challenging the theory of evolution from its textbooks on the grounds that they violated the U.S. Constitution. In a ruling issued in Atlanta, U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper said Cobb County's school board had violated the constitutional ban on the separation of church and state when it put the disclaimers on biology books in 2002.
Dec 30, 04: Osama bin Laden will die of kidney disease. Saddam Hussein will be shot to death. Fidel Castro will die. A live dinosaur thousands of years old will be captured. The Hoover Dam will collapse. And Rosie O'Donnell will adopt Siamese twin girls. That's what the world's best psychics predicted for 2004.
. . Not only did they fail to foretell what would happen in 2004, the psychics continued their tradition of missing the major events that did make the headlines. "Given their track record, it's amazing that a psychic can tell you when the 10 O'Clock News is going to come on!"
In their delightful book Debunked! (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), CERN physicist Georges Charpak and University of Nice physicist Henri Broch show how the application of probability theory to such events is enlightening. In the case of death premonitions, suppose that you know of 10 people a year who die and that you think about each of those people once a year. One year contains 105,120 five-minute intervals during which you might think about each of the 10 people, a probability of one out of 10,512--certainly an improbable event. Yet there are 295 million Americans. Assume, for the sake of our calculation, that they think like you. That makes 1/10,512 X 295,000,000 = 28,063 people a year, or 77 people a day for whom this improbable premonition becomes probable. With the well-known cognitive phenomenon of confirmation bias firmly in force (where we notice the hits and ignore the misses in support of our favorite beliefs), if just a couple of these people recount their miraculous tales in a public forum (next on Oprah!), the paranormal seems vindicated. In fact, they are merely demonstrating the laws of probability writ large. ~By Michael Shermer
Oct 8, 03: Through a series of interviews with local people in Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan, a researcher found that "yeti" is a regional dialect word for "meti", meaning bear.
Sept 7, 03: Mysteriously snuffed out candles, weird sensations and shivers down the spine may not be due to the presence of ghosts in haunted houses but to very low frequency sound that is inaudible to humans. Infrasound is also generated by natural phenomena.
. . British scientists have shown in a controlled experiment that the extreme bass sound known as infrasound produces a range of bizarre effects in people including anxiety, extreme sorrow and chills --supporting popular suggestions of a link between infrasound and strange sensations.
. . In the first controlled experiment of infrasound, Lord and Wiseman played four contemporary pieces of live music, including some laced with infrasound, at a London concert hall and asked the audience to describe their reactions to the music.
. . The audience did not know which pieces included infrasound but 22 percent reported more unusual experiences when it was present in the music. Their unusual experiences included feeling uneasy or sorrowful, getting chills down the spine or nervous feelings of revulsion or fear.
. . "These results suggest that low frequency sound can cause people to have unusual experiences even though they cannot consciously detect infrasound." Infrasound is also produced by storms, seasonal winds and weather patterns and some types of earthquakes. Animals such as elephants also use infrasound to communicate over long distances or as weapons to repel foes.
Those who disturbed Tutankhamun's tomb died all right, but no sooner than those who kept their distance, according to a study published in the British Medical Journal. "It doesn't need to be scientifically debunked because it's rubbish really, but it's the first time I've seen it treated in this medical or scientific way," Neal Spencer, an Egyptologist at the British Museum said of the study.
May, 01: Numerologists rejoiced and mathematicians scratched their heads in 1994, when the respected journal Statistical Science published a paper asserting the Hebrew text of the Bible contains encoded messages. That work swiftly spawned a best-selling book, television documentaries, and endless Nostradamuses finding predictions ranging from the bombing of Hiroshima to the death of Princess Di coded into the text of the Old Testament. Now statisticians from the Australian National University and Jerusalem's Hebrew University, publishing in the same journal, reveal the flawed logic behind the original claim.
. . Dror Bar-Natan of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and his colleagues proved the search technique is so vague and open to interpretation that it can turn up hidden words in any text of comparable length. For instance, in Moby Dick, the researchers found apparent references to assassinations of Martin Luther King, Robert F. Kennedy, and Mohandas Gandhi. Says Bar-Natan: "The world is full of highly unusual occurrences, but this isn't one of them."
From UU WORLD: "Divorce went against what for a couple of millenniums had been the very definition of marriage--that it linked you unto death. That was Jesus’ definition!
. . In 1816, when Connecticut was debating divorce, Timothy Dwight, the president of Yale, equated divorcés with prostitutes--they were “impure, loathsome, abandoned wretches … the offspring of Sodom and Gomorrah.”
From UU WORLD:
. . Young Arthur Conan Doyle filled many notebooks with ruminations similar to those he later put in the mouth of Sherlock Holmes. He wrote: "A religion, to be true, must include everything from the amoeba to the milky way. Nothing must be excluded from our view and purview for any faith to be true."
The believer often falls prey to the logical fallacy devised by Arthur Conan-Doyle who purports "if you've eliminated all the possibilities, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the answer."
. . What makes this a logical fallacy is that one must first know all the possibilities in order to eliminate them. This is simply not possible. ~Paul Novak. The ParaSkeptics.
Schrafinator, Yahoo Skeptics Club: "If it was me, I would want every test in the world, but then again, I am one to doubt my senses, because I know how wrong they can be. Most people do not understand anything about how memory and thought can be heavily influenced by many factors such as hypnogogic hallucinations, and mass delusions, let alone the thought traps of confirmation bias, wishful thinking, selective thinking, communal reinforcement, subjective validation, priming, and post-hoc reasoning."
schrafinator: "There is that sticking point for the UFO folks that there were no "space alien" claims until the 1950's, when Sputnik went up and science fiction took off. Before that, it was fairies and witches. Before that, it was demons and succubi.
. . Throughout all of recorded history, various era-appropriate otherworldly beings have been sitting on people's chests in bed, holding them down in bed, doing sexual things to them in bed, watching them in bed, and implanting things in them in bed. The type of creature changes [over time], but not the basic experience. This is very, very meaningful, particularly since there has never been any physical evidence.
. . It is not closed-minded to require evidence."
"Ausiepath will continue to see faces on Mars despite any debunking, because he so desperatly wants to. Likewise, every hardened bogie he picks from his nose will be an alien implant because of his pathological need to have been implanted by aliens. This compulsion to believe scares the crap out of me." ~Avondrow
"Without evidence of some sort, ideas are just speculation." Matt
(from Skeptic club) posthumanist(66/M/Sonoma County, CA) 1/23/01 It's everyone's right to be both ignorant and stupid. It's not everyone's right to impose their ignorance and stupidity upon others. The Skeptic movement is about preventing the latter from happening. Since ignorance and stupidity are contra-survival, they will be weeded eventually from the gene pool. To speed that along, let those who believe that global warming is a liberal hoax begin constructing their beach houses. -John Thomas.
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