Science > Religion

This comic from SMBC sums up exactly why 93% of the top scientists who are members of the United States National Academy of the Sciences are atheist or agnostic:

You Can't Explain That!

Many of you might know that conservative commentator Bill O'Reilly made a fool of himself when interviewing president of the American Atheists, David Silverman, by trying to explain the existence of god by saying, "Tide comes in, tide goes out.  No miscommunication.  You can't explain that".  Justifiably, Bill'O has become a laughing stock of the internet.  Again.

Now there's a fun meme going round that puts similarly stupid phrases above a picture of Bill O'Reilly as arguments that you just can't explain, so it must be true!  Joel shared this via Google reader.  So in the spirit of lampooning foolish TV figures that use terrible reasoning skills, I've made one of my own with the meme generator:

Help Balance the NC Budget!

I love transparency in government!  While we'll probably never be at a level that I totally approve of, any attempt to actually use the internet to engage the public with government decisions and processes is really a positive attribute in my book.  Check out this new website by Governor Beverly Perdue of North Carolina (my home state!).

You can actually go through all of the different options to decide what funding gets cut and what revenues get raised to balance the NC deficit.  Give it a try!  I cut 1.265 billion dollars of spending and raised 1.5 billion dollars in new revenue to give NC a surplus of 0.340 billion dollars.  Of course, realistically, these decisions are much more complicated, but it's nice to see the options and have an idea of what sorts of financial cuts and gains are plausible.  What can you do to fix the deficit?

Prop 8 is Delayed. Again.

The Advocate reported today that the supreme court case concerning Proposition 8, the bill passed in the California 2008 election making same-sex marriage illegal, is now delayed because of an appeal to 'standing'.  Ironically, this delay is actually being caused by gay rights advocates.  Prop 8 had been overturned earlier in the year (thankfully) by Justice Vaughn R. Walker.  The decision was appealed, but not by the state of California, the governor, or the attorney general.  Now the legal battle will be fought to determine whether general voters of California (supporters of Prop 8) actually have the right to appeal.


History says that voters do not have the right to appeal.  According to the Advocate:

Last month a three-judge panel for the ninth circuit asked the California Supreme Court whether Prop. 8 supporters who have defended the ballot initiative in the federal case Perry v. Schwarzenegger "possess either a particularized interest in the initiative's validity or the authority to assert the State's interest in the initiative's validity ... when the public officials charged with that duty refuse to do so."

Fortunately the process is being expedited, but don't expect a decision on this matter any time soon.  It seems that there is light on the horizon for the Prop 8 opponents - with a little more time, gay and lesbian couples will no longer be formally discriminating against by the government.  Better late than never.


In other news, the Hawai'i legislature approved civil unions today for same-sex couples, and the Governor plans to sign the bill.  This brings the tally up to 10 states that offer domestic partnership and 5 states plus Washington DC that allow same-sex marriage.  It's a long road, but we'll get there eventually. 

Empty the Clip

Tea Party Jesus is keeping politician comments in perspective.  Alabama Senator Scott Beason recently said this about the topic of illegal immigration:

Really?  Empty the clip?  A gun reference that suggests firing all ammunition at immigrants until the weapon is empty?  How can this person be serious? Such bigoted comments should be exposed, and voters in Alabama should vote for "the other guy" in the next election.

If you're not familiar with the work over at TPJ, the author takes quotes from religious conservatives (usually Christian) and puts them in the mouth of Jesus - because conservatives think they're following Jesus' way of life, TPJ switches the character speaking the words and let's the reader decide if it's something Jesus would do.  It doesn't take twelve years of Sunday school to know that Jesus would never say "Empty the clip, and do what has to be done."

Free Will(y)

Thank goodness for Mr. Deity!  I've now found the perfect response to show the next baptist or evangelical that explains to me that the reason an omniscient and omnipotent god can allow evil is because of free will.  What a terrible reason!  In other words, a god would be choosing evil and suffering so we can have free will?  Doesn't sound like a trade off that a merciful and compassionate god who wants us to be with him/her one day would do.  Let's see how Mr. Deity gets through this:

Episode 21 is up!

Hey!  We've just uploaded our 21st episode of Pascal's Bettors - the best way to be happy without god!  Take a listen and join in the conversation and fun.

Finally a Good Trade-off for Allergies

There's a cool new study out showing an inverse correlation between the intensity of your allergies and the susceptibility of getting gliomas, a common type of brain and spinal cancer.  Although it's just a correlation, the study supports other data suggesting that the more allergies you have the less likely you are to get certain types of cancer.  It's still uncertain as to why this might be the case, but one likely hypothesis is that allergies indicate an overactive immune system.  Cancers result only when your body fails to kill the rogue cells before they get out of control - if people with allergies have overactive immune systems, perhaps their bodies just make it naturally harder for cancer cells to escape and survive immune stimulation.  Perhaps further research will confirm or refute this hypothesis, and inform us of more handy tools we could make to block cancer formation.

Until then, take a look at this MRI image of a glioma taken from the Mayfield Clinic website:

Hymns for Science

I myself (an ardent scientist and atheist) am unashamed to admit that I'm a huge fan of sacred music - especially pieces by Mozart and Rachmaninoff.  Unfortunately, as it's been discussed before in the science and atheism blogosphere, there are no good science or atheism hymns like religious folk have.  Although Steve Martin has actually performed a song about how "atheists don't have no songs", there really isn't anything all that enjoyable (or singable) that actually resembles something like a hymn you would find at your local church for science/godless enthusiasts like me.

Until now.

I give you, Evolution Made Us All, by Ben Hillman:


Evolution Made Us All from Ben Hillman on Vimeo.

Thou Shalt Kill?

Many Christians, especially evangelicals, believe that evil things happen in the world because of Satan, not because of God.  This is a typical response to the question "Why does God let bad things happen to good people?"  The other popular response is "You can't know God's plan", implying that even though you *think* whatever happened was bad/evil, in the bigger scheme of things it was probably good (because God did it).  Of course, the implication is that God is the source of all things good, and Satan is the source of all things evil - it's a bit of a tautology, and it's very frustrating to hear these excuses in conversation because it seems that the individuals are just imagining beings into existence (Satan) or claiming your ignorance to account for phenomena that they don't want associated with their God (but should be associated because they demand an all-knowing, all-powerful god).

Well here's something else Christians may have trouble explaining - a simple graph depicting the number of murders that occur in the Bible committed by either God or Satan:

According to the source here (the Bible), God killed 2,391,421 people, but Satan only killed 10.  Note that the Y-axis is logarithmic - this indicates a level of killing by God that is FIVE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE ABOVE what Satan did.  In other words, God killed people 239,142.1 times MORE than Satan did.  I thought that the commandment was "Thou Shalt Not Kill"?  I'm sure you can draw your own conclusions.

Information originally shared from a StumbleUpon post.
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UPDATE: For clarification, the SumbleUpon post was referred to me by the noble Greg Barnes, otherwise known as Greggles.