Chariots of Iron

In zee news: atheists in heaven? Clergy across the country freak out. Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays: Does it matter? Apparently it does. People get pissed when you mess with Santa and Women go “TJ Hooker” on all of Egypt. God tells man to hump daugter every day for 5 years and the Raelians run into some trouble in Israel.

Derrr…Ken Ham can’t do math.

Jesus is a big fat, imperfect, confused liar-theif. Lamar leads us through a very interesting discussion about the premise that Jesus is perfect and why that premise is important to Christians. Then we use the bible to pop that little bubble. Watch your back, though; Jesus might jack your donkey.

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As we talked about in the last podcast Australian students in religious education classes are going to be given some education about Humanism and it will be pointed out that “there is no evidence for god. Of course Ken Ham has a bit of a reading comprehension problem, and this explains a lot about Mr. Ham, in his recent blog post he claims that Australian Students are to be taught “there is no god”.

Allow me to be the first to point out that “there is no evidence for” and “there is no” are two distinctly different statements. It is further into Mr. Ham’s inanity that I take a certain level of umbrage, he claims that “religious education” is the place for this discussion because “atheism is a religion”.

This old one again, and frankly one I’m a bit sick of. Atheism, is specifically the absence of religion, in the way that “darkness” is not in itself a “thing” but merely the absence of light, so is atheism an absence of religion. Humanism could be thought of as a religion in some ways, however a more proper definition would be that Humanism is a philosophy as most religions deal with supernatural claims and are most marked by some form of worship, and philosophies are not.

Of course where atheism and religion cross is when secularists point out that freedom of religion, in order to be truly a “freedom” must include freedom from religion. If I told you that your “freedom of being punched” meant you got to choose wether I punched you in the face or in the gut, I do not believe you’d think very highly of such a “freedom”.

Over on my favorite blog (well besides my own) PZ Myers was kind enough to post some hate-mail he’d received over the recent Zoo/Creation museum controversy.  While Professor Myers does not respond to these directly, there was one comment I wanted to call out, and decided, since I’ve been lazy this week, that I’d do so here, as it is representative of a common claim from fundamentalist religious types.

Scientist thought the universe revolved around the earth about 1000 years ago,they thought the earth was flat 500 years ago and 200 years ago man couldn’t fly so as we progress we find science is very fallible.

What the author of this statement fails to realize is that the above three statements were believed by early “scientists” because the religious institutions at the head of most civilizations said that these things were so.  I also think the authors dates were a bit off… but all three are examples of dogmatic truth overthrown by scientific inquiry. While it is true that as more data is collected by scientists theories are revised, overthrown and corrected. But that is the strength of science not it’s weakness. The ones holding onto outdated beliefs are the religiously faithful. Here they chide scientists for being wrong in the past centuries yet somehow holding onto beliefs over 2000 years old is “correct”.

News flash, you were wrong 200 years ago, get over it, while scientists may have been wrong in the past, they’ve at least the intellectual honesty to change thier beliefs in concert with the facts rather than railing against the facts in order to hold onto thier beliefs (although there have been individual sceintists who have held onto overthrown theories, this is speaking of the scientific community in general, not individual scientists). Let’s also add that scientific methods and the introduction of peer-review and widely distributed (at least amongst the professionals) scientific journals have added much to the accuracy of the scientific method, no longer are authorities allowed to dismiss arguments when evidence is presented that all can see and experiments are easily replicated and predictions confirmed. The internet has made this process more efficient but has also caused some data to get out to the general public before the peer-review process is complete, hence my common detraction of popular science websites in favor of established scientifc journals.

In this episode, we talk about sexual abuse as religious therapy, expose style astronomy and the shit-heels that run the Salvation Army. Spineless principals, hypocritical censorship and the humanist counter-attack down under and finally we illustrate through song how the WBC is doing more for secularism than any atheist group could ever hope to.

In our main segment, we explore the notion that there may be nothing atheists can say about religion without it being labled “hate-speech.” We pick apart an exellent letter from a woman who is offended by the atheist sign on the lawn of the Washington legislature. Listen to the trainwreck unfold as she makes asinine claims such as: “The Catholic Church preserved the western world during the dark ages” and “Cain and Abel is the oldest story in the world.” Join us, as we tear our hair out and froth at the mouth impotently.

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I found article written by Angie Vogt for PNW Local News, which we talk about in episode 14. This is the full text of my frothy rebuttal.

Enjoy!

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In an article over on sciam, researchers have found that meteor-like impacts can also catalyze the formation of life’s chemical precursors.This could be in contradiction or in complement to asteroids and comets being the delivery vehicle for such molecules.

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Disaster continues for this fine nation I live in and the forces of the “christian right” (as opposed to the respectable right, the fiscal conservatives) are galvanizing and pushing their religious agenda harder than ever. Shortly after becoming absolutely incensed over Bill-O the clowns remarks concerning the Atheist sign in Washington state (which has now gone missing). We’ve got this revisionist historian airing his opinions in the Miami-Herald.

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While I often trash National Geographic (along with other popular-science magazines) in favor of true Scientific Journals, this one is a bit interesting, and states that the paper reflecting this find is due to appear in Geology. According to NeoGeo they’ve found some stone tools predating the earliest Homo Sapiens remains by 80,000 years. These tools are apparently sophisticated enough that they are attributed to Homo Sapiens, and date to about 276,000 years ago (the oldest Homo Sapiens remains are about 195,000 years old).

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While I do not always agree with Roger Ebert in his movie reviews, I must say that of any movie critic in the popular press i find his reviews the most useful. Weather or not he liked the movie I can usually determine if I would personally enjoy a film from his review. This speaks volumes, so it was a little concerning a few months back when on Roger Ebert’s website a Q&A about creationism appeared. Something about it didn’t quite sit right with me. Mr. Ebert seemed to intelligent to buy into creationism, so I thought it was either a prank, joke, or someone at the Sun-Times with access pulling a fast one.

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In a great example of how science corrects its own errors is this recent article in the New York Times showing that recent studies indicate that the early earth may have been more hospitable to life than originally thought. It’s a clear example of how, when backed by evidence long-held scientific “truths” can be overturned when one follows the proper process of evidence, study and review.

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