I can go on and on, and as many of you have noticed I have in the past, about the evils of organized religion, but the biggest evil of religion is its destruction of rational thought. Here is a prime example. It’s painful to watch.

via Effect Measure

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Rationality is anathema when faith pervades a society. North America is well along that path. If anything makes that clear it is this incident in Barrie Ontario.

Colleen Leduc already had a lot going against her. The Barrie woman was holding down a job while struggling to raise her autistic 11-year-old daughter. She couldn’t afford to give the child the intensive therapy she needed, and was forced to send her to a public school in the area.

So she was completely unprepared for what happened to her and the youngster, an almost unbelievable tale of red tape involving a strange claim from a teaching assistant, a bizarre decision by a school board, a visit from the Children’s Aid Society (CAS) and most improbably of all, the incorrect pronouncements of a psychic.

Leduc’s weird tale began on May 30, when she dropped young Victoria off for class at Terry Fox Elementary and headed in to work, only to receive a frantic phone call from the school telling her it was urgent she come back right away.

The frightened mother rushed back to the campus and was stunned by what she heard - the principal, vice-principal and her daughter’s teacher were all waiting for her in the office, telling her they’d received allegations that Victoria had been the victim of sexual abuse - and that the CAS had been notified.

How did they come by such startling knowledge? Leduc was incredulous as they poured out their story.

“The teacher looked and me and said: ‘We have to tell you something. The educational assistant who works with Victoria went to see a psychic last night, and the psychic asked the educational assistant at that particular time if she works with a little girl by the name of “V.” And she said ‘yes, I do.’ And she said, ‘well, you need to know that that child is being sexually abused by a man between the ages of 23 and 26.’”

Victoria, who is non-verbal, had also been exhibiting sexualized behaviour in class, actions which are known to be typical of autistic behavior. (See other typical actions here) That lead authorities to suspect she had a bladder infection that may have somehow been related to the ‘attack.’

Leduc was shaken by the idea. “It’s actually your worst nightmare your child being violated,” she admits. “So for them to even suggest that, and that be my worst nightmare, it was horrific.”

But things got worse when school officials used the “evidence” and accepted the completely unsubstantiated word of the seer by reporting the case to Children’s Aid, which promptly opened a file on the family.

“They reported me to Children’s Aid,” Leduc declares, still disbelieving. “Based on a psychic!”

I am flabbergasted to say the least. WTF was going through these idiots heads, why are they still employed, and how did people that fucking stupid ever get into that type of position in the first place. Religion is for dummies, it makes you stupid because it short circuits the logic functions of the brain. To believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Cat on the Ceiling, God, Allah, Jehovah, Xenu, take your choice, you have to completely suspend rational thought and disbelief. Doing so leaves you susceptible to all kinds of wacky faith based ideas like homeopathy, astrology, numerology and countless other new age ideas that have no scientific evidence to support their claims and vast amounts that prove them worthless.

h/t to PZ

Technorati Tags: flabbergasted, fucking stupid, Religion is for dummies, Flying Spaghetti Monster, Cat on the Ceiling, God, Allah, Jehovah, Xenu, worthless, psychics, frauds, con artists

I’m too lazy to check whether this is true or not but I sure hope it is

Technorati Tags: Texas, Drummond’s Bar, Baptist churc, power of prayer

Evolution caught in action

New Scientist: A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers’ eyes. It’s the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait.

And because the species in question is a bacterium, scientists have been able to replay history to show how this evolutionary novelty grew from the accumulation of unpredictable, chance events.

Twenty years ago, evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski of Michigan State University in East Lansing, US, took a single Escherichia coli bacterium and used its descendants to found 12 laboratory populations.

The 12 have been growing ever since, gradually accumulating mutations and evolving for more than 44,000 generations, while Lenski watches what happens

How it all likely started

Life’s Raw Materials May Have Come From The Stars, Scientists Confirm
ScienceDaily (Jun. 13, 2008) — Scientists have confirmed for the first time that an important component of early genetic material which has been found in meteorite fragments is extraterrestrial in origin, in a paper published on 15 June 2008.

The finding suggests that parts of the raw materials to make the first molecules of DNA and RNA may have come from the stars.

The scientists, from Europe and the USA, say that their research provides evidence that life’s raw materials came from sources beyond the Earth.

The materials they have found include the molecules uracil and xanthine, which are precursors to the molecules that make up DNA and RNA, and are known as nucleobases.

The team discovered the molecules in rock fragments of the Murchison meteorite, which crashed in Australia in 1969.

Technorati Tags: evolution, caught in the act, Escherichia coli, genetic material, found in meteorite fragments, extraterrestrial, uracil, xanthine, DNA, RNA, nucleobases, science, ID, Intelligent Design

New Video from the National Center for Science Education.

Thomas Paine:

“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize Mankind; and for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.”

Technorati Tags: obscene stories, voluptuous debaucheries, cruel and torturous executions, unrelenting vindictiveness, Bible, word of a demon, word of God, wickedness

Global climate change denialists and so called Intelligent Design proponents share at least two things in common, aside from their general lack of reasoning capabilities, and that is their willful dismissal of sound science and their intellectual dishonesty. Here’s a couple of articles to piss them both off.

Scientists at the Carnegie Institution determined that over a 23-year span from 1979 to 2001 the jet streams in both hemispheres have risen in altitude and shifted toward the poles. The jet stream in the northern hemisphere has also weakened. These changes fit the predictions of global warming models and have implications for the frequency and intensity of future storms, including hurricanes. (Science Daily)

and for the idiotic IDers - you’re Expelled

In 1971, biologists moved five adult pairs of Italian wall lizards from their home island of Pod Kopiste, in the South Adriatic Sea, to the neighboring island of Pod Mrcaru. Now, an international team of researchers has shown that introducing these small, green-backed lizards, Podarcis sicula, to a new environment caused them to undergo rapid and large-scale evolutionary changes.

“Striking differences in head size and shape, increased bite strength and the development of new structures in the lizard’s digestive tracts were noted after only 36 years, which is an extremely short time scale,” says Duncan Irschick, a professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “These physical changes have occurred side-by-side with dramatic changes in population density and social structure.”

Researchers returned to the islands twice a year for three years, in the spring and summer of 2004, 2005 and 2006. Captured lizards were transported to a field laboratory and measured for snout-vent length, head dimensions and body mass. Tail clips taken for DNA analysis confirmed that the Pod Mrcaru lizards were genetically identical to the source population on Pod Kopiste. (Science Daily

Read the article it’s fascinating. It’s pretty much as close to proof of evolution as it is possible to get.

Technorati Tags: Global climate change, denialists, Intelligent Design, sound science, intellectual dishonesty, Carnegie Institution, jet stream, These changes fit the predictions of global warming models, storms, hurricanes, Expelled, pod kopiste, green-backed lizards, Podarcis sicula, rapid and large-scale evolutionary changes, only 36 years, Duncan Irschick, evolution

Fitna by Geert Wilder is a very disturbing film. It is a completely one sided view of Islam. It focuses solely on jihadists and not on the millions of peaceful law abiding Muslims that don’t accept the Wahhabi jihadist movement. By doing so he has produced a hate film, regardless of the sweet Rimsky-Korsakov Scheherazade background music. This is a movie intended to incite fear among non-Muslims and hatred of Muslims by them and for that reason alone he needs to be thoroughly condemned for it.

There’s nothing wrong in pointing out the dangers of jihadism so long as you also point out that the vast, overwhelming majority of Muslims are peaceful, though misguided, people. Indeed, so far as I’m concerned, the only good jihadist is a dead jihadist. Their take on the world is submit to their violent brand of Islam or die so they should all just die. I don’t have a problem with that, do you? In my book the same applies to any fundamentalist, from any religion, that tries through force to push their fucked up view of the universe onto anyone. In my book all religions, especially monotheistic religions, are despicable.

You can view the film below but pay attention - you need a strong stomach to watch this.

Update 11:12pm PDT - Due to serious death threats LiveLeak has pulled the movie from their site. It is however still available on YouTube so I have changed the video below to that

Technorati Tags: Fitna, Geert Wilder, jihadist, hate film, Muslims, dangers of jihadism, majority of Muslims are peaceful, , only good jihadist is a dead jihadist, fundamentalist, any religion, fucked up view of the universe

You have to ask that question when assholes like John Hagee

via Ed Brayton

make asinine statements about natural disasters, like Katrina, being punishment from God for sinful behavior then what does he think about this:

1. CNN: Under sunny skies, members of the Church of God in Lady Lake, Florida, held their morning worship service Sunday amid the remnants of their destroyed sanctuary, leveled by a pre-dawn tornado on Friday
2. North Carolina 1998: Before touching down, a funnel cloud damaged property in the small Stokes County town of Pine Hall. The fellowship hall of Morning Star Baptist Church was hit especially hard — walls were knocked off the foundation and windows were broken.
3. Haysville KS 1999: Haysville churches destroyed, but residents’ faith unshaken
4. Charleston SC: 2008Congregation Vows to Rebuild After Tornado Collapses Church
5. OK May 1999: Churches destroyed: 3.
6. March, 1948: That was the day that terrible tornado swept through parts of Ohio, taking down the Landeck church
7. Caledonia MS January 2008: Caledonia MS Church of Christ Building Destroyed
8. Greenburg KS: May 2007: All the churches were destroyed.
9. DODGE CITY, KS May 2007:With his church destroyed by a powerful tornado
10. and many many many more examples

I guess God must just have a powerfully bad aim eh John. Or, gasp, maybe he/she/it just doesn’t like Christians eh”? It sure seems like that to me - it;s the bible belt that gets hit the worst John.

hat tip to commenter Wes on Ed’s post for the germ of this idea.

Technorati Tags: John Hagee, asinine, natural disasters, Katrina, punishment from God, sinful behavior, Morning Star Baptist Church, churches destroyed, , God, bad aim, Christians, fucking moron

Canada rules oh great noodleness

via PZ

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The marvelous Mark Morford has a good column, How to Abandon Your God, today. In there he quotes a census stat and an explanation for it that I’ve always felt (and no doubt you too have felt the same) is bang on.

…78 percent of Americans still identify as Christian overall, no matter if they actually pray or attend church or run for Congress or secretly snort meth and visit gay hookers as they run an evangelical megachurch in Colorado? It certainly seems like an impressive number, like no matter how you slice it and no matter how many new beliefs spring up, we are overwhelmingly, devoutly Jesus-happy.

I’m not buying it. I suspect a huge chunk of respondents merely check the “Christian” box for lack of something else, because they felt they needed to choose something, even though they don’t actually follow Scripture in the slightest, but since they’re not technically atheists and they’ve never really ventured out on a unique spiritual quest of their own, they merely choose “Christian” as the default American position, the fallback, the safe bet, sort of like checking “average” on a customer satisfaction survey or saying “fine” when your barista asks you how you’re doing today. Thoughtless, automatic, convenient.

There’s the nub of it. Whenever I hear the fanatical Christian proselytizers claiming how nearly all Americans are Christian this is exactly the type of thought that goes through my head. I think most aren’t, it’s just out of habit because they don’t know what else to put. Since grade school they’ve always filled that box in on questionnaires and it has become a force of habit, no more, no less. Just another lie the Dobson’s of this world tell you to convince you to conform, to not be an outsider. If it wasn’t so sad it would be hilarious, it is so contrary to the myth of the rugged individualist that permeates American culture but which in reality is observed more in absence than in fact. The individualist is mostly a myth in America. Get lockstep in line behind the president or you’re a traitor ad nauseam.

In other words, maybe you abandon God by realizing it’s all God, it’s all divine, all hot, thrumming, vibrating connection in all places in all things at all times. And hence, to try and parse it and restrict it and beat it into submission and claim it for one people, one history, one country or church or authoritarian body, is actually the highest form of divine insult.

Or, you know, grand cosmic joke. Same thing, really.

Eggsactly I remember writing a paper once in a college philosophy course that I guess could be summed up as, all religions (and particularly monotheistic ones) are an attempt to codify that which can not be codified, the mystical experience. In doing so they lose everything and destroy that which they wanted preserved.

Technorati Tags: Mark Morford, Abandon Your God, Christian, evangelical, Scripture, proselytizers, myth of the rugged individualist

Soon, in Colorado God will be a murderer. According to a new law being proposed as soon as a human egg is fertilized it will have the status of, and all the legal protections thereof, a human being (Do You Know Where Your Candidate Stands on this Issue - no surprise that Huckabee supports this). Now considering that between 10 and 30 percent of all pregnancies end in a spontaneous miscarriage (no human intervention of any kind) then obviously God murdered those poor innocent baby people. Well, you know there can only be one recourse to that don’t you, eye for an eye, tooth for tooth and all that. That’s right, execute God for murder. Kill the bastard (once and for all) and be done with it.

So just remember folks when crossing into Colorado you’ll be in the state of very stupid people.

via C&L

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Watch. The video says it all

hat tip to Sara

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Even though this was sent as a joke you know you see this kind of hypocrisy from Christians every day.

Technorati Tags: Christians, What Would Jesus Do, Follow me to Sunday School”, My Boss is a Jewish Carpenter

The picture below was taken recently in Rio as lightening struck the 130 foot tall statue of Christ the Redeemer. I guess he must have done something to piss his old man off or maybe Thor is making a comeback and letting the opposition know it