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See here for what is essentially the same argument, but with a much more detailed explanation than what I provided.

Just because the other journals are, "respected" doesn't mean they are smarter.

It's been a problem for a while.

And will continue to be.

The androcentric scientific and meta-scientific evidence that the penis is the male reproductive organ is considered overwhelming and largely uncontroversial.

That’s how we began. We used this preposterous sentence to open a “paper” consisting of 3,000 words of utter nonsense posing as academic scholarship. Then a peer-reviewed academic journal in the social sciences accepted and published it.

Because departments run by LGBTQ and similarly "disadvantaged" people produce such high levels of scholarship:

http://www.skeptic.com/reading...

That white men should just quit- just get out of the way of people of color, whom they are repressing :

http://www.dailywire.com/news/...

Look in a money and resource limited environment, we have to make hard decisions about what and who is important and what and who is not:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Because feminists have sooo much to offer science, so much keen insight:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

That it would be a pity to let the entire social justice left be excluded merely on the basis of their inability, their differently abledness:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Like the Revivvalism of the turn of the century and Scientology today, social justice is a literal cult. Unfortunately it's a cult that threatens the rational and scientific basis of Western civilization and if left unchecked, which it largely has been, will reduce the West to Feminist Lysenkoism and a and ethnic and gender-based totalitarianism.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/...

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/L...

The time for passivity and tolerance in the face of civilization-deconstructing psychosis is past. It's civilization or it's the race hatred, gender-cidal cult of social justice. It won't be both. I know I have re-engineered my career to effect the total, permanent and irreversible extermination of this disease and I enjoin anyone of good will- man woman white black brown gay or straight- to join me.

Also I wonder how on-clock we believe these cycles have been coming in the past. Have they all been well within that 15% estimated drift of today? 15% doesn't sound like much for a system so incredibly complex. I may be wrong.

Sounds like you don't really know just how fucked thing have become. Using ice core samples, they were able to calculate how much atmospheric CO2 there was in the past. Here's a graph of it including our really fucked present.

Interesting article by Dr. Marty Klein (licensed marriage & family therapist and certified sex therapist for over thirty years) who adresses this topic rather well... http://www.skeptic.com/eskepti... ....and yes, there are problems, but no, they are not critical.

"Because you interrupted a thread discussing"
nope I responded to this:
"Ah no.. the problem is the ignorant masses propagating the fallacious idea that science and religious faith are incompatible"

"Your approach is counterproductive"
I think we can only make progress proportional to how non-religious those parents are. Maybe I piss them off, but trying to trick them into accepting science is not going to work. Even if I make lots of progress there, the next scientific discovery that threatens their religion leads to a much greater backlash (proportional to the strength of their beliefs).

If they choose the failure of religion http://www.skeptic.com/reading... over the success of science then that's their mistake. But since I think they are in conflict with each other I'm not going to pretend otherwise so I can temporarily get a few people to tolerate science.

I know I'm ambitious, but every bit of progress is valuable, it's not a big bang idea where someone has to lose faith completely.

When the World Trade Center collapsed, there were those who said the burning fuel from the airliners never got hot enough to melt the steel beams of the buildings. This means, in their warped view, there was no way for the buildings to have collapsed on their own and were instead deliberately destroyed.

The problem with that idea is twofold. While the heat from the burning fuel may not have gotten hot enough to melt the steel, it was sufficient to heat the metal and cause structural deformation.

Further, these conspiracy folks completely ignore all the other combustible material inside the buildings which WERE hot enough to warp the beams and pull them laterally from the sides of the building (see this sheet, numbers 8 and 9 for a further explanation) which then precipitated the pancake effect we all witnessed.

Thus, the reference to not being able to melt an airliner.

However, these same folks ignore incidents such as this one where a tanker fire directly under a bridge was able to melt steel beams. It's the way conspiracy theories work. Ignore anything which contradicts your point of view or explain them away as not relevant to their rantings. Just like Russia and their proxies have done trying to claim their innocence at shooting down the civilian airliner.

It seems the US has always had much more and worse bullying than other countries, phones and internet are not the root cause of this problem. Seems to me the underlying cause is religion.

It claims to provide absolute morality, while the morality of the abrahamic god is horrible.
It claims there is an eternal afterlife, logically that means this life is irrelevant.
In order to keep existing in the face of scientific developments, it promotes gullibility and portrays seeking knowledge as a sin.

[url=http://imgur.com/u1hWgfr][img]http://i.imgur.com/u1hWgfr.png[/img][/url]

And all of this while there is plenty of morality without religion, it has even been shown that life is shittier the more religious people are. http://www.skeptic.com/reading.... That does not mean religion makes things worse, but it does mean that religion does not make things better.

ok, if you've lost your sense of humour try this instead http://www.skeptic.com/reading...

That's what gets me ... saying with certainty that Santa Clause, Zeus, Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny does not exist is not disputed. As an adult, if you beleive in those things, your mental competence is put into question.

Say the same thing about the Judeo-Christain God, well then! You are committing a logical fallacy because you cannot prove his non-existence (Shermer). And you are obviously quite arrogant to say with certainty that god does not exist.

Its history can be traced back to the Egyptians and even earlier (Armstrong) and as Stephen Hawking has said (paraphrasing), "The existence of God is impossible because time did not exist before the Universe existed; therefore, nothing could have existed to create the Universe."

The historical evidence of the existence of Jesus is scant at best (Biblical historians mostly agree that he did exist though). He was an apocalyptic preacher who pissed off the Romans and they executed him - most likely by sword and put him into a mass grave. (Skeptic Magazine). The New Testament story of Jesus is a fanciful tale.

See the current issue of 'Skeptic' Jesus as a person probably existed, although the evidence is scant, a few biblical historians (some Jewish) believe he existed.

He apparently was an apocalyptic preacher among many that the Romans killed for causing too much trouble.

As far as the teachings in the New Testament - I think they were a mishmash of what folks taught then and what was imported along the trading routes from the far East. Like the Golden Rule (Do not do onto others ...) which was orginally taught by Confucious 1,000 years before Christ.

And of course, his divinity was/is complete horseshit.

Of all the religions teaching the same things back then, I think Christianity got the lead because of the conversion of Constatine's conversion. If he didn't convert, Christianity wouldn't have gotten that lucky foothold and have taken over the Western World.

For some people nothing says "appeal to emotion" like FBI arrest reports I guess.

Here are some great resources for anyone confused by information at "911truth.org" and would like more information.

'Debunking 9/11 Myths': Nano-thermite dust found near Ground Zero (Photos)
Debunking 9/11 Myths: conspiracy plots are sheer fantasy

NIST Releases Final WTC 7 Investigation Report
World Trade Center Disaster Study

Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts
Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report
Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report

Resources for debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories

Debunking 9/11 Bomb Theories

The Truthers Are Out There

9/11 Conspiracy Theories: The 9/11 Truth Movement in Perspective

Debunking Conspiracy Theories In 'Voodoo Histories'

You joke but that's a common line of thought among denialists. "How could we be so arrogant to think a little human activity could change the climate of this mighty planet?" or "God won't let that happen" or something like that.

And here is the truth behind that statement:
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/06-01-05/

It is unlikely those were his words and the statement has most likely been "been drastically exaggerated beyond anything that he could recognize as his own".

It not the first time I hear religious people (jews and christians) claim he was "one of theirs" using dubious or out of context quotes. I can excuse the historical inaccuracies in your old books but I can't excuse the making up of new ones.

Einstein was wrong about this one, if it is in fact an authentic Einstein quote. Can someone please verify for me?

Here is an apparently honest attempt at verification by a math professor who put a lot of effort into sourcing the quote in 2006. He concludes that it is probably not authentic.

HOWEVER, in 2008, a woman brought a series of letters to an episode of Antiques Roadshow. Apparently her father had also attempted to source the quote. Her father finally received a letter from Einstein himself:

"It's true that I made a statement which corresponds approximately with the text you quoted. I made this statement during the first years of the Nazi regime-- much earlier than 1940-- and my expressions were a little more moderate."

Einstein never said that as he confirmed in an unpublished letter: http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/06-01-05/

Lot's of Niburu debunking here: http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/2012-and-counting/

Agnosticism is just weak atheism,
I agree. It has a bit of a scientific flavor but it's rubbish.

There's another distinction that needs to be made though Most atheists are antitheists and usually against religion. They are believers in not-God. Atheism is also typically a reaction to christianity. Just read the piece "Roman Catholic Atheist" about how weird it is that Freeman Dyson goes to church. Contrast this with how acceptable the idea is of an atheist Jew in a synagogue.

  An atheist in the more literal sense would have a more neutral attitude. Mainly, less involved, like someone who just got introduced to the concept. I don't mind anthropomorphising too much and I could believe in a God if properly defined, so that it becomes a valuable concept.

"Why is HAARP such an attractive target for conspiracy theorists? HAARP is a gigantic, high-energy, Pentagon-funded gizmo located in the remote Alaskan wilderness that plays around with the Earth’s ionosphere, but whose purpose seems deeply mysterious to the scientifically uninformed."

This article, from a 2008 edition of Skeptic magazine, spells out the good, bad and ugly of using hydrogen to power cars.

In short, not a good or easy thing to do.

The article.

This article, from a 2008 edition of Skeptic magazine, spells out the good, bad and ugly of using hydrogen to power cars.

In short, not a good or easy thing to do.

The article.

What does the claim that 17% of the population believe in a geocentric earth mean? Even assuming that there's no one in that population that is simply saying that for kicks, it seems probable that a large part are simply answering that way because they don't know anything either way and are just guessing. At some level that's not as bad as having people who actively believe in geocentrism. But at another level, that means that one should expect that around 34% are really ignorant and have of them just got lucky when asked. That's not good. However, I suspect that some of these answers really are just people messing with the polsters or not bothering to thing.

But one thing to note is that many of the geocentrists are religious. Not only is geocentrism common among Christians but there's a substantial fraction of ultra-Orthodox (charedi) Jews who are affirmatively geocentrist. This is especially common among the chabad chassidim who are often geocentrists because their guru, the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, made pro-geocentrist comments and because they want to preserve the word of Maimonides as inerrant (of course some of these are the same sort of people who refuse kidney transplants because the Talmud says that one kidney is the seat of your good instincts and the other is the seat of your bad instincts. So we're not talking about highly enlightened individuals). There are however, some very disturbing studies by Alexander Nussbaum showing that even among modern Orthodox Jews, anti-science views are disturbingly common. See for example http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/featured_articles/v12n03_orthodox_judaism_and_evolution.html .

However, one thing to note is that although the conference in question in the top post is Catholic, affirmative geocentrism is not nearly as uncommon among evangelical Protestants as one would hope. Indeed, it is common enough that Answers in Genesis, one of the world's largest young earth creatonist ministries, feels a need to have essays that talk about why Christians don't need to be geocentrists. http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v15/i2/geocentrism.asp . Incidentally, There's some evidence that anti-Copernican sentiment actually started in Protestants and only spread to Catholics a few years later. Thomas Kuhn discusses this in his excellent book "The Copernican Revolution" although my understanding is that more modern historians disagree with him on this point and many don't think that there is a strong case for anti-Copernicanism as an originally Protestant ideology.

Finally, note that there are still some flat-earthers out there although they are very rare. They aren't as uncommon in the Islamic world. See for example this segment on Iraqi TV http://haha.nu/interesting/iraqi-tv-debate-is-the-earth-flat/ . In the West there is still some flat-Earthism but it is often more conspiratorial than religious in nature. See http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/ although some of the people there are trolls, some are quite sincere.

don't forget skeptoid, skepticality and the skeptic zone

Socrates said "All I know is that I know nothing"

Off topic, but here's an article by Priscilla Sakezles giving a convincing argument that the above self-contradictory statement is in fact a misquote: http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-06-25.html

To get started learning about skepticism read blogs and listen to podcasts such as these:

http://www.skeptic.com/index.html
http://www.badastronomy.com/
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/
http://whatstheharm.net/index.html
http://www.expelledexposed.com/

Then when you find a science topic you are interested in, read a lot of books about it so that you can be comfortable enough with the topic to think critically about new discoveries and claims and to explain it to others.

The blogs I listed tend to recommend more good books than I can keep up with.

Be warned though. Skepticism and science are addictive and fun and tend to piss off the intellectually lazy.

You should do some homework regarding using H for power. First, being the lightest element, it does not like to be constrained and so seeps easily out of containers which are not properly sealed or, and this is key, thick enough.

Yes, thick enough. Do a Google for how thick tanks have to be to contain hydrogen and you will see that you are adding substantial amounts of weight to any vehicle which uses hydrogen as a power source. Why thick? Because you need a lot of H to do the same amount of work that gas does and the only way to get a lot of H into any area is to compress it. To keep it under pressure you need a strong containment vessel (or wessel as Chekov would say).

Second, you can't just have Joe Six Pack walk up to an H filling station, pull out the hose and start pumping. To use the compressed H (see above) it has to be liquified which means extremely cold temperatures. Usually, tranferring H to containers involves an automated process, not some guy with a cigarette hanging out his mouth, a cell phone in one hand and the other hand holding the valve open.

In the end, using H as a power source, while a nice idea, is not feasible. You're missing at least one, if not more, steps in your example above. The liquification stage. That takes large amounts of energy to do so by using your example, you'd have to build the liquification plant next to the nuclear plant which is doing the electrolysis. That's what we need, a large source of explosive material next to a nuclear plant.

This is not to say that we shouldn't use H where it can be easily applied but as a source to fuel cars, buses, planes, etc, it's simply a pipe dream.

For your reading pleasure: eSkeptic

By professional skeptic, I mean people like the Skeptic Society and the various other people that go around actively trying to disprove stuff. And as for amateur skeptic, I'm not one of those either. Questioning everything, even things you personally think are correct isn't limited to the UFOs, magical powers, or the existence of a deity. Moral systems aren't defined by the physical world in the way that planetary systems are (the sun isn't good or bad, it is). I've got a huge pile of unfinished arguments on my computer (because I'm not a professional) against the philosophical and moral positions of the "skeptic community" that have nothing to do with the good, helpful, and necessary science work that they base those positions.

I guess technically I would fall under the dictionary definition of skeptic, but that word has more political, social, and moral overtones than just what's in the dictionary, and I don't fall into that mold.

Are you also opposed to half-truths, a lack of ethics and generally misleading content?

See this for some hot debunking action.

To briefly (and probably not completely accurately) summarize: 1) one guy did get fired, but that's because he wasn't getting published or graduating many students. Sorry you didn't perform. 2) a guy who said "I was fired" from the smithsonian wasn't actually fired (and was never employed there anyway), still has access to the collections and an office there, etc. They did move him to a different office, so the fact that he said "they changed the locks on my office" is true. Even worse, this is the guy who, in his last month as editor of a scientific journal (not because he was fired, but because his time was going to be up anyway) basically took it upon himself to wave a publication into print without peer review, saying that he was the only qualified editor, when there were others who could have and should have been able to review this paper.

So the ID advocates portrayed here seem to be acting in deceitful or unethical ways, and then this movie is compounding their deceit.

There are a lot of interesting questions still to be answered in evolutionary theory; rehashing the same battles over and over again with these people is a distraction at best.

I suspect a joyride and jailarity to ensue. =)
--
A skeptic attitude and a fair amount of reason is all you really need.

This is old old old old old news, and debunked long ago:
http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/featured_artic les/v12n02_AI_gone_awry.html

Why does the media pass off bunk like this as news?
Answer here:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0305/p09s01-coop.htm l

There are plenty of things in science that are proven beyond a doubt, from the act that pouring water into a glass container will not suddenly be on the ground to the mixing of multiple chemicals injecting that into a person and appling an outside invisible ray will help to cure illness.
We are talking government based research not some theoretical paper, when a paper is release for the government it is for policy purposes so why would you want some guess that cannot be proven?
Also the examples people have talked about during President Bush have been in the area whre the writer is saying and advocating an action should be based on non-proven guesses from position friendly and unfriendly to the President. That is not to say the government does not censure papers on political impllecations it happened numerious time during the mid to late 90s however under Bush it has not been to common.
That stuff about the Grand Canyon has been proven absolutly false and the only people not interest in the truth are thoses that keep spreading stuff like that.

"Unvarnished Bullshit" it is. http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-01-17.html

Much as I detest the Bush administration and their 'faith-based' orientation, I have to point out that the people at peer.org have exaggerated their case. Michael Shermer of skeptic.com (who published peer.org's press release last week in his newsletter) has issued a clairification and retraction this week: http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-01-17.html

but I do know you are mistaken about astronomers not reporting UFO's. I would suggest that you might do better research before making any more such bold and misleading statements, (like your previous comments regarding photography).

Talk about pot calling the kettle black. I suggest you read what reasonable people like Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Richard Feynman, or the folks at The Skeptic have to say. Mustn't forget to include Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy take on UFO nuttiness.

There is a difference between scientific ignorance and gullible ignorance. I know I don't know anything and am willing to be educated, but it doesn't mean I have to take what people say at face value, and if I learn it's bullshit, I'll call it bullshit. Especially UFOs as alien spacecraft bullshit. Having an open mind doesn't mean a lack of critical thinking.

If there really are aliens visiting earth in flying saucers, why then, and I'm really trying to understand this, why then would someone travel, perhaps, thousands of light years to abduct some stranger on a farm or isolated spot and give him an anal probe?

The problem is that Bush is ACTIVELY ignoring the problem and actively stifling those who would
give voice to the reality of the problem. I'm sure the fact that the fact that Exxon Mobile
has had record profits this year has absolutely nothing to do with the Exxon's perspective on global
warming.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/30/business/30cnd-e xxon.html?hp&ex=1138683600&en=ed7ac90463244e93&ei= 5094&partner=homepage
I'm also sure that the secret meetings between Bush and the energy sector in the start of his first term
has nothing to do with Bush's disinclination to treat the issue of global warming with any kind of thought that it deserves.

The Bush administration has not placed any priority on climate research. It as if President Bush
doesn't really want to explore lines of research that might discover a link between various climatic
events and the possibility that these events have their roots in man made causes. Disputing various
reports about global warming is one thing, actively derailing avenues of research is another.

1. The Global Precipitation Measurement project has been delayed. This project would have helped us understand what is happending to our climate.
2. The Glory Project has been canceled. This would haved studied the behaviour aerosols in the atmosphere.
3. Our system of "system of environmental satellites is at risk of collapse." warned the National Academy of Sciences warned in April 2005. This happened in an unscheduled report, which underscores the importance that the National Academy of Sciences views this. Of course, the administration will conveniantly use the National Academy of Science when it aligns with their preconcieved notions but ignores them when it doesn't. When the Bush administration asked the NAS to find weaknesses in climate studies to justify their climate policy the commision's report didn't come back to their liking. So they dropped that report and used a study funded by the American Petroleum Institute (an independent unbiased organization fund by GUESS WHO: Exxon). So the Report on the Environment ended up with something that reflected Exxon policy instead of science.
4. Even relatively inexpensive systems like the Earth System Pathfinder missions and Explorer class satellites have been eliminated or subject to prolonged delays.

From
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/archives/2004/04-1 0-08.html
"To prove that he took the issue of global warming seriously, Marburger shamelessly cited a study that President Bush had commissioned from the National Academy of Sciences. The administration had asked the NAS to find "weaknesses" in climate science studies to justify their efforts to derail an international global warming treaty. When the commissioned report instead confirmed human-induced climate change and mentioned fossil fuels as a major culprit the EPA decided to replace the findings in its Report on the Environment with a discredited study funded by the American Petroleum Institute"
You remember who the American Petroleum Institute is funded by, right?

"Maybe this is a feature of global warming, but maybe not," Polyakov said of the presence of warm Atlantic water in the Arctic Ocean. "We should think about what's causing this, but it's just as important to monitor it."
http://www.sitnews.us/0605news/061205/061205_ak_sc ience.html

Powerful ocean currents are grinding slowly to a halt, raising the possibility of a catastrophic climate "flip" that could chill Europe and warm New Zealand, startling new evidence sug

They nabbed the cover, too. No excerpts on the website for their interview, tho... The interview is excellent, and it answers a lot of the questions posed by folks here. Link to the Skeptic site follows:

http://www.skeptic.com/index.html

I was wondering what all the fuss was about, so I recently purchased a book of Dembski's on Intelligent Design. It's fascinating to read, and is based in large part on number theory.

Reading through the various posts on this topic, I have yet to read one that appears to even really know the various arguments ID makes.

That's funny because I was wondering why Dembski's "mathematics" aren't addressed in the mainstream media either. Could it be that it's heady stuff, befitting a scientific mind with degrees in math, philosophy and theology--more the solid foundation the theory is based on, unnecessary to understand for most people? Like the solid foundations of genetics, geology and paleontology, whose details (mutation, stratigraphy, the molecular clock etc) aren't necessary for understanding the basics of evolution? And so easily ignored by their opponents?

Well you're in luck because in the latest issue of Skeptic, Mark Perakh takes Dembski's science to task, and finds it thoroughly lacking. I don't want to give away the ending so I'll quote from the introduction:

"Dembski's many degrees and scores of published books and papers cannot conceal, however, that he has never conducted real scientific research. Moreover, Dembski's literary production contains no real mathematics but instead a lot of philosophizing, often saturated with unnecessary mathematical symbolism. . . . In this article I shall concentrate on the most salient features of Dembski's prolific literary output, almost all of which turns out to be poorly substantiated, contradictory, and often self-aggrandizing."

Maybe that's why the tireless arguments of the mousetrap, the eye and the flagellum are endlessly repeated, and Dembski's work largely ignored, or unpromoted: because Dembski's work simply won't hold up. Maybe not. But it's worth noting what Perakh goes on to say:

"Dembski is selective in deciding which critique to respond to and which to ignore. For example, his (mis)use of the No Free Lunch (NFL) theorems . . . was subjected to a strong critique by Wein and Wolpert. In two lengthy rebuttals Dembski spared no effort to reply to Wein, but he never uttered a word in response to Wolpert. It is not hard to understand why. Wein, as Dembski stresses in his posts, has only a bachelor's degree in statistics. This irrelevant factoid, according to Dembski, makes Wein insufficiently qualified to dispute Dembski's work. . . . Dembski could not use such silly arguments against Wolpert, because Wolpert is a highly respected mathematician and a co-author of the very NFL theorems Dembski misuses."

Instead, the posts generally just rant about creationism. Intelligent posts would take the ID arguments and actually debate them one by one.

Perakh does that very thing. If you want to save US$5.95, you can find the whole article here: The Dream World of William Dembski's Creationism.

*shrug* there doesn't have to be any evidence. but, that does mean it shouldn't be taught alongside evolution as an "alternate theory"

In order for something to be taught in science it has to be a scientific theory. As most /. readers knows, most of what scientists deal with are theories. Some of them are only approximations, like some of what Newton did - later Einstein found some better approximations which probably aren't 100% accurate either.

ID isn't a scientific theory, and therefore should not be taught next to evolution as an alternative theory. ID is superstitious goobledigook dressed in scientific language to make it palatable to more people. That doesn't make it a scientific theory though.

Lots have been writen about this, check out, for example, http://www.csicop.org/ or http://www.skeptic.com/

http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/eskeptic05-04-05.h tml

"If ID is not science, then what is it? In a 2005 web article on
"Intelligent Design's Contribution to the Debate over Evolution,"
Dembski wrote: "Thus, in its relation to Christianity, Intelligent
Design should be viewed as a ground-clearing operation that gets rid of
the intellectual rubbish that for generations has kept Christianity
from receiving serious consideration." IDT founder Phillip Johnson, a
law professor at U.C. Berkeley, wrote in a 1999 article in Church &
State magazine: "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 non-existence of God. From
there people are introduced to 'the truth' of the Bible and then 'the
question of sin' and finally 'introduced to Jesus.'""

• How to Debate A Creationist: 25 Creationists Arguments & 25 Evolutionists Answers
• Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the new creationism
• The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design

• How to Debate A Creationist: 25 Creationists Arguments & 25 Evolutionists Answers
• Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the new creationism
• The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design

• How to Debate A Creationist: 25 Creationists Arguments & 25 Evolutionists Answers
• Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the new creationism
• The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design

• How to Debate A Creationist: 25 Creationists Arguments & 25 Evolutionists Answers
• Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the new creationism
• The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design

for my part (mainly reading a lot of Richard Dawkins lately) I have come to the conclusion that we don't have a purpose other than to survive long enough to procreate.

For what it's worth, Dawkins himself does not agree with that conclusion:

But what I want to guard against is people therefore getting nihilistic in their personal lives. I don't see any reason for that at all. You can have a very happy and fulfilled personal life even if you think that the universe at large is a tale told by an idiot. You can still set up goals and have a very worthwhile life and not be nihilistic about it at a personal level...

But further, there's no logical reason why we should try to derive our normative standards from evolution. It's perfectly consistent to say this is the way it is--natural selection is out there and it is a very unpleasant process. Nature is red in tooth and claw. But I don't want to live in that kind of a world. I want to change the world in which I live in such a way that natural selection no longer applies.

For anyone interested, Bill Nye will be speaking at the Skeptics Society meeting on April 24. Details here.

Meetings are at Cal Tech (Pasadena, CA)

Oh, right, this is the first allegation that the Bush administration politicizes science.

Do you think it's possible that liberal pro-science groups are collecting information about the Bush administration's move to faith-based science because there aren't any pro-science conservative groups?

I love how Slashdot mixes it up on these inane linguistic minutiae.

You can read Murray's responses to the issues Gould raises here