“I am not gay” cartoons
Dedicated to the exploits and not-so-earnest protestations of Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig, the cartoonists are having a field day.
Sick children left behind
As Eliott Spitzer writes: SCHIP is a program that provides health care to children whose families make too much to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford private health insurance. It's a program that provides medical care, including preventive medical care, to innocent children. According to the Bush Administration, we…
What does evolution really have to do with religion? David Sloan Wilson argues that it’s time to find out.
The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins, is a runaway bestseller. Dawkins is a relentless one-man religion wrecking-crew. He carries a sharp knife for the many arguments that religions are somehow useful or worthy.
But isn’t religion sometimes good? Doesn’t religion sometimes heal the sick and feed the poor? When it comes time to complement religion, Dawkins tends to give only backhanded complements. When people are good, they are not really good because of religion. To the argument that religion makes people happy, Dawkins cites George Bernard Shaw’s words: “The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.” (Page 167). Indeed, Dawkins really doubts whether religion is worthwhile at all:
It is hard to believe, for example, that health is improved by the semi-permanent state of morbid guilt suffered by a Roman Catholic possessed of normal human frailty and less than normal intelligence. . . . . the American comedian Kathy Ladman observes that “All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays.”
When it comes time to applying evolutionary theory to religion, Dawkins doubts that religion is an evolutionary adaptation. He suspects religion is only a wretched byproduct of evolution.
…Moths fly into the candle flame, and it doesn’t look like an accident. They go out of their way to make a burnt offering of themselves. We could label it “self immolation behavior” and, under
John Edwards speaks out about our broken political system
Here's what Edwards had to say on August 23 in New Hampshire: Real change starts with being honest -- the system in Washington is rigged and our government is broken. It's rigged by greedy corporate powers to protect corporate profits. It's rigged by the very wealthy to ensure they become…
Richard Dawkins moves on to those other Enemies of Reason
Richard Dawkins is famous for his criticisms of organized religion. In this new two-part video (see here and here), he moves on to examine spiritualists, faith healers, dowsers, homeopaths, astrologers and others who shun evidence in order to practice their unsubstantiated trades. Much of this video is straightforward and succinctly…