1. Did pre-big bang universe leave its mark on the sky?

Comment #158574 by neander on April 10, 2008 at 7:12 pm

I expect thinking like this to upset the loonies. Pushing gods back even farther!

2. Iowa county board gives initial OK for ghost hunters to investigate asylum

Comment #151446 by neander on March 28, 2008 at 6:01 pm

I like to phone the local psychics, astrologers etc. and not say anything. I hang up when they ask, "Who's there?"

3. Writer Arthur C Clarke dies at 90

Comment #151421 by neander on March 28, 2008 at 4:56 pm

Athur was instrumental in my love of science. We are all richer because of him.

4. Italy's Padre Pio 'faked his stigmata with acid'

Comment #81312 by neander on October 24, 2007 at 3:12 pm

The Catholic Anti-Defamation League

5. Creationism raised as Ont. election issue

Comment #68326 by neander on September 6, 2007 at 8:30 pm

Spinoza, I also got a very good, liberal education in a religious school (as an atheist). But was that a sign of the times? Given the current state of religious evangelism and the present pope we must ask if those schools will stay as you remember. Leaving them alone is really a ticking bomb!

6. Pig study sheds new light on the colonisation of Europe by early farmers

Comment #68325 by neander on September 6, 2007 at 8:22 pm

A good article that actually backs up Diamond's comments in "Guns, Germs, and Steel".

7. Creationism raised as Ont. election issue

Comment #68322 by neander on September 6, 2007 at 8:08 pm

Yes, Daniel Dennet's idea has merit. Otherwise, its wellcome to the dark ages.
Is there a possability that if Tory's idea goes though, that subsequent governemats could control the private schools and actually remove their religious content?

8. Bonobo Handshake: What Makes Our Chimp-like Cousins So Cooperative?

Comment #68046 by neander on September 5, 2007 at 8:44 pm

How closely related?

But in contrast to chimpanzees who live in male dominated societies, where infanticide and lethal aggression are observed..

9. Ancient Protein Tells a Story of Changing Functions

Comment #64769 by neander on August 21, 2007 at 6:13 pm

Great stuff. Won't move the loonies though!
remember "Creationism is just god's way of saying 'You're Stupid!'"

10. Evolution IS a Blind Watchmaker

Comment #51629 by neander on June 23, 2007 at 9:39 pm

Well done. As an analogy it is great. It clearly explains the reasons for the lack of transitional fossil forms, and the "sudden" jumps of the fossil record. So much for punctuated equilibria being anything more than an observation. I will be using it in my classes.
Age of pendulums..LOL.

11. U.S. circumcision rate drops

Comment #50575 by neander on June 18, 2007 at 8:45 pm

Lets get a grip .. so to speak. Check out:

www.circumstitions.com/Sexuality.html#sorrells"

to see the results caused by the lack of sensation in a circumcised penis. Apparently deeper and more violent thrusting is necessary to achieve orgasm. Besides violence towards women, this leads to increased(not guaranteed but increased chances of preferring anal and homosexual sex as the only ways of achieving release. Since the increased vascularization in the rectum is prime for HIV transmission then it is likely that moves to circumcise as a prevention of HIV may actually have the opposite effect.

12. 5000 Darwin letters go online

Comment #42805 by neander on May 19, 2007 at 6:35 pm

A wonderful resource for all of us.

13. Television evangelist Falwell dies at 73

Comment #41137 by neander on May 15, 2007 at 2:36 pm

You may not realise that Jerry "saw the light" in his last hours and converted to atheism saying that his life "had been a lie".

14. Gene mutation linked to cognition is found only in humans

Comment #39482 by neander on May 10, 2007 at 8:49 pm

Isn't depression a MENTAL illness .... just like the religion it lead to. It is no accident that ALL mental patients in asylums are believers.

15. Fighting Words: A wartime lexicon

Comment #34974 by neander on April 25, 2007 at 7:35 pm

This is great. I only wish I could speak and write as well as he does.

16. Pope says science too narrow to explain creation

Comment #32108 by neander on April 15, 2007 at 7:01 pm

Science says the pope too narrow to explian anything.

17. Then Call it God

Comment #30787 by neander on April 9, 2007 at 8:05 pm

Sums it up nicely.

18. Praying for the Apocalypse

Comment #30785 by neander on April 9, 2007 at 7:59 pm

WilliamP - didn't you know that the Rapture already happened! ;) I'm sure a good net trawl should give us some article showing it occurred in 2001 or 2002 or 2003. Anyway it happened and left these nuts behind.
That's what I always tell them - gets a good response.

19. Scientists Hope Vigilance Stymies Avian Flu Mutations

Comment #28946 by neander on March 31, 2007 at 7:11 pm

An evolutionary time bomb! Or is it just god killing wholesale as he/it usually does?

20. John Paul Sainthood Nun 'Gentle, Simple'

Comment #28565 by neander on March 29, 2007 at 7:42 pm

If she was praying why did she get parkinson's in the first place? Maybe prayer would work better if they prayed for something more reliable - like the sun coming up, ot the world turning.

21. Happy 66th Birthday, Richard Dawkins!

Comment #27825 by neander on March 27, 2007 at 1:36 am

Happy Birthday Professor, you are an inspiration to all of us. Thank you.

22. Believers are away with the fairies

Comment #27823 by neander on March 27, 2007 at 1:24 am

Great article. Lets keep the anti-fairy/anti-religion agenda going by all standing up in our respective countries and being counted.

23. Sea floor records ancient Earth

Comment #27283 by neander on March 23, 2007 at 5:52 pm

Good science, and more data for fundies to deny.

24. The Salem Hypothesis

Comment #27002 by neander on March 22, 2007 at 8:01 pm

Yes, I have noticed this occasionally. As an interesting aside, I recently had one of my students (Biology) who also takes Physics state that biology had surprised her as it was actually much harder that physics. Her point was that once you grasped the mathematics physics was easy to follow and governed by set laws, whereas biology was complex and dynamic and required more effort to understand at a deep level.
I also wonder if there is a correlation with Aperger's syndrome; which often gives very great mathematics and physics abilities to people, but which tends to limit their abilities to interact with people at a social level.

25. Orr vs. Dennett/Dawkins

Comment #26999 by neander on March 22, 2007 at 7:48 pm

John P, your right when you say "I could never wrap my head around whatever concept they were expounding on" when you try to examine religious "logic". This is due to the horrific acts of mental acrobatics that are require to believe total rubbish and think at the same time. To ignore the stupidy of these ideas, whilst simultaneously trying to justify them takes some really amazing closed mind rationalization. Each practitioner's brain will develop its own tricks in self deception, no wonder its hard to follow.

26. Religion

Comment #26994 by neander on March 22, 2007 at 7:30 pm

Great! I BELIEVE in Jo Pesci!

27. Free Speech

Comment #25727 by neander on March 14, 2007 at 8:42 pm

Does anyone have a link to a transcript of this?

28. Evangelicals battle over agenda, environment

Comment #25717 by neander on March 14, 2007 at 7:42 pm

Stephenray, it all "comes" from the story of ONAN who "split his seed" instead of impregnating his brother's wife (one of gods great commands!). Since god was angry at Onan for missing (hence onanism = masturbation) then all wasted sperm must be a crime; read masturbation and abortion. Don't worry about wasted eggs as they used to think of women as nothing but gardens.
Good old religion, the modern fundie reasoning is probably even more wacko.

29. Did You Know? Shift Happens - Globalization, Information Age

Comment #25714 by neander on March 14, 2007 at 7:29 pm

By the year 2100 information will be generated so fast that 13 out of every ten questions will be answered before they were thought of. The doubling of processing power will occur backwards in time, and robots will rule the earth.

30. Non-believers can be bigoted too

Comment #25659 by neander on March 14, 2007 at 3:11 pm

As an atheist I am very bigotted against STUPIDITY! Whenever I hear tripe served up as intellectual debate I think the espouser is a twit!

31. Turkey: Creationism Documentary

Comment #25658 by neander on March 14, 2007 at 3:07 pm

Disconcerting that this fundie disease is spreading! Dark ages here we come?

32. Remote sheep population resists genetic drift

Comment #25657 by neander on March 14, 2007 at 3:04 pm

...something along the lines of the sheep not being nervous 'cause thy're used to it?

Actually, not surprised to hear that natural selection would strengthen a geen pool. I was under the impression that evolutionary theory showed/supported this!

33. US Congressman Holds No God-Belief

Comment #25482 by neander on March 13, 2007 at 3:32 pm

Bravo. I just emailed my support.

34. Beyond Stones & Bones

Comment #25480 by neander on March 13, 2007 at 3:23 pm

What branches will we leave (leaf)?
Hopefully divorced enough from superstition to not make our mistakes.

35. In Lice, Clues to Human Origin and Attire

Comment #25477 by neander on March 13, 2007 at 3:19 pm

Great article! But, like drive1 I was fascinated by gorilla health care. OOK.

36. Understanding Genetics - Daniel Dennett Interview

Comment #25272 by neander on March 11, 2007 at 2:46 pm

"Sifters" I like it! Sums us up nicely.

37. 'Don't discuss polar bears': memo to scientists

Comment #25027 by neander on March 9, 2007 at 6:38 pm

Yet another example of Bush administration muzzling scientists. Dark ages, here we come!

38. Response to Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris

Comment #25026 by neander on March 9, 2007 at 6:35 pm

Mindless drivel!

39. Academy denies claims from job candidate

Comment #25024 by neander on March 9, 2007 at 6:31 pm

Was this in the US?
(Sarcasm from an Aussie seeing the same thing here).

40. Science, Faith, and Evolution

Comment #25023 by neander on March 9, 2007 at 6:25 pm

Egotistical? Yes.
Deluded? Yes. But..
Am I stepping out on a limb to think that I would rather deal with loonies like Dowd than loonies like Falwell? Could Dowd represent the path for narrow minded fundies to slowly look around?

41. Economics and human evolution

Comment #25020 by neander on March 9, 2007 at 6:04 pm

The viral idea for neanderthal extinct probably doesn't work due to the large overlap of the two groups. But since the neanderthals probably lived in small tibal units it cannot be discounted.
As to Vaal's comment on DNA; I was under the impression that DNA degrades over time making these analyses not so reliable, and that they were using mitochondrial DNA - I would love some links/references to validiaty. Also, mitochondrial DNA still doesn't exclude the possibility of interbreeding. My point was that a massively higher number of sapiens (better food technology leads to colonisation = Jared Diamond, nothing else) would dominate the gene pool in an interbreeding situation making neanderthal genes dissappear. I also cited examples of where this occurs today.
The concept of religious fatwa is quite plausible. Where else did cousins collide. Since it now looks like Homo florensis was still around 20,000 years ago was it too fatwa-ed?

42. You can't trust science!

Comment #24834 by neander on March 8, 2007 at 7:13 pm

Good stuff!

43. Public Acceptance of Evolution

Comment #24831 by neander on March 8, 2007 at 7:10 pm

As a high school science teacher in a very fundamentalist area I have a lot of fun leading the kids to the facts. Happy to say that I've had several nasty encounters, all of which have ended in better educated kids and parents.
Good education about genetics is definately the answer!

44. Economics and human evolution

Comment #24828 by neander on March 8, 2007 at 6:51 pm

Good! Finally a sensible model. Using Occam's razor should have come up with something similar years ago. ie: Look at all example where modern groups of humans have replaced indiginous inhabitants (read Jared Diamond "Guns, Germs, and Steel"). All have done so because they had significantly better food production and trade. In some cases the indigenous gene pool has been so diluted as to be almost invisible (southern Australia). Where indigenous food production and trade were analagous to the invaders assimilation was not possible (ie India and the Brittish).
Surely this model easily demonstartes (Occam's razor) that neanderthal man could well hacve been out-evolved and assimilated. Significantly smaller population numbers (due to less food available)make this understandable. Some recent fossil finds seem to support this, as a recent fossil shows traits from both groups.
Amazing to find something like this in an economics journal!
By the way, was anyone annoyed to see "House" poo-pooing evolution the othe day. Its off my to watch list!

45. U.S. Mint goof creates 'Godless dollars'

Comment #24824 by neander on March 8, 2007 at 6:33 pm

Hopefully a sigh of things to come!

46. Happy 50th Birthday to PZ Myers!

Comment #24822 by neander on March 8, 2007 at 6:29 pm

Happy Birthday PZ!

47. Why Children Love Their Security Blankets

Comment #24781 by neander on March 8, 2007 at 2:04 pm

The title say it all!

48. How my eyes were opened to the barbarity of Islam

Comment #24779 by neander on March 8, 2007 at 1:58 pm

We need more loud voices of reason like Phyllis Chesler, not noisy apologists. Keep up the good work!

49. Why there are almost no genuine atheists

Comment #24638 by neander on March 7, 2007 at 7:40 pm

107 Iamb_spartacus
You need to clearly define your use of "religious" before using it to mean several different things. Atheists morals are not based on religious reasoning in any conventional or normal use of the word. If you want religious to mean "inquisitive" then use that word instead.

50. Why there are almost no genuine atheists

Comment #24495 by neander on March 6, 2007 at 11:11 pm

Stephen J makes a lot of assumptions about atheists. We use many different ethical models in our many different lives. What we try not to do is make generalizations based on lack of evidence. Here is an example you may enjoy?:
Religious peopl have no ethical values because they only do the right thing as they are scared of being punished.