1. Is Obama the Antichrist?

Comment #286972 by SASnSA on November 19, 2008 at 2:47 pm

666 or 616? it depends on which language you use when converting Nero Ceasar to a number. Apparently back in that time they believed he was the beast.

In Hebrew, the values of the letters in his name added up to 666. But evidently a Latin translator changed it because in Latin it didn't add up to 666 it added up to 616.

But either way I have to question their method of coming up with a mark of a beast that was supposed to come in the future. I do wish they'd get this rapture over with though, so we can start the real party!

2. Puncturing the Acupuncture Myth

Comment #286276 by SASnSA on November 18, 2008 at 12:35 pm

Next you'll be telling us that leeches don't really drain poisonous toxins from the body or that trepanation (drilling a hole in your head) isn't a cure for insanity! That's just crazy! ;)

3. The Saudis' dubious interfaith agenda at the UN

Comment #284089 by SASnSA on November 14, 2008 at 10:16 am

As a side note, it's funny that religious fanatics will claim that atheism is just another religion based on just another belief system, even though we know it's not. They'll keep repeating this rhetoric up until the point that they're discussing religious freedoms.

But if they go along with the Saudis on this, Christian fundies may realize a little how we feel, when the Saudis show that their religion should be more free than any others.

4. Somalia: Rape Victim Executed

Comment #275583 by SASnSA on October 31, 2008 at 10:24 am

I gotta ask. What was done to the actual rapist? Or was he one of the "Men" out there throwing stones at this poor deluded woman?

5. Children need to be sprinkled with fairy dust

Comment #272373 by SASnSA on October 27, 2008 at 10:05 am

I've been reading fantasy and science fiction for as long as I can remember (and still do). I think it's allowed me an escape from reality without the commitment of religion. It's quite possible that the understanding of the difference between fantasy story and real life that I've learned to maintain has helped me break free of religious indoctrination.

What I mean by this is that at some point when I got away from my father, I started to realize that despite everyone around me telling me the bible was fact, it wasn't necessarily true. When the evidence against religion outweighed the (virtually non-existent) evidence for it, it became just another fantasy story.

6. Countdown: Palin Wants To Help Special Needs Kids By Doing Away With Science

Comment #272337 by SASnSA on October 27, 2008 at 8:56 am

Titania
I am taking them to the La Brea Tarpits, Jet Propulsion Lab, whale watching in Los Angelos and to the San Diego Wildlife Park in February.

7. Bill Heine interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #267903 by SASnSA on October 21, 2008 at 8:46 am

mixmastergaz

I realise that isthatclear's first language probably isn't English, but I honestly have no idea what his posts are on about. I get that he doesn't accept the theory of evolution, but what's all the stuff about elephants?

I feel as if I've inadvertantly stumbled upon a game of Mornington Crescent...

8. 'Glowing' jellyfish grabs Nobel

Comment #262851 by SASnSA on October 9, 2008 at 2:53 pm

Is this a "brainbow"?

9. The rival to the Bible

Comment #262225 by SASnSA on October 8, 2008 at 6:29 am

Yeah, they tried waterboarding, but while the bush became less fiery, it just seemed to grow stronger and in the end said nothing.

10. The rival to the Bible

Comment #261825 by SASnSA on October 7, 2008 at 12:50 pm

I've long believed that the bible was a hack job, being edited and moderated throughout the centuries to fit particular rulers' needs. I may have to download this just as evidence. The religious like to believe that the bible is their evidence of God, but what happens if you can prove their evidence is unreliable?

I would also question Constantine's purpose. It was said, decades before Christ, that "All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher" (-Lucretius 98?-55? BCE). Is it inconceivable that Constantine (who was a Pagan before his "conversion") wished to use the newer monotheistic religion, Christianity, to consolidate people's beliefs in the various pagan gods to a single belief in one god. His "guidance" in selecting and editing the books included in this codex would allow him some control over how people thought.

Since his time, how many rulers and church leaders have made changes to this "living bible", including their own modifications to fit their own needs?

11. Atheist group sues Bush over national prayer day

Comment #260405 by SASnSA on October 5, 2008 at 1:10 pm

If they're "good christians", they pray every day anyway (if they're "good muslims" its 5 times a day). The only reason I can see that they would need a National Prayer Day, is as a wedge to bring prayer into schools and government at least once a year despite separation of church and state.

But FFRF would probably be better off waiting for more liberal judges to be placed into the SC before initiating this suit.

12. Bill Maher's Religulous Opens Today

Comment #260393 by SASnSA on October 5, 2008 at 12:52 pm

Well, looks like it's doing better than that Creationist garbage (oops, I mean Intelligent Design garbage) Expelled: No intelligence used. And without even bribing any schools to make their kids go. Expelled made $2,970,848 in the first weekend, and Religulous is looking to beat $3,500,000.

I saw it yesterday, and enjoyed it thoroughly, but imagine that's mostly because it coincides with my own views on religion. I doubt it'll greatly change a majority of people's beliefs.

13. Bill Maher's Religulous Opens Today

Comment #259589 by SASnSA on October 3, 2008 at 3:23 pm

I would have loved to see this movie made by Penn and Teller instead.

14. Bill Maher's Religulous Opens Today

Comment #259396 by SASnSA on October 3, 2008 at 10:13 am

Looks like only one theater carrying it in all of San Antonio. Of course there were several theaters carrying Expelled when it came out. Go figure.

15. Seeing Red and Blue Can Divide a Species - of Fish

Comment #259271 by SASnSA on October 3, 2008 at 7:53 am

As a diver myself, spoiled by diving mostly in Guam, I can see where the confusion comes in. But my few excursions into lake diving have shown this not to be true everywhere.

Lake Victoria's water is cloudy due to organic material in it. That material filters the light, removing the blue wavelengths so that as depth increases the light shifts toward the red end of the spectrum.

16. Why I left Young-earth Creationism

Comment #258913 by SASnSA on October 2, 2008 at 1:48 pm

He seems to be a man hanging off of a cliff by a root. He doesn't want to look down for fear that he may lose his grip and fall.

He's had to face the truth about geology, otherwise he couldn't succeed at his job, but he appears to avoid looking into evolution for fear that he'll lose his grip on Christianity.

If he was raised to be a YEC, he was also probably raised to believe atheism is evil, and that may really scare him like looking into the void below.

17. Ministers to Defy I.R.S. by Endorsing Candidates

Comment #255491 by SASnSA on September 27, 2008 at 6:51 pm

I didn't misread your post, you chose to over exaggerate to make it seem worse than it was.

But anyway, let me put a couple things together for you. From the article from money.cnn.com, the tax rates for the highest tax brackets are currently 33 - 35%. from the article in my first post, Warren Buffet, without even trying to cheat the system got his down to 17.7%.

With that in mind, I don't think they're going to be hurting even if their taxes are raised to 39.6%. I also don't consider it to be an outrageous increase when they're just going to be returning the tax rate to what it was before 2001!

18. Ministers to Defy I.R.S. by Endorsing Candidates

Comment #255447 by SASnSA on September 27, 2008 at 3:01 pm

1)Yes we are actually giving away money to people who don't work, thats called welfare.

2)I am not saying to not give the middle class a tax break, Im arguing that you shouldn't tax the rich so heavily. Yes the rich are going to pay more in taxes juts for the fact that they make more. But we shouldnt be trying to take over 50% of a rich person salary.

19. Ministers to Defy I.R.S. by Endorsing Candidates

Comment #255363 by SASnSA on September 27, 2008 at 11:33 am

DPB, you seem to misunderstand a few things about the tax situation.

First off, you seem to believe that we will be giving away money to people who don't work. The tax breaks are on a percentage. The less a person makes the less they are taxed, but also the less any tax break will actually effect them. If your tax is $0, even if you get a 100% tax break, your tax is still $0! As for the people that do work but fall in the lower and middle classes, they still have to buy gas, food, and clothes; they still have to pay bills: electricity, water, sewage disposal and they still need to be able to save for their children's college funds to help them have a better life; but have less to pay with. These tax breaks help with those considerations.

But you feel it's unfair to tax the rich more. The rich of course would usually have you believe that it is an unfair burden, but that's seldom true. Take Warren Buffett for example who recently realized that he's paying less in taxes than his middle class secretary without even trying to cheat the system.

Maybe we should all just get these $300k/year jobs. But the system wouldn't support that. These rich, highly paid, CEOs and business owners make their money only on the sweat and tears of the working class. Without this working class, those people would quickly be out of business, and on welfare themselves. but despite this fact, we see that more and more, they seek to increase their own profits by keeping worker pay as low as they can, and exporting jobs to other countries where they can pay far less than local minimum wages. I think the rich can afford to share a little more of the tax burden. They can't afford the lower classes becoming so poor that they can no longer buy their products.

20. 'All Terrorists are Darwinists': An Interview with Harun Yahya

Comment #252659 by SASnSA on September 23, 2008 at 1:28 pm

Is he thinking about the same terrorists I am? cause from what I've seen, most of these people strapping bombs to their bodies to bomb infidels don't even seem to have attained a grade school education let alone studied abroad and learned Darwinism (or evolution for that matter).

I think this guy is bucking for Ben Stein's job in the next movie "Expelled II: The search for more idiots"

21. Secular schools of thought tainted

Comment #252163 by SASnSA on September 22, 2008 at 2:49 pm

You go Rod! Teach the Controversy: Atheism in Sunday School! If they're gonna do it to science, we should be able to do it to religion too.

22. Robert Winston criticises dangerous 'science delusion'

Comment #248117 by SASnSA on September 15, 2008 at 3:59 pm

Ah yes, saying believing in religion is a delusion is much more divisive than the religious types saying that us atheists are evil sinners that are going to hell! I can see that.

23. The Origins of the Universe: A Crash Course

Comment #246602 by SASnSA on September 12, 2008 at 2:35 pm

It looks like they've set up a couple webcams at the LHC here if anyone's interested. Wasn't much going on when I looked, but is interesting to see.

24. Talk at today's meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science

Comment #245946 by SASnSA on September 11, 2008 at 3:02 pm

Actually I think that if it could be done right every time by every teacher, this could work to improve the overall understanding of evolution.

But, I don't believe, here in the US, that we could expect it to be done right in any significant percentage of the time; nor do I really trust that all teachers would want to do it right.

So it's fine in theory (the lesser meaning of the word of course), but I wouldn't count on it in practice; especially with the DI watching for any crack to slip their wedge into.

25. Bizarre Anti-Spore Website Takes Issue WIth Stance On Creationism

Comment #245262 by SASnSA on September 10, 2008 at 1:04 pm

8teist
Your avatar appears to be obscured by a large turd.
I just thought you ought to know.

26. Closest Look Ever At Edge Of A Black Hole

Comment #244324 by SASnSA on September 8, 2008 at 2:52 pm

15. Comment #243965 by dvespertilio
Can we ship all of the bigots and do good faith heads to the center of the galaxy and watch them slip over the event horizon into the black hole?

27. Beetle drive

Comment #239452 by SASnSA on August 29, 2008 at 3:53 pm

Why would a creationsist not believe in something simply becuase it can't be seen?

28. Beetle drive

Comment #239369 by SASnSA on August 29, 2008 at 1:55 pm

Carto

Either that or it's not really the optimal solution it seems to be. Maybe using your reproductive organs as weapons exposes them to unnecessary dangers?

29. Porn pastor's wife vows to stand by him

Comment #237448 by SASnSA on August 26, 2008 at 1:52 pm

I do see where David is coming from. On the one hand after all the fundies talk down about "those immoral atheists" I like the thought of being able to point at cases like these and saying they're no better than us, and even worse at times. Of course on the other hand, I realize that to do that makes me no better than they are. If we're going to debate the value of atheism over theism, we need to keep to our strength, reason, instead of sinking to their level of generalizing a few individuals' flaws.

P.S. of course I still like to see the occasional Christian fall on their face like that, in that National Inquirer sort of morbid curiosity way :)

30. To learn biology, just pick up the console

Comment #230992 by SASnSA on August 15, 2008 at 1:59 pm

One note, and I don't what degree this is true as I haven't played it, but apparently there is some religion in the game beyond the assumption of a creative intelligence. Not that playing god in a game once in a while isn't fun, just thought I'd put it out there. The article of course isn't clear on what the religious aspect is in the game.

31. Enemies of Reason: Available now on DVD!

Comment #230850 by SASnSA on August 15, 2008 at 10:27 am

It appears that princezephyr's challenge is meant to be on their terms. Pictures of fossils for evidence? No way of testing for himself how old they are? Or being sure where they came from? He challenges Prof. Dawkins to bring in any "transitional" fossils as evidence as well. something tells me they won't accept anything less than the equivalent of a croco-duck either.

This whole "debate" appears to be set up so that he has no opportunity to succeed. I can see why he would skip this type of "debate". I wouldn't go to a poker game if I knew my opponents stacked the deck either.

32. We need to stop being such cowards about Islam

Comment #230554 by SASnSA on August 14, 2008 at 9:19 pm

Maybe I did overstate it a bit (ok, more than a bit), they just seem to be pushing more and more for their form of brain washing in our schools, and restrictions on what should be individuals' choices. I keep hearing how the US is a christian nation, when I'm sure I remember something about freedom of religion somewhere. Sorry for the rant.

You are correct that Islam has historically (and currently) had more direct control of several countries.

33. We need to stop being such cowards about Islam

Comment #230257 by SASnSA on August 14, 2008 at 1:28 pm

Well now that I got through that long list of comments mostly tarnished by the flame war incited by she who shall remain nameless, a few comments of my own.

The story itself was good. It may have been said before, but it's something that bears repeating until its message is widely received. Who the author is is irrelevant, the value is in the content.

Fanusi Khiyal: one note, Christianity doesn't inherently separate church from state. Even today, if the fundamentalists had their way, the US would be a Christian state, and ALL children would be taught it in the schools.

WP: you're swinging that cricket bat wrong, don't you know it's supposed to be swung low? :O

34. Al-Qa'eda in Iraq alienated by cucumber laws and brutality

Comment #229368 by SASnSA on August 13, 2008 at 12:43 pm

I think it's vegetable envy. The cukes are taking care of their womens' needs, leaving the men with only their goats for lovin'. What it doesn't say is that the goat was showing it off all around town. Killing her was a crime of passion. Where's the loyalty these days. :)

35. Judge says UC can deny class credit to Christian school students

Comment #229307 by SASnSA on August 13, 2008 at 10:52 am

Timmydou,
You really need to take a look at Expelled Exposed. The propaganda flic Expelled was just that: propaganda. They gave no scientific evidence for Intelligent Design (creationism) nor did they give any against evolution. They just used rhetoric and symbolism to make "Darwinism" appear to be a path towards evil. If you actually read the information on that site, you will note that the "poor mistreated ID scientists/teachers" weren't treated nearly so bad as they wanted you to believe.

36. Judge says UC can deny class credit to Christian school students

Comment #229271 by SASnSA on August 13, 2008 at 10:00 am

Chemistry for Christian Schools

37. Saudi Arabia Bans Dog Walking in Capital

Comment #228668 by SASnSA on August 12, 2008 at 11:04 am

Yup, I firmly believe more religions should practice celibacy as a general rule instead of just the priests. Of course you know celibacy is hereditary; if your parents never had sex, there's a good chance you wouldn't either.

38. Saudi Arabia Bans Dog Walking in Capital

Comment #228645 by SASnSA on August 12, 2008 at 10:34 am

Aw, come on TWP, I was building up a good case for the evolutionary removal of the Muslim faith here, and ya gotta mess it up with facts! :P

OK, how about this one then: Muslim concern with flirting is that it would lead to sex. Same conclusion. That sound more accurate?

39. Saudi Arabia Bans Dog Walking in Capital

Comment #228626 by SASnSA on August 12, 2008 at 9:43 am

Instead of banning methods of flirting, I think they just need to get to the root of the problem. People flirt cause they wanna have sex. So they just need to ban sex, and there'll be no more reason to flirt! That would solve everybody's problems (eventually)!

40. Church exorcism protected by First Amendment

Comment #222008 by SASnSA on July 30, 2008 at 12:35 pm

"Thank you. I will borrow your cricket bat.Perhaps a warning to the public is in order?"

We should make sure you're properly qualified in the use of that cricket bat though.

You do know that it's meant to be swung low right?

I thought so.

41. Church exorcism protected by First Amendment

Comment #221428 by SASnSA on July 29, 2008 at 3:52 pm

"Mrs Schubert Pearson, 29, claims she was left bruised and traumatised after members of her church group allegedly kept her captive for two days so they could perform an exorcism in which was pinned to the ground and "pummelled"."

OK, that's false imprisonment and assault as a minimum. Now let's say the defendants were Muslim instead of Catholic (assuming Muslim doctrine included something similar to exorcism). Would the court have considered it out of their jurisdiction in that case?

42. Council ban on atheist websites

Comment #221385 by SASnSA on July 29, 2008 at 3:07 pm

"We do have to realize that a large portion of the theist population does not know the difference between atheism and satanism."

Worse than that, I was brainwa... er... brought up to be a Baptist(I've since gotten better), and remember from before the current political correctness, being taught that any religion outside of Christianity was the tool of the Devil.

My opinion on the current subject? If they're gonna block atheist and the less "popular" religious sites, they better be blocking ALL religious sites.

43. Texas Fiction Science

Comment #220521 by SASnSA on July 28, 2008 at 2:27 pm

Part of the problem is that Texas freethinkers are at a bit of a disadvantage due to Article 1, Section 4 of the Texas Constitution:

"No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office,
or public trust, in this State; nor shall any one be excluded from holding
office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the
existence of a Supreme Being."

It all sounds very accommodating up till the last part where it says you gotta believe in some God. So even a radical Muslim could hold office in Texas before an atheist could!

44. Dalai Lama defends Islam as peaceful religion

Comment #212029 by SASnSA on July 16, 2008 at 1:45 pm

It ssems to teach peace umongst fellow muslims... but hatred and fear of everything else, including teddy bears (remember that?).

45. The Return of Religion

Comment #211827 by SASnSA on July 16, 2008 at 10:23 am

I'm still waiting for religion to release it's strangle-hold on the US, so I can be considered a citizen and a patriot again. It hasn't gone anywhere, in fact it seems to be reaching new highs in low.

46. PLEASE WRITE IN SUPPORT OF PZ MYERS

Comment #210937 by SASnSA on July 15, 2008 at 9:18 am

Just thought I'd add a little information from an IT perspective. Mr. Donohue has stated as his reasoning for firing PZ, that his statement goes against the policies of the University's web site:
"The Myers blog can be accessed from the university's website. The university has a policy statement on this issue which says that the 'Contents of all electronic pages must be consistent with University of Minnesota policies, local, state and federal laws.'"

But checking the whois database, I see that scienceblogs.com is owned by ScienceBlogs, LLC and seedmediagroup.com in New York. This is a far cry from the University of Minnesota web site at www1.umn.edu located in Minneapolis Minnesota.

Now we do still have the right to freedom of speech don't we? Or have my years in the service been for nothing?