This is what religion is: ka-ching

"This is what religion is: they angle for fresh prey, and once they snag you, they swallow you up. You are embraced in the rugae and crypts of the gut of the church, all warm and pink and soft and wet and intimate, and each of the members is like a little villus — a multitude of villi brush adoringly against you, each telling you how wonderful and delicious you are, and each leeching away a little of yourself, your individuality, your independence. It feels good as you are slowly absorbed. Then at last, when your will is gone and your dependence is complete, you are digested by the body of Christ, and there you will be for all of your productive years. Eventually, when you are old and no longer active, you'll take residence in the colon of the church, serviced by occasional visits from a priest or a volunteer, in hopes of one final ka-ching from your will…and then your empty husk will be shat out into the church graveyard, with the leavings of other past meals. The churches of your community all ought to be viewed as predatory animals, some lazy and sated, others restless and hungry, but all eyeing you as potential fodder to keep the beast alive."

-- PZ Myers

Muslims like to cut off heads while the victim is alive and screaming.

On This Day...
August 26, 2011: Mogadishu, Somalia
Boys are beheaded by al-Shabaab: 2 Killed

Somali militants behead boys in Mogadishu attacks

by Reuters Friday, 26 August 2011

* Attacks show rebels still have power in capital

* Most of those beheaded were teenage boys

MOGADISHU, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Somalia's Islamist al Shabaab militants beheaded at least two young boys in Mogadishu, an activist said on Friday, in the latest of a string of attacks showing they still had the power to strike despite a well publicised withdrawal.

At least seven other youths were reported beheaded in the city in recent weeks, Fartun Abdisalan of the Elman rights group told Reuters.

The outgunned and divided rebel force pulled its fighters out of bases in parts of Mogadishu earlier this month, after waging a four-year insurgency against government and African Union troops.

Analysts said it was only a matter of time before the militants regrouped and re-emerged in Mogadishu, as a guerrilla fighting force.

Residents told Reuters al Shabaab militanta had started broadcasting messages across the city, using mosques' loundspeaker systems, urging followers to behead spies and other enemies.

"We understand they (al Shabaab) want to engage in guerrilla fighting and the beheading is just to shock residents so that no one turns against them," Abdisalan said.

"Two beheaded bodies of young boys were thrown in the former spaghetti factory building and in the livestock market yesterday (Thursday)," she told Reuters.

A 19-year-old man from the village of Garas Baleylat, 13 km (8 miles) northwest of Mogadishu, was found beheaded on Thursday, said one of his relatives.

"Al Shabaab beheaded my cousin, Qadar Omar Siyad, yesterday. For the past few days, the group has been announcing beheadings in mosques in the city. They even said most Muslims in mosques are infidels," Mohammed Siyad told Reuters.

Siyad said masked men grabbed his cousin on Wednesday, bundled him into a vehicle and drove towards north Mogadishu's Daynile district, where al Shabaab has been putting up resistance.

"On Thursday, his beheaded body was found lying in the livestock market. His hands and legs were bound together, his front teeth were missing and his lower lip was cut," Siyad told Reuters.

Al Shabaab follow an austere version of Sharia Law and they frequently carry out beheadings and amputations in the areas they control in much of south and central Somalia.

Thousands of Somalis have been returning to Mogadishu since the rebels' withdrawal, rebuilding their homes and businesses, in the hope the lull in violence would hold.

"Everyone is shocked here and the only question is who will be beheaded next," Siyad said.

On Friday evening, a car bomb parked near the busy K-5 area, exploded and wounded one pedestrian, witnesses said. (Reporting by Abdi Sheikh; Writing by Yara Bayoumy)

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

There are some people in Idiot America who like our fucktard president.

This blog has many more Doonesbury comic strips at Doonesbury.

Something interesting I found while wasting my time on the internet.

On this day, August 15: 1769 Napoleon Bonaparte was born on the island of Corsica.

I never heard of Corsica so I looked it up. It's a beautiful island in the Mediterranean Sea.

Corsica, a mountainous Mediterranean island, presents a mix of stylish coastal towns, dense forest and craggy peaks (Monte Cinto is the highest). Nearly half the island falls within a park whose hiking trails include the challenging GR 20. Its beaches range from busy Pietracorbara to remote Saleccia and Rondinara. It's been part of France since 1768, but retains a distinct Italian culture.

Official languages: French

Capital: Ajaccio

Population: 330,000 (2017)

Virtually always the Christian disease is incurable. Here is one of the rare exceptions.

As usual thanks to PZ's blog, I found this example of a person who was an evolution denier and now apparently he loves evolution. I wrote a comment on his blog.

How I Left Creationism

Human Ape said...
"he refused to even entertain the possibility that evolution was true or that God could have used evolution."

I assume that by now you realize "god could have used evolution" is bullshit. Natural processes, including natural selection, don't need magical intervention.

I also assume you now realize magic god fairies are not necessary for anything, therefore they are just childish fantasies. There's no magic, also known as god, in the universe.

Even without 21st century science the god hypothesis would still be an idiotic idea. A fairy who waves its magic wand hiding somewhere in the universe? What incredible bullshit.

Should normal people (atheists) debate religious tards (science deniers)?

Only if they enjoy wasting their time. Virtually always, insanity can't be fixed.

You however are one of the rare exceptions. You had what it takes to recover from the Christian disease. Congratulations and good luck.

In this post I predict who will be the next President of the United States.

Of course President Obama will win the Democratic nomination. There's nobody running against him.

The most likely winners of the Republican nomination are Romney and Rick Perry.

Romney won't win. Americans like wealthy people who became successful on their own. For good reasons they don't much care for people who were born rich like Romney. Another reason Romney won't be nominated is he's a Mormon, a religion so wacky even Christian Bible Thumpers ridicule it.

That leaves Rick Perry who has the advantage of being way ahead in the polls. Rick Perry will win the Republican nomination for one reason only -- he is incredibly stupid. In other words, Rick Perry will win the retard vote, also known as most Republicans.

Rick Perry is famous for praying in public to his dead Jeebus. Rick Perry is also famous for choosing science deniers to be chairperson of the Texas State Board of Education. Rick Perry's goal has always been to dumb down or completely suppress the teaching of the foundation of biology in biology classrooms. Rick Perry is an evolution denier and he's proud of it.

It's impossible to deny the established truth of evolution in the 21st century and not be extremely retarded. Therefore Perry is a drooling moron so he will most definitely win the Republican nomination.

It will be Obama, an extremely intelligent person, against Perry, a person so hopelessly stupid he's even worse than George W. Bush.

If Rick Perry is our next president, he will make America a theocracy and America will be called The United States of Jeebus.

A President Rick Perry would be a disaster for the entire world so this isn't only an American problem.

Both conservatives and liberals have disagreements with President Obama but I bet pretty much everyone agrees he is perhaps the most intelligent president in American history.

The question is, who is the majority in this country, the tards or the people who are not tards?

I'm betting the retarded voters will not get their way. The election might be close, but I predict Obama will get his 2nd term.

Most certainly it will help that Obama recently killed Osama, and he did it before the 10th anniversary of Islam's greatest atrocity.

As a conservative I have a quite a few problems with our president, but I'm not going to vote for a Christian asshole who would destroy science education, destroy scientific progress, destroy the environment, and make America an international laughing stock.

President Obama will get my vote because for the first time he made me proud to be an American. He will win it.

This post is a collection of some of my favorite quotes.

In addition to the quotes on this post please see Some quotes from the National Academy of Sciences and please see Some stuff I stole from Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair

I can't believe the special stories that have been made up about our relationship to the universe at large because they seem to be too simple, too local, too provincial. The earth, he came to the earth, one of the aspects of god came to the earth mind you, and look at what's out there. It isn't in proportion.-- Richard Feyman

To accept evolution isn't just to acknowledge the obvious, that the evidence behind it is overwhelming. It is to open one's eyes to the endless beauty that life has generated and continues to produce. It is to become a knowing participant in the truest sense, in the living world of which we are all a part. -- Ken Miller

There is probably no other notion in any field of science that has been as extensively tested and as thoroughly corroborated as the evolutionary origin of living organisms. -- Encyclopedia Britannica

From the movie: You killed god sir. You have killed god.

THEORY: In science, a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses. The contention that evolution should be taught as a "theory, not as a fact" confuses the common use of these words with the scientific use. In science, theories do not turn into facts through the accumulation of evidence. Rather, theories are the end points of science. They are understandings that develop from extensive observation, experimentation, and creative reflection. They incorporate a large body of scientific facts, laws, tested hypotheses, and logical inferences. In this sense, evolution is one of the strongest and most useful scientific theories we have.
-- National Academy of Sciences

Evolution is God's redundancy notice, his pink slip.
-- Richard Dawkins

For all of those who do see the overwhelming evidence of natural selection and life's descent from ancestors, and the immense span of time over which the story of life unfolded, it is, to put it mildly, baffling how so many still do not. It is absolutely astonishing and often infuriating that some take it so far as to deny the immense foundation of evidence and to slander all the human achievement that foundation represents.
-- The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Evolution by Sean B. Carroll

Even without fossils, we have evidence of human evolution from comparative anatomy, embryology, our vestigial traits, and even biogeography. We've learned of our fishlike embryos, our dead genes, our transitory fetal coat of hair, and our poor design, all testifying to our origins. The fossil record is really the icing on the cake.
-- Jerry Coyne

Religion is a cruel hoax sustained by miracles, fear, superstition and ignorance. Evolution is a science sustained by proven facts. Take your pick.
-- Dean Carson

The first thing to notice is that Mooney and Kirshenbaum are confused about the nature of the problem. The goal is not to get more Americans to merely accept the truth of evolution (or any other scientific theory); the goal is to get them to value the principles of reasoning and educated discourse that now make a belief in evolution obligatory. Doubt about evolution is merely a symptom of an underlying problem; the problem is faith itself—conviction without sufficient reason, hope mistaken for knowledge, bad ideas protected from good ones, good ideas occluded by bad ones, wishful thinking elevated to a principle of salvation, etc. Mooney and Kirshenbaum seem to imagine that we can get people to value intellectual honesty by lying to them.
-- Sam Harris

Scientific education and religious education are incompatible. The clergy have ceased to interfere with education at the advanced state, with which I am directly concerned, but they have still got control of that of children. This means that the children have to learn about Adam and Noah instead of about Evolution; about David who killed Goliath, instead of Koch who killed cholera; about Christ's ascent into heaven instead of Montgolfier's and Wright's. Worse than that, they are taught that it is a virtue to accept statements without adequate evidence, which leaves them a prey to quacks of every kind in later life, and makes it very difficult for them to accept the methods of thought which are successful in science.
-- J.B.S. Haldane

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
-- Isaac Asimov

Should Creationism be taught in public schools? Oh God, no. Oh, Jesus. We thought we had made a big advance with the Scopes monkey trial….My God, evolution is a fact, and if these people are disturbed by being the descendants of monkeys and fishes, they’ve got a mental problem. We can’t afford the psychiatric bill for them. That ends the story as far as I’m concerned.
-- Mike Gravel, former Democratic United States Senator from Alaska, who served two terms from 1969 to 1981, and a former candidate in the 2008 presidential election.

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
-- Charles Darwin

If the history of science teaches us anything, it is that what conquers our ignorance is research, not giving up and attributing our ignorance to the miraculous work of a creator.
-- Jerry Coyne

Science is a philosophy of discovery, intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance.
-- Neil deGrasse Tyson

Darwin knew a lot of biology: more than any of his contemporaries, more than a surprising number of his successors. From prolonged thought and study, he was able to intuit how evolution worked without having access to all the subsequent scientific knowledge that others required to be convinced of natural selection. He had the objectivity to put aside criteria with powerful emotional resonance, like the conviction that evolution should be purposeful. As a result, he saw deep into the strange workings of the evolutionary mechanism, an insight not really exceeded until a century after his great work of synthesis.
-- New York Times

Darwin’s theory of evolution has become the bedrock of modern biology. But for most of the theory’s existence since 1859, even biologists have ignored or vigorously opposed it, in whole or in part. It is a testament to Darwin’s extraordinary insight that it took almost a century for biologists to understand the essential correctness of his views.
-- New York Times

If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worse than ignorant, they are deluded to the point of perversity. They are denying not only the facts of biology but those of physics, geology, cosmology, archaeology, history and chemistry as well. This chapter is about how we know the ages of rocks and the fossils embedded in them. It presents evidence that the timescale on which life has operated on this planet is measured not in thousands of years but in thousands of millions of years.
-- From page 85 of "The Greatest Show on Earth, The Evidence for Evolution" by Richard Dawkins

ID creationism adherents believe in ID creationism because they haven't considered, or don't want to consider, the possibility that they're just retarded. Well, it's time for them to consider it.
-- Mike Toreno

It takes nothing more than a child of a few years to understand the incompatibility of understanding how the world works as opposed to essentially Santa Claus type thinking. It is a matter of honesty to admit that someone being raised from the dead is not a belief compatible with what we know of in science or that the myriad of religious beliefs from around the world are simply not square with the scientific knowledge of the day. It is rank dishonesty to pretend that science and religion are compatible while trying to backdoor tons of material as 'outside' the realm of science.
-- KevinB

To accept evolution isn't just to acknowledge the obvious, that the evidence behind it is overwhelming. It is to open one's eyes to the endless beauty that life has generated and continues to produce. It is to become a knowing participant in the truest sense, in the living world of which we are all a part.
-- Ken Miller

Religion is the antithesis of science, an anesthetic for the mind that disables critical thought and encourages the acceptance of inanity as fact, and wishful thinking as evidence.
-- PZ Myers

Your Discovery Institute is a horrific mistake, an epic intellectual tragedy that is degrading the minds of those who consume its products and bringing dishonor to you and to the church. It is for good reason that Casey Luskin is held in such extreme contempt by your movement's critics, and there's something truly sick about the pattern of attacks that your operatives launched in the weeks after the Biola event. It's clear that you have a cadre of attack dogs that do this work for you, and some of them seem unconstrained by standards of integrity. I can't state this strongly enough: the Discovery Institute is a dangerous cancer on the Christian intellect, both because of its unyielding commitment to dishonesty and because of its creepy mission to undermine science itself. I'd like to see you do better, but I have no such hope for your institute. It needs to be destroyed, and I will do what I can to bring that about.
http://sfmatheson.blogspot.com/2010/06/open-letter-to-stephen-meyer.html

There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.
-- Stephen Hawking

But, as Lovan noted in his piece, “83 percent of home-schooling parents want to give their children ‘religious or moral instruction.’” I weep for those children. For many of them are simply being brainwashed by their parents. Yes, that’s what it is—brainwashing. For a parent to ignore 150 years of solid science, feeding their children lies based on theology, is to deprive those children of the wonder of the universe—a wonder based on truth rather than medieval superstition. It kills off the part of a child that most needs nurturing: her sense of wonder, and all the possibilities of life that are opened up by that wonder. How many budding biologists have been stifled by their parents’ willful ignorance of science, and on their insistence that the Bible is the real source of biological information? Generation after generation of ignorance and religious dogmatism, all perpetuated by religously based home-schooling.
-- Jerry Coyne, http://tinyurl.com/yclezr6

Humans aren't high on the evolutionary scale…there is no evolutionary scale. We aren't the pinnacle of anything.
-- PZ Myers

You know, there’s this pervasive idea in biology that I think is wrong. It goes: we humans are at the pinnacle of the evolutionary tree, and as you get up that tree, brain size must get bigger. But a fly is just as evolved as a human. It’s just evolved to a different niche.
-- Jeremy Niven

It would be so nice if those who oppose evolution would take a tiny bit of trouble to learn the merest rudiments of what it is they are opposing.
-- Richard Dawkins

The field of molecular biology provides the most detailed and convincing evidence available for biological evolution. In its unveiling of the nature of DNA and the workings of organisms at the level of enzymes and other protein molecules, it has shown that these molecules hold information about an organism’s ancestry. This has made it possible to reconstruct evolutionary events that were previously unknown and to confirm and adjust the view of events already known. The precision with which these events can be reconstructed is one reason the evidence from molecular biology is so compelling.
-- Encyclopedia Britannica

Chance alone cannot explain the marvelous fit between individuals and their environment. And it doesn't. True, the raw materials for evolution--the variations between individuals--are indeed produced by chance mutations. These mutations occur willy-nilly, regardless of whether they are good or bad for the individual. But it is the filtering of that variation by natural selectionthat produces adaptations, and natural selection is manifestly notrandom. It is a powerful molding force, accumulating genes that have a greater chance of being passed on to others, and in so doing making individuals even better able to cope with their environment. It is, then, the unique combination of mutation and selection--chance and lawfulness--that tells us how organisms become adapted.
-- Jerry Coyne, Why Evolution is True, page 119

As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races. If, indeed, such men are separated from him by great differences in appearance or habits, experience unfortunately shows us how long it is, before we look at them as our fellow-creatures. ... This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings. As soon as this virtue is honored and practiced by some few men, it spreads through instruction and example to the young, and eventually becomes incorporated in public opinion.
-- Charles Darwin; The Descent of Man, 1871

If anything is absolutely, rock-bottom true, it’s that life evolved, beginning about 4 billion years ago, and that the creation myth of Genesis is completely wrong.
-- Jerry Coyne

The plight of many science teachers today is not less dire. When they attempt to expound the central and guiding principle of biology; when they honestly place the living world in its historical context -- which means evolution; when they explore and explain the very nature of life itself, they are harried and stymied, hassled and bullied, even threatened with loss of their jobs. At the very least their time is wasted at every turn. They are likely to receive menacing letters from parents, and have to endure the sarcastic smirks and close-folded arms of brainwashed children. They are supplied with state-approved textbooks that have had the word 'evolution' systematically expunged, or bowdlerized into 'change over time'.
From page 4 of "The Greatest Show on Earth, The Evidence for Evolution" by Richard Dawkins

The Theologian is an owl, sitting on an old dead branch in the tree of human knowledge, and hooting the same old hoots that have been hooted for hundreds and thousands of years, but he has never given a hoot for progress.
-- Emmett F. Fields

The religious imagination is paltry and petty compared to the awesome reality.
-- PZ Myers

Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact. The evidence for evolution is at least as strong as the evidence for the Holocaust, even allowing for eye witnesses to the Holocaust. It is the plain truth that we are cousins of chimpanzees, somewhat more distant cousins of monkeys, more distant cousins still of aardvarks and mantenees, yet more distant cousins of bananas and turnips ... continue the list as long as long as desired. That didn't have to be true. It is not self-evidently, tautologically, obviously true, and there was a time when most people, even educated people, thought it wasn't. It didn't have to be true, but it is. We know this because a rising flood of evidence supports it. Evolution is a fact, and this book will demonstrate it. No reputable scientist disputes it, and no unbiased reader will close the book doubting it.
-- page 8 of The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins

Your comments are evidence yet again, though it isn't needed, that religions only survive because of the invincible ignorance of their practitioners. Not just ignorance of biology, and physics, and geology, and cosmology, but ignorance of history, and of anthropology, and sociology and psychology. An ignorance that enables the individual member at one particluar time and place to imagine that they, uniquely, have the truth, and that all of the other billions of humans who live now, and lived in the past, didn't. What extraordinary arrogance and ignorance. Encouraged, indeed demanded, by the leaders of every religious cult, for various motives that have nothing to do with any supposed reality of an imaginary second life. And everything to do with power, and wealth, and misogyny, and xenophobia.
-- David Horton

Over the past quarter-century, poll after poll has revealed that nearly half of all Americans flatly reject evolution, many clinging to the ancient superstition that the earth was created only 6,000 years ago, complete with all existing species. But as Richard Dawkins shows in his splendid new book, The Greatest Show on Earth, the theory of evolution is supported by at least as much evidence as is the germ theory of disease--heaps of it, and from many areas of biology. So why is it contemptible to reject germ theory but socially acceptable to reject evolutionary theory?

One answer is religion. Unlike germ theory, the idea of evolution strikes at the heart of human ego, suggesting that we were not the special object of God's attention but were made by the same blind and mindless process of natural selection that also built ferns, fish and rabbits. Another answer is ignorance: most Americans are simply unaware of the multifarious evidence that makes evolution more than "just a theory," and don't even realize that a scientific theory is far more than idle speculation.
-- Jerry Coyne

Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution.
-- Theodosius Dobzhansky

Darwin matters because evolution matters. Evolution matters because science matters. Science matters because it is the preeminent story of our age, an epic saga about who we are, where we came from, and where we are going.
-- Michael Shermer

Evolution is God's redundancy notice, his pink slip.
-- Richard Dawkins http://tinyurl.com/l4n2ar

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.
-- Richard Dawkins

I should love to have everybody taught about evolution from a fairly early age, because it is so important, so exciting. It answers so many questions and mysteries; it solves so many problems. Until you know about it, you're wandering around on this Earth looking at trees and birds and flowers, not knowing why any of them is there. Evolution is the answer to that riddle, so you're not really a whole person if you don't know where you come from and why you exist. And it's not difficult. It's not like relativity, it's not like quantum theory – it's something teachable to fairly young children.
-- Richard Dawkins

Darwin anticipated problems with his theory. Modern science has
answered them. Evolution by Natural Selection has been triumphantly
vindicated as fact.
-- Richard Dawkins

So the case is closed in a most beautiful way, and that is, the prediction of evolution of common ancestry is fulfilled by that lead-pipe evidence that you see here in terms of tying everything together, that our chromosome formed by the fusion from our common ancestor is Chromosome Number 2. Evolution has made a testable prediction and has passed.
-- Ken Miller at the Dover trial http://tinyurl.com/2llumn

In October 2008 a group of about sixty American high-school teachers met at the Center for Science Education of Emory University, in Atlanta. Some of the horror stories they had to tell deserve wide attention. One teacher reported that students 'burst into tears' when told they would be studying evolution. Another teacher described how students repeatedly screamed 'No!' when he began talking about evolution in class. Another reported that pupils demanded to know why they had to learn about evolution, given that it was 'only a theory'. Yet another teacher described how 'churches train students to come to school with specific questions to ask to sabotage my lessons'.
-- page 434 of "The Greatest Show on Earth, The Evidence for Evolution" by Richard Dawkins

Now, nearly 150 years later, we can see. We no longer look at Nature's diversity "as a savage looks at a ship." From the new DNA record, the evidence of the workings of the evolutionary process abounds. But many people--a great many--either do not see what scientists see, or do not believe what scientists have concluded.

I have borrowed the title of this chapter from the wonderful book Seeing and Believing by Richard Panek, about the invention of the telescope and how it changed our perception of the sky and our place in the universe. Like Darwin, Galileo's observations and ideas were rejected by authorities who had no use for new evidence or ideas. But, eventually, the observable evidence overwhelmed ideological resistance. For all of those who do see the overwhelming evidence of natural selection and life's descent from ancestors, and the immense span of time over which the story of life unfolded, it is, to put it mildly, baffling how so many still do not. It is absolutely astonishing and often infuriating that some take it so far as to deny the immense foundation of evidence and to slander all the human achievement that foundation represents.

With the facts on evolution's side, how can this doubt and denial persist, or even be growing, here at the outset of the twenty-first century?
-- "The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution" by Sean B. Carroll

The faculty in the Department of Biological Sciences is committed to the highest standards of scientific integrity and academic function. This commitment carries with it unwavering support for academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas. It also demands the utmost respect for the scientific method, integrity in the conduct of research, and recognition that the validity of any scientific model comes only as a result of rational hypothesis testing, sound experimentation, and findings that can be replicated by others.

The department faculty, then, are unequivocal in their support of evolutionary theory, which has its roots in the seminal work of Charles Darwin and has been supported by findings accumulated over 140 years. The sole dissenter from this position, Prof. Michael Behe, is a well-known proponent of "intelligent design." While we respect Prof. Behe's right to express his views, they are his alone and are in no way endorsed by the department. It is our collective position that intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally, and should not be regarded as scientific.
-- Lehigh University Department of Biological Sciences, Department Position on Evolution and "Intelligent Design"

Evolution is both a scientific fact and a scientific theory. Evolution is a fact in the sense that life has changed through time. In nature today, the characteristics of species are changing, and new species are arising. The fossil record is the primary factual evidence for evolution in times past, and evolution is well documented by further evidence from other scientific disciplines, including comparative anatomy, biogeography, genetics, molecular biology, and studies of viral and bacterial diseases. Evolution is also a theory – an explanation for the observed changes in life through Earth history that has been tested numerous times and repeatedly confirmed.
-- Paleontological Society

While modern biologists constantly study and deliberate the patterns, mechanisms, and pace of evolution, they agree that all living things share common ancestors. The fossil record and the diversity of extant organisms, combined with modern techniques of molecular biology, taxonomy, and geology, provide exhaustive examples of and powerful evidence for current evolutionary theory. Genetic variation, natural selection, speciation, and extinction are well-established components of modern evolutionary theory. Explanations are constantly modified and refined as warranted by new scientific evidence that accumulates over time, which demonstrates the integrity and validity of the field. Scientists have firmly established evolution as an important natural process.
-- National Association of Biology Teachers

It is our view that a reasonable, objective observer would, after reviewing both the voluminous record in this case, and our narrative, reach the inescapable conclusion that ID is an interesting theological argument, but that it is not science ... In summary, the [school board's] disclaimer singles out the theory of evolution for special treatment, misrepresents its status in the scientific community, causes students to doubt its validity without scientific justification, presents students with a religious alternative masquerading as a scientific theory, directs them to consult a creationist text [Of Pandas and People] as though it were a science resource, and instructs students to forego scientific inquiry in the public school classroom and instead to seek out religious instruction elsewhere.
-- Judge Jones' decision in the 2005 Dover trial

Fortunately, there is, however, an altogether new way of deciphering species' relationships. It also relies on DNA, but rather than being based on the degree of sequence similarity, it looks for the presence and absence of certain landmarks in specific places in species DNA. These landmarks are produced by accidental insertions of junk DNA sequences near genes. Particular chunks of junk DNA, call long interspersed elements (LINES) and short interspersed elements (SINES), are very easy to detect. Once a SINE or LINE is inserted, there is no active mechanism for removing it. The insertion of these elements marks a gene in a species, and is then inherited by all species descended from it. They are really perfect tracers of genealogy. These insertion events are very rare; therefore, their presence in the same place in the DNA of two species can be explained only by the species sharing a common ancestor. The inheritance of variable markers in DNA is the same principle applied to paternity testing in humans. By surveying the distribution of a number of elements that arose at different times in different ancestors, biologists have sufficient forensic evidence to determine species' kinship beyond any doubt.
-- "The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution" by Sean B. Carroll

My point here is that there is anincredible amount of evidence for evolution, far more than any one person can digest, and that it is a vital field, still growing and still producing new results. All those papers don't get published unless they contain some new observation, a new experiment, a new test of the idea…and evolution has weathered them all.
-- PZ Myers http://tinyurl.com/6qn3gm

The plain fact is, religion must die for mankind to live. The hour is getting very late to be able to indulge in having key decisions being made by religious people, by irrationalists, by those who would steer the ship of state not by a compass, but by the equivalent of reading the entrails of a chicken.

Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It's nothing to brag about. And those who preach faith and enable and elevate it are our intellectual slave holders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction.

Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don't have all the answers to think that they do. Most people would think it's wonderful when someone says "I'm willing Lord, to do whatever you want me to do". But since there are no actual gods talking to us, that void is filled in by people with their own corruptions and limitations and agendas.

This is why rational people, anti-religionists, must end their timidity and come out of the closet and assert themselves. And those who consider themselves only moderately religious really need to look in the mirror and recognize that the solace and comfort that religion brings you actually comes at a terrible price.

If you belonged to a political party or a social club that was tied to as much bigotry, misogyny, violence and sheer ignorance as religion is, you'd resign in protest. To do otherwise is to be an enabler, a mafia wife for the true devils of extremism that draw their legitimacy from the millions of their fellow followers.
-- Bill Maher

Q. So what you're testifying here is that modern genetics and molecular biology actually support evolutionary theory?
A. They support it in great detail. And the closer that we can get to looking at the details of the human genome, the more powerful the evidence has become.
-- Ken Miller at the Dover trial http://tinyurl.com/2llumn

It's hard not to look at someone like Don McLeroy, professional science-denier and flaming creationist asshole, and not feel considerable disgust that that man was in charge of destroying the public school curriculum in the state.
-- PZ Myers

An essential element in the teaching of science is the encouragement of students and teachers to critically appraise the evidence for notions being taught as science. The Society states unequivocally that the dogmatic teaching of notions such as Creationism within a science curriculum stifles the development of critical thinking patterns in the developing mind and seriously compromises the best interests of objective public education. This could eventually hamper the advancement of science and technology as students take their places as leaders of future generations.
— Geological Society of Australia

The Hominidae (anglicized hominids, also known as great apes) form a taxonomic family, including four extant genera: chimpanzee, gorillas, humans, and orangutans.
-- Wikipedia

"Yet Darwin looked beyond the obvious, suggesting--and supporting with copious evidence--two ideas that forever dispelled the idea of deliberate design. Those ideas were evolution and natural selection. He was not the first to think of evolution--several before him, including his own grandfather Erasmus Darwin, floated the idea that life had evolved. But Darwin was the first to use data from nature to convince people that evolution is true, and his idea of natural selection was truly novel. It testifies to his genius that the concept of natural theology, accepted by most educated Westerners before 1859, was vanquished within only a few years by a single five-hundred-page book. On the Origin of Species turned the mysteries of life's diversity from mythology into genuine science."
-- page 3 of Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne

Creation science has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and because good teachers understand exactly why it is false. What could be more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our entire intellectual heritage -- good teaching -- than a bill forcing honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any general understanding of science as an enterprise?
-- Stephen Jay Gould

Christians attack science education & scientific progress, they brainwash children, they're equal to terrorists. The time for being nice is over with.

Christian assholes are enemies of America. They are trying to destroy my country. The time for being nice to these subhumans is over with. They must be relentlessly attacked and ridiculed. They must be treated with contempt.

When Christian scum try to stick their intelligent design into our schools they must not be allowed to get away with it. A good place to start would be to demand they stop calling magic "design". They need to understand they aren't fooling anyone when they use code words like design to make their childish fantasies look scientific. When they call their magic god fairy a designer they are being dishonest and everyone needs to tell them they're liars. They also need to be told they're traitors and they belong in prison.

Even worse than the theocratic Christian tards are the wimpy atheists who suck up to them. The atheist wimps are the reason Christians continue to make progress with their goal to make America a theocracy. The wimps must be ridiculed even more than the Christian idiots they suck up to.

Tone matters, because too many have been insufficiently fierce in their criticism of pious excuses for sloppy thinking. Tone matters because we haven’t been rude enough in the face of special claims of privilege for religious inanity. We need to flip that tone argument around 180°—the problem isn’t that our tone is so harsh, it’s that yours is so inappropriately soft towards people who lie to children, who want to gut our educational system, and who want to taint science with a bias for magic.

-- PZ Myers

The human psyche has two great sicknesses: the urge to carry vendetta across generations, and the tendency to fasten group labels on people rather than see them as individuals. Religion fuels both. All violent enmities in the world today fuel their tanks at this holy gas-station. Those of us who have for years politely concealed our contempt for the dangerous collective delusion of religion need to stand up and speak out. Things are different after September 11th. Let's stop being so damned respectful!

-- Richard Dawkins

Out of control stupidity from the Christian Post.

I wrote four comments at this website for Christian retards:

Calif. Science Center Allows Intelligent Design Film to Be Shown

Human Ape

Calif. Science Center Allows MAGIC Film to Be Shown.

Magic, magic, magic, everything is magic according to Christian tards.

Calling magic "design" doesn't make it any less childish.

From a previous comment: "Why would I be interested in changing my beliefs if all you can say is that I'm stupid for believing what you don't believe?"

Because you should be interested in being less stupid. And you are bloody stupid.

Consider the advantages of growing up and not being a superstitious idiot.

You also wrote "I also have a degree in Biology and I love science" then you stupidly say "I also believe that how our universe was created cannot be fully or accurately be described through either ID or Evolution. Both are only theories, not laws."

You have a science degree and you don't even know what a scientific theory is. A theory is the highest level of understanding in science. Higher than laws and facts. You don't even know what evolution is. Hint: evolutionary biology says nothing about the origin of the universe. You're either a liar or you graduated from a worthless Bible college. Even grammar students know more about science than you do. Then you complain when normal people correctly call you a tard.

You dishonestly say you love science when you're really a science denier. You say you have a biology degree and you deny the foundation of biology. And you call magic a scientific theory. You're pathetic.

So what are you, bloody stupid, a pathological liar, or both? I'm betting on both.

-----------------------

"I wanted someone to give me a good reason for why insults, sarcasm, and the general desire to tear an opponent apart is accepted as an intelligent argument."

When you uneducated morons who dishonestly call magic "design" stop disgracing America with your anti-science fantasies, the insults will end. It's morally wrong to not insult people who are too cowardly to grow up, who brainwash children to be superstitious morons, and who are constantly trying to dumb down science education to defend their dead Jeebus. Christians are equal to terrorists and they deserve nothing but contempt and ridicule.

You have a science degree but you believe in magical intelligent design creationism and you have the nerve to call your childish fantasy a scientific theory. If anyone ever deserved ridicule it's you.

-----------------------

• "Just because I don't think the earth is that young I should automatically reject everything ID proposes and blindly follow every tenet of Evolution? Why is this debate only either/or?"
  
  There is NO debate. Evolution is the strongest basic fact of science. "Intelligent Design" are code words dishonest Christians use when they really mean "supernatural magic".
  
  Should you automatically reject everything MAGIC proposes?
  
  You disgrace your science degree.
  
  If you don't like being called stupid, why do you ask stupid questions?
• -----------------------

  
  

  "What am I to think of those people who criticize me, but don't explain why they believe what they believe?"

  
  Since when did basic scientific facts like evolution become beliefs?
  
  It's obvious you learned nothing in that worthless Christian college you went to.

"The evidence is unmistakable."

Click the label human chromosome two for more information about this extremely powerful evidence for our evolutionary relationship with the other Great Apes.

YouTube Video: Human Chromosome 2

Since the mid-1800s, biologists have generally shared the belief that all living things descended from a single common ancestor. Based on fossil evidence and comparative anatomy, Charles Darwin proposed that humans and great apes--which include chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans--share a common ancestor that lived several million years ago. More recent research has propped up Darwin's theory of common descent (also called common ancestry): genome analysis reveals the genetic difference between humans and chimps to be less than 2 percent. In other words, humans and chimps have DNA sequences that are greater than 98 percent similar.

While the genetic similarity between human and ape strengthened Darwin's theory, a significant, unexplained discrepancy remained. While great apes all have 48 chromosomes (24 pairs), humans have only 46 (23 pairs). If humans and apes shared a common ancestor, shouldn't both have the same number of chromosomes in their cells?

The phases through which chromosomes replicate, divide, shuffle, and recombine are imperfect, as DNA is subject to random mutations. Mutations do not always produce harmful outcomes. In fact, many mutations are thought to be neutral, and some even give rise to beneficial traits. To corroborate Darwin's theory, scientists would need to find a valid explanation for why a chromosome pair is missing in humans that is present in apes.

A fundamental part of the process by which science is done involves developing a testable prediction, also known as a hypothesis. Scientists offered two possible explanations for the discrepancy: Either the common ancestor had 24 pairs, and humans carry a fused chromosome; or the ancestor had 23 pairs, and apes carry a split chromosome. Their focused research led them to find a mutation on one human chromosome that explained what had happened.

In 2005, a peer-reviewed scientific journal published results of the tests. It turns out that chromosome 2, which is unique to the human lineage of evolution, emerged as a result of the head-to-head fusion of two ancestral chromosomes that remain separate in other primates. Three genetic indicators provide strong, if not conclusive, evidence of fusion. First, the banding (or dye pattern) of human chromosome 2 closely matches that of two separate chromosomes found in apes (chimp chromosome 2 and an extra chromosome that does not match any other human chromosome). Second, a chromosome normally has one centromere, or central point at which a chromosome's two identical strands are joined. Yet remnants of a second, presumably inactive centromere can be found on human chromosome 2. And third, whereas a normal chromosome has readily identifiable, repeating DNA sequences called telomeres at both ends, chromosome 2 also has telomere sequences not only at both ends but also in the middle.

"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." -- Thedosius Dobzhansky

This blog has 82 posts about the evidence for evolution.

Occasionally an evolution denier will visit this blog. Do they ever read and try to understand these 82 posts? No. Never once. They are not interested in scientific evidence. They are here only to show off their very bad reasons for denying reality. Sometimes they are polite but usually they are assholes. Always they demonstrate their total ignorance of what they're complaining about.

They could fix their problem. All they have to do is study the bloody evidence, if not here then somewhere else. On the internet there are thousands of websites that explain the facts of evolutionary biology and they are easy to find with google. But the science deniers are not interested.

Why do Christian assholes and Muslim terrorists prefer magical intelligent design creationism instead of the strongest basic fact of science? There can be only one possible explanation. They're just plain stupid.

The University of Chicago biologist Jerry Coyne wrote Why Evolution is True which is, in my opinion, the best book about evolution for non-scientists. The book has so many examples of powerful evidence for evolution even experienced biologists would benefit from it. Another important thing about Why Evolution is True is there's nothing tedious in it. The entire book is interesting and easy to read. If you buy only one book about evolution this should be the book you own.

In Why Evolution is True Jerry Coyne asked five good questions about some facts of nature in the section called Palimpsests in Embryos (pages 73 thru 80).

Why do different vertebrates, which wind up looking very different from one another, all begin development looking like a fish embryo?

Why do mammals form their heads and faces from the very same embryonic structures that become the gills of fish?

Why do vertebrate embryos go through such a contorted sequence of changes in the circulatory system?

Why don't human embryos, or lizard embryos, begin development with their adult circulatory systems already in place, rather than making a lot of changes in what developed earlier?

Why does our sequence of development mimic the order of our ancestors (fish to amphibian to reptile to mammal)?

Only evolution can answer these questions. The professional evolution deniers ignore these questions and the amateur evolution deniers have never heard of these questions.

These questions are about facts of nature. Established facts. How to explain these facts? Did the dead Jeebus wave his magic wand to make it look like evolution is true? Or is evolution how the world works?

A list of American politicians who prefer supernatural magic instead of scientific facts.

Idiot America is infested with idiot voters so of course most of our politicians are idiots.

From Answers in Stupidity a list of science deniers who are also "recent American presidents and high government officials" as if this list of assholes for Jeebus is evidence against the foundation of biology.

High Level American Government Leaders Support Magic

I often wonder what it would be like to live in a country not infested with uneducated morons (also known as Christians).

"Creation scientists" is wishful thinking bullshit. There are no creation scientists.

If idiots invoke magic to solve a scientific problem they are not doing science. They are only being idiots.

Creation = magic = bullshit.

Magic is not science and the Christian tards who invoke magic are not scientists.

Understand Christian loons? Do you scum understand anything?

Some friendly advice for Christian assholes.

When you Christian tards are talking to a normal person (also known as an atheist) you should not waste your time and the normal person's time with quotes from your idiotic disgusting worthless Bible. When you thump your Jeebus Holy Book you are only providing evidence for your breathtaking stupidity and insanity. And when you use your Bible to insult normal people, you are only proving you're a fucking asshole.

Also, Christian morons, if you want to make some dishonest claim about evolutionary biology, don't bother because normal people will only laugh at your ignorance and your cowardly fear of reality.

You looney Christians should spend less time complaining about normal people and more time trying to understand them. You should ask yourselves why at least one billion people in the world don't share your childish supernatural fantasies. You should consider the possibility the normal people are correct and you have been wasting your life being a fucking idiot.

Paula Kirby perfectly explains why the facts of evolutionary biology kill the idiotic Christian Death Cult.

Evolution threatens Christianity

Evolution poses a further threat to Christianity, though, a threat that goes to the very heart of Christian teaching. Evolution means that the creation accounts in the first two chapters of Genesis are wrong. That's not how humans came into being, nor the cattle, nor the creeping things, nor the beasts of the earth, nor the fowl of the air. Evolution could not have produced a single mother and father of all future humans, so there was no Adam and no Eve. No Adam and Eve: no fall. No fall: no need for redemption. No need for redemption: no need for a redeemer. No need for a redeemer: no need for the crucifixion or the resurrection, and no need to believe in that redeemer in order to gain eternal life. And not the slightest reason to believe in eternal life in the first place.

"The denial of evolution requires denial of the bedrock of two centuries of biology and geology. That is quite a feat ..."

Human endogenous retrovirus K (HERV-K) insertions in identical chromosomal locations in various primates

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The quote in the title of this post comes from Sean B. Carroll's The Making of the Fittest, DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution.

In the same book Sean B. Carroll also wrote:

For all of those who do see the overwhelming evidence of natural selection and life's descent from ancestors, and the immense span of time over which the story of life unfolded, it is, to put it mildly, baffling how so many still do not. It is absolutely astonishing and often infuriating that some take it so far as to deny the immense foundation of evidence and to slander all the human achievement that foundation represents.

I won't "put it mildly". Evolution deniers are world-class idiots. Their stupidity and their irrational fear of reality is as overwhelming as the massive scientific evidence they have to deny to defend their dead Jeebus. Evolution deniers, also known as creationists because of their childish belief in an invisible creator who used a magic wand to create every creature out of nothing, are severely mentally disturbed. In many cases their mental illness is dangerous to others. They disgrace the human race with their cowardly denial of what every biologist knows is the strongest basic fact of science. In Idiot America they are most of the population and they have disgraced my country long enough. They will always have my complete contempt.

Magical Intelligent Design Creationism (or whatever Christian assholes are calling it now) is virtually always an incurable disease, but there are very rare exceptions. After years of trying I did, only once, convince a Christian his magical creationism has big problems, like for example it's bullshit. How was I able to convince a willfully ignorant Christian tard to grow up? That's what this post is about.

I have talked to science deniers both in person and on the internet. The one person I was able to convince was communicating with me on a Christian website. Unlike most creationists this Christian was not an uneducated moron. He had a lucrative career that required strong intelligence. Unfortunately like most Americans he was a victim of intense religious brainwashing, but this person still had the ability to think. So instead of giving up early like I usually do (because insanity can't be fixed) I kept at it for awhile.

I was explaining why ERVs are used to accurately determine evolutionary relationships. I explained why, for example, ERVs in the exact same locations in the genome of modern human apes and modern chimpanzee apes show beyond any doubt these two ape species share an ancient ape ancestor.

He then invoked one of the professional assholes who work for the Christian Creationist Discovery Institute who said these ERVs are functional, which is not true and in any case has nothing to do with the point of this evidence.

I then explained that not only was his professional liar wrong about ERVs, it wouldn't even matter if he was right. The liar was only trying to avoid talking about the reason this evidence is so powerful which is that ERVs are inherited and when they appear in identical locations in two species, the only possible explanation is those ERVs were inherited from a common ancestor.

To my great surprise the Christian understood. He actually said "This is a problem for creationism." Even more surprisingly he asked for some books to read and I recommended Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne.

He said he was going to continue being a Christian no matter what. I never heard from him again but I would bet by now he's in the process of throwing out his Christian death cult.

This blog has a few posts about ERVs:

Endogenous Retroviruses make Jeebus cry.

From biology-talk.com, why evolution is true.

Molecular evidence - Endogenous retroviruses

We also harbor dead genes that came from other species, namely viruses. Some, called 'endogenous retroviruses' (ERVs), can make copies of their genome and insert them into the DNA of species they infect. (HIV is a retrovirus.) If the viruses infect the cells that make sperm and eggs, they can be passed on to future generations. The human genome contains thousands of such viruses, nearly all of them rendered harmless by mutations. They are the remnants of ancient infections. But some of these remnants sit in exactly the same location on the chromosomes of humans and chimpanzees. These were surely viruses that infected our common ancestor and were passed on to both descendants. Since there is almost no chance of viruses inserting themselves independently at exactly the same spot in two species, this points strongly to common ancestry.

-- Jerry Coyne

Science deniers don't know what they're missing.

When we no longer look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as something wholly beyond his comprehension; when we regard every production of nature as one which has had a long history; when we contemplate every complex structure and instinct as the summing up of many contrivances, each useful to the possessor, in the same way as any great mechanical invention is the summing up of the labour, the experience, the reason, and even the blunders of numerous workmen; when we thus view each organic being, how far more interesting - I speak from experience - does the study of natural history become!

— Charles Darwin

These quotes are for the Christian scum who want to make America their theocracy.

"The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma."
-Abraham Lincoln, American president (1809-1865)

"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I absenteed myself from Christian assemblies."
"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."
-Benjamin Franklin, American Founding Father, author, and inventor

"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, bigotry, and persecution."
"In no instance have . . . the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people."
"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."
-James Madison, American president and political theorist (1751-1836)

"The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity."
-John Adams, U.S. President, Founding Father of the United States

"Religions are all alike - founded upon fables and mythologies."
"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."
"Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man."
-Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President, author, scientist, architect, educator, and diplomat

The only people more disgusting than the Bible thumping evolution deniers are the idiots who accept both evolution and a magical god fairy.

Sean B. Carroll (Professor of Molecular Biology, Genetics, and Medical Genetics at the University of Wisconsin) wrote the priceless book The Making of the Fittest, DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution. He unfortunately, in a chapter where he complains about evolution deniers, sucks up to religious idiots who accept the facts of evolutionary biology but pollute this branch of science with their magic fairy (god used evolution to make people and other creatures, as if natural processes exist only to make a god's job easier).

This makes Professor Carroll part of the religious insanity problem. How are we suppose to rid the world of terrorism and the brainwashing of innocent children if our best scientists suck up to these superstitious imbeciles?

Sean B. Carroll, whose book is a must-read masterpiece, is unfortunately what I would call an atheist wimp. A suck-up who quotes professional religious assholes to defend evolution education from religious attacks even though he most certainly doesn't share their god fantasy.

However this post isn't about wimpy atheists. I want to write about the religious tards Carroll sucks up to. For more information about wimps please see the 21 posts I wrote about them.

This is from pages 241 and 242 of the book The Making of the Fittest, DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution.

Consider, for example, a recent statement by Reverend Richard Harries, the Bishop of Oxford; in a BBC radio "Thought for the Day," he expressed his sadness and concerns over the treatment of evolution: "Do some people really think that the worldwide scientific community is engaged in a massive conspiracy to hoodwink the rest of us? ... The theory of evolution, far from undermining faith, deepens it." This was quickly seen by Frederick Temple, later Archbishop of Canterbury, who said that God doesn't just make the world, he does something even more wonderful, he makes the world make itself.

Bishop Harries asked a good question. Evolution deniers (also known as cowardly Christian assholes) apparently do think the world's biologists are liars. Then Harries makes a fool out of himself with his childish disgusting "evolution deepens faith".

What the fuck? Sean B. Carroll doesn't question this bullshit but I'm going to do that right now. A basic scientific fact is, according to Harries, something that can make people more likely to believe in supernatural fantasies. Really? How? Harries is just making stuff up to justify his totally worthless profession.

Then there's Archbishop Temple who makes the wild idiotic claim that his Magical Master of the Universe (an invisible creature who has never shown itself) uses natural processes to create stuff, including life. Does he provide any evidence for this childish fantasy? No, of course not. Like Bishop Harries, Archbishop Temple is willing to say any bullshit that justifies his worthless career.

Also, Archbishop Temple, if natural processes are responsible for everything in the universe, what the fuck is your god fairy good for? What has it ever done? Obviously nothing. Therefore it doesn't exist. Of course it doesn't exist. A magical god is as idiotic a fantasy as the Easter Bunny. And Sean B. Carroll uses these professional religious tards to defend evolution from the religious war against it.

A better idea would be to stop sucking up to idiots. The goal of every scientist, when they're not busy doing their research, should be to help completely eradicate religious insanity from this planet. The Christian and Muslim war against science education will never end until every preacher, cleric, and other professional god-soaked scum are dead.

The stupidity of the science deniers of America's Republican Party.

At two different Washington Post websites I wrote some comments.

Attention Governor Perry: Evolution is a fact

Why is evolution so threatening to religion?

Richard Dawkins wrote "Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science, and he who denies it betrays woeful ignorance and lack of education, which likely extends to other fields as well."

Evolution deniers like Rick Perry and virtually every other Republican candidate for President of the United States are uneducated morons and therefore they are not qualified to lead this country. Denying the science of evolution is equal to denying the holocaust. Their stupidity is out of control and it would be a disaster for the entire world if one of these idiots was elected.

By the way I'm very conservative and I would love to vote for a real Republican. Unfortunately today's Republicans are too god-soaked insane to get my vote.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Rick Perry, at a campaign event this week, told a boy that evolution is just a theory”

Evolution is just the strongest basic fact of science. Rick Perry is just an uneducated moron.

"Why is evolution so threatening to religion?"

Evolutionary biology, more than any other branch of science, threatens every Christian fantasy, including the magic god fairy, and especially the magical heaven myth. This is why cowards are terrified of modern biology.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

in Texas they teach “both creationism and evolution.” Perry later added “God is how we got here."

Texas biology teachers teach both magic and science? If that's true they should be fired.

As Texas Governor Rick Perry has done everything he possibly could to dumb down science education to accommodate his Christian Death Cult. Rick Perry has no respect for our constitution, he's uneducated, and he's just plain stupid. He's insane to pretend he's qualified to be president of anything. Rick Perry is an enemy of our country. He deserves nothing but contempt and ridicule.