Sam harris and bill maher

i think its fair to say that putting bill maher and sam harris in the same room will challenge even the most intelligent viewer. Well, watch the video and prepare to be challenged:

michael ruse is a liar

michael ruse has written an article saying that the god delusion makes him embarased to be an atheist. As always, the intelligent folke at richarddawkins.net rip ruse apart with comments such as:

Interesting he refers to PZ Myers as a "non-stop" blogger. Just what is that supposed to mean? I'm pretty sure he does stop to eat and sleep. Or is it that his blog is too widely-read for Ruse's tastes? Hmm.

Michael Ruse is a fucking LIAR.

So, he was a philosopy prof at 25. We're presumably supposed to conclude he's totally brilliant. Pity he failed the logic course.

Your sky daddy's big blunder

I was thinking how your sky daddy made trees with apples growing on them. But heres the problem. If they have been a really intelligent designer then they'd have designed ones with pizzas growing on them. Pizzas taste nicer than apples? Right? Well would a pizza tree be better than an apple tree? Right? So an intelligent designer would fill the universe with pizza trees instead of apple trees. Right?

more on francis collins

sam harris does it again with another awsom argument against francis collins (and dim wits like john polinghorn) you can read it here. Basically his argument is as follows:

1. believing in a sky daddy is unscientific
2. francis collins believes in a sky daddy
3. therefore francis collins cannot be a good scientist
4. therefore francis collins should not be in charge of the nih

obviously this is only a summary, id encourage you to read the article itself.

more on francis collins

You may remember that i bloged about francis collins becoming director of the nih not that long ago. Well now P Z Myers has blogged about it on a similar theme. Its not that francis collins isnt a good scientist as such, or that he did a bad job running the human genome project but he isnt an atheist and only atheists should be allowed to hold important jobs. There should be a rule stating that only atheists can becoming incharge of the nih. Now you mighbt ask why? This is not the same as the xian who wants to persecute atheists because we are doing it in the name of reason instead of an imaginary friend. and thats the point - p z myers is a scientist, p z myers says that francis collins is a clown therefore all we asking for is that clowns arent put incharge of the nih. So lets hope that us brights will be able to get francis collins sacked.

nazi salue

somebody told me that when xians sing songs they raise there hands in a nazi salute way. more evidence that hitler was an xian...

francis collins

aparantly fraancis collins is going to be put in charge of the nih, as always Richard Dawkins hits the nail on the head:

I know we are all supposed to say it doesn't matter how ridiculous somebody's beliefs are, so long as he leaves them at home and doesn't thrust them on other people. This is often said of teachers. For example, it doesn't matter if the science teacher believes the world is 6,000 years old, so long as he tells the children the scientific estimate is 4.6 billion. But I can never be quite happy with this. Surely the fact that somebody believes really dopey things tells you he isn't INTELLIGENT enough to teach, even if he keeps his stupid beliefs out of the classroom.

Now, Francis Collins is a very nice man, he doesn't SEEM stupid, and I think Bill Maher was mistaken when he told me, on television, that Collins believes in a talking snake. But he presumably believes the things his Biologos Foundation advocates, for example the view that God causes miracles to happen (illustrated with a picture of Jesus walking on water). Can somebody who holds such anti-scientific and downright silly beliefs really be qualified to run the NIH? Isn't he disqualified, not by whether or not he leaves his beliefs outside the laboratory and the committee room, but by the very fact that he is capable of holding such beliefs at all?

Richard