Patriotic songs | The Rational Response SquadSource: www.rationalresponde...The Rational Response Squad is a group of atheist activists who impact society by changing the way we view god belief. This site is a haven for those who are pushing back against the norm, and a place for believers of gods to have their beliefs exposed as false should they want to try their hand at...    God bless Russia, God bless the UK, God bless America. What a brainwashing tool...    

Valley pastors, atheist: Don't burn Quran
Danville News
By Joseph Deinlein The Daily Item LEWISBURG — A Florida minister's plans to burn copies of the Quran on Saturday to mark the ninth anniversary of the Sept. ...

• Scientists Find that ‘Orange’ Maize is a Good Source of Vitamin A

• A New Theory on the Origin of the Lewis Chessmen (tip to David)

• Burn a Bible, save a kitten

• Barriers to GE Hort Crop Commercialization

Last week a workshop at the International Horticultural Congress in Lisbon, Portugal featured a series of speakers known for their work in transgenic technology. I’ll summarize these in the next few posts. Today’s post addresses an important question- why are there few horticultural (basically non-agronomic fruits and vegetables) transgenic crops available, at least relative to corn, soy and other huge agronomic crops? These are the capsules of flavor and nutrition truly necessary in a diverse diet, yet they suffer tremendous challenges to production and distribution. Transgenic technologies could deliver great benefits.

• Ghostwriting As Marketing Tool

An article in the latest issue of PLOS Medicine, The Haunting of Medical Journals: How Ghostwriting Sold “HRT”, details the use of ghostwriting as a marketing tool for pharmaceutical companies. It is a chilling discussion of how at least one pharmaceutical company, Wyeth, used the peer-reviewed literature as a method of distributing marketing messages to physicians.

Despite the stereotype of all airline food being bad, it is sometimes possible to find a good meal set on the tray in front of you. Unfortunately, a majority of the food you are likely to come across while flying will be of poor quality.

The Guardian
What you're saying: Atheist author Christopher Hitchens' visit to Birmingham ...
al.com (blog)
They have a reception at 5 pm and debate "Does Atheism Poison Everything" at 7 pm, today (September 7) at Sheraton Birmingham Hotel ballroom. ...
A personal journey back to GodOn Line opinion
For the sake of argumentThe Samford Crimson
Hitchens sets an example for us allScienceBlogs (blog)
Christian Post -The Guardian -Jerusalem Post
all 17 news articles »

Atheist group leases billboard by state fairgrounds
Journal Record (subscription)
OKLAHOMA CITY – Don't believe in God? Join the club. That's the message that the United Coalition of Reason wants to share with the public, ...

and more »

Daily Mail
Papal Protesters, Bishop Call for Courtesy During Visit while Media/Atheists ...
Lifesite
Asked what he would say to the pope were he granted an audience, Professor Richard Dawkins, Britain's premier “New Atheist,” said he would say, ...
Distressed by the atheist onslaught? Get a grip of yourselfCatholic Herald Online (blog)
I disagree with many of his teachings. But it's those who oppose Pope Benedict ...Daily Mail
Pope won't be arrested in UK, protesters admitTelegraph.co.uk

all 252 news articles »

MyFox Tampa Bay
Churches counter atheist billboards
MyFox Tampa Bay
L;AKELAND - First came the atheists with their anti-God messages on billboards in Lakeland—now there are believers who say God is part of the fabric of ...

Creative Loafing Atlanta
Anti-Religious Billboards to Appear in Metro Atlanta
WXIA-TV
Soon, 50 billboards will go up all over town, pushing a decidedly atheist message. "It lets people know that we're here," said Perry Mitchell, ...
Billboards shun religion, promote separation of church and stateAtlanta Journal Constitution

all 3 news articles »

The Sakshat, the $35 Indian tablet everyone's been buzzing about, has an official launch date of early next year and...

Water lily Read the comments on this post...

The Koran Burning Pastor - From an Atheist's Perspective
NewsBlaze
As an atheist, I get pegged as someone who doesn't respect religion, a heathen, a sinner, and a plethora of other unsavory things that ...

EDIT:  I’m leaving the original post intact, but this is a great example of a good way for a skeptic to approach life.  It turns out this speech was not from Bill Gates in his high school days.  It’s actually from Charles Sykes.  Score a win for skepticism.  Rather than take it as read, I [...]

The AtlanticWire (blog)
Atheist Assistant Has Military Chaplain's Back
The AtlanticWire (blog)
He says he was simply seeking counsel about whether atheists can really be chaplain's assistants. RP2 Chute is convinced Lt. Moran was trying to trade him ...
Pentagon Pairs Chaplain With Atheist AssistantIndyPosted

all 2 news articles »

It has become quite amusing to watch the Defenders of the Faith reach for increasingly more hysterical phrasing to describe what the Gnu Atheists are doing. I thought we were writing and talking, but according to William Oddie, we're carrying out a distressing onslaught.

The atheists' utter loathing, all the same, is at times a little frightening in its sheer vicious irrationality. These people are in the grip of a barely restrained hysteria. Take the current issue of the New Humanist, subtitle: "Ideas for godless people"; this issue gives a good idea of what it must be like being godless, and at least it makes you grateful not to be godless yourself. "If you were invited to address Benedict XVI during his UK visit," the New Humanist introduces its special issue, "what would you say to him? Richard Dawkins, Philip Pullman, Claire Rayner, Ben Goldacre and many more take part in our Pope quiz."

Ah, yes, the fellow who believes in angels and miracles and magic crackers finds it irrational that people look at his beliefs and point out how silly they are, and even worse, looks at the faith-based bloody-minded malfunctioning policies promulgated by the Pope and criticize them as nonsensical and counter-productive and damaging to humanity. He's upset now because the New Humanist was insufficiently reverent and loving towards the Pope; in the Catholic World Order, after all, we must ignore the real effects of his ideas and instead adore him and kiss his ring.

This is all horrible for anyone who regards Pope Benedict with the admiration and love most Catholics feel for him; and I find myself almost wishing that the decision had been taken to beatify Cardinal Newman in St Peter's Square and not a muddy field, and for the Pope to be spared this dreadful business of a state visit.

Someday, they'll explain to us what there is to admire and love about an old conservative dogmatist who clawed his way up the rigid hierarchy of an ancient institution like the church. I get the impression we're supposed to love the guy simply for the fact that he is a pope.

And oh, yes, that dreadful business — he's getting millions thrown away on the pomp of his visit, will be treated like a king, and only simpering lackeys will be allowed anywhere near him, while his critics are held off…and for that, his critics are deranged monsters because they don't love the narrow-minded old man enough.

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Dr Hall had a gig writing for Oprah's woo-laden magazine, and I didn't even know it (that tells you how often I've looked at O), and it was a good plan: she'd be writing a skeptical column for them that would address common medical myths. Unfortunately, reality smacked hard into the jello of pop pseudo-medicine, passed through quickly, and Dr Hall now finds herself not writing for Oprah. She didn't belong in that den of inanity anyway.

One amusing thing, though: compare the comments discussing her departure at Science-Based Medicine with those on Gawker. Right out of the gate, the Gawker commenters are whining that science doesn't know everything, and wondering what's wrong with Reiki, and accusing Dr Hall of all kinds of egotistical perfidy.

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The numbers and graphs at Indeed.com's job trend report show a different story from the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics. What the government says is going down, Indeed shows is going up by crawling websites.

Universities are supposed to be places where students are free to think and argue…but too often, if a student says something that contradicts the religious dogma of the institution, it's an excuse to be censored. Here's an example: a Mormon student at BYU wrote a letter for the school newspaper criticizing the LDS position on gay rights while still supporting Mormonism as a religious belief.

It is time for LDS supporters of Prop 8 to be honest about their reasons for supporting the amendment. It's not about adoption rights, or the first amendment, or tradition. These arguments were not found worthy of the standards for finding facts set up by our judicial system. The real reason is that a man who most of us believe is a prophet of God told us to support the amendment. [This is a privately held religious belief that we are using to support legislation that takes away a right from a minority group. If our government were to enact legislation based solely on such beliefs, it would set a dangerous precedent, possibly even more so than allowing a homosexual to marry the person he or she loves.] We must be honest about our motivation, and consider what it means to the delicate balance between our relationship with God and with His children here on earth. Maybe then we will stop thoughtlessly spouting arguments that are offensive to gays and lesbians and indefensible to those not of our faith.

It got pulled. Why? I don't know. It's still crazy pro-mormon gushy baloney, but it is simply saying that everyone should be honest about their motivations.

Oh, wait. I forgot. Honesty is one of those sins in these goofy cults.

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So I'm having a few niggling little health problems, but all is well and getting better; meanwhile, Christopher Hitchens mentions this:

"Well, I'm dying, since you asked," Hitchens replied. "So are you, but I'm doing it faster and in more rich and fecund detail."

And what does he do? He gallops off to Birmingham to debate that supercilious pompous nitwit, David Berlinski. And by all accounts, whips him into slime. I am extremely impressed with Hitchens right now.

I'm not at all impressed with Berlinski, but then I never have been. He dredged up the rotting corpse of Hitler to claim he was under the spell of Darwin!

When Berlinski linked Nazism and Darwinism while connecting atheism with violent government regimes of the 20th Century, Hitchens bristled and went on the attack in his next turn at the podium.

Connecting Nazism with Darwinism "is a filthy slander," Hitchens said. "Darwinism was derided in Germany."

Hitchens said Adolf Hitler claimed in "Mein Kampf" that he was doing God's work with his policies against the Jews and that the first Nazi treaty was with the Vatican.

"To say that there is something fascistic about my beliefs, I won't hear said, and you shouldn't believe," Hitchens said to the audience, almost thundering despite his diminished voice.

Good grief, please. Hitler was a nominal Catholic with an extremist pseudo-scientific philosophy that excluded Darwin and evolution, and found justification in religious dogma. It's absolutely nuts that people still play this game of blaming Darwin for the Nazis; there's just no historical reason to do so. Why not settle on that mass murdering tyrant, Stalin, instead? He was no friend of Darwin, either, but at least he was openly atheist, so they'd at least have a tiny pinch of logic (but not much of one) in correlating atheism and tyranny. At least, pointing at one godless anti-Darwinian and blaming all his crimes on godless evolution is marginally more sensible than pointing at a god-walloping anti-Darwinian and blaming all of his sins on godless evolution.

Another bizarre bit from the story is this little anecdote from Taunton, the organizer of the debate:

Taunton said he drove Hitchens to Birmingham this week from the Washington, D.C., area, and had Hitchens read aloud the prologue of the Gospel of John, which they then discussed.

Hitchens referred to that in the debate, saying that if Taunton found out Jesus did not exist, it would ruin his life.

Taunton responded at the end of the debate. "It would ruin my life," he said. "It would suggest this life is a sham."

Hitchens shook his head. "Don't give up so easily," he said.

Exasperating nonsense. It ruins your life to believe that an old book of fables is all that gives it meaning. What would be a sham is the wasted investment in promoting lies; that isn't corrected by insisting on continuing to live on falsehoods.

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