Superstition cultivates stupidity

It should come as no surprise that the people kneeling to pray before a spittlebug nest think Jesus is showing them a sign. Teaching people to believe in a 6,000 year old universe, a boat holding all of the creatures on earth, people teleporting and flying through the sky...it leads to the absolute ruin of critical thinking faculties.

What would be really funny is if one of them caught this "water" in their cup and drank it. It's what they deserve:

Spittlebugs are xylem parasites of vascular plants. They tap into the xylem through a proboscis, suck out the xylem sap, and absorb the nutrients within. Xylem sap is very dilute, though, and they must process a lot of the liquid sap to obtain their nutrients. The excess liquid is then excreted from the anus. As the liquid passes through the anus, the spittle bug adds silk-like protein to it. As this emerges from the anus, the spittle bug folds air into the liquid with its legs, producing the characteristic spittle that envelops the insect.

heh.

Hilarious: Jesus -- the easy button

Just saw this "Jesus Easy Button" picture on Friel's website and thought it worth sharing:

Child preachers, abortion & the RR, oh my!

1. This video on child preachers just makes me sad. Check out Marjoe. I did.


2. The new documentary, "Lake of Fire," has stirred up some controversy. Anti-choicers would do well to read up on the facts, and a new WHO study shows that abortion rates are highest in countries where it is illegal, and lowest in countries which have comprehensive sex ed programs and abundant contraception choices. Contrary to all the spin and stupidity, although the US is much more religious than European countries, we have higher rates of teen pregnancy, STDs and abortions than them. Why? Because the religiosity of our country blinds people to the reality that curtailing these things is only accomplished through sex ed for teens and widely-available contraceptive choices. In other words, if they really care about "saving" fetuses, they should be pushing contraception. Instead, they push failed "abstinence-only" policies that lead to more teen pregnancies and STDs. These people don't care about other people, just about controlling them.


3. The RR still doesn't know quite what to do: back the serial-adulterer Giuliani with a liberal track-record on judicial appointments, Mormon "Magic Underwear" Romney -- someone they know only became "pro-life" 5 minutes ago (both he and Giuiliani fit into this category), or someone they know will not win? Dobson swears he'll choose the latter.
   

Conservative weighs in on the fall of the GOP

Respected former Republican John Cole explains why he is voting out the GOP come November:

For starters, people got tired of being associated with these drooling retards. Then, when they realized that these drooling retards had ideological allies running the show in the Bush administration and then began to experience their idiotic policies, they moved from disgusted to outright hostile.

Like me. It had nothing to do with Burke, and everything to do with what the party had become. A bunch of bedwetting, loudmouth, corrupt, hypocritical, and incompetent boobs with a mean streak a mile long and no sense of fair play or proportion.

Seriously- what does the current Republican party stand for? Permanent war, fear, the nanny state, big spending, torture, execution on demand, complete paranoia regarding the media, control over your body, denial of evolution and outright rejection of science, AND ZOMG THEY ARE GONNA MAKE US WEAR BURKHAS, all the while demanding that in order to be a good American I have to spend most of every damned day condemning half my fellow Americans as terrorist appeasers.

And that isn’t even getting into the COMPLETE and TOTAL corruption of our political processes at every level. The shit is really going to hit the fan after we vote these jackasses out of power in 2008.

Screw them. I got out. They can have their party. I will vote for Democrats and little L libertarians and isolationists until the crazy people aren’t running the GOP. The threat of higher taxes in the short term isn’t enough to keep me from voting out crazy people and voting for sane people with whom I merely disagree regarding policy. Hillarycare doesn’t scare me as much as Frank Gaffney having a line to the person with the nuclear football or Dobson and company crafting domestic policy.

That is why the Republican party is in shambles. The majority of us have decided that the movers and shakers in the GOP and the blogospheric right are certified lunatics who, in a decent and sane society, we would have in controlled environments in rocking chairs under shade trees for most of the day, wheeled in at night for tapioca pudding and some karaoke.

Verschärfte Vernehmung

The dirtiest word in politics a few years ago was "liberal," but not anymore.

Try "conservative" and its logical associations:

• enhanced interrogation
• secret prisons
• anti-poverty
  
• against "socialist" children's health care programs
  

I embrace the l-word now.

November is gonna be a bloodbath.

That just breaks my heart for them

The gay-bashing science-loathing fundie Jebus stampede I mentioned a while back was apparently a bust:

BRANDON, Florida - A conservative Christian summit at a Florida church last weekend attracted only about half as many people as organizers had hoped.

By Friday evening, just over 100 people had registered to hear speakers that included Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Southern Baptist leader Richard Land, former presidential candidate Gary Bauer and the American Family Association's Don Wildmon.

A workshop on grass roots activism drew a handful of people -- and one was a spy, an activist for Americans United for Separation of Church and State researching the opposition.

Just shed a tear for them...

VIDEO: "How to think about (the lack of a) God"

At Gator Freethought's 2nd meeting, Prof. Witmer gave a talk entitled "How To Think About (the Lack of a) God." Dr. Witmer argued above all else that we can (and should) rationally inquire into the question of God's existence—it is not a "matter of opinion" or "merely a matter of faith." Such inquiry, he further argues, undoubtedly leads one to atheism. Dr. Witmer also considers atheism in relation to theism, agnosticism, and other labels we might use; he discusses skepticism and the belief that faith ought to end the conversation, both of which he considers potential impediments to rational discussion; and finally, attacking teleological arguments for God's existence and defending the Problem-of-Evil argument against it, he argues that atheism is the most rational position one might hold. For Dr. Witmer's abstract of his talk, see here.

The video is embedded below, or you can watch it at the GF site here, or at GV.