Category Religion

Islamic Bicycles

This is for real, as far as I can tell:

Iran plans to make special bicycles designed for women that will be compatible with Islamic regulations and not expose their body movements while riding.

The new bicycle would have a cabin to cover half of a rider’s body, the newspaper Iran quoted project manager Elaheh Sofali as saying.

Jesus and Mo has the perfect T-shirt for this:
Thank you for not provoking my uncontrollable lust

Seriously, what’s these people’s hangup about sex? The cynic in me thinks that if you take a bunch of normal young males and try to get them to suppress the sexual urges bequeathed them by half a billion years’ worth of evolution, of course they’re going to become neurotic and pliant.

These people really need to have a glass of wine, get laid, and just chill out.

Well, That Didn’t Take Long…

Falwell In Hell

Drawing the Wrong Conclusion from Giant Bacteria

DaveScot has an article over at Casa Dembski about Epulopiscium fishelsoni. Judging by the article that he links to (from the Journal of Bacteriology, 1998), this bacterium looks like a pretty interesting beastie: it changes size by up to 20 times. That’s individual cells, not variation in a population: a single E. fishelsoni can grow to become 10-20 times larger than it was some hours ago. Not only that, but at its largest, it’s over half a millimeter long, making it visible to the naked eye.

But what interests DaveScot is the size of its genome: about 1 trillion base pairs, more than 300 times as much as in humans, which he evidently takes to be evidence for intelligent design. Unfortunately, to do so he must ignore the conclusions of the very paper he cites.

Read More

“But It’s Still Just an X!”

I realize that “DaveScot says something incredibly boneheaded” is about as newsworthy as “dog bites man”, “Pope is Catholic”, and “Hollywood remake not as good as original”, but this time I couldn’t resist.

Every time someone tries to demonstrate evolution by pointing to one of the numerous instances when new species have arisen through evolution, e.g., fruit flies speciating into two distinct species in the lab, you can bet that the creationists will say, “but they’re still fruit flies!” This raises the question of just how much change creationists will accept as microevolution.

Read More

Getting Information from Creationists Is Like Pulling Teeth

Some of you may remember threads on time.com and Pharyngula where Egnor challenged “Darwinists” to say “how much new information can Darwinian mechanisms generate?”

For completeness, you should read those threads, but the summary is that when people tried to answer his question, e.g., by showing that point mutations increase the Shannon information of the genome, or pointing at the literature for gene duplication, Egnor said that wasn’t what he meant by “biologically meaningful information” and refused to provide a definition.

On the Mar. 26, 2007 episode of the ID the Future podcast, Casey Luskin interviewed Michael Egnor. They talked about these discussions. Egnor accused Darwinists of being angry and implied that they were unsure of the soundness of their own theory (start listening at 12:42, if you care).

Then (around 14:16), Egnor said

I, for example, if a Darwinist approaches me, and asks me politely about Intelligent design, I’m delighted to talk about it!

I took this as an invitation to ask him to clarify his remarks.
Read More

Hovind on Hold

The Pensacola News Journal reports:

An appeal by Pensacola creationist Kent Hovind and his wife, Jo Hovind, seeking acquittal on tax-fraud charges was denied.

U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers upheld the Hovinds’ November 2006 conviction on 44 counts of bank-structuring — the withdrawal of bank funds under the $10,000 threshold that triggers bank reports to the Internal Revenue Service.

During the trial, prosecutors presented evidence that showed the couple routinely withdrew $9,500 and $9,600, from their bank.

In November, a jury found Kent Hovind guilty on 58 federal counts, including failure to pay $845,000 in employee-related taxes. In January, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Jo Hovind was convicted of 44 counts of evading bank-reporting requirements. Her sentencing was delayed pending the appeal and should soon be set.

Is anyone surprised by this? If so, I have some lovely oceanfront property in Oklahoma to sell you. As I recall, Hovind started by screwing with the judge, by pleading “Subornation of false muster”, whatever that means; then hired a lawyer with a long history of involvement with tax evasion; then didn’t even mount a defense.

And now, like a kid who has finally realized that there’s only so much he can get away with before mommy gets mad and really punishes him, he wants a mulligan.

Criswell predicts!
Allow me to predict that he’ll continue claiming that he hasn’t done anything wrong (unless he thinks that repentance will play well with the parole board); he’ll rationalize his problems by saying that God wants him in prison, spreading the Word™ through his prison ministry; and his followers will continue to defend him.

(Thanks to for the headline. Better than what I could come up with: “God to Hovind: HA-ha!”)

More Godless Numbers

Newsweek reports the results of a religious identification survey they recently conducted. The bits of interest to me are:

  • 91% of Americans “believe in God”.
  • 82% identify themselves as Christian.
  • 10% have “no religion”.
  • 6% “don’t believe in a God at all”.
  • 3% “self-identifies as atheist”

Read More

Whith-arrrrrr Freedom of Religion?

The Asheville, NC Citizen-Times tells the tragic story of a High School student whose religion is being persecuted:

being kicked out of school for a day?

Bryan Killian doesn’t think that’s a fair reaction to his decision to come to North Buncombe High School wearing an eye patch and an inflatable cutlass.
…

“I feel like my First Amendment was violated,” Killian, 16, said. “Freedom of religion and freedom of expression. That’s what I tried to do, and I got shot down.”

Freedom of religion?

Yes, Killian says, his “pirate regalia” is part of his faith — the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

And as if that weren’t bad enough, even those who love him won’t support him:

Killian’s mother, Vanessa, agreed with the school’s decision despite sympathizing with her son.

“I think Bryan should be able to voice his opinion,” she said, “but he kind of got carried away.”

US No Longer a Christian Nation?

James Dobson says presidential candidate Fred Thompson isn’t a Christian:

“Everyone knows he’s conservative and has come out strongly for the things that the pro-family movement stands for,” Dobson said of Thompson. “[But] I don’t think he’s a Christian; at least that’s my impression,” Dobson added
…

In a follow-up phone conversation, Focus on the Family spokesman Gary Schneeberger stood by Dobson’s claim. He said that, while Dobson didn’t believe Thompson to be a member of a non-Christian faith, Dobson nevertheless “has never known Thompson to be a committed Christian—someone who talks openly about his faith.”

“We use that word—Christian—to refer to people who are evangelical Christians,” Schneeberger added.

(emphasis added)

I note that according to the American Religious Identification Survey, in 2001 about 1 million people identified themselves as “Evangelical” — they were outnumbered by Muslims. That’s less than 0.5% of the US population.

So can we expect Dobson et al. to drop the “America is a Christian nation” argument?

(HT PZ.)

Discovery Institute Doesn’t Think God Loves Them Enough

The Mar. 16 episode of Intelligent Design the Future has this blurb:

On this episode of ID The Future CSC Fellow, Dr. Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler asks, “does Darwinism devalues human life?” Some Darwinists deny that Darwinism has any ethical implications at all. In this short clip, Dr. Weikart looks at comments from Darwinists about the animal ancestry of humans and shows how that blurred the distinction between the animal kingdom and humanity, and negates the idea of human exceptionalism.

(Transcribed from the MP3 file, in case you notice differences between this and what’s on the episode web page.)

Read that last sentence, and then look at the title of the episode:

Does Darwinism Devalue Human Life?

Read More