This thread is generating lots of comments, mostly in the form of an amusing ongoing exchange with our old pal Rhology, who's going all postmodern and solipsistic on us in a frankly bizarre bid to deny that requiring evidence for claims is rational. But this comment from a reader named Jay contains a very basic mistake that Christians make when trying to argue with atheists, and so I thought I'd

Note I didn't say Muslims, I said Islam. Don't lecture me about all the nice Muslims. I used to live in Dubai and met more of them than you ever will. But any religion whose extremism is capable of the following has no place in a modern, civilized world, full stop.The suspect, who is unshaven and appears to be in his 20s or 30s, was arrested by Iraq security forces after they retook most of Basra

Via Dawkins' site, I caught this article from the London Times, and its headline is a thing of such beauty it practically made me weep for joy: Churchgoing on its knees as Christianity falls out of favour. The article's lead practically has you grabbing the phone to hire a marching band and sending out eVites for a block party. If only this were America.Church attendance in Britain is declining

In the news today:Two children and their mother lived for about two months with the decaying body of a 90-year-old woman on the toilet of their home's only bathroom, on the advice of a religious "superior" who claimed the corpse would come back to life, authorities said Friday...She said she propped Middlesworth on the toilet and left the room to call [Bishop John Peter] Bushey, who told her to

If it weren't enough for this moon-faced git to have ended up one of Olbermann's Worst People in the World, try this on for size. No one has quite dissected what a deeply immoral, cretinous piece of lying filth Ben Stein is like Jeff Dorchen. Beauty.That a man, let alone a Jew, could, without shame, walk on the graves of Holocaust victims and claim the theory of evolution was at fault, let alone

Via Ed Brayton. He does not, for some reason, link to a source. We'll see if this is real.Addendum: Ed mentions that the ruling is only available online via a pay service, which he why he did not include a link in his article. In his comments section, however, someone has cutpasted it.

One of these is the usual parade of batshit crazy, and the other is a comparatively rare case of a church doing what we're meant to believe churches do all the time: something good for their community. Makes sense that the latter is located in Austin, where people have a tendency to be pretty cool, even some of the religious ones.In San Francisco, of all places, a bunch of dimwits staged a "

The Church of the Burning Stupid is keeping up its anti-science missionary efforts, as we can see here. This was submitted to the ACA Yahoogroup by one of its members who presumably lives in the area (Greeley, CO). He got it among his daily junk snail mail. It would be awesome if some educated folks could turn up to this farce and bombard the presenter, some dingaling named H.S. Rester, with

Regrettably, I may have to miss this depending on what my schedule for that day looks like. But I wanted to post the information for the science-minded among you. This ought to be another good talk. It's in the same lecture hall where Ken Miller spoke.Date: Friday, May 2, 2008Time: 3:00pm - 4:00pmLocation: WEL 2.224Parking Info: http://www.utexas.edu/parking/maps/index.htmlSan Jacinto or Speedway

If Expelled achieves anything, it will be to make millions of Beatles fans Yoko Ono supporters for the first time in their lives. You just don't steal music.This is why we call them IDiots, gang.

It brings people together!

Some of our Christian commenters are just idiots or mean-spirited trolls, but occasionally we get someone who's sincere and easily duped by the lies spewed by Ben Stein's little movie. One of these, a young woman (I assume) calling herself Verity, has commented here, and my comment, straightening out a number of the falsehoods and misconceptions she holds as a result of taking Stein at his word,

As happens with all shitty movies, the distributor for Expelled declined to screen the movie in advance for critics. Indeed, we know they kept their advance screenings a tightly controlled series of fundie lovefests, expelling any knowledgeable, scientifically literate viewer if they were able. After all, in a movie that beats the "free speech" and "academic freedom" drums long and loud, it's

Pope Ratzo is touring the U.S., about which some people with nothing better to do apparently give a shit. Amazingly, there are still those who actually think the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church still have some kind of moral authority as an institution that deserves to be leading the world, rather than what it is, a bunch of dirty old men playing dressup in expensive robes. Naturally, even

Joe Zamecki has been going through his tapes of the fledgling Atheist Experience TV show and posting them to YouTube. As you may recall, the first one of these he posted was pretty dire in terms of video and audio quality. This latest episode, from August 1998, looks and sounds a lot better. It features an early guest appearance by ever-popular firebrand Jeff Dee. As usual, Joe is splitting the