There’s a believing blogger named Rachel Held Evans, and man, do I like her.
Imagine that.
You know what she did? She went and wrote a really great piece about biblical literalism. And if you have a few minutes, here’s the link.
Here’s a snippet:
[E]verything changes when it’s your brother or sister who gets divorced, when it’s your son or daughter who is gay, when it’s your best friend who struggles with addiction, when it’s your husband or wife asking some good questions about Christianity you never thought about before.
Bill Nye was on CNN recently discussing the age of the earth, and how science knows it’s 4.5 billion years old.
You can click the screen captured image above to watch the interview. I suggest it.
He’s not saying anything new to anyone who reads about this stuff, but the discussion about the Dover trial is a bit nuanced.
I found this video at Pharyngula, and PZ gave a great explanation about the importance of bringing up the smoke detector.
He writes:
Ionizing smoke detectors use a tiny amount of radiactive [sic] material to generate charged ions by their decay; these ions are released into the space in a capacitor, and their movement generates a constant trickle of current. If smoke particles enter the detector, they bind to the ions and block the current; that easily measured decline in current is what triggers the alarm in the detector.
This is a very simple system that depends entirely on our quantitative understanding of radioactivity. If radioactivity didn’t work like we thought it did, your smoke detector would not be very reliable, and for that matter, no one would have thought of using this function to work as a smoke detector.
And I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, in your world that’s completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that’s fine, but don’t make your kids do it because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need people that can—we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems.
I wanted to reblog this post from regular-reading Glock.
Now I’ve blogged regularly about the military’s propensity to discharge soldiers based on pre-existing conditions pulled out of their ass without proof. The basic gist is they develop mental conditions while in the service of the military, especially issues such as severe PTSD, and get kicked out without military benefits and long and often difficult fight with the Veterans Affairs Administration to get medical help.
At the end of this post is the posts on these related news items and demands my congress to address the problem. But right now I’m adding a new one to the list. Rape victims being kicked out of the military without benefits for having “pre-existing personality disorders” without any proof of such pre-existing conditions, conveniently timed after they’ve reported rape.
From CNN (Read the full article for individual cases they profiled):
Is it just me or has Pat Robertson changed his tune about deities sending weather to destroy towns? What did he say about Haiti again? Phew, it was Satan! God’s enemy that he let’s confuse you and tempt you with sex and other great sins.
Robertson says that enough people pray, they can stop a tornado.
Which I guess is where this video comes from in which a woman is praying a tornado away from her home.
