Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
…and this is a pharyngula stage embryo.
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Throughout the 1970s I had been mainly studying black holes, but in 1981 my interest in questions about the origin and fate of the universe was reawakened when I attended a conference on cosmology organized by the Jesuits in the Vatican. The Catholic Church had made a bad mistake with Galileo when it tried to lay down the law on a question of science, declaring that the sun went round the earth. Now, centuries later, it had decided to invite a number of experts to advise it on cosmology. At the end of the conference the participants were granted an audience with the pope. He told us that it was all right to study the evolution of the universe after the big bang, but we should not inquire into the big bang itself because that was the moment of Creation and therefore the work of God. I was glad then that he did know the subject of the talk I had just given at the conference — the possibility that space- time was finite but had no boundary, which means that it had no beginning, no moment of Creation. I had no desire to share the fate of Galileo, with whom I feel a strong sense of identity, partly because of the coincidence of having been born exactly 300 years after his death!
Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam, 1988), pp. 115-16.
Category: Religion
Salon has a peculiarly defensive article by a Christian confessing to being embarrassed about her beliefs, which seems like a good start to me. She should be embarrassed. As a fun exercise, though, try reading her article while categorizing...
Posted by PZ Myers at 9:45 AM • 157 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
It's a little known disturbing fact that the Mormons have a set of prophecies that foretell that the Mormons will take over the leadership of the US. A candidate for the governor of Idaho has brought this out into the...
Posted by PZ Myers at 9:03 AM • 855 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Pointless polls
The Joliet Jackhammers, a baseball team in Illinois, have put up an interesting sign to get people to buy tickets. Some people are unhappy and want it taken down. "It's in very poor taste," Councilwoman Jan Hallums Quillman said. "To...
Posted by PZ Myers at 8:55 AM • 75 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Religion
It's not just crackers; they freak out over Mary's virginity. A New Zealand church put up this provocative billboard to get people to discuss the absurdity of literalism: The Catholic Church condemned it as "inappropriate" and "disrespectful." I think it's...
Posted by PZ Myers at 10:40 AM • 161 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Religion
That's what he says, anyway: he's put out a desperate call for mo' money because he is under a "demonically inspired financial attack". His ministry is facing a $3 million dollar shortfall. Coincidentally, he also had to make a big...
Posted by PZ Myers at 2:08 PM • 89 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Religion
I guess Oral Roberts didn't meet his fundraising quota this year, because god has finally pink-slipped the old fraud....
Posted by PZ Myers at 5:28 PM • 400 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Godlessness
I had no idea cartoonists wielded such vast power. First it was the Danish cartoons that outraged the Muslim community, and now an Austrian named Manfred Deix has drawn the ire of the Catholics: the Viennese archdiocese has 'tattled' on...
Posted by PZ Myers at 5:22 PM • 133 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Religion
What a horrible, sad waste of a life: Tillmon Webb injured his knee, couldn't afford to get it treated, and sat in a recliner for 8 months, praying for healing. His saintly (and I don't mean that in a complimentary...
Posted by PZ Myers at 9:35 AM • 279 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Religion
Can you bear yet another case of religion-rationalized child abuse? Over three months in 2006, as her five children grew more emaciated and listless by the day, Estelle Walker made no move to find a job, no effort to scrounge...
Posted by PZ Myers at 10:12 AM • 134 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Religion
So true and so hilarious: a study has found that god speaks with a remarkably egocentric voice. In tests that asked people what god's opinion of various matters was, the unsurprising discovery was that it was the same as the...
Posted by PZ Myers at 11:58 AM • 155 Comments • 0 TrackBacks