I just took a few days off to go to Walt Disney World with my daughter and we had a great time.
Speaking of Fantasyland, there is another legend that’s getting its own theme park, but this time it’s in Kentucky and called “Ark Encounter.” It’s a production of Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis, the people who brought you the Creation Museum in Northern Kentucky. Continue reading
Am I anti-religious?
Many atheists are proudly so. They see all religion as dangerous and harmful and they seek its eradication. That’s not my emphasis. In fact, I generally view liberal religion as my ally. (I’m what the other atheists call an accomodationist.)
In my profile (over there on the right) I state this:
I believe in the centrality of ceremony and ritual in human life, but I also believe that it must be de-coupled from the supernatural. I believe that the scientific method is the only way to understand ourselves and reality. I believe that dogmatic religion is one of the most destructive forces in the world and that we humans need to create non-theistic alternatives to it. Continue reading
Here’s a picture from a protest set up in Manhattan yesterday (from FailedMessiah.com). Typical of most creationists, this scientific illiterate does not have a clue about what the theory of evolution teaches:
I have no idea what life on other planets has to do with Rosh Hashana.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is an aggressively self-promoting rabbi to the stars. Now he’s coming out with a book about evolution being a religion. Or something like that. In his blog for HuffPost a few months back, he criticized the idea of what he called “atheist chaplains” for the military. Not once did he give any recognition to the fact that what people are asking for are Humanist chaplains. He makes a big stink about the “Church of Evolution” and atheism being a religion. No, Shmuley, atheism is not a religion. It is just a stance vis-a-vis the existence of a god. Humanism is a philosophy that for some serves in the place of theistic religion. Like Humanistic Judaism. You can Google it. Continue reading
At least one state legislature has managed to push through a law designed by proponents of intelligent design and creationism.
Tennessee, where the debate should have been settled almost a century ago, has passed a bill (so far only in their House of Representatives) to promote “critical thinking” about scientific theories that can “cause controversy.” I’ve written about this before. Continue reading