The Secular Outpost

Pat Robertson has a new book out and you know what that means: asking about the sex lives of women he just met. Rita Braver of CBS News interviewed Robertson on April 9 (the transcript is available here). First, Robertson tells a whopper about a woman who was “stone cold dead” and raised back to life because of the prayers of others. Then he tells Braver a story about a trip he took to Jerusalem:[T]hey thought she was demon possessed. And these women are in the conference, and they said, "Go … [Read more...]

Every so so often I like to visit the web site of The Raelian Movement, just so I can remind myself that rejecting God is perfectly compatible with all sorts of craziness.It's too bad they don't advertise themselves as the "world’s largest Atheist, non-profit, UFO-related organisation" on their web site anymore, but at least its title is "The Raelian Movement: Intelligent Design for Atheists." Yes, they do push ID. Except that the "designer" is a bunch of advanced space aliens.They've still … [Read more...]

For those of us interested in ancient Christianity, the National Geographic Society has announced a new manuscript find. Those don't happen everyday (or even every decade) so it's pretty exciting news. The text is of the gospel genre, written in Coptic around 300 CE like those found at Nag Hammadi, and is entitled Gospel of Judas. The codex is said to be a copy of an older work written in Greek around 200 CE. At this time in Christianity's development, there was already a thriving oral tradition … [Read more...]

According to a story published in today's New York Times, scientists have discovered a "missing link" between fish and land mammals. The transitional fossils are "so clearly an intermediate 'link between fishes and land vertebrates,' they said, that it'might in time become as much an evolutionary icon as the proto-bird Archaeopteryx,' which bridged the gap between reptiles (probably dinosaurs) and today's birds." Since creationists have made it a central point to argue that no such transitional … [Read more...]

Due to a Guardian op-ed attacking Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins, some disagreements between Dennett and Michael Ruse have become more public. Ruse thinks the more atheistic commentators on Darwinian evolution, such as Dennett and Dawkins, are (a) intellectually mistaken, and (b) unwittingly helping creationists politically. Dennett has briefly replied to the charge.Now, generally I'm more impressed with Dennett than Ruse, whose work I very often dislike. And naturally, on (a) I think Ruse … [Read more...]

The "Science Times" section of the New York Times today has a note on an oceanographer, Doron Nof, who proposes to explain Jesus' walking on water with his standing on a bit of ice.I wonder, when I occasionally see something like this, if the 19th century practice of finding rational explanations for Biblical miracles (and thereby curiously preserving the Bible's historical accuracy) is still alive. I doubt it's that, though. I expect that if Nof & co. had just had some dry academic … [Read more...]

Interesting article by Kevin Phillips in the Washington Post today, "How the GOP Became God's Own Party." And he has a book out, naturally -- yet another one I'll have to add to my reading pile.Actually, I don't hugely care about religion per se. I'm interested mainly in supernatural fact claims, since they make the best contrast to what I really care about, working on a naturalistic big-picture view of the world. I'd really rather not get drawn into those aspects of religion that don't, for … [Read more...]

Carnival of the Godless #37 is up at the Neural Gourmet. … [Read more...]

John Allen Paulos' latest "Who's Counting" column addresses the Univ. of Minnesota study on American distrust of atheists and the facts (or rather, lack thereof) behind Liberty University's claim to be the #1 debate team in the U.S. … [Read more...]