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There must be a mistake. That man can’t be the PZ Myers I have heard about; he didn’t breathe fire even once.
Uhu – No horns either, I noticed. Couldn’t tell if he had a tail or cloven hoofs though.
Yeah, pretty CONVENIENT that he only showed his upper body, methinks…
This one is also very interesting:
Mr. Deity & Cast at the AAI 2009 Conference
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOSgKVotOPo&feature=related
Enjoyed that, thanks Olaf.
I try to “follow his path” of slipping science into conversations with religious people, not necessarily in a confrontational way. When discussing the weather, you can just comment that what thermometers measure is actually kinetic energy, which all originated with the big bang. There are so many little nuggets of truth that contradict the Bible, just keep dishing them out.
I did this only yesterday. A deeply Christian friend of mine is in a geology class, and the professor had explained that one of the leading theories about what killed the dinosaurs involved a meteorite. She had said that the dust thrown up in the air had blacked out the sun, killed the dinosaurs, and then settled. He seemed to disbelieve that the dust could settle – he wondered if it would just stay there. I explained to him about the volcanic eruption of Tambora in 1815 that caused the Year Without a Sun. I listed all of the problems caused by the drastic impact on climate – nonstop rain, temperature swings of more than 50 degrees Fahrenheit in a day, starvation, etc. If a volcanic eruption caused that much human misery, the impact of a meteorite like the one that caused the massive crater in the Yucatan Peninsula would surely have been even more devastating. The point I made in the case of the eruption of Tambora (which was a 7 on a scale of 8) was that the volcanic ash and debris eventually settled and, as we can see today (unless you live in LA), the sky is once again blue. He seemed able to believe the geologist’s explanation a little better after that.
If a history major like myself can use a little science to open minds, I hope that my fellow nonbelievers and skeptics may do the same.
“He seemed to disbelieve that the dust could settle – he wondered if it would just stay there.”
Are eductational standards in America really so low that your friend doesn’t grasp the concept of more dense things sinking below less dense things?
(NB, The Republican Party is the exception to this otherwise universalised rulificationism. Okay then you betcha, alrighty)
The Republican Party is pretty dense, and it has sunk well below just about everything else.
In response to the question at 9:00 about the momentum of the current atheist movement.
I believe it will continue for the simple reason that science has progressed to the point of being able to answer some of the bigger questions. Where did we come from – evolution. Where did the universe come from – big bang cosmology. Until very recently if someone wanted answers to questions like this religion was it. These are also the primary areas of friction between religion and science.