atheism

“There are no Genuine Atheists” claims an Astrophysicist

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Yep, a real Astrophysicist has made this claim … but we are deeply into kook territory here.

Before we get into details, I think I better first introduce you to the claimant. This comes from a chap called David Klinghoffer. He works for the Discovery Institute as a … well, that does not really matter, because knowing that it is the Discovery Institute tells you all you really need to know; its basically kook central for the Intelligent Design movement.

Since it is indeed “them” you know in your heart of hearts this is going to be truly silly (it is), so here we go. He starts out with …

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Finally some action – Montreal police are investigating Markuze

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First, a bit of context for folks who don’t know. Dennis Markuze of Montreal is a fully certified 100% solid gold kook who, using an assortment of pseudonyms when online (including David Mabus and Hebert Marxuxe) has been issuing a torrent of threating emails and tweets to many skeptic bloggers. When I say “torrent”, I’m not being poetical, its a factual description. To give you a feel for what its like,  PZ wrote the other day …

Every morning when I get up and get on the computer, the first thing I do is delete the pile of spam from Dennis Markuze, each of which is usually cross-posted to 50 to 100 other people. Every time I fire up Twitter, the first thing I do is clear the garbage Dennis Markuze has left there; yesterday I blocked and reported spam from over 25 Markuze accounts, amounting to several hundred messages.

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Not Understanding the word “Atheist”

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You would think folks would understand the word “Atheist”, but to my complete astonishment some sections of the media don’t. Jesse Bogan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports … “Halfmann, essentially an atheist,” writes Brogan, ”testified that he needed the book [the Satanic Bible] to practice his religion, which, he said, primarily meant following the … Read more

Atheist History – Thomas Aikenhead

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Thomas Aikenhead was the last man to be executed for blasphemy in Britain, so what is his story?

In the 1690’s Thomas Aikenhead was, a young Edinburgh medical student at a time when his University’s library held books by Descartes, Spinoza, Thomas Hobbes and other thinkers, and being a keen student young Thomas would often enjoy reading new ideas.

He later  talked about some of his reading with friends, and unfortunately one of them, possibly Mungo Craig, took offense and informed on him to the authorities. In the autumn of 1696 Thomas was arrested and remitted to the Tolbooth Prison “to be tryed for his life” for blasphemy. He mouldered there until December 23, when he crossed Parliament Square to the High Court to be charged under both of Scotland’s Blasphemy Acts, one enacted before and one after the Revolution of 1689.

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PZ has a new blog – but Pharyngula remains

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The news is out … PZ has a new blog … Don’t Panic, Pharyngula is not going away. You will get the full Pharyngula blog on freethoughtblogs.com along with other great blogs, it is the scienceblogs host that will get a subset and only have science and anti-creationism. He writes in Google+ … The news … Read more

The WTC cross and the 9/11 memorial

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David Silverman writes in the Guardian to explain why the WTC cross does not belong at the 9/11 memorial. There is been a lot of biased news that does not represent what is going on here (think Fox News), so if this is not at all clear, then you might be interested in reading why … Read more