Paleontologists brought to tears, laughter by Creation Museum

PETERSBURG, Kentucky (AFP) — For a group of paleontologists, a tour of the Creation Museum seemed like a great tongue-in-cheek way to cap off a serious conference.

But while there were a few laughs and some clowning for the camera, most left more offended than amused by the frightening way in which evolution — and their life’s work — was attacked.

“It’s sort of a monument to scientific illiteracy, isn’t it?” said Jerry Lipps, professor of geology, paleontology and evolution at University of California, Berkeley.

“Like Sunday school with statues… this is a special brand of religion here. I don’t think even most mainstream Christians would believe in this interpretation of Earth’s history.”

The 27 million dollar, 70,000-square-foot (6,500-square-metre) museum which has been dubbed a “creationist Disneyland” has attracted 715,000 visitors since it opened in mid-2007 with a vow to “bring the pages of the Bible to life.”

Continue here…. http://tinyurl.com/nxa97t

‘I Quit the Evangelical Movement in Disgust’: Former Evangelist Fears Right-Wing Lunacy Will Lead to More Murder

What are the Republicans in Congress and the other “respectable” leaders on the far right — from Focus on the Family’s James Dobson to Rush Limbaugh, from Laura Ingraham to the leaders of the NRA — doing to stop the right-wing domestic wave of terrorism exploding in the aftermath of President Barack Obama’s election? I ask this as a former evangelical right-wing and “pro-life” leader who quit the right and the Republicans in disgust over their extremism.

In the wake of the election of our first black president, we’ve seen rage — an abortion doctor gunned down; three police officers in Pittsburgh shot by a man who feared “they” would take his guns; and a black security guard at the National Holocaust Museum slain.

Continue here…   http://www.alternet.org/story/141019?page=1

Michael Shermer of Skeptic magazine presents the Baloney Detection Kit

Bush’s Shocking Biblical Prophecy Emerges: God Wants to “Erase” Mid-East Enemies “Before a New Age Begins”

The revelation this month in GQ Magazine that Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary embellished top-secret wartime memos with quotations from the Bible prompts a question. Why did he believe he could influence President Bush by that means?

The answer may lie in an alarming story about George Bush’s Christian millenarian beliefs that has yet to come to light.

In 2003 while lobbying leaders to put together the Coalition of the Willing, President Bush spoke to France’s President Jacques Chirac. Bush wove a story about how the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were at work in the Middle East and how they must be defeated.

Continue here….. http://tinyurl.com/qxv8kf

Missing Link Found? 47 Million-Year-Old Primate Fossil Revealed

Scientists announced on Tuesday in New York the discovery of a 47 million year old human ancestor. For the past two years, an international team of scientists, led by world-renowned Norwegian fossil scientist Dr Jørn Hurum, University of Oslo Natural History Museum, has secretly conducted a detailed forensic analysis of the extraordinary fossil, studying the data to decode humankind’s ancient origins. At 95% complete, Ida is set to revolutionize our understanding of human evolution.

Discovered in Messel Pit, Germany, the fossil is twenty times older than most fossils that explain human evolution. Known as ‘Ida’, the fossil is a transitional species showing characteristics from the very primitive non-human evolutionary line (prosimians, such as lemurs), but she is more related to the human evolutionary line (anthropoids, such as monkeys, apes and humans). This places Ida at the very root of anthropoid evolution – when primates were first developing the features that would evolve into our own.

Why We Believe in Gods – Andy Thomson – American Atheists 2009

Andy Thomson gives his talk titled ‘Why We Believe in Gods’ at the American Atheist 2009 convention in Atlanta, Georgia.

Primate Fossil Could Be Key Link in Evolution

Young Female Had Thumbs, Fingernails, May Have Walked

By NED POTTER

May 16, 2009

Scientists say a 47-million-year-old fossil found in Germany may be a key link to explain the evolution of modern human beings.

The fossil, of a young female that probably resembled a modern-day lemur, is described as “the most complete primate fossil ever found.” It is small — with a body about the size of a raccoon — but it has characteristics that suggest a relationship both to primates and humans.

It has, among other things, opposable thumbs, similar to humans’ and unlike those found on other modern mammals. It has fingernails instead of claws. And scientists say they believe there is evidence it was able to walk on its hind legs.

Continue here… http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=7603618&page=1

Darwin’s Rottweiler

Biologist Richard Dawkins talks about the creator of evolutionary theory

By Scott LaFee Union-Tribune Staff Writer

2:00 a.m. April 20, 2009

In Charles Darwin’s day, his theories of evolution and natural selection aroused plenty of controversy, though the debate was arguably less nasty than it sometimes seems today.

Darwin loathed the fuss, preferring to cloister himself at Down House, his rural home in Kent, England, where he could study without distraction.

It was left to others to defend his epic research, most notably a handful of fellow scientists who provided staunch and vocal support. Among them: Thomas Henry Huxley, a noted naturalist in his own right whose defense of Darwin was so unwavering that he was called “Darwin’s bulldog.”

A century and a half later, Darwin’s work still arouses critics and still demands, it seems, determined defenders. Among them: Richard Dawkins, the 68-year-old English biologist and best-selling author, whose rousing defense and explanations of evolution have earned him international admiration, the enduring enmity of creationists and the nickname “Darwin’s Rottweiler.”

Dawkins, who retired last year from the Charles Simonyi Chair for Public Understanding in Science at Oxford University, was in San Diego recently to accept the $25,000 Nierenberg Prize, given annually by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography to honor outstanding contributions to science in the public interest. Dawkins talked about the man who has informed and influenced so much of his life.

Continue here…       http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/apr/20/1c20dawkins202019/

Churchgoers more likely to back torture, survey finds

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new analysis.

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed, according the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified — more than 6 in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only 4 in 10 of them did.

The analysis is based on a Pew Research Center survey of 742 American adults conducted April 14-21. It did not include analysis of groups other than white evangelicals, white non-Hispanic Catholics, white mainline Protestants, and the religiously unaffiliated, because the sample size was too small.

http://tinyurl.com/cjtpzx

More Atheists Shout It From the Rooftops

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

April 27, 2009

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Two months after the local atheist organization here put up a billboard saying “Don’t Believe in God? You Are Not Alone,” the group’s 13 board members met in Laura and Alex Kasman’s living room to grapple with the fallout.

The problem was not that the group, the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, had attracted an outpouring of hostility. It was the opposite. An overflow audience of more than 100 had showed up for their most recent public symposium, and the board members discussed whether it was time to find a larger place.

And now parents were coming out of the woodwork asking for family-oriented programs where they could meet like-minded nonbelievers.

“Is everyone in favor of sponsoring a picnic for humanists with families?” asked the board president, Jonathan Lamb, a 27-year-old meteorologist, eliciting a chorus of “ayes.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/us/27atheist.html?_r=1&hp