Invisible Friends and Blame

Conspicuous Consumption

Evolutionary Psychology in Action

Terrorists Among Us
Think Christians aren’t like Muslims?  Think again. An atheist billboard in Cincinnati has been relocated after the landowner received “significant threats” demanding its removal. “Everything that has happened shows just how vital our message is,” said Shawn Jeffers, co-coordinator for the Cincinnati Coalition of Reason. “It proves our point, that bigotry against people who don’t believe in [...]

Doubt vs Doubt
I love discovering new conflations.   Or rather, I love discovering that there’s a conflation being bandied about that I hadn’t noticed before.  You see, I believe that a substantial number of disagreements, misunderstandings, and in general, a lot of the problems in the world, are caused by conflations.  There are two common ways in [...]

Greta Christina — Top One Reason Religion is Harmful
I know I’ve directed your attention towards this argument before, but I honestly believe it is the coup de grâce in the debate over whether or not faith based belief is inherently beneficial or harmful.  Before I go on any further, I need to make my standard disclaimer.  In deference to Greta’s post, I used [...]

Catholic Bishops Contradict Science Again
AP reports that the Catholic Church has again gotten things wrong with regard to gays and marriage: BALTIMORE – The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops have affirmed that the church defines marriage between one man and one woman, and sex is meant for procreation. The pastoral letter was issued Tuesday in Baltimore by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. To be fair, “marriage,” [...]

Design and Transitional Fossils
This is Tiktaalik.  It was discovered by Neil Shubin and several of his colleagues, who had been looking for it for over a decade.  In many ways, Tiktaalik is the scientific equivalent of the Crocoduck.  It really is a transition between two modern forms of life — fish and amphibians. The details of Tiktaalic’s “transitional nature” [...]