The A-Unicornist

The other day, the popular Facebook page I Fucking Love Science posted this picture:





Aside from basically being meaningless drivel, the more glaring problem is that Albert Einstein never actually said this. His Wikiquote page keeps a healthy list of quotes frequently misattributed to him (there are many), but new ones like this seem to pop up all the time. And yet, at the time of this writing, the picture had over 10,000 shares.

On a more personal note,  an alert reader called my attention to a statistic I had used in the previous post – that Christians are over-represented in the prison population. It's a statistic that's been bandied about for years, and I'd never heard it challenged, but it turns out even the crack team at Friendly Atheist was aware of the dubious validity of the statistics.

It reminds me of the time that I hastily reposted a survey on religion and sex conducted by Darrel Ray, the results of which formed the basis of the book Sex & God: How Religion…

If, like me, you grew up in the youth group culture of the 1990s, you've probably heard the term "backsliding" to denote those who fell back into the worldly ways of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Y'know, because you're either a pious, chaste Christian or a self-loathing angry hedonist – no middle ground!

Anyway, if you haven't caught the story in the news yet, here it is: Tim Lambesis is the singer for the mediocre metalcore band As I Lay Dying and the vastly more awesome Austrian Death Machine. He's now facing serious charges after allegedly meeting with an undercover cop who was posing as a hitman, whose services he (Lambesis) solicited to have his estranged wife killed.

According to the prosecution, Lambesis met the officer (whom he knew only as "Red") and gave him his wife's name, the security codes to her house, told the 'hitman' a time to do the deed (when he had the kids, so he'd have an alibi), and when asked if he…

The other day I came across this great video: an interview with Neil Carter, who participated in an interview at a church in Jackson, MS, in conjunction with the "National Interview an Atheist at Church Day", which is apparently a thing. The longer interview is here, but I enjoyed this excerpt in which he lists 11 things atheists wished Christians knew about them.



If you don't want to watch the whole video, they are:
We have morals, too!You don't know us better than we know ourselvesWe don't deep down believe in your particular god (sorry, Ray Comfort)We don't hate your particular god We don't all disbelieve because something bad happened to usBelieving isn't a choiceMost of us used to be Christians, tooQuoting the Bible doesn't work like a Jedi mind trickWe don't worship the devilHell doesn't scare us; to us, it doesn't even make senseWe aren't all anti-theists The last one is sort of soft-ball accommodationism, but I think that…

It's perhaps not particularly well known that the theologian William Lane Craig is what biologist Larry Moran would call an IDiot – an advocate of Intelligent Design Creationism. In fact, he's a fellow at the ironically named Discovery Institute, along with a litany of other theologians, lawyers, and lots of other people who aren't, golly I dunno, biologists. He took a crack at debating Fransisco Ayala, who is notable for being both a biologist and an evangelical Christian (and a darling of the John Templeton Foundation). I didn't watch the debate because, well, I don't give a shit what a theologian thinks about biology. But sometimes (well... lots of times) they make such stupid remarks that I can't resist the urge for rebuke.

Which brings me to my recent visit to Reasonablefaith.org, Craig's website. In a recent "Question of the Week" segment, he's asked to clarify his view of evolution. He doesn't specifically mention Intelligent Design…

If you've followed this blog for any significant length of time, you've undoubtedly noticed that I tend to go in spurts. I'll be churning out blasphemous content practically daily, and then... nothing. Well, this is one of those 'nothing' times.

Part of it is old-fashioned writer's block. I've got a post drafted about the nature of apologetic arguments, but y'know, inspiration isn't exactly overflowing. I find myself caring less about apologists, anyway.

The other part of it is that I'm spending lots of time with my girlfriend and with my guitar. My two favorite things! I also nabbed a new guitar and amp this week, which means even writing this took an unusually high degree of self-motivation.

In any case, I'm sure inspiration will strike soon. In the meantime... well, I dunno. Karate.


Oh, and on another note, my blog is right around the 300,000 view mark. That's pretty pathetic, actually – Jerry Coyne has something like 20 million views…

I have a friend, whom I'll call Robocop for privacy purposes, who some time ago got pulled into an MLM. It seemed pretty innocuous at first, but as time has gone on I've been reminded more and more why I really, really hate MLMs – it's no exaggeration to say that they destroy lives.

So the MLM that Robocop has gotten into sells what I'll call Product X. Product X, so the claims go, is not like similar products you can find for significantly less money in the store; rather, it has a myriad of health benefits that might range from lifting your mood and helping mental focus to putting cancer in remission. As with most such products, a search through Google Scholar will reveal a paucity of data supporting such grandiose claims.

Then there are the promises of wealth. Robocop has heard one pitch after another telling him about the high life he'll live as a successful entrepreneur. There are pamphlets with pictures of big mansions and expensive sports cars, all with the c…