The real problem with the creationists is that they believe The Flintstones was a documentary.

I’m sure I’ve seen that somewhere before, but it bears repeating. Kind of sums up creationism very nicely in a single sentence.

In fact, what would probably happen is, I’d spend my entire work days hammering out posts in the futile fight against nonsense, aaaaand lose my job. Maybe I would chip at the surface of the hundreds of millions of nutcases, but talk about a pyrrhic victory!

I had no idea Roger Ebert was as enlightened as he has shown. I join Phil in a humble offering of thumbs!

I mean… thanks for trying! (honestly I’m no artist and couldn’t even come close to that)

Well, it worked in textedit….

Mikey keeps his reference material right next to his dictionary. Oh, wait…

@ Beryl:

I agree wholeheartedly. I’ve never understood why religion gets handed a get-out-of-rationality free card. The number of people who believe something has nothing to do with whether or not it’s a fair representation of reality.

Many fundies — and well-meaning progressives — would force western society to treat all religions as sacrosanct. Witness the silliness over the political cartoons depicting Mohammed.

I’m leaning towards the kitteh serial killer theory myself.

Roger Ebert ‘review’ of Expelled

It’s more a complete tearing-to-shreds decimation rather than a review, which might explain why it’s presented as a blog piece.

There was actually an episode of House recently with the same phenomena. Here’s the link: http://www.housemd-guide.com/season5/518herekitty.php

Basically, House deduces that psychic kitty is actually just cold kitty. Kitty is attracted to patients who are running a fever (thus near death) or are being kept warm with warming blankets or heating pads (because they are near death). So kitty takes a nap, and then the patient later dies. Kitty’s presence is later attributed to woo. I don’t know how scientifically plausible House’s logic is, but it actually makes a lot of sense to me as my cats like to curl up on my stomach on cold nights because I’m warmer than the couch.

Also, re post #8, are you saying atheists will inevitably join the occult and then go back to “mainstream religion?” That doesn’t sound right on either point.

As a species we are driven by the desire to find explanations and connections for what are often just isolated random events, and even if you remove God from the equation, that desire doesn’t go away. Thus if you happened to read in your horoscope that you would be going on a trip and two hours later your boss stops by and tells you that she wants you to go to a convention in Sydney, Australia next week, you can’t help but wonder if the two were connected.

I was playing a game of backgammon with a colleague during my lunch break one time, and just for a laugh I called out what I wanted my roll of the dice to be. I called the first roll right, then the second, and when the third one fell exactly as I called it, my colleague just about fell off his chair. It was pure chance (I wasn’t cheating) but his first reaction was that there must be something spooky going on.

Still, there is one good thing you can say about New Age beliefs over fundamentalist religion. They don’t usually organize themselves into well funded crusades. There are some excepts, like the alt-med movement (though much of that is supported by religious fundies too) but on the whole they tend to do less damage in society than the fundamentalist wing of organized religion.

(keepitcleankeepitcleankeepitclean)

a) Selection bias
b) Physiological changes in those near death
c) The cat really does have psychic powers

(c) makes a cute story, but either (a) or (b) is by far the most likely answer.

You’re full of it. Your unsubstantiated claims are no better than religious frippery.
So sayeth the atheist, who doesn’t believe in the occult, homeopathy, or any other nonsense that isn’t supported by reason.

That’s not to say that some atheists don’t believe in nonsense, but not believing in an imaginary god doesn’t mean you have to flock to other imaginary garbage.