March 2009

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When Nigel Hannaford gets science, watch out!

March 31, 2009 in Education, Evolution, Religion by admin | No comments

You are into a whole new world of dumb

Sorry Nigel. I almost missed your latest desperate attempt at  trying to look like you know what you are talking about in the Tuesday March 24, 2009 edition of the Calgary Herald.

The piece, entitled When science gets religious watch out, Nigel trots out the same tired argument so in vogue with the (nonthinking) members of the media. Specifically, that the question of how life evolved on earth is a religious, rather than scientific question. We addressed the lunacy of this argument earlier in (see ASkepticRTN: First Alberta science ) as have many others. Even the title of Nigel’s piece tries to turn truth on its head, implying that science is meddling into the affairs of religion when the Gary Goodyear affair, about which Nigel was writing, was about religion meddling in science.

So what does happen when religion, or in this case the religious, meddles in things scientific? The answer is to be found in Nigel’s column. Nigel tries to display his knowledge of science and ends up sounding as dumb as I would lecturing the Pope on Catholic interpretations on the holy trinity. I am not so dumb as to try. Nigel on the other hand . . . Read the rest of this entry »

First Alberta science, now Canadian science. How long must we wait for Real science.

March 25, 2009 in Evolution, Religion by admin | 2 comments

Okay, this getting depressing.

First, Alberta decides that a supporter of the Discovery Institute (conditions for membership: fat wallet, gullible but preferably both) is qualified to lead provincial science policy, and to spearhead the effort of designing a provincial life sciences strategy (see ASkepticRTN Is Intelligent Design Leading Alberta Science Policy). No word on how you do that without talking about evolution but hey, this is Alberta. We don’t need no stink’n science!

Now, it turns out that Gary Goodyear, Minister of State for Science and Technology for Canada is a creationist. He is also a chiropractor. This means Canada’s Minister of Science is not only profoundly igorant of the subject of his portfolio, he has also spent his career promoting the abuse of science through the promotion of pseudo-scientific nonsense at the expense of those individuals sick or gullible enough to pay for snake oil. Read the rest of this entry »

More Bus Ad Nonsense

March 6, 2009 in Religion, Skeptic News by admin | No comments

Ottawa Denies Offending Ads

The City of Ottawa is the latest in Canada to deny bus ad’s carrying the message: There’s Probably No God: Now Stop Worrying and Enjoy Your Life sponsored by the The Freethought Association of Canada. My source of all that is true in the world, The Calgary Herald, reported that the reason given by City officials in Ottawa was that the ad’s were offensive.

I am not sure what offensive means anymore. It strikes me that people, especially in Ottawa, have become very easily offended. Is there a difference between not liking something and being offended? There are plenty of ads I don’t like but I am not really all that offended by what I see on TV, hear on the radio or read in print. It strikes me that anyone can be offended by virtually anything if they set their mind to it. Read the rest of this entry »