The Daily Profaner: Putting Snark First, Myths Last!

The Pacific Justice Institute, a conservative Christian activist group, is attacking UC Berkley (with a lawsuit!) over a website the University put up to promote the teaching of evolution. They allege that the website violates Separation of Church and State because it endorses religions by promoting evolution and teaching all that science/evidence/reality stuff. Institute President Brad Dacus says:

“This [website] injures religious freedom in this country… The government is playing a role that is overtly hostile to some religious groups and denominations while favoring and giving greater recognition towards others.”

His argument goes something like this:

• Religions hold different positions on evolution therefore any position on evolution is a religious position - even if it has fuckall to do with religion. If some nut has a religious position on something then EVERY opinion on it is religious.
• UC Berkley’s website is all about promoting the teaching of evolution and science due to being the godless liberal heathens they are.
• Therefore UC Berkley’s website is endorsing a religious position because some crazy fuckers don’t believe that science is real.
• Since C Berkley’s website is taxpayer-funded (because we promote science education in this country) it is state sponsorship of religion.

You know, some religions (Scientology, Christian Science, the Amish) have a religious problem with pharmaceuticals and modern medicine. Since hospitals are taking government money to give out drugs they are taking a government sponsored stance that “is overtly hostile to some religious groups and denominations while favoring and giving greater recognition towards others” every time they write a prescription. We need to stop it! Someone, quick, call Brad Dacus!

This just in: The virgin birth is scientifically possible, but a really long shot. The catch? If there was indeed a virgin birth, that virgin would need to have genetically been a dude:

One possibility, according to Prof Berry, is that Mary may have had a condition called testicular feminisation. Women with this condition have an X and a Y chromosome like a man, but their X chromosome carries a mutation that makes their bodies insensitive to testosterone. This leads to their developing as a female.

Genetically male, and probably sporting ambiguous genitals, Mary would have been sterile. But had she become pregnant spontaneously, her child could have inherited an intact Y chromosome.

However, the author admits this is pretty unlikely and it seems much more plausable that Mary was just a slutty mcslutserson:

If there needs to be a rational explanation for the stories generated around Jesus’ birth, we are perhaps more likely to find it in a Biblical mistranslation or through a liaison between Mary and man who was not Joseph.

Feel free to use this amusing tidbit to harass your Christian friends. Mary was either a dirty slut or a gay homo - now choose!

[Guardian] via [Jezebel]

Der Popenator has been busy lately; he recently declared that Gender Theory would destroy our civilization - just like the aliens from Independence Day - and now he’s embraching the 17th Century heresy of Galileo. Der Popenator, who had been criticized for seemingly condoning the Church’s persecution of the famed astronomer, celebrated the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first telescope observations by saying that Galileo isn’t a hell-bound heathen. He said, “an understanding of the laws of nature could stimulate appreciation of God’s work.” 

He neglected to mention whether or not that appreciation covered radiometric dating, which proves that the Book of Genesis is like totally wrong. 

[BBC]

“The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.”

12 years ago today Carl Sagan died. Sagan’s life was one of science, exploration, activism, and above all, knowledge.  His most seen work was the television documentary Cosmos, which has been seen by more than 600 million people in more than 60 nations - few, if any, other people have had such success in teaching so many people so much. While he is most often remembered for these contributions, I would like to remember him for the principals that drove him into the public eye: his passion for knowledge - not as materiel for progress or as something to be hoarded in institutions - but knowledge as the birthright and true salvation of every human being. For Sagan, it was not enough to know; he was driven to enlighten, driven to disseminate his knowledge. He believed in the promise that knowledge holds, the promise to liberate our species from the chains of ignorance, labor, and fear.

(more…)

Based on painstaking astronomical research Australian astronomer David Reneke has reconstructed a star chart showing the position of the stars 2000 years ago.  With his chart he has been able to pin down the exact date of Jesus’ mythical birth using the gospel according to Matthew and a really fancy computer program.  He believes that the star the wise men saw was really an alignment of Venus and Jupiter that looked like a fancy new star to ancient people who didn’t have any telescopes.  Since the two planets only made sky-love on June 17th 2 C.E. he concluded it must have been when the three wise men followed it to the nativity.

What he fails to explain is how the wise men could have followed a faux star that appeared only one day for the entire long ass journey from the east.  He also fails to explain why he doesn’t have anything better to do; like say, studying real stars. 

[AHN]