Comment by Sagacious Hawk on May 20, 2012 at 5:20am

Just so you are aware, this one:

The Religious Right's righteous frauds.

needs a login for the NY Times.

Comment by Reg The Fronkey Farmer on May 20, 2012 at 7:14am

I cannot see the GOP evolving or even changing it’s stance on gay marriage before the election or indeed for the next few either. So if it remains an election issue it will be interesting to see how much of a shift there may be between those that vote republican because of political philosophy and those that do so because of deep seated religious conservatism. Their homophobia towards homosexuality is so deeply seated in the Bronze Age bigotry of their religion that it has become too powerful a meme to be able to change dramatically in a short period of time.

Would it be correct to say that many younger voters will find this ancient view intolerable and therefore be unwilling to vote GOP? Most of them must see it as a human rights issue and not a religious one? If the Republican Party cannot replenish its stock of conservative voters from the youth of America it may indeed die.

I don’t think such a dramatic change in GOP philosophy is possible as they would be viewed as just as liberal as the Democrats by those that vote Republican for historic or religious reasons. Maybe religion and the religious values it promotes are so engrained in its manifesto that it cannot evolve as the same “old” party. Could this lead to a new party being formed based on political and economic concerns while remaining concerned with equality and parity of esteem for everyone? They could try to rebrand their stance on gay marriage as Van Lohuizen suggests but they will not be able to rebrand their bible. Anyway this debate has started even if the Romney camp does not want to discuss it further.

Comment by Robert Karp on May 20, 2012 at 8:13am

Thank you Nelson! Please like, tweet, RT, upvote, +1, share, pimp out, etc...!

Comment by Gary Bergeron on May 20, 2012 at 10:44am

Greta Christina's smackdown put the hammer to the anvil: Atheists have a high regard for the truth. To paraphrase Carl Sagan, we stand on the rocky shore and face the cold, hard realities of life and existence instead of wading out into the waters of the warm, comforting fantasy or possible delusion.

The verbal twists and turns of Edwina Rogers didn't fool us one bit! She spoke AT us like a true political hack. Her extraneous attempt to sell us the snake oil, to convince us that she stands with us and agrees with the core values of our cause has failed miserably... nice try Edwina!

Thanks, Nelson, for all the hard work you put into getting the lessons to us!

Happy Weekend, everybody! :)

Comment by Nelson on May 20, 2012 at 12:09pm

Thanks for the comments and kind words guys. Thanks, too, for the tweets and LIKES and such! Much appreciated!

@Sagacious Hawk: NYT.com allows you access to a certain number of stories for free. Once you've used those up subsequent attempts to view (different) stories will result in the page you see asking for your log in information to get past the paywall. So the link works just fine for those who haven't hit their maximum number yet, which, in a given week, is most people. The link I posted for that piece works just fine for me. And I suspect it works just fine for most others too. If I'm wrong I'd love to hear that so I can adjust how I treat links to NYT.com links!

Comment by Greg Gorey on May 20, 2012 at 12:42pm

amazing stuff as always.

Comment by Reg The Fronkey Farmer on May 20, 2012 at 4:02pm

Thanks Nelson for the article on “ignoring the creationist threat” I had become very dismissive of the creationist anti-evolution position and almost given up arguing against it on the grounds that eventually it would go away because people would see it for the bad science that it is. However I have taken that for granted for too long and will renew my efforts to demolish it whenever I can. We know Evolution is true. It is important to keep people like Ken Ham in AIG from polluting more young minds. These people are so wrong they cannot be ignored. It would be remiss of us not to be proactive in countering them. This is why.

Comment by Stephen Charles on May 20, 2012 at 4:38pm

Loved it Nelson, as always. Loved the purpose of sleep and the 2 links about the problems with replication in psychology in particular. Thanks for this. I look forward to it every week

Comment by Dave Gibbs on May 20, 2012 at 6:03pm

Nelson. I believe that the story about the 37,000 year old limestone carvings is a hoax. The "photograph" at the top of the story looks like the American and African continents in drift and the article makes reference to carbon dating being used to determine the date... of etchings in a stone.

Comment by Nelson on May 20, 2012 at 6:21pm

@Dave: It's not a hoax. The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. One of the world's most well respected journals. Cave art is routinely dated by C14 owing to the presence of natural pigments used in the art. And in this case, a quick look at the abstract of the paper confirms that the engraving was "ocre-stained", ochre being a clay-based pigment used for anything from dark yellow to brown and red, depending.

But in this case it wasn't ochre that was used to date the engraving, when the block fell from the ceiling onto the floor below, it covered the bones of reindeer and other animals. These were dated to the 37,000 years on the firm assumption that the bones had been there since at least the time of the engraving.

No. It's not a hoax. But I certainly appreciate the critical eye. I'm glad you asked about it.

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