PeterEvolves

Rick Santorum. Really? Really?!? What self-respecting person with any good moral sense for taking care of humans and the world we live on or in could vote for this guy? I have to say I laughed when I watched his kid cry when he got clobbered by Bob Casey in Pennsylvania's 2006 Senate election. I'm not a big Casey fan but Santorum is made of the kind of insipid, mealy-mouthed, unctuous, overly-ingratiating goo that makes bad politicians look good. I think it's fair to say he's in the dregs... Read Full Story

Man. I was sort of glad that the religious whack-a-loonery in American politics had subsided after the last presidential election. Sarah Palin's goofy exorcism stuff was enough. And thanks to enough sane and somewhat responsible Americans, the Alaskan almost-but-not-quite vice-nutball-in-chief won't be running again. Sadly, we have someone considerably more *cough!* respectable looking like he's going to run: Texas governor Rick Perry. All I can say is that this sucks. He sucks. As a bunch... Read Full Story

As I walked along this morning, I was thinking about my dad. My friend from afar, Richard, spurred some of these thoughts in me after a conversation we had yesterday. His health has not been so good. He is a father and lover of nature and the wild and a sort of "brother in arms" for a more sustainable world. And my father died just a few months ago. I am a father. Richard is a father. We are mortal and gifted with memory, senses, love, and language. So I wrote this poem this morning... Read Full Story

What is with this guy ? No one denies that astronomer Martin Gaskell was the leading candidate for the founding director of a new observatory at the University of Kentucky in 2007 — until his writings on evolution came to light. Gaskell had given lectures to campus religious groups around the country in which he said that while he has no problem reconciling the Bible with the theory of evolution, he believes the theory has major flaws. And he recommended students read theory critics in the... Read Full Story

While I have gotten some pretty lame emails, nothing I've ever gotten compares to these. But you "is totally sucks ass" because you are full of bullshit retard dogma. You have to love people who defend their impoverished beliefs with impoverished arguments built on impoverished ideas. I'd use the word retarded but somehow I think it "is totally sucks ass" and I'd be even more "full of fucking bullshit" that I should "regret [that] fucking behavior." But if you laugh, you might get struck by a... Read Full Story

...I was more prepared than many of us. In fact, having been near my father for years as he approached his death, talked and ruminated with him on death, life, living, words, and the meaning of our many goings and comings, my father gifted me with the relief of his dying and death. He died on August 18th of this year. Today, Thanksgiving 2010, would have been his 68th birthday. To mark the day, I will share with you my remarks at his memorial service. He loved and taught poetry as an English... Read Full Story

Watch this garbage. As an atheist father with an atheist wife, I wonder what would happen if some pious judge decided that atheist parents are unsuited to be parents. That's not what happened here, but it's worth wondering about. .. type="text/javascript" src="http://s7.addthis.com/js/152/addthis_widget.js"> Read Full Story

...more about it! Why should anyone be surprised that those who are more generally informed about more stuff would know more about something that they wanted to know a lot about and then decided to reject? Got that? Yeah. It took a lot of polling ( reported here at Time ) to figure out that atheists and agnostics know more about. As Time reports: Why did atheists do so well? The study concluded that those who reject faith often do so after growing up in a religious household, and studying and... Read Full Story

So I've just read this article . I have lots of thoughts about it but here are my responses to each point regarding the abolition of Colleges of Education. The last point is the most salient and conclusive. 1. American K-12 students perform in a mediocre fashion on international standardized tests, and other data likewise suggest that the academic performance of American students is disappointingly modest. What do those tests measure that... are applicable in the world when it matters for... Read Full Story

A really interesting set of presentations and great Q&A on Intelligent Design as a positive research "science." It features William Dembski and Michael Behe and their interrogation by Robert Pennock and Ken Miller . I'd love to run some commentary on it but there's just way too much to do. Follow the links to the second half. And yes...they are still flogging the bacterial flagellum to death. .. type="text/javascript" src="http://s7.addthis.com/js/152/addthis_widget.js"> Read Full Story