Holloween costume

This year I am again going as society's scariest thing: an atheist. We are not trusted and disliked and should appreciate that. People don't like what they don't understand and they don't understand people who are in no need of an imaginary friend to cope with life.

GO NASA!!

While the US taxpayer is forced to pay for all kinds of crap (faith-based initiatives,Iraq, homeland security) NASA has announced it will service Hubble!! This will keep it up until at least 2013. It is always a comfort for me after dealing with small minded religious crap to step back and be reminded of the magnificent things we (the west) are doing even in the face of attacks on science.

How can 95% of the world population be wrong?

I've heard this a few times and it strikes me as a great counter argument to the persons intention. Firstly I don't know where the 95% comes from, I think it's reference to the number of monotheistic Americans. That is odd for the simple reason of India being more than triple the population of the US and being polytheistic. Not to mention a large segment of the African population that is "naturalistic" or has "indigenous beliefs" that are often polytheistic so this argument goes no where on that basis.

But on another front is makes a great point: the universe doesn't function by consensus! If (or when) the whole world thought the Earth was flat or the sun went around the Earth made it so, we'd have noticed. I think people don't understand the difference between scientific consensus and just consensus. A lot of dumb people can agree on anything and it makes no difference but a bunch a trained and logical people using the scientific method reaching consensus means a lot. So clearly this statement can only be taken to mean one thing: 95% of the population is ignorant. But at least ignorance is bliss...