I'm sick and tired of religious zealots telling people what to do. If you compare the good that is done in society between these hypocrites and decent law-abiding "heathens", the heathens will always come out on top. Why am I so sure about this? Because it is science and philosophy and intellect that progress the human species, not religion.

The only consistency organized religion has given us, the only legacy to be left to history by religion, is war. And only when we have eradicated religion completely, can we eradicate war. But you ask, what is life without religion, what is life without war?

Something I don't 'get' about theism is how they explain away the lack of proof for a god's existence by telling us that we must have faith - in books written millennia ago.

If we are to put our faith in a book, we could put it in any book - and maybe even one with more verifiable authorship than the Bible, Koran, Upanishads, et cetera. For example, I could claim my beliefs are based around The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the Scripture divinely inspired in the Prophet Douglas's mind. It teaches in the ways of hitch-hiking, towel-carrying, and how to free oneself from the evil Vogons and their satanic poetry.

Richard Dawkins' website has been banned in Turkey, but mine has not.

For those living in Turkey, here's an update from the website:

• The Turkish edition of Dawkins' book. The Ancestor's Tale, sold out within a day
• There is a Turkish translation of the offending article.  See below.

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Ingilizce aslindan ceviren: Kutluhan Celik

Susan Easton has written an interesting article titled, "Klaus Against The Greens" for Human Events. Here is a brief summary:

Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, directs much of his energy to campaigning against global warming alarmists. Klaus has been President of the Czech Republic since 1993 and holds a doctorate in economics. He is concerned about the totalitarian agenda of environmentalists. He believes there is little difference between the ideology of communism and that of climate change.

A fellow at New York City's Weill Cornell Medical Center, Dr. Sam Parnia is one of the world's leading experts on the scientific study of death. Last week Parnia and his colleagues at the Human Consciousness Project announced their first major undertaking: a 3-year exploration of the biology behind "out-of-body" experiences. The study, known as AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation), involves the collaboration of 25 major medical centers through Europe, Canada and the U.S. and will examine some 1,500 survivors of cardiac arrest. TIME spoke with Parnia about the project's origins, its skeptics and the difference between the mind and the brain.ADVERTISEMENT

What sort of methods will this project use to try and verify people's claims of "near-death" experience?

Will New Military Technology Be Used By Candidate In The Debate?

Researchers are building mind-reading helmets at the University of California.  The US Army recently injected millions of dollars into the project with the hopes that it will someday allow troops to communicate via mental projections in a combat setting, thus improving tactical efficiency. 

However, The Loki Times has information that this technology might have fallen into the hands of the McCain campaign, just before the first presidential debate is to take place. 

Stem cell research can be divided into two types: those that destroy human life, and procedures that do not.  In terms of scientific promise, there is greater possibility in the later.  There is no clear benefit to produce human embryos for research above stem cell research that involves embryonic fluid or adult stem cells.  There is no reason to sacrifice human life to advance science in this area.  Additionally, all kinds of moral dilemmas are created by embryonic research, i.e. paying low income people for their embryos so they can be used in research.

The lab I work in at the University of Illinois has recently acquired funding for several graduate student positions.  If you are considering a career in taxonomy, genomics, phylogenetics, biodiversity, tropical ecology, or parasitoid wasps, click here for information about the positions.

Ponder the following: you'd get your graduate degree from one of the finest entomology institutions in the world.  Plus, it's paid for.  And, if you choose the Heterospilus project, you'll get the rare honor of working with, um, me.

Just experimenting to see how many hits I get get with the following keywords."John McCain, Sarah Palin, Barack, Obama or Joe Biden".   Something tells me that this post is about to break a site record .  Apologies to anyone actually looking for info, because i feel so bad, click the links below to run searches for you. Ill post results of this little experiment tomorrow.

Update: Pre-Post I was at 808 total site hits @ 4:47pm CST

John McCain

Sarah Palin