Report: 32% Of Prayers Deflected Off Passing Satellites

HOUSTON—According to an official NASA report released Saturday, nearly 32 percent of all prayers exiting Earth are deflected off satellites orbiting the planet—ultimately preventing the discharged requests for divine intervention from ever making it to the Gates of Heaven. "After impact with the satellite, these diverted prayers typically plummet back into the atmosphere, where they either burn up or eventually land, unanswered, in a body of water," the report read in part. "Of the remaining prayers, research confirms 64 percent fail to make it past the stratosphere because they aren't prayed hard enough, 94 percent of those with enough momentum are swallowed by a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and 43 percent are eaten by birds." The report concluded that, of the 170 billion prayers issued last month, one made it to God, whose reply was intercepted by a hurricane and incorrectly delivered to a Nigerian man who reportedly did not know what to do with his brand-new Bowflex machine.

One Day Left

Richard Dawkins is speaking here tomorrow and I am very excited! I have my ticket laying right in front of me and it appears as if I may have an opportunity to meet him, have him sign my copy of The God Delusion, and get a picture with him. I will post the pictures if I can get them.

Richard Dawkins is Coming Here!!

Richard Dawkins is going to be coming here to speak in Madison at the Union Theater next Tuesday!! I've already got my ticket and I'm so looking forward to it. *gloats*

A friend I'm going has a former math tutor that is an old friend of Richard Dawkins's so there's a very good chance I may get to meet him and hopefully have him sign my copy of The God Delusion. He's also speaking at a smaller dinner from what I understand with only residents of the Chadbourne Residential College here on campus. Fortunately for me I've got a friend who lives there who might be able to get me in.

Updates will be forthcoming

My Favorite

George Carlin gets it right as usual:

Update: Here is another section of the same special which is also quite relevant. Although I haven't seen it all yet I recommend watching the whole thing, which starts here with part one (I certainly plan to when I find the time) because George is the best. Please don't ever retire George!

Goods Sign for the Godless

Well, everyone has been taking a look at the latest Pew Report on American Religion which came out a few days back and which I've been too busy to comment on until now. PZ Meyers at Pharyngula offers a pretty good analysis of it here and I recommend you take a look if you get a chance.

I think the most encouraging thing is the fact that the protestant population is shrinking. This seems to be a common misconception among people I talk to. Most seem to think because of the recent (and fortunately failed…at least thus far) attempted takeover of American government by the religious right that evangelical protestant religions are growing out of control and going to take over America. What evidently is actually occurring is that the extremely religious that do exist are just getting louder. I would even contend that this is happening specifically because of the shrinking numbers of the protestant population. What we are seeing is a movement that is lashing out and using the typical scare tactics to stop the flow of people out of the pews. We saw this in the 17^th and 18^th centuries in response to the Enlightenment with the advent of the Great Awakenings.

I think this time though it's different. I think we are far better armed with scientific evidence and we can easily make the debate about that evidence. In the 1800s it was hard to counter any sort of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" nonsense. (The full text of which can be found here) That sort of thing pretty much scared the shit out of everyone and sent them into a frenzy. I think now we have made enough scientific advancement that we can refute empirically most all of religion's other claims to the degree that even the burn in hell stuff doesn't as many people as it used to, even if we can't empirically refute the idea that you're going to spend the rest of eternity in hell for not believing. Then again, the burden of proof doesn't lie with us, it lies with the one who makes the claim.

Anyways, this trend is extremely encouraging and I think it will likely continue into the future. The far right will scream and holler itself into oblivion in the face of rising evidence against its claims. Then again, maybe I'm being extremely and uncharacteristically optimistic.