Today is the 50th birthday of PZ Myers, the powerhouse behind Pharyngula, and a tireless proponent of science and rationality in the face of religious and anti-science idiocy. If you want to know why Pharyngula is top of my Sage RSS reader, and why I read his blog first every day, take a look at The unspeakable vileness of religious law, PZ’s response to the claim that without religion we would have no morality. It concludes:
Face it, everyone. Religion is not a source of moral behavior. It's a source of tribalism and obedience to authority, which sometimes coincides with respectable morality, but isn't necessarily associated with it. We have to find our virtue in one true thing, our common humanity, and these ancient superstitions actually interfere with instruction in how to be good by encrusting it with nonsense.
For a more lighthearted satire on creationism, read the first Pharyngula post I ever read, a plumbing parable:
My kitchen sink has a problem. Something has broken inside the Moen faucet, so that the handle is loose and only marginally effective. I'm thinking I should run down to the hardware store and get a new faucet assembly, and get under the sink with a pipe wrench. It shouldn't be too difficult.
Right away, I run into an obstacle. I get down to the basement to fetch my wrench, and there's one of the local ministers sitting on the toolbox. "Have you tried the incredible power of prayer yet, son?" he asked. I said no, of course not. I'm trying to fix a broken faucet. And then he gave me one of those pitying looks and tried to convince me that not only could Jesus fix my faucet, he would give me wine on tap. So I told him to get his fat ass off my toolbox and out of my house, and he stomped off.
The rest at the link.
Happy birthday PZ. Keep ‘em coming.
Thanks for linking to that PZ post. I had forgotten about it, and it was well worth revisiting.
Posted by: Kristjan Wager | March 09, 2007 at 05:30 AM