Truth and the Devil

There was a recent story about new images from Cassini. It showed a hexagonal shape at the north pole of Saturn. Apparently this shape was first identified in 1980 during the Voyager mission, and scientists were excited to see that it has remained.

It’s interesting that when people see a regular shape that there is a sense of something unnatural about it. That maybe it’s unexplainable or even supernatural. Some of the comments on the Daily Mail site are instructive:

With each exciting discovery comes mystery. Which, in my estimation proves that the universe didn’t evolve. It was created by God.
- Frank, Charleston, SC USA

There’s a new 9/11 conspiracy video making the rounds. It’s called 9/11 Justice, and it can be found here. I was curious if it contained any new arguments, but it’s the same old stuff that has been refuted many times in the past. I thought I’d take the opportunity to point out some of these errors, as it can be applied to many of the major points in 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Check out some of these Roy Zimmerman songs now. This one is about those who claim to be defending marrriage. He’s got more about Intelligent Design, politics, etc. Just my kinda guy.

The snake-oil-bullshit-self-help book/dvd phenomenon The Secret being promoted by Oprah which I talked about 2 weeks ago, while still selling strong, has caught the ire of even more skeptics. Monday’s Salon has a very good article by Peter Birkenhead about the possible damaging implications of Oprah’s support.

Unfortunately, I missed the documentary on Jesus’ tomb last weekend, but apparently I didn’t miss much. PZ Myers watched and wasn’t impressed:

It wasn’t very impressive. They really milked a paucity of hard data for an over-long ‘documentary’ that was mostly handwaving. The DNA data was pretty much non-existent—one pair of bone fragments were compared and found not to match. Most of the story was an assurance that the conjunction of names found in the tomb couldn’t merely coincidentally match the names found in the gospels…but they really had to reach to make excuses to turn “Miriamne Mara” into “Mary Magdalene”, and they had one name, this “Judah” kid, that didn’t match the biblical collection at all, so they just flat-out invented an unsupported tale of Jesus having a son. Flogging a link between some ossuaries stored in a warehouse (which did not look at all secure) for twenty years and a known forgery also simply obliterates any credibility the whole shebang might have.

I would imagine that many people might expect some of a secular persuasion like myself might be inclined to jump all over new ‘evidence’ that the tomb of Jesus might have been found. I’m not so inclined. My interest in secular values as well as the study of religion has everything to do with evidence and a search for the truth, not trying to make religion look bad.

With that philosophy, I try to treat all fantastic claims with the same skepticism I would any other. Just as I find the claims of any conspiracy about UFOs or 9/11 or even The Da Vinici Code lacking in evidence, so do I James Cameron’s claim that he has found the tomb of Jesus Christ.

It appears that allegations are emerging regarding pedophiles within the Southern Baptist churches similar to the Roman Catholic scandal of recent years. Organizations such as Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and websites such as Stop Baptist Predators are organizing campaigns for Southern Baptist conventions to police their own.

Apparently there’s some new ‘woo woo’ bullshit percolating through the country at the moment. Some ‘philosophers’ are touting a new self-help method of turning your life around called The Secret. It seems Oprah is all over it, helping to reveal the ‘secret’ and expand its marketing empire. Currently there’s a DVD, book, CD and more.