Hey dude. When you get to hell, tell ’em Neo sent ya!

It’s amazing what gets reported as news:

THE Catholic Church has revealed how growing interest in satanism and the occult has led to a rise in exorcisms across Queensland.

Well, for starters this statement is a little misleading. To be clear, what is actually on the rise is the rate of exorcism ceremonies being carried out. There is no evidence to suggest that any of these anecdotally reported cases involves anything that could be construed as supernatural demonic possession.

One priest, who asked not to be named for fear of “reprisals”, said he was carrying out at least one exorcism a fortnight.

Reprisals from who pray tell? Satan? Demons? The police? Other, saner priests?

Happy Darwin Day

Hug a monkey, it’s Darwin Day.

The Geologic Universe

One of the things I’ve been tied up with over the last month has been my novice attempts at putting together audio content to contribute to a fancast celebrating the one year anniversary of the Geologic Podcast. It’s been something of a steep learning curve, but overall quite rewarding.

The Geologic Podcast is an intelligent and humorous (though often NSFW) layered blend of music, sketch comedy, rants, atheism, skepticism, science and bald jokes. If that’s not enough to get you interested, he’s just posted a video clip for the Assumption. Take a look, it’s brilliant.

linux.conf.au on $0 a day

Linux Conf is back in Melbourne.

I live here and I couldn’t even get within sniffing distance of tickets, so if like me you’re hungry to get your nerd on, they are posting video and slide files on the website as the presentations take place. Yum.

Death cold coffee from the skies!

In case you’re interested, the asteroid TU24 has passed it’s point of closest approach, and we appear to have avoided fiery liquid death. (Although my coffee was a little cold this morning … Gah! Curse you TU24!)

Debating Science

I as a general rule, I don’t think that the debate format is appropriate to scientific topics. A debate necessarily has a winner, whose ascendancy is determined by their ability to make a superior argument in the eyes of some theoretically impartial adjudicator. Reality however, doesn’t really care about rhetoric or majority opinion, and neither should science. The debate format is a circus, lending equal weight to opposing views that may or may not merit such treatment and which may or may not fully encompass all of the possible views. It also presupposes that the debaters are themselves qualified to argue their points and that the adjudicating person(s) is similarly competent to impartially weigh the opposing arguments.

As a case in point, consider this debate between Christopher Hitchens and Jay Wesley Richards.

Disaster from the skies! Apparently.

The image above is a pointlessly alarming graphic that is at best tangentially related to the following post. Silly I know, but all the cool kids are doing it.

If you don’t believe me, take a look at this ridiculously alarmist video that now seems to be making the rounds on Facebook. The video makes a few vague slaps at NASA and the evil scientific establishment before launching into a presentation on apparently potential dire consequences of the asteroid TU24 passing close* to the Earth.

Scientology versus Tom Cruise biography

Action against Libel or Censorship by litigation?

AUSTRALIA’S major book retailers have bowed to pressure from the Church of Scientology and will not stock the controversial biography on Tom Cruise by British writer Andrew Morton. Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography will hit American shelves on January 15 and has already generated its fair share of controversy.

The book is seen by the powerful Church of Scientology, which has Cruise as of its most high profile and loyal members, as an attack on its teachings.

Religious voices must be respected

Tom Frame is director of St Mark’s National Theological Centre in Canberra and head of the School of Theology at Charles Sturt University. He delivered the annual Acton Lecture on religion and freedom at the Centre for Independent Studies last night, which has been reworked in the Australian as an opinion piece entitled “Religious voices must be repected”. Must they indeed?

DESPITE their well-known indifference to ideology and apathy towards philosophy, Australians have become surprisingly animated when it comes to religion. In the minds of many, its presence or absence will decide the fate of the nation. The proponents of theistic religion claim it explains the origins of mortal life and reveals the destiny of human beings; provides the foundations for moral reasoning and ethical deliberation; and gives insights into how communities can peacefully coexist.
Theistic religion’s opponents argue that belief in a transcendent being or life beyond death lacks any evidentiary basis, defies the dictates of reason, impedes scientific advance, encourages discriminatory attitudes, further divides an already fractured humanity and leads to violence.

Hoo boy. I think someone just rolled up a straw man and smacked me over the head with it.

All hail our Noodly Lord

The the American Academy of Religion’s annual meeting has the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster on the agenda:

When some of the world’s leading religious scholars gather in San Diego this weekend, pasta will be on the intellectual menu. They’ll be talking about a satirical pseudo-deity called the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose growing pop culture fame gets laughs but also raises serious questions about the essence of religion.