"In God we Trust" bugs me

Having that phrase plastered all over the U.S. physical money bugs me. It was originally religiously motivated back in the 1950's as a McCarthy-era response to "Godless Communism".

Why does it bug me? I think I've figured it out.

As an atheist, if I want to do any transaction with government-sanctioned physical tender, the government has forced me to hand the merchant a note (or series of actual literal "notes" - bank notes) that I believe in a god. 

"Forced" is not an overstatement. If there's a situation where I can't use my credit or debit card, and I only have money to use to barter for the goods, I must use the Government-required tender that has the Government-mandated endorsement of monotheistic religious concepts.

... but it's okay, because it's "tradition", now labelled "ceremonial deism", which, despite still being a governmental preference for monotheism over polytheism, pantheism and atheism, is now magically okay, and totally not unconstitutional.

If it said "In Allah we Trust", pitchforks and torches would be lit across the country.

Hunting for Creationism - Round 1 - We're the Center of the Universe

I'm on the hunt for evidence for Creationism/Intelligent Design (hereby C/ID). Here, I set the ground rules and mission.

Our first stop, icr.org

Tornadoes

Want to help with the Oklahoma tornado aftermath?

Foundation Beyond Belief is a nice secular charity organization, who has set up shop for this particular crisis.

The Red Cross, as usual, is on the scene.

As an aside, one thing that has struck me is the phrase "They're in our thoughts and prayers". What's up with the "thoughts" part? Is that throwing a bone to the non-religious? Actually, I'd say that it's even more useless than prayer. At least with prayer, on a conceptual level, you're asking some guy who has the power to do something to help. With "thoughts", they're literally asking you to sit around, stare into space, and think about the problem.

Fuck that - donate - do something that actually does something.

Hunting for Creationism - The Ground Rules

I don't think I'm quite done with Simmon's "What Darwin Didn't Know" (2004). but I certainly am done with it for the moment. I've had enough hole-poking in evolutionary theory. Right now, I'm itching for any actual evidence supporting creationism and/or intelligent design.

Before I begin - and this is going to be an ongoing series -I'd like to set some ground rules, and a mission statement, for what I'm about to do.

There was a Debate

It came to my attention that this Geoffrey Simmons fellow had a debate with PZ Myers in 2008. If you've read my reviews of his book (link to review index), you can guess it went about as well as you would have thought.

CO2 and Pollution

Unless you haven't heard, the atmospheric levels of CO2 have reached their highest concentration levels in the past few million years.

Now, I fully expected a number of excuses from the deniers, but there is one rationalization that I've found to be especially dim.

Atheists and Unicorns

An argument exists, which atheists receive on a fairly regular basis - "I don't believe in unicorns, but you don't see me forming groups of opposition" (paraphrased).