• Did you masturbate before you were born? No seriously, I need to know.

    The hands of the male fetus may sometimes appear to be gripping its genitals. And that, says Rep. Michael Burgess (above), is why abortion should be banned even earlier in pregnancy than the GOP is seeking in a bill on its way to the floor.
    Congressman Burgess is an MD. If he prescribes water for you, avoid it like the plague.

    As I wrote yesterday about skeptics’ failing to get involved in matters such as the 20-weeks abortion ban bill passed by the US house, I got some negative comments about skepticism’s involvement in politics, and the negative effect it can have on the movement. I happen not to share this concern. Because if the goal of skepticism is to stay clear of politics, there are large numbers of issues that it cannot touch, and hence it turns into “selective skepticism”. If skeptics apply critical thinking to one set of issues but not others, how do you tell skeptics apart from anyone else? After all, someone who doesn’t apply the scientific method to tarot/dowsing rods/etc. maybe doing the exact same thing: being selective. Maybe skeptics have to make their mind: you can be a skeptic, or you can be apolitical. You can’t always be both.

    Case in point: the same bill. The “scientific evidence” used to justify it is beyond idiotic; it is stunning. If this counts as science, then the Onion is a scientific journal. Not that the Onion humorists can ever be remotely as hilarious as US congressmen, though.

    “Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful,” said Burgess, a former OB/GYN. “They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to believe that they could feel pain?”


    So, there you have it. The good “doctor” sees fetal motions on ultrasound, some of them touching their legs and some touching their skin elsewhere, and somehow this convinces him that they are “feeling pleasure”. If this is not something a skeptic can, and should, tear to pieces, then frankly I don’t see the point of a skeptic movement.

    Category: Uncategorized

    Article by: No Such Thing As Blasphemy

    I was raised in the Islamic world. By accident of history, the plague that is entanglement of religion and government affects most Muslim majority nations a lot worse the many Christian majority (or post-Christian majority) nations. Hence, I am quite familiar with this plague. I started doubting the faith I was raised in during my teen years. After becoming familiar with the works of enlightenment philosophers, I identified myself as a deist. But it was not until a long time later, after I learned about evolutionary science, that I came to identify myself as an atheist. And only then, I came to know the religious right in the US. No need to say, that made me much more passionate about what I believe in and what I stand for. Read more...