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Humor Pareidolia Religion Skepticism/critical thinking

Papal pareidolia?

One of my favorite phenomena that represents better than perhaps any other how humans are wired to look for patterns, whether there is a pattern there or not, is the phenomenon known as pareidolia. As a Catholic-turned-sort-of-heathen, in particular I like Virgin Mary pareidolia, and have blogged about multiple such incidents. Of course, the Virgin […]

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Humor Religion

Caption this

I don’t do this very often, but this picture of Pope Benedict XVI struck me as amusing: One suggested caption is here. Not bad, but surely my readers can do better than that. Add your own caption!

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Religion

The “Satanic sorcery” of vaccines?

On occasion, I’ve thought of inaugurating awards for the looniest quackery, alternative medicine, or antivaccination craziness of the year. I was thinking of calling them the Woo Awards, but I’ve never actually gotten off my lazy posterior to do the work it would take to set up some sort of voting system, and I’m not […]

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Anti-Semitism History Politics Religion

Richard Dawkins walked right into that one, I’m afraid

Richard Dawkins really should know better. That’s why it’s frustrating to see him put his foot in his mouth in a big way in a recent interview. Indeed, he did it in a way that leaves himself wide open to charges of anti-Semitism: In an interview with the Guardian, he said: “When you think about […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Religion

Jesus is growing her a new leg! Or is he?

One of the best retorts to the claims of faith healers is the simple question: If faith healing works such miracles, why has there never been a documented case of faith healing regrowing an amputated limb? Now that would be truly miraculous. That would make even a curmudgeonly old skeptic like me sit up an […]