Site Updates

Sep 4, 2007 Major changes for Labour Day weekend! The entire site has been redesigned "under the hood", although you should see only minor stylistic changes. It has also been brought up to XHTML standards, and reorganized.

The Introduction section has been completely rewritten.

The Probability section has been completely rewritten.

The "Atheist Morality" and "Biblical Morality" pages have been combined into a single "Morality & Politics" page, where they will coexist with upcoming related articles.

The "Database" page has been combined with several entries from the Essays page in order to create a "Common Arguments" page.

A new "Fine Tuning" page has been written, and added to the "Common Arguments" page.

The Site FAQ has been revised.

Note: several older essays are temporarily being stored in an "Obsolete" page. This denotes pages that are slated for revision or replacement.
Sep 18, 2006 Added a new essay entitled "The Philosophy of Intelligent Design: Why Intelligent Design Theory is Completely Useless". Yes, I know, I've got another essay about Intelligent Design, but this one goes after a very specific point.

Sorry for the slow updates; I'm very busy. But I do have some good E-mail exchanges to add to the Hate Mail page. Some of these guys are great, especially the obvious posers. One of the great things about the really obvious posers is that they never realize how obvious it is. Challenge them and they just bluster more.
Mar 10, 2006 Added Michael Rennie and Aaron Carney to the Hate Mail page.

Fixed a reference to University of Toronto astrophysics professor Barth Netterfield being a creationist. Mr. Netterfield is a powerfully religious man, but he E-mailed me to clarify that while he believed evolution was guided by God (as he believes everything is guided by God), he certainly did not dispute the scientific theory of evolution.
Aug 26, 2005 Added A Brief History of American Fundamentalism by Yefim Galkine: a reader contribution to the website.

Added some more entries to the database.
Feb 27, 2005 Added a new essay: "The Care and Feeding of Analogies", all about everyone's favourite debating tool.
Jan 13, 2005 Replaced the old "Arguments" page with a new "Debating" page.
Sep 30, 2004 I added a "Wired Magazine" article about the history of the "Intelligent Design" propaganda campaign to the Links page.

I also added Jeff Knight, Joshua McCarthy, and Joe Marino to the Hate Mail page.

On other news, the site has moved out of its parents' house! Yes, is moved out of the old home as a directory in the StarDestroyer.Net sci-fi oriented domain and into a new (separate) domain name: CreationTheory.Org. And yes, I am quite aware of the irony of choosing a domain name which implies that the site will support creation theory rather than attacking it :)

And finally, on the propeller-head front, there have been some major coding changes beneath the surface. The entire site is now PHP-based (and W3C-compliant) for ease of maintenance, although the change should not be visible to the end-user. Nevertheless, if you experience any strange problems, please let me know.
May 14, 2004 Added the Fundie Phrase Dictionary to the Essays page. Sorry about the slow pace of website updates; I have a number of demands on my time.
Aug 24, 2003 After more than a year of inactivity, I have returned! I just added a fresh addition to my Hate Mail page: a person by the name of Rachel Cook. Enjoy!

I also added the National Center for Science Education to the Links page. These people are very helpful, and sent me a very useful informational package via snail-mail upon request.
Mar 3, 2002 I added another essay: Science, the Grand Illusion, and Other Neat Stuff.
Feb 27, 2002 I added Terry Langley, Todd Ritzema, Jordan Srnec, Anonymous Brian, and the ASU Coward to my Hate Mail page.
Jan 27, 2002 I added a more thorough discussion of Hitler's Religion in the Essays section, as well as a critique of the propagandistic Nuremberg-era OSS documents recently unearthed by the Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion which supposedly "prove" that the Nazis were out to exterminate Christianity. I also decreased font sizes site-wide.
Dec 17, 2001 I added a little PDF file to the Essays section (as an attachment to the School Prayer piece) about the annoyingly common assertion that America is a "Christian Nation".
Nov 28, 2001 After this week's cloning breakthrough, I was dismayed to see how popular the anti-cloning "don't play God" arguments were. Therefore, I decided to add a somewhat polemic essay on Playing God that I'd been toying with for a while, slightly rewritten to address the cloning issue. It's a bit more confrontational than usual, but quite frankly, the anti-cloning brigade has been more than confrontational enough to warrant it.
Nov 14, 2001 Quite a few people wrote me to say that some people were running around claiming that atheism is a religion. This struck me as extremely strange (don't any of these people own a decent dictionary?), so I added the Webster's dictionary definition of "religion" as a footnote to my Site FAQ. Silly religionists ...
Nov 11, 2001 I added an essay which some might find rather topical nowadays: Terrorism in the Bible. I also added a second essay entitled Flavours of Christianity in the hopes of clarifying what I mean when I keep using the term "Christian Fundamentalist" as opposed to "Christian moderate", and I threw in a Site FAQ too.
Nov 4, 2001 I added another person to the Hate Mail page: Paula Davis. This one is the most aggressive proselytizer I've run into so far. She makes no effort whatsoever to refute any of my arguments; her entire focus is to try to convert me to Christianity. I feel like I've just been visited by a Jehovah's Witness.
Oct 28, 2001 I added a School Prayer page to the Essays section. Normally, I tend to stick to discussions of science and defense of atheism and secularism rather than political issues, but this particular political issue represents an ongoing assault upon secularism so I feel compelled to say something.
Oct 6, 2001 I added a Morality page to the Arguments section, in order to head off some of the most common criticisms of my Biblical Morality pages.
Sep 29, 2001 I added a Religious Opportunism page to the Essays section, in order to discuss religious reactions to the World Trade Centre attack.
Sep 12, 2001 No real update this time. I just wanted to convey my deepest sympathies for the victims of yesterday's horrible terrorist attack. While most have expressed outrage, there are those (not just Palestinians, but people from many other nations) who have been muttering that the Americans "had it coming to them" for their government's past actions. For anyone who would say such a thing, I would like to relate a personal anecdote.

It was the great Quebec ice storm of 1998, and the province had been devastated. Power was out everywhere, lines were down, towers were down, and people were freezing in their homes. I was on my way from Michigan to Toronto, when I ran up behind a large utility truck. I pulled out to pass, and I saw that in front of it was another, and another, and another, and another. In fact, the truck convoy stretched out as far as the eye could see, and on the side of each truck was the logo: "Detroit Edison". Every damned truck they had, full of utility workers juiced up on coffee and ready to bust their asses all the way to Quebec to help out. I couldn't help but feel a little choked up at the sight, and I remember commenting that you can say what you will about Americans, but they are an exceptionally kind-hearted and generous people.

Today, I would like to remember that generosity. The Americans did not have that coming to them. And as Forrest Gump would say, that's all I have to say about that.
Sep 9, 2001 Jonathan Boyd hate mail updated. It's now been split into multiple pages.
Sep 6, 2001 Nitpick rewording of the "Status of Women" page in the Biblical Morality section.
Sep 3, 2001 Jonathan Boyd added to Hate Mail section.
Sep 1, 2001 Old Testament Reference page added to the Biblical Morality section.
Aug 18, 2001 "Quickies" page added to the Arguments section.
Aug 3, 2001 Michael Miller hate mail updated.
Jul 29, 2001 Essays section added.
Jun 23, 2001 Michael Miller added to Hate Mail section.
Jun 11, 2001 Hate Mail section added, with lots of entries.
May 4, 2001 Arguments section updated with various revised items, including an expanded discussion of Occam's Razor and other basic science principles.
Apr 8, 2001 Atheist Morality section revised, particularly with respect to sex and family values.
Mar 30, 2001 A site is born!