Sorry for my poor performance here last week. I realize I haven’t posted in almost a week, so here are some funny pics to make up for last week.

Last week, a lot of new information was revealed about Bill Maher’s upcoming movie, Religulous. I have been tracking the term religulous with google alerts and my inbox has exploded with stories. I started tracking the term about a month ago and had received about 5 alerts about it in the first 3 weeks. Over this past week, I have received over 50 alerts.

Here is a roundup of the writing from around the blogosphere that I found to be the most interesting.

Religulous was originally planned to be released around easter, but easter came and went and the movie didn’t get released. At the time, I was left wondering why Maher’s camp was quiet about the film not getting released. It was not until I read Phil Brown’s article that I realized this was due to the writer’s strike, which I had completely forgotten about. I guess this is because I don’t watch enough TV.

Slashfilm was one of the first blogs to notice and post the new trailer, which is where I found out about it in the first place. They had good statements from both Larry Charles and Bill Maher:

Set to the rhythms of Sympathy for the Devil and Jesus Walks, from the Western Wall to the Vatican, from self-professed messiahs to self professed Pariahs, we will not only expose the hypocrisy and corruption in organized religion but the absurdly hilarious logic that holds it together. - Larry Charles

————

As a comedian, religion has always interested me — it was the single easiest subject to make jokes about. I think that tells us something:  comedians look for things that don’t make sense, that are illogical.

Join me in the final battle between intelligence and stupidity that will decide the future of humanity. Coming soon to a house of false idols near you. - Bill Maher

Not everyone found the trailer funny….

Rama over at Rama’s Screen missed out on the humour:

Religulous has hit the web and Bill Maher surprisingly is not as funny as he is on his show.

Eddie couldn’t even come up with any ideas of his own to diss the film. He just copied and pasted some weird poetry that sounds pretty ancient and hardly makes sense, instead of coming up with any arguments himself.

There was a wide range of reactions, but overall most were positive. Even some humour blogs, like gorillasushi, posted the trailer. I am actually pretty surprised about how little controversy it has stirred up. I am sure people will start voicing their opinions closer to release time.

If you still haven’t seen the trailer, check it out here.

On Friday, I announced that Bill Maher’s new movie, Religulous, got a new site, but I still moaned that a trailer hasn’t been released yet. My prayers were answered today, with news of a new trailer.

Check it out below. (Here’s a link for HD versions)

I was planning on avoiding anything to do with religion this Friday, as I have had quite a few comments to deal with this last week. I am not complaining about them, as sparking some controversy was my plan from the start.

Bill Maher is currently working on a movie called Religulous, which I have blogged about previously. There has been little news about the movie since his interview on Larry King Live. On that interview, he announced that he was planning on releasing the movie around easter. Easter has now passed, and religulous didn’t get released. The new site, disbeliefnet.com, is claiming that it will show up in theaters on October 2nd.

It looks like there is quite a bit of content on the new site, which I haven’t had an indepth look at yet. Done in Mayer’s normal satirical style, the site has many articles done in a similar fashion to the onion.

Go check it out here.

PS…..there’s still no trailer

Yesterday, PLoS Biology published an alarming study about creationist belief demographics among high school biology teachers. It showed that 16% of high school biology teachers are young earth creationists (that’s the worst kind). This means that 16% of these teachers believe that the world is under 10,000 years old. This is just too ridiculous. I can’t imagine anyone actually believing it, let alone biology teachers. It’s scary to think that these people are teaching kids. I believe that these teachers should be fired and have their degrees revoked by their respective universities.

Actually, they shouldn’t have gotten their degrees in the first place. Before getting a science degree, students should be asked: “Are you a creationist?” If they give the wrong answer, they shouldn’t get their degree.

PZ Meyers summed up this morning’s news the best.

Here’s the most depressing thing I’ve seen all week (and I’m grading genetics exams): it’s the result of a national survey of high school biology teachers.

Below is the main figure from the study:

If you have the guts, go read the full study [via Pharyngula]

The internet is populated with a lot of intelligent material, which is why I am addicted to it, but it is also filled with an enormous amount of ridiculous information. Creationists only contribute to one end of this spectrum and they bring the average of the whole internet down. The only thing that they are good for is a bit of cheap entertainment.

So here are the top 10 ridiculous creationists that I have found. If you can top these, please send your links in and I will add them to the list.

10. I wouldn’t want to miss anyone out, so #10 includes all creationists not covered below.

9. Becky Fischer from Jesus Camp.

8. Charley…just watch:

7. Quote - “One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted EVERYWHERE BY EVERYONE. Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn’t possible: UNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it.” [via Measured Against Reality]

6. Ann Coulter definitely had to make this list. Even if she didn’t believe in creationism, she’d still be an idiot. Here’s a quote from her book Godless: The Church of Liberalism: “Throw in enough words like imagine, perhaps, and might have — and you’ve got yourself a scientific theory! How about this: Imagine a giant raccoon passed gas and perhaps the resulting gas might have created the vast variety of life we see on Earth. And if you don’t accept the giant raccoon flatulence theory for the origin of life, you must be a fundamentalist Christian nut who believes the Earth is flat. That’s basically how the argument for evolution goes [emphasis in original].”

5. Quote: “He needs to read the Bible. Noah did not save “all of the Earth’s animals species.” God sent TO Noah representatives of each LAND ANIMAL KIND. When one sees such incorrect information in a piece by a scientist, one has to worry whether the same lack of attention to accuracy is exhibited in his own research, or the research he supervises!” original [via Jeff the Fish]

4. Ben Stein for his movie expelled. Thanks for making lies seem respectable.

3. Animation from a creationist movie ( part of the series: Why people laugh at creationists on youtube)

2. The Atheist’s Nightmare: Peanut Butter

1. The Atheist’s Nightmare: The Banana

This isn’t really breaking news, but Pat Condell’s entire youtube collection was released as a DVD last week and is on sale at richarddawkins.net (don’t worry this isn’t an affiliate link).

Pat Condell is a very well spoken atheist among the youtube community. His accent does help him out as anything with an English accent normally sounds intelligent, except for scousers.

Here is a clip of him below addressing replies from some angry christians.