Atheists, according to Mollie Ziegler Hemingway of the Wall Street Journal, are no more rational than theists. In fact, they are a mite more superstitious, or so she says in a recent article titled “Look Who’s Irrational Now.” Apparently, 8% of those “who attended a house of worship” claimed belief in palm readings, astrology, and undead visitations, compared to a staggering 31% of the unchurched, including “avowed atheists.” Even more stunning is the fact that quite a few of these so-called atheists pray or proclaim belief in a personal God.

An article in the New Zealand Herald reports of a school, Ponce de Leon High School in Florida, whose principal engaged in a "witch hunt" against homosexual and lesbian students. The incident was initiated when a lesbian girl complained to the principal of harassment based upon her sexuality. His response was, in the words of the New Zealand Herald, "[to tell] her homosexuality is wrong,[to out] her to her parents and [to order] her to stay away from children."

Recently, the California Supreme Court overturned legislation that put an effective ban on gay marriage. Some of the first couples were married in the last few days.

Naturally, this has created quite a stir, and these couples' newfound civil rights hang precariously upon a proposed amendment to the California constitution. This amendment would etch into the highest legal writ in the Golden State that marriage is a union of a man and a woman.

Well, it's been some time, and the Festival of the Naturally Selected didn't quite go as I had planned. Life and other such things intervened, and I did not finish that week. Still, it was a good exercise in blogging for me.

I've been lucky to meet few people who felt that scientific knowledge sucked the wonder out of the world, but I hear they are common. I have a hard time understanding that point of view. When I see the crescent moon in the night sky I imagine us in the context of the universe: the planets around the sun, the moon around the Earth, the stars and galaxies beyond. When I walk through a forest, with the knowledge that everything I see is the product of billions of years of evolution, I see a tapestry of immense depth and history.

The other day I happened across, in a post on FriendlyAtheist, a book by Ray Comfort. For those of you who don't keep up with the minutiae of arguments between atheists and theists, Ray Comfort is the man who brought us the Banana Argument for God: essentially, that the banana is so perfectly formed, it has to be evidence of Yahweh. He is surely a man of formidable intelligence.

An entertaining aside: I just went to Fandango.com to reserve tickets to see Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. I've been having second thoughts about this whole review idea, as just reading the abstract makes me retch. But that isn't the funny thing.

I recently discovered that the Harvard video The Inner Life of the Cell may not be the only material ripped off by the producers of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed for their antiscientific purposes. Allegedly, some sequences of gene replication were stolen from a PBS program on the topic,ERV reports.

Academic freedom is the byword for modern creationism. In Dover and other areas Intelligent Design was incorporated into school curricula with the justification that they were "teaching both sides" of a controversy. The forthcoming movie Expelled makes the charge that "design proponents" are being expunged unfairly from academic institutions and that academic freedom is suffering as a result.

In response to this week's April 18th, formerly April 15th, release of the creationist propaganda flick Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, I shall be blogging on the subjects of evolution, science and creationism for this next week in my own one-man Festival of the Naturally Selected. Why? Here's a few reasons.

1. The topics are important to me.
2. I want to join the chorus of voices on the Internet speaking out against the attempts of theocrats to cajole and coerce their dogma down our collective throats.
3. I feel like it (see above).