It will be a busy one, I know. For instance, in January, the Texas State Board of Education is slated to "review" science education standards, and we already know the creos are hard at work to undermine them. The pro-science community dealt with this handily back in 2003, and now we're going to have to deal with it again. Sigh. They never learn. Such is the power of myth over minds.
I'll be taking a blog break of about 5 days or so. See you soon.
Superdickery is a site with some of the most bizarre, offensive, propagandist, sexist, racist, innuendo-laden, or just plain hilarious comic book covers and panels from back in the day. Much of it will have you scratching your head in bewilderment, while some of the less worksafe stuff — like a whole plethora of the most unintentionally gay Batman panels imaginable — will simply have you delirious with laughter and must be seen to be believed. The one above, though, has got to be the most inexplicable piece of art damage I've ever encountered. So Hitler is apparently crucifying Jesus — so he can blame the Jews for it, I wonder? — when suddenly God, a surprisingly short fellow who favors baby blue dresses and flip flops, bursts into the room, rather the hard way of doing things for an omnipotent deity. Bonus WTF comedy points for Jesus himself crying, "I'm saved!"
I've been thinking on this question in the last few days, in light of reading and responding to some comments made by a handful of inordinately ignorant creationists made here and on other blogs. We were visited here recently by a clod named Jon, whose gaseous and incoherent anti-evolution ramblings were annihilated with glorious eloquence by regular commenter Lui. Shalini, over at Scientia Natura, has been ruthlessly trolled by a commenter simply calling himself "creationist" who appears to be quite literally psychopathic, and over at Larry Moran's Sandwalk, a jaw-dropping fool calling himself "mats" has raised (lowered?) the human capacity for aggressive stupidity to the level of performance art. It's a phenomenon just breathtaking to behold, and it's a sobering realization that this kind of mental chaos is what science education in this country has to confront.
It would seem that, to a least a percentage of its followers, Christianity appeals because it provides them with a vehicle for intellectual poseurdom. Without anything in the way of scientific education or expertise behind them, creationists are unique among cranks in the perverse confidence with which they lash themselves to the mast of their stale and long-debunked claims. They'll confidently and even condescendingly inform experts with Ph.D's and 25 years of field work that there is no evidence at all to support what is probably the best-supported theory in all science. This goes beyond mere stupidity or even run-of-the-mill ideological denialism into a bold and deliberate repudiation of knowledge and even reality itself.
I've often thought that a large part of religion's appeal is directed towards the less intelligent or less educated, who have come to mistrust those more educated than themselves and who actually equate good education and intellect with "elitism." For them, Christianity provides the comforting illusion of intellectual superiority by selling the idea that knowledge is a thing received through revelation, and not something you actually have to work for, the results of which are always provisional and contingent upon such things as evidence. This rejection of learning is actually scripturally supported. Many Christians take to heart the wildly ranty final passages of Romans 1, in which anyone who pursues anything other than the "knowledge of God" is branded as "slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful...senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless" with a degree of overwrought hysteria calculated to make Ann Coulter's G-spot explode. (Of course, the Bible, being the Big Book of Multiple Choice and all, can usually be counted on to provide an oasis of common sense at times as well. A passage I often love lobbing at creos is Proverbs 12:1.)
There really is a profound chasm between science and religion that seems so obvious to me, I often wonder at how much guys like Stephen Jay Gould, whose efforts to make nice with religion resulted in his widely-mocked notion of "non-overlapping magisteria," are entertaining their own "god delusion." If you were asked, "Why do you trust science? Why do you think evolution is true?" you'd have to give the questioner books, stacks of books. Ask a Christian what they get out of being Christian, and you get sound bites, quick Hallmark-card taglines that radiate emotional comfort. Having dealt with truly ardent fundamentalists, I can say pretty confidently that a huge appeal of their beliefs is not only this emotional comfort, but the idea that one now knows what it's all about and doesn't have to look for answers in a big lonely universe anymore. Knowledge is hard work, but belief is easy. Religion claims to provide the answers to the Big Questions ordinarily attained through lifetimes of hard work, to people who don't particularly care if the answers are verifiable or even true as long as they provide the convincing illusion of both truth and purpose. The difference, I guess, between guys like me and the "Neville Chamberlain atheists" is that I'm not inclined to be sympathetic to the human weaknesses and emotional vulnerabilities that cause people to embrace the easy path to faux-knowledge over the often rocky and difficult path to intellectual honesty and integrity. Ironically, it's another bit of scripture, the oft-quoted 1 Corinthians 13:11, that best reflects my own rejection of superstition and my disdain for the continued intellectual posturing and rejection of learning coming from the creationist camp.
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
I imagine that when Isaac Asimov wrote, "Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived," he was thinking of passages like that. Religion's great crime against humanity isn't that it persuades grown adults who should know better to hold onto childish things. It's that, in Dawkins' words, it asks us to be satisfied with not knowing, and beyond that, to confuse belief with knowledge and allow believers to pretend to an unearned and false expertise concerning the facts of the world.
There's a rumor going around that America is the most advanced nation on Earth, in terms of human rights and scientific prowess at the very least. But in reality, the majority of this nation has greeted the prospect of returning to the dark ages with open arms. Atheists only ever usually see this in the comments creationists leave on science blogs, most of which (the comments, that is) are such a black hole of vacuous moronity coupled with unwonted arrogance and smugness that they must be seen to be believed.
But Americans' eagerness to flush the last 200 or so years of civilization down the commode can be seen in so many places, and most prominently in the fact that the front-runner for the GOP right now is Mike Huckabee, a hyper-fundamentalist nincompoop who proudly wears his sexism, homophobia and scientific illiteracy on his sleeve, and who puts his superstitions right at the forefront of his campaign as if they were his greatest virtue. That the benighted American public thinks the more idiotic religious atavism you practice, the more virtuous you really are, it's sadly predictable that Huckabee's lunacy is selling. It's selling so well that people not only don't care that, when he was governor of Arkansas, this staunch enemy of abortion rights pressed for the early release of a serial rapist from prison despite numerous warnings that the man would almost certainly offend again (and sure enough, he raped and killed one more woman after Huckabee let him walk), but they'd probably be more inclined to support him if they did know. Hell, it's what all them uppity feminazi bitches deserve, ain't it?
I fear some folks are taking the confident "it can't happen here" attitude towards a possible Huckabee presidency. Even American voters couldn't be that idiotic, they assure themselves. Well, when you remember that over half the population of this country believes the universe was created after dogs were domesticated, I think the intelligence of the majority is something one should not overestimate. That Huckabee has gotten as far as he has solely on flogging his Christian faith, while openly displaying his ignorance of foreign policy and geopolitics ought to be enough of an indicator of GOP voters' low standards for who they'd like to see in the White House (as if Bush weren't bad enough).
Yes, Huckabee has tried to assure people he's open to non-Christians as well ("The key issue of real faith is that it never can be forced on someone. And never would I want to use the government institutions to impose mine or anybody else's faith or to restrict..."), but when he's on record as stating he'd like to "take this nation back for Christ," then defends it as simply the kind of thing you say to a Baptist gathering, forgive me if I'm a little dubious. If a presidential candidate were to appear at an Islamic mosque and talk about taking America back for Allah, or at a Klan meeting to talk about putting the uppity blacks in their place, and then respond to the press that "certainly that would be appropriate to be said to a gathering of" Muslims or neo-Nazi hicks, his political career would be over faster than you could say "redneck." (Though creepily enough, Ron Paul's lunatic fringe of supporters don't seem terribly bothered by his apparent affiliation with white supremacists, so maybe racism wouldn't be much of a liability to a candidate these days.)
Well, who knows yet how things will turn out in the caucuses, but it does appear as if the GOP at large is throwing former golden boy Romney overboard in favor of Huckabee. I can say that if Huckabee actually gets the GOP nomination, it would be a sufficiently awful turn of events that I might actually be driven to support Hillary. At least the worst you can say about her is that she's a dishonest, opportunistic careerist who never takes a stand on anything she can't abandon in a heartbeat if it appears to be hurting her in the polls.
Can you tell I'm not overly optimistic about the election year?
Current observations indicate that order and consistency (e.g., "design") can arise from intelligence or from undirected events (e.g., Mandelbrot patterns, chance).
Given those observations, is there any reason to assume that the design of the universe more likely arose from intelligence (theism/deism) or from undirected events (atheism)?
Current observations indicate that people can be killed by machine guns, or by things that are not machine guns.
Given those observations, is there any reason to assume that Julius Caesar was more likely killed by a machine gun, or by a non-machine gun event?
We know with reasonable certainty that there were no machine guns during Caesar's time, so the latter is best assumed.
So what is it that you know about the origin of the big bang that makes your analogy relevant?
We certainly do not know that. All we know is that we don't KNOW of any machine guns in Julius Caesar's time. Yet we know that it is possible for machine guns to exist. So what is your proof that machine guns did not exist then?
Another thing we know is that it is much easier to kill someone with a machine gun than without one. Given the reasonable belief that Julius Caesar was killed (rather than dying of natural causes), isn't it fair to say that if there is even a small chance that machine guns existed, then it is at least equally likely that they were used as that they were not?
Why is assuming the existence of something complex, like a machine gun, not plausible to you, when it can be used as a handy explanation for Julius Caesar's death?
I can't resist hilarious stories like this. Seems two different groups (gangs?) of priests — one Greek Orthodox, the other Armenian Apostolic — were cleaning up inside Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity when some careless fellow set foot in the other group's section, setting off a bloody turf war. About 80 men of the cloth whaled away at one another with brooms until the police were called in to break up the rumble. Just amazing. Apparently there were "long-standing rivalries" between the two groups. You'd think if there were a God, he'd step in to clear that sort of thing up. Mediate, you know? After all, how can they expect to fend off the evil atheist secularist liberal Darwinist scourge if they can't even get along with each other?
Always worth reminding folks that a very special person was born on this day.
It's true. I know O'Reilly and any number of the folks running the right-wing Christian-persecution industry want to think I've declared "war" on their holiday. But I haven't. If anything, they've done so, by loudly claiming the entire holiday season as their own and not wanting anyone else to play. I thought this was a time of peace on Earth and good will to all men. Not for fearmongering religionists who see enemies beneath every rock, I suppose.
The things I dislike about Christmas are mainly the things most people dislike: the traffic, the congestion, the crowds. I'm able to avoid most of this, because I'm not a family man myself so I don't have an obligation to race to the mall and bow to the gods of commerce every year so I can get the kids the latest awesome video game. No, I get to go at my own pace and pick that game up for me whenever I want it. Hah!
When I was a Christian in my childhood and adolescence, I recall having more of an investment in the religious aspects of the holiday. Today I find much about the holiday that engendered those same feelings of warmth in secular motifs — and in fact, I realize now that what I really loved about the holiday back then was mostly secular, as well. I dug decorations, and hanging out by the tree, and the anticipation of opening presents. Going to church on Christmas Eve was okay, I guess, the only really sucky part having to do with getting dressed up and going out in the cold when I'd rather be at home curled up under blankets. But I do remember liking one thing about the Christmas Eve church service when I was a kid: they'd kill the lights in the sanctuary and everyone would be holding lit candles, and that created a really great ambiance.
As an atheist adult, I don't miss the church services or religious carols, but there's still plenty about the holiday for a secularist to enjoy. I have often been asked by Christian friends why I celebrate Christmas if I'm not Christian. I hasten to remind them that the holiday wasn't exclusively Christian to begin with (as with all major Christian holidays, it's an absorbed pagan celebration), and that today, there's the Christian Christmas and the secular Christmas, the latter of which embraces all the good, humanist sentiment of the holiday (the peace and goodwill thing) with none of the baggage involved in taking the mythological parts seriously. We shouldn't need a particular time of year set aside during which it's the proper thing to do to be good to one another. But with all the sectarian ideologies around the world eager to divide humanity into warring factions throughout all the rest of the year, clearly we do. A shame that in this country, the Christians who claim to be Christmas's most ardent supporters want to turn it into a divisive time, too.
Finally, here's one more bit of childhood Christmas nostalgia that still rocks my world. Who doesn't remember growing up with this bit of awesomeness? In fact, I think I'll watch it tonight over a cup of hot chocolate.
So if you don't celebrate Christmas but something else (the solstice, or whatever), then Happy Holidays. If you do celebrate Christmas, then Merry Christmas. (There. I said it.) If you don't celebrate any holidays at all, but are looking forward to a day off work, then have a great day. In fact, have one every day. As best we know, this is the only life we have. There's no excuse not to celebrate every day of it.
The folks at the Barna Group have done another poll on beliefs, and surprise, the majority of respondents prefer a literal belief in the Bible as opposed to believing that it consists "merely [of] stories told to communicate life's principles." Given how frought with inconsistencies and contradictions the Bible is — and especially given how many alterations have been made by ecclesiastical editing and multiple translations over the centuries — it should seem obvious that any belief in the book's literal truth is wholly insupportable. But not to the punters who make up Christianity's rank and file, obviously.
This ignorance is on its boldest display in that over 90% of respondents believe that Jesus was actually born of a virgin. As Biblical scholars have known since, well, forever, the whole virgin-mother thing is based on a gross mistranslation from the original, in which "young woman" became "virgin," perhaps at the hands of some sexually repressed clerical scribe. So as we see, one of the most widely held and cherished beliefs among Christians is based upon ignorance of their own religion's history. (This is nothing new, of course. People call the TV show all the time, angrily denying that such and such a passage is in the Bible, only to splutter in confusion when Matt whips open his Bible and reads the passage to them.) Religion is most certainly the path away from, and not toward, knowledge and understanding.
Ever noticed how the bobbleheads in the mainstream news media really have it in for bloggers? It's an especially virulent hatred on the part of right-wing media figures. Bill O'Reilly has called anyone associated with Daily Kos (including its readers) "devil worshipers," and raving closeted homophobe Michael Savage is driven to near-homicidal mania by the very thought of Media Matters.
Perhaps the mainstream media is just pissed off that bloggers have an ability to do proper journalism — that which isn't vetted by corporate masters and their armies of lawyers loyal to one political faction or another — they simply lack. Not that the crew of Fox or CNN would do proper journalism if they had the chance. That's the thing about guys like Murdoch taking over every media outlet they can buy. They tend to hire on-air personalities cut from the same ideological cloth.
CNN's latest exercise in egregiously stupid non-reportage came in this simple-minded puff piece about the Light the Highway movement, that exercise in fundamentalist absurdity in which the faith-heads have been laying "purity sieges" to Interstate 35 and any businesses that happen to be stationed along it they don't like. I snarked all over it a few days back, and it has been widely covered on other godless blogs as well, to much amusement.
The CNN piece really is pitiful. Note how the writer, some nincompoop named Gary Tuchman, calls the fundie obsession with I-35 an "interesting belief." Well, I suppose it's "interesting" in the same way some madman raving on a street corner in a bathrobe and a lampshade on his head about how the CIA and the Illuminati are trying to kidnap him and haul him off to Area 51 for a round of alien anal-probage is "interesting." And note Tuchman's flaccid gesture towards the concept of "objectivity." It's the sort of equivocating gibberish that has led to the kind of "he said, she said" pandering that conveniently allows the reporter himself off the hook when it comes to actually digging up hard facts: "Now, it's only fair to say most people, the religious and the non-religious alike, don't buy any of this..." Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. Someone also told me the sun rises in the east. Who knew? "But on the side of the road, the prayerful aren't going to change their minds." Yes, that tends to be the mentality of lunatics who congregate to do their business on the sides of roads. Remind me how any of this is news?
Well, none of it is news in the way CNN has approached it: as the sort of pure padding on a slow news day newspeople call a "human interest" story. But here's a little something about the Light the Highway movement that is interesting and even a little newsy. And naturally, one has to have gone online to find it.
When this story originally surfaced in the blogosphere, it was accompanied by a YouTube clip of jaw-droppingly lunatic 700 Club "news" broadcast extolling the virtues of this amazing evangelical enterprise. Part of this report featured the stunning story of James Stabile, a "19-year-old homosexual atheist" (two, two, two horrible sins in one!) who was apparently on his way to his local gay bar one night to smoke a little pole when he encountered some prayer warriors laying purity siege to said bar. After a brief exchange with Joe Oden, the purity siege organizer, Joe "laid hands" on James (no, not like that!) and instantaneously "cured" him of teh gay through the power of Jebus!
This account was met with what you might call skepticism, mostly by those who identify themselves as skeptics. Who knew that you could transform a gay man into an all-around red-blooded American heterosexual stallion simply by letting a moronic religious bigot scream "Fire!" at him? You'd think if it were that easy the country would have rid itself of the gay community ages ago and the Rupert Everett/Jodie Foster wedding would have been the talk of the tabloids for 2007. Many bloggers and commenters cried "Staged!" and "Plant!" But it took a couple of online writers, blogger Warren Throckmorton and gay journalist John Wright, to get to the bottom of what was going on with this James Stabile character. And it was far more intriguingly complex than just the usual routine of fundie lying. How did they get their information? Why, by doing what guys like Gary Tuchman are supposed to do: investigate, follow up leads, dig beneath the surface to get to the truth. You know...journalism.
The short version: it turns out that James Stabile suffers from bipolar disorder and often goes off his meds, at which point he is described by his family and those who know him as a pathological liar who loves attention and will say what he has to to get it. After James was "cured" by Oden, James enrolled in a "residential treatment program" in Kentucky run by Pure Life Ministries, but was ejected by them for being what they called a "compulsive liar." That's an interesting charge coming from a camp run by Mike Johnston, an HIV+ man who was the face of the Christian "ex-gay" movement for years, until it was revealed that he was still cruising for unsafe gay sex all the while.
Anyway, after James left Pure Life he moved in with some folks from Oden's church, where his problems with dishonesty, doubtless a symptom of his bipolar condition, continued to manifest.
By the time CBN's 700 Club crew came to Texas to shoot their segment, Joe Oden already knew about James' mental health issues. He had spoken to James' father, Joseph, a Methodist minister who is reportedly "fully accepting of his son’s sexual orientation and believes being gay is neither a choice nor a sin." Oden claims he told CBN about all this, and they didn't care. They wanted James for their piece. Still, Oden doesn't get off the hook here. He is interviewed in the same CBN piece, and joyously boasts of de-homosexualizing James. So he's just as much an exploitive, lying shit as any of them.
Word is now that James has finally returned home to his family and is receiving "appropriate medical care." So the long and short of it is, on the one hand, a young man with mental health and sexuality issues lying to people in order to feel accepted and validated, and a group of religious fundamentalists only too happy to exploit him to promote their crusade. A sad story all around, but one that appears to be ending more or less happily for the Stabiles. The problem with James isn't that he's gay, it's that his brain chemistry is all out of whack. It's a shame he left his tolerant family for acceptance by a bunch of raving bigots. But the appeal of fundamentalist groupthink is that, with its revivals and mobs of singing, cheering worshipers, it can seem to a lost and confused person to have something meaningful and fulfilling to offer in a directionless life. When all you really need in life are those people who know you and love you for who you are, not who their ideology dictates you have to be. (And with that loving environment, in the case of a real mental disorder, the proper medical care. You can't pray away mental illness any more than you can pray away the gay. When it comes to dealing with real problems, count on science every time.)
For in depth coverage of James' story, read Wright's story here, and Throckmorton's blog here. Especially if you're Gary Tuchman. These writers ought to give you some tips on how to do your job.
Here's old Bill Dembski, being interviewed by Focus on the Family, one of the few remaining forums that take him seriously.
I believe God created the world for a purpose. The Designer of intelligent design is, ultimately, the Christian God.
Whoops. Well, so much for any more attempts to claim in courts of law that ID is purely scientific and isn't about trying to shoehorn Christianity into science classes. Cuz, you see, here's the Discovery Institute's official position:
Does intelligent design postulate a “supernatural creator?”
Overview: No. The ACLU, and many of its expert witnesses, have alleged that teaching the scientific theory of intelligent design (ID) is unconstitutional in all circumstances because it posits a “supernatural creator.” Here we provide several actual statements from intelligent design theorists that the scientific theory of intelligent design does not address metaphysical and religious questions such as the nature or identity of the designer. [Emphasis added by some little atheist smartass.]
Hmm. Awk-warrrd, eh, Billy?
Of course, Dembski has frequently been perfectly open about his religious motivations — when addressing a safe Christian audience. In the world of creationism, talking out of both sides of your mouth is standard operating procedure. It must lead to some really uncomfortable muscle cramps.
First bandits make off with a holy man's holy leg, and now, via Skeptico, I discover this delicious little story about a provincial judge in India ordering two gods, Ram and Hanuman, to appear in court to give evidence in a property dispute. The judge is not about to grant any special dispensations to them for being divine, let alone imaginary.
"You failed to appear in court despite notices sent by a messenger and later through registered post. You are hereby directed to appear before the court personally," Judge Singh's notice stated.
The newspaper notices were published, in keeping with accepted Indian legal practice, after two summons dispatched to the plaintiff deities were returned because their addresses were "incomplete".
You know they're just going to lawyer up.
None of you is likely to forgive me for the bad joke in the headline when you read this article. But still, I think this little event shows up the practical risks of embracing irrational beliefs in magic and the occult. So the next time some wide-eyed individual calls me a closed-minded old grumpus because I can't see the "beauty" in the act of confusing fantasy with reality, I'll just reply that I'd rather have a closed mind than a bloody severed limb. Skepticism: the life and limb you save may be your own.
Without explanation, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has retracted on its website a positive review of The Golden Compass that appeared in Catholic newspapers last week. The review had appeared to counterbalance claims by the Catholic League, the nation's largest Catholic lay group, that it served as an introduction to atheism expounded in the trilogy of books on which the movie is based. The League had urged a boycott of the film. In an interview with the Baltimore Sun, Jim Lackey general news editor of the Catholic News Service, run by the bishops' conference, acknowledged that he was told to remove the review from the CNS website. "It's hard for me to categorize whether or not it was a surprise," he told the newspaper. Meanwhile, the church's Raleigh, NC diocese on Tuesday warned pastors in a letter about the possible ramifications of the film. "The concern is that once a child gets 'hooked' on the film or the books, then the next film could resort to the true atheistic nature of the books," the letter said.
And we all know how bad it would be for business if children around the country had an epiphany from reading the books that there's no invisible magic man in the sky and the church is simply a self-perpetuating authoritarian money machine. Plus, if the kids turn atheist and stop coming to mass and catechism and all the other little rituals we have for them, there won't be so many of them around to molest! Gasp! Martin! You mean mean man! What a cheap shot! Yeah, well, it wouldn't be so easy if they hadn't done it.
Now I know I didn't care for the movie much, but it also happens to be true that the grounds on which the Catholic League (has the odious Bill Donohue even seen it?) is condemning it are wholly bogus, and part of me wishes people would go see it just to realize that all the hysteria in the press is much ado about nothing. Then perhaps folks will be less likely in future to say "How high?" whenever Donohue says "Jump!" But what I find most amusingly ironic about this whole Catholic war on the movie is that they're basically walking right into it and validating the themes of Pullman's original books: that the Church is repressive and even punitive towards ideas which challenge their long-held dogmas, and that humanity's real growth lies not in those dogmas but in embracing free thought and fighting authoritarian rulers and institutions that keep people cowed and submissive. I've heard Pullman's religious critics attack his humanism as somehow "elitist." But what could be more elitist than a bunch of men in expensive robes and pointy hats claiming to be the emissaries of a deity and telling everyone what to think and how to live thereby?
Anyway, it appears the movie is doing better business in Europe (where theistic demagogues generally hold less sway than here), adding an additional $51 million to its lackluster $26 million domestic take. In Pullman's home of England alone, the movie had a per-screen average of $29,129, compared to $7,308 in the U.S. New Line foolishly overspent on the movie, as studios are wont to do with "event" pictures, but the overseas gross could help put the movie in the black.
Interesting new research popping up in the news today. Darwin predicted that evolution would be a faster process in large population groups, and current science seems to be confirming those predictions with research that shows about 7% of the human genome has undergone rapid change ("rapid" in evolutionary terms being on the order of 40,000 years) under selection pressure from such civilizing activities as agriculture. For one thing, it appears lactose tolerance is a recent development, with the emergence of the LCD gene; no one, it appears, in the Stone Age could drink milk. Nor did any of them have blue eyes. Also, when people began to cluster in large population groups, thus allowing a venue for new infectious diseases to spread, we began developing genes to increase resistance to them, such as G6PD, which staves off malaria.
Today we see different alleles emerging in different population groups, unique to their continent of origin. Europeans have alleles that express fair skin, for instance, but they're different than the ones that fair-skinned Asians have. Also, it appears Asians are rapidly developing genes that suppress ear wax and body odor! Australian aborigines and African bushmen have a hard time with the grains and other carbs we in the agricultural west seem to digest just fine. This is leading to the conclusion that humans may be growing apart, not closer, as a species. In another 40,000 years, might we actually speciate? Particularly in light of the fact we all seem to be staying fertile until much later in life?
It's all nifty stuff to read (here's another article from National Geographic). And it all just shows why science is such a rewarding pursuit. Always new things to learn, to complement, refute, and/or modify existing knowledge.
The latest on the Colorado church shootings:
The gunman was identified as Matthew Murray, 24, who was home-schooled in what a friend said was a deeply religious Christian household.
Gosh, it's all so confusing.
Hadn't seen this before, but it's hilarious. Leave it to the two coolest guys in Hollywood to know exactly how to let hypocritical neocon politicians have it where the sun don't shine. And that's all the innuendo for me, thanks.
(Context: Clooney's Ocean's Eleven costar Julia Roberts is winning an award, and Clooney can't be there, so he's sending a video congratulations.)
This is a developing story out of Colorado, so we'll be keeping up with it. It would be too easy to throw in some snark about the obvious (God didn't pop up to save these people), but there is a time and place for that and it isn't when people are really being hurt. I suspect there's something to the fact that this occurred at the megachurch formerly run by the disgraced Ted Haggard, that the guman had some real issues there. We'll see what an investigation into his background reveals. It doesn't appear anyone was killed (we're unsure whether the gunman himself is alive or dead), so that's good news.
Apparently earlier today two guys were killed at a missionary training center about 70 miles away. We'll see if it was the same shooter.
Latest update is that the gunman killed one person at the church before himself being taken out by a quick-thinking security guard.
I'll start here by noting that this review, while it avoids outright spoilers for either book or movie, has some things in it that will mean more if you've read the book rather than not. Since not reading the book would make you a silly person, go correct that lapse in your cultural education at your earliest convenience. Now, onward...
Chris Weitz's film of Philip Pullman's brilliant fantasy adventure The Golden Compass is a respectable adaptation in a lot of ways, but at the same time exhibits a lot of the problems inherent in trying to compress the plot of a complex novel into a two-hour running time. If I give the book a 5 on a 5 scale (and I do), then the movie is hovering around a 2½-3. Truth be told, Weitz did a better job than I was expecting. He's clearly a huge fan of the book and strives to be as faithful to it as he can within the limitations he has to work under. I respect him for trying to do his best by Pullman and the book's fans.
But what this means cinematically is that we get a movie whose story feels rushed, with Weitz doing everything he can to touch on each major plot point in rapid succession. The script just sails along, at such a pace that very little suspense is actually built. We establish the movie's universe, its heroine, and her quest — and then we're off to the races. Lyra, though extremely well played by a great little newcomer named Dakota Blue Richards (why is Dakota the moniker of choice for preteen actresses?), never really feels like she goes through a character arc in the normal sense of the term. She learns to use the aliethiometer, decoding its arcane symbols with almost supernatural speed, just so the script can get the story going.
Thinking about it, it isn't that the movie is too rapidly paced, so much as that it doesn't really have anything you could call "pacing." Its script just flings you from one scene to the next — boom, boom, boom — without much in the way of the dramatic peaks and valleys stories normally have to draw an audience in and give them a stake in the outcome.
Part of me wonders just how much studio interference Weitz had to endure from New Line. If The Lord of the Rings taught New Line anything, it's that doing epic fantasy that already has a built-in audience faithfully, and putting the project in the hands of a dedicated filmmaker equals a major box office love-happening. On the other hand, with $180 million at stake (each LOTR movie cost right around $100m by comparison), New Line clearly wasn't willing to give Weitz a Peter Jackson level of carte blanche. Three editors are credited, leaving me to wonder just how often the infamous moviemaking mantra "We'll fix it in post" reared its little fuzzy head during dailies. I'm not saying that a three-hour running time would have been for the best, but allowing for, say, 140 minutes would have given the movie a little space to breathe, and bring some moments back from the book that the script either excised or truncated in order to stay focused on Lyra's quest alone.
The cast is quite excellent. As Mrs. Coulter, Nicole Kidman is ideal. I like her as an actress anyway, though for this role I wasn't sure. Physically she's different from the novel, where she's a brunette, for one thing (when I read the book, I was picturing more someone like Catherine Zeta-Jones). But Kidman swans through the part looking about as glamorous as it's possible for a woman to look short of being sculpted out of ivory, and she conveys the character's seductive, fatal attraction to a tee. I also dug Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel. Craig, after proving himself the second best James Bond of all time (flame shields on), is turning into an actor I'll probably want to see no matter what he's in — wait, scratch that, I still have no desire to see The Invasion. Still, I like him, but of course, the script doesn't give him enough to do.
Sadly, other supporting characters are given short shrift, especially Serafina Pekkala, who's barely in the movie enough to matter. (The script's treatment of the witches is an exemplar of how awkwardly the movie translates ideas from the book. In the movie, we really don't get much of an understanding of who the witches are, why they're involved in this, or anything. They're just there, presumably, because they were in the book.) LOTR veteran Ian McKellan lends his voice to Iorek Byrnison, the disgraced bear prince who becomes Lyra's guardian. And though the movie succeeds in building their relationship (it's really the only relationship in the movie with any substance), the script doesn't give Iorek the sense of tragic pathos he has in the novel. Another LOTR alum, Christopher Lee, is prominently billed (how many octogenarian actors are getting as much work as he is?), but he has exactly one line and about ten seconds of screen time. Sam Elliott made for a very good Lee Scorsby, though I was picturing Billy Bob Thornton when I read the book. Elliott is better suited, I think.
As for the movie's whitewashing of the books' theological themes, well, this was interesting. The Magisterium is played less as a church than as a generic totalitarian governing body. But Weitz manages to keep in enough material about freethought (represented by Asriel and his scientific pursuits) versus dogma that I think fans of the book won't feel like the movie betrays the book's themes too drastically. How exactly any proposed movies of books two and three, though, will manage to slip around the whole "kill God" thing is a mystery to me. Weitz has said that he was willing to compromise certain things about this movie to fit them into more of an acceptable Hollywood blockbuster framework, so that its hoped-for box office success would mean he could take more chances with the sequels. I hope that wish comes true, because I predict that audience word of mouth on this movie will hover around "oh, it was okay, I guess," and TGC won't be looking at LOTR-level returns.
Among fans of the book, the biggest letdown is the movie's decision to end a little early, so that the movie can have a happy ending rather than the somewhat tragic one the book has. I think this is a choice that will backfire, not just because it's a mistake to think audiences only want all happy endings all the time, but because the happy ending we get here is so...well...bland. To have ended the movie the way the book ends (and I know I'm assuming you've read the book here) would have given the movie the one thing it utterly lacks: an edge, a willingness to take risks, to challenge its audience both intellectually and emotionally. You know, the very qualities the book is popular for. As it stands, the movie, while it stays true to the book's words as best it can, lacks its mind and its heart. And it lacks its truth. If only Weitz had had his own aliethiometer.
So yeah, I guess it's 2½. I don't want it to be an Eragon-level megabomb, because it's a worthier effort than that. I'd like it to at least make its money back, so that perhaps Weitz gets to make The Subtle Knife after all and take the risks he says he wants to take. So I'll say TGC is worth a matinee. Fantasy cinema that at least tries ought to get our support, if only so we get a great one now and again.
I know I seem like a broken record about this, but the wide-ranging ridicule the TEA is getting over the Comer ouster is deserving of all the exposure it can get. The Houston Chronicle editorializes as follows:
Since Texas policy supports the inclusion of evolution in science curriculum, it's hard to see how Comer was violating state policy by circulating an event notice sent out by a group that also endorses teaching evolution. Although TEA officials later cited Comer's attendance at a meeting of the same group, that seems a bogus rationale for dismissal and a violation of academic freedom.
"Maybe [the TEA] must remain neutral to whether or not to lie to students about evolution — but if so, that's just sad," Forrest said.
It will be more than sad if the Texas Education Agency is leaning toward taking an anti-evolutionary stance and allowing religious doctrine to be taught side by side with valid science in the state's classrooms. If intelligent design is a Trojan horse for creationism, the Comer episode indicates Texans need to be wary of TEA bureaucrats bearing undesirable gifts.
Even the Waco Tribune Herald has chimed in, and we all know Waco's history of religious zanies. Perhaps the town is just feeling burned, and burned out, by having to put with the recent shenanigans old William Dembski has tried to pull on Baylor. The paper opines:
Because the State Board of Education will review the state science curriculum next year and set standards for classroom instruction and textbook selection, Comer’s abrupt removal could signal an opening for the insertion of creationism or intelligent design into science classrooms in Texas.
Texas parents, teachers and lawmakers should be on guard that the state avoids the mistakes that led to the 2005 Dover, Pa., lawsuit.
Meanwhile, some pencil-dicked creationist calling himself John King has sent a whiny email my way in reply to the letter I just had printed by the Statesman, and it's replete with exactly the kind of dishonesty, fallacies, and scientific illiteracy you'd expect from one of his lot. I was hoping this would happen, since I've been in the mood to bloody my knuckles. But interestingly, there's only been one response so far. Here it is below, with my rebuttal included in bold.
One thing is clear, that you fully embrace censorship in public schools. If Chris Comer was censored, so are those who want intelligent design acknowledged in the classroom.
Except for one detail: Intelligent design is not valid science, and thus has no business being taught in science class, except perhaps as an example of pseudoscience. It isn't "censorship" to refuse to teach things in schools that are not facts. It wouldn't be "censorship" to refuse to teach Holocaust Denial in history classes, it wouldn't be "censorship" to refuse to teach astrology in astronomy classes, and it's not "censorship" to refuse to teach "intelligent design" or any other form of creationism without a single example of science to back it up in science classes.
The notion that a trial in Dover, Delaware established any scientific truth is nonsense on its face, equivalent to saying that a trial established O.J. Simpson's innocence.
Except for another detail: Both sides asked Judge Jones to decide whether or not Intelligent Design was science. But if you don't want to go by his ruling, you can just take the testimony of Michael Behe, who admitted on the stand that in order for Intelligent Design to be considered scientific, you would have to expand the definition of science to include the aforementioned astrology. That's pretty bad, and coming from the mouth of one of ID's biggest proponents, how could you blame Judge Jones from deciding any other way?
As for other leading ID supporters, like William Dembski, the Dover trial was the opportunity they all said they had been waiting for to prove in a court of law that ID was soundly scientific and deserved to be taught in classrooms without committing some sort of religious constitutional violation. And not only didn't they make their best case, most of them didn't even show up! That should tell you something.
Similarly, the comparison of the solar system to the dogmatic claim that accidents of nature account for life as it exists today is just as arbitrary.
Just as you revealed your ignorance about the Dover trial, you now reveal your scientific illiteracy. There is nothing about evolutionary science that is dogmatic; like every other field of science, new discoveries are made every year that open up entirely new branches of study. And there is nothing in evolutionary science that attributes the process to "accidents of nature." Evolution is a remarkably complex and wide-ranging field of scientific study, about which you are quite clearly entirely ignorant. And the ignorance you reveal makes a much better case than I could that quality standards for science education need to be upheld in Texas. Because you obviously didn't get a quality science education.
Your insistence that Darwin was infallible is like Al Gore's remark that "the debate is over," the sole meaning of which is that Al Gore is afraid to debate.
Find anywhere in my letter where I insisted Darwin was "infallible." I didn't, and you know it, which means this is a typical straw man. That's the problem with dealing with creationists: you guys can't make your points without lying. So the whole inherent dishonesty of your character does make it exasperating to deal with you.
But if you'd rather hide behind the self-flattering fantasy that scientists are afraid of you, go ahead. We are all well aware how important martyr/persecution complexes are to you folks. Indeed, the entire PR thrust of the ID movement feeds on those complexes. Just remember, the ID side had its chance to make its case in Dover, and they were the ones who ran away.
Maybe if any of you folks would produce some peer-reviewed research, your claims might finally be worth taking seriously. But this isn't what you want. ID supporters basically want to cheat, to be allowed to cut to the front of the line without doing any real science to support your position, then whine about "censorship" when people point out just how scientifically vacuous ID is.
So, sorry John, nice try, but we've all heard the tired claims you're trying to make many many times, and they're just as bogus coming from you as anyone else. Try again if you feel up to it. If you think I have any fear of debating you, you're in for a humiliating surprise.
Not surprising ol' Barney Fife here is also a global warming denier, is it? Well, we'll see if he bites, so that I may taunt him a second time!
Man oh man. The whole Chris Comer thing is looking like one colossal embarrassment for the Texas Education Association, who are being vilified in editorials and opinion columns everywhere. The Austin American Statesman website has posted a page full of letters to the editor, and not one of them — not even the one written by a Christian referring to God as "our gracious creator" (and it's quite possible more of the letter writers are believers who just didn't bring up their thoughts on God) — is supportive of the creationists' shenanigans. This could be a bigger blot on their copybook than even Dover. While the IDer's endlessly accuse scientists and academicians of suppressing the teaching of "strengths and weaknesses" or the "controversy" or whatever code words they wish to use to cover their creationist agenda, in actual fact, they're the only ones doing any suppressing.
Apropos of nothing, I thought I'd make the observation that, for reasons I can't make out, the "current weather" widget on my computer is telling me that it's 21° outside, with wintry snowflake icons to drive the point home. And I just walked outside in my shirtsleeves to bright sunlight and gorgeous blue skies. I hope this isn't some kind of metaphor for the poor quality of science we're getting right now in Texas under the current leadership.
At least according to this list of "Top Atheism Blogs." Granted, we're right at #40. So I guess I'll have to get more militant or something.
I really am beginning to wonder if, in order to be an evangelical, there's some kind of secret, Masonic-style ritual where they haul you off into a darkened chamber and spend ten hours bashing your head in with baseball bats made out of freeze-dried stupid. Because one's brain really needs to be in such a state in order to swallow malarkey this malarkified.
If you live in Austin, you'll be well familiar with I-35, that dazzling display of engineering ineptitude designed to maximize wrecks and congestion at all hours of the day and night. This highway actually traverses the entire midwest, running all the way up to Duluth, MN, which ought to indicate that if there's Somebody Up There, he really really hates us. But not to a clutch of cuckoos in Christianity's parallel universe, who have decided, based on their reading of this Bible Rhology likes to remind us is infallible and accurate in every particular, that I-35 is some kind of "Highway of Holiness."
The scripture they're basing this whole little movement on is Isaiah 35:8, which reads:
And a highway will be there;
it will be called the Way of Holiness.
The unclean will not journey on it;
it will be for those who walk in that Way;
wicked fools will not go about on it.
Exactly why do they think this passage — written centuries before any surveyor ever thought of building I-35 — prophesies the existence of our delightful freeway, which, to anyone who's ever actually taken their lives in their hands by driving on it, is clearly populated by nothing but wicked fools? Because — and prepare to be bowled over by the breathtaking genius that is Biblical "hermeneutics" — the passage appears in Isaiah 35. Get it!? I-35! It's so obvious!
So what this means in terms of starting up some kind of revival movement is that Christians have taken to prayer sessions in "prayer rooms" (basically harmless), as well as harassing freeway businesses they don't like in protests they dramatically call "Purity Sieges," such as adult video stores, family planning clinics (where nasty liberals kill babies and anoint effigies of Hillary Clinton with their blood, of course), and any business catering to gays and lesbians. They also see signs and portents in recent events, too. Read the following and remember, the gibbering madness you're trying to wrap your brain around passes for thinking in this revivalist environment.
"I don't usually send what the Lord is downloading to me, however this is very timely and significant I believe," Highway of Holiness Community Coordinator Christine Pickett of Little Canada wrote to the movement's Web site.
Pickett says that last year's election of U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, a Muslim, and his announcement of a trip to Israel the very same day of the collapse could be an omen. "I think the Lord may be saying that this man and his district and what he is about doing in Israel is connected. I could be wrong -- however, I just have to look at the timing and the fear of the Lord comes upon me."
"I don't usually send what the Lord is downloading to me..." How can you not love that part? One imagines Hebbin having its own tech support department. Does God also download periodical updates so that Christians can patch their brains with his latest build of crazy? Evidently, being God in the wired generation is a stressful occupation. You gotta constantly be on guard that Steve Jobs and his gang of grinning assholes in Cupertino don't totally broadside you with a pocket sized iGod and leave you holding onto last week's obsolete salvation chipsets with your thumb up your ass and a dazed look on your bearded face as millions of impressionable teens backslide into Apple-y perdition! So hey, prayer warriors, don't forget to lay "purity siege" to any Apple Store you may come across in your quixotic journey! (Only thing is, I think those are generally too upscale to be located along a freeway.)
Anyway, snark aside, one just has to read some of the testimonials at their website to really understand that we're dealing with the mentally ill here.
My prayer journal entry was dated June 1, 2004, it was 4am and I saw the Lord walking along I-35 into downtown Dallas, Texas. He stood by the Reunion Tower and Arena next to I-35 and began callling [sic] out words of love and encouragement (in Hebrew) to His body and bride, (the Church) that was living throughout the area. He was wearing a prayer shawl (talit) with a "Star of David" over his head. He skin was like blazing bronze and His eyes were full of pure light and fire and a brilliant light eminated [sic] from his nail scarred hands and feet.
Yeah, that's just...special, isn't it? Nurse!
So I'll wrap up with a fun bit of speculation: I wonder just how many of these "prayer warriors" have accounts at the adult video stores they're picketing? I know...I'm so mean. Anyway, I think it's too bad they won't make it all the way down to Austin. Are we just too much of a godless liberal hellhole even for them? Or could they not find anyone down here insane enough to participate?
The Old Grey Lady has its article up on the retaliatory firing resignation of Chris Comer from the TEA, and some passages really reveal the boo-scary Orwellian atmosphere that seems to be permeating the agency under its neocon creationist leadership.
Ms. Comer said that barely an hour after forwarding the e-mail message about Dr. Forrest's talk, she was called in and informed that Lizzette Reynolds, deputy commissioner for statewide policy and programs, had seen a copy and complained, calling it "an offense that calls for termination. " Ms. Comer said she had no idea how Ms. Reynolds, a former federal education official who served as an adviser to George W. Bush when he was governor of Texas, had seen the message so quickly, and remembered thinking, "What is this, the thought police or what?"
Update: Now there's an editorial. And it's nicely uncompromising and, hopefully, deeply embarrassing to Texas.
It was especially disturbing that the agency accused Ms. Comer — by forwarding the e-mail message — of taking a position on “a subject on which the agency must remain neutral.” Surely the agency should not remain neutral on the central struggle between science and religion in the public schools. It should take a stand in favor of evolution as a central theory in modern biology. Texas’s own education standards require the teaching of evolution.
Those standards are scheduled to be reviewed next year. Ms. Comer’s dismissal and comments in favor of intelligent design by the chairman of the state board of education do not augur well for that review. We can only hope that adherents of a sound science education can save Texas from a retreat into the darker ages.
We'll do all we can, of course. But we're going up against fanatics who have a religious ideology to protect, and they're deeply fearful of evolution because they've been indoctrinated into believing that if it's true, they won't get to live forever playing harps in Heaven's Fairyland Food Court. When facts go up against psychologically crippling existential terror, it's always a hard-fought battle.
...and up to his old tricks — straw men (he accuses us of using them, but as you'll see, he actually does); tautologies; putting words in my mouth and demanding I defend them; it's all there — in this comments thread. Go read and enjoy. Click on over to the link he provides to his blog and get a kick out of his arguments for the Bible's infallibility. Cheers.
They didn't pick my letter to print, but there are two very good ones in the current Austin American Statesman, as well as a surprisingly smart editorial, attacking the political retaliation against Chris Comer by the creationist-run Texas Education Association. The editorial board opines:
The education agency, of course, portrays the problem as one of insubordination and misconduct. But from all appearances, Comer was pushed out because the agency is enforcing a political doctrine of strict conservatism that allows no criticism of creationism....
Whether one accepts the theory of intelligent design or not, discussion encourages scientific exploration, which is what a science curriculum director should do. Forcing Comer out of her job because she passed on an e-mail about the critic’s presentation is egregiously wrong.
It looks like the Texas Education Agency has fallen victim to a smelly little orthodoxy, to quote author George Orwell. And that cannot be good for the schools or the schoolchildren of Texas.
Apart from the little gaffe of calling ID a "theory," which is like some no-hoper pointing to a Playboy centerfold taped to his wall and calling it his "girlfriend," it's nice to see that the paper is ready and willing to call the TEA on its bullshit spin right away, and tell it like it is regarding Comer's firing: that she was forced out for not toeing a Christian neoconservative anti-science party line. And that the people who make a big noise about scientists being closed-minded dogmatists who have unfairly "Expelled" intelligent design from fair scientific inquiry are the most despicable of hypocrites and lying frauds. Good on ya, Statesman. Maybe you don't suck as much as I've been thinking all these years.
Not surprising, perhaps, but still sad. I will never understand why people so eagerly embrace fantasy while flushing reality down the nearest commode as fast as they can. [jeremiad] The American Century is definitely over. In the 21st century, expect precious few great achievements from these shores. We'll be an intellectual third world country, as dependent on other countries for our scientific advancements and quality of life as we currently are for our oil. [/jeremiad]
Pope Ratzo today issued an encyclical — a scholarly sounding term evidently used at the Vatican as a synonym for "overlong, ill-founded rant" — in which he purports to respond to the "new atheism" by drawing an oddly-reasoned equivalency between atheism and Marxism, and shoring up the theistic position with such empty, Hallmark-card platitudes as "Let us put it very simply: man needs God, otherwise he remains without hope." To which the rationalist can only respond with, "Speak for yourself, you weak-willed superstitious infant."
Seriously, if the news release is anything to go by, Ratzo really does hinge a huge portion of his anti-atheist position on comparisons to Marxism, which appear to have little depth beyond "Marx was an atheist, so atheism = Marxism." Using that logic, one could argue that because Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian who painted bad landscapes (not to mention a Christian), that being a vegetarian or a bad landscape painter (not to mention a Christian) invariably leads to Naziism and white supremacist beliefs. It isn't exactly Mensa-level thinking.
Amusingly, a commenter over at RichardDawkins.net has already noted that Ratzo, who belonged to the Hitler Youth as a child, goes out of his way to stick to Marxist comparisons while avoiding the Nazi comparisons being made by evolution deniers. But if, as the pope's defenders will doubtless claim, Ratzo's membership in that august boyscout club was compulsory and in no way reflects approval of Nazi ideologies, then why shouldn't Ratzo go ahead and own up to that and start throwing around Nazi straw men alongside his Marxist straw men? It wouldn't make his blatherings any lamer than they already are.
And it's a bit rich to have the pope attack atheism by saying things like "It is no accident that this idea [Marxism/atheism] has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice," given his own church's bloody history. Hell, right up to this decade, we've seen the Vatican responsible for the enabling and cover-up of the largest and most horrifying pedophilia scandal in the history of western civilization. And yet, without a shred of irony, Ratzo can drone on sanctimoniously with such dreck as "We have all witnessed the way in which progress, in the wrong hands, can become and has indeed become a terrifying progress in evil. If technical progress is not matched by corresponding progress in man's ethical formation, in man's inner growth, then it is not progress at all, but a threat for man and for the world." Ah, blow it out your ass, gramps.
Sorry, Mr. Pope person, sir, but looking at the track record of your little cult, I really don't care how shiny and expensive your robes and pointy hat are, but you've got no moral authority to lecture anyone on anything. And as for your invisible sky fairy, I'll tell you the same thing I tell all of you lot. Prove it exists — hell, provide even a modicum of credible evidence it exists. But even if you do that, you've still got an uphill battle to convince me that without this being I have no hope, since the actual experience of my daily life tells me that goal-oriented rationalism and productive, positive humanism gives me hope to burn.
Well, at least they're not going to flog the skin off her back. I guess that's what passes for "progress" and "human rights" in the Islamic world.
This is beyond appalling. Remember the talk given here in Austin by Barbara Forrest back at the beginning of the month? It turns out that creationist sympathizers in the Texas Education Agency (rapidly becoming a grossly misnamed entity) have forced the resignation of their science curriculum director, Chris Comer, for forwarding an email promoting that talk. It's as egregious an act of theocratic political retaliation as you're likely to see. The lead in this Statesman article is boggling in its implications.
The state's director of science curriculum has resigned after being accused of creating the appearance of bias against teaching intelligent design.
Think about this sentence for a minute. Let it sink in. Imagine, for a moment, if it had read: "The state's director of science curriculum has resigned after being accused of creating the appearance of bias against teaching that the earth is flat." Or what if it had read, "The state's director of history curriculum has resigned after being accused of creating the appearance of bias against teaching Holocaust denial." What if we actually lived in that world?
Newsflash: we do live in that world. America is gleefully abandoning everything that the Enlightenment stood for and racing backwards into the Middle Ages with open arms. I don't like to deal in slippery slope fallacies. But when one has to deal with Christianists and their political machinations, it hardly seems beyond the pale to think these are people who won't rest until absolutely everything modern science teaches us about the world that in any way appears to threaten their precious fantasies about their invisible sky fairy will be suppressed, its proponents driven out of jobs and positions of public influence. (No, I'll stop short of hysteria about Gulags, and leave that bit of paranoia to the fundamentalists and their little persecution complexes.)
No surprises about who ordered Comer fired. Lizzette Reynolds is a TEA member who used to work for — wait for it — the Bush administration.
"This is highly inappropriate," Reynolds said in an e-mail to Comer's supervisors. "I believe this is an offense that calls for termination or, at the very least, reassignment of responsibilities.
"This is something that the State Board, the Governor's Office and members of the Legislature would be extremely upset to see because it assumes this is a subject that the agency supports."
Yes, well, we all know how Bush and his boys are not exactly supporters of evidence-based facts, and indeed their whole policy of "if the facts don't support our agenda, just make some up" is entirely in keeping with the modus operandi of ID creationists. Reynolds is a chip off their little Orwellian block, isn't she?
I say we make a stink about this, and Comer's firing should be a major talking point when science textbooks come up for review again in early 2008.
Here is the letter to the editor that I just sent to the Statesman:
I am appalled to read of the political retaliation in the Texas Education Agency against Chris Comer for, in the article's words, "creating the appearance of bias against teaching intelligent design."
Imagine if the article had stated Comer had been forced out for "creating the appearance of bias against teaching the Earth is flat." Since when is the promotion of accurate science teaching a firing offense?
Religious extremists in the TEA don’t want students and citizens to know a simple fact that threatens their ideology: that "intelligent design" was laughably revealed to be the poorest pseudoscience in the 2005 Dover trial, and the so-called "controversy" over evolution exists only in the minds of the evolution opponents whose dishonesty and ignorance were laid bare in that trial.
Anti-science extremists in the religious right are playing politics with the education of Texas' kids. If facts get in the way, shoot the messenger!
Go to statesman.com, and click on Opinion > Letters to write your own.
Testing for STDs offends parentsStory number two:
Juvenile detention facility insists policy protects children's health
For some parents, the testing is the usurpation of their authority and obligation to make sound decisions concerning their children's health.
State's STD rate among highest
Tennessee in top 10 for cases of syphilis, chlamydia, gonorrhea
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show that the state ranks eighth for syphilis infections, ninth for chlamydia and 10th for gonorrhea. All three diseases are caused by sexually transmitted bacteria and can be treated with antibiotics.
No religion in the world seems to lend itself to organized mob psychopathy more than the "religion of peace." When they aren't flogging women for being impure enough to allow themselves to be gang-raped, they're doing even crazier shit. The latest tempest in a teapot has erupted over a British schoolteacher in the Sudan letting her students name a teddy bear Mohammed. I was under the impression that, in addition to being Islam's "prophet," Mohammed was a fairly common Arab name. When I lived in Dubai, at least two of our houseboys were named Mohammed. So why this should be a big deal is a mystery to those of us with rationally functioning brains. But it appears a lot of Sudanese Muslims don't possess those. For her "crime" of "blasphemy," 54-year-old Gillian Gibbons in currently in jail facing a possible punishment of six months behind bars or even a public lashing. It gets even more insane.
"We tried to reason with them but we felt they were coming under strong pressure from Islamic courts," said [school director Robert] Boulus. "There were men with big beards asking where she was and saying they wanted to kill her."
Kill her. Over a fucking teddy bear!? What the fuck is wrong with these maniacs? They're quite simply mentally ill — there's no other word for it. And you can't reason with people whose brains have been short-circuited by a religious scourge as omnidestructive as Islamic extremism. I'm starting to wonder if Hitchens has got the right idea about these people. And I speak as someone who's lived in the Middle East, and knew many moderate Muslims and Arabs back in the day when America had no greater friends in the world. Moderate Muslims are among the finest people I've ever met. But the sanity gulf between Islam's moderates and their radicals is so much wider than that you find in any other religion, that I'm wondering if the only way to pacify these people is just to make them stop breathing before they do it to you (which they'll do if they can, rest assured). But then, as we're seeing now in Iraq, follow that course and you just end up radicalizing more and more of them. There's just no easy way to deal with such faith-based barbarism, especially that which takes such excessively violent forms as Islam.
Okay okay, the snark in the headline may have been overkill, since I do believe the whole discussion with Rhology about the presumed necessity of theism as a prerequisite for morality has reached its end. But it never ceases to fascinate me, that the people in our society who most frequently suffer humiliation and public disgrace are those whose public reputation for devout religiosity is most prominent.
Richard Roberts, whose every command God is reported to have told at least one ORU regent to obey without question, has resigned effective immediately from ORU's presidency. The whole Roberts clan were exposed as having misappropriated university money for their own private use, living lavishly on the backs of their student body and faculty. Sleazy is as sleazy does. That a fundamentalist "university" has been exposed as just another money-making scam by those who subscribe to the "prosperity gospel" is, I suppose, not surprising. But it is depressing that, in the 21st century, religion still continues to hold human culture back from true enlightenment and progress, enabling venality and selfish excess under the justification that if you're Godly, you're forgiven already through Jesus' "sacrifice" — so live it up!
Apropos to the current round of discussions we've been having with Rhology, news has appeared today announcing the result of a new study suggesting that even 6 month old babies can distinguish fundamental differences between good and bad social behaviors, and choose all by their little selves the better option.
Babies as young as 6 to 10 months old showed crucial social judging skills before they could talk, according to a study by researchers at Yale University's Infant Cognition Center published in Thursday's journal Nature.
The infants watched a googly eyed wooden toy trying to climb roller-coaster hills and then another googly eyed toy come by and either help it over the mountain or push it backward. They then were presented with the toys to see which they would play with.
Nearly every baby picked the helpful toy over the bad one.
The babies also chose neutral toys -- ones that didn't help or hinder -- over the naughty ones. And the babies chose the helping toys over the neutral ones...
The choice of nice over naughty follows a school of thought that humans have some innate social abilities, not just those learned from their parents.
"We know that they're very, very social beings from very, very early on," Hamlin said.
A study last year out of Germany showed that babies as young as 18 months old overwhelmingly helped out when they could, such as by picking up toys that researchers dropped.
There is an obligatory quote from a psychologist who isn't convinced of the "innate ability" part, insisting these behaviors were learned. But it seems he's not recognizing that all these babies observed were the actions of the toys themselves, which toys "helped" one another and which "fought" each other. They were not then told by the researchers which to choose to play with. On their own, they overwhelmingly chose the "good" toy over the "bad" one.
He does make a good point about the social experience babies have in their first six months of life, and how this likely plays a role. But this experience would be limited exclusively to family, where the baby will naturally be getting cared for in most cases. But often, even at that age, there can be bullying and sibling rivalry in multi-child households. I can think of one good control for a future study to test how much the babies' choices are innate, but it would be difficult to pull off. Find some 6-month-olds taken from homes where neglect, if not outright abuse, was the norm, and see if they choose the "meaner" toy.
While nothing in science ever rests on one study, and there is more research clearly to be done here, I think what this study can be confidently said to establish is that it wasn't necessary to hammer these babies with a fusillade of Christian moral indoctrination about their innate "depravity," and nasty threats of eternal hellfire and damnation, in order to persuade them to choose nice over naughty. Sure, they're not old enough to understand such indoctrination in the first place, but that's the whole point: even at this young an age, very fundamental notions of beneficial social behaviors appear to be entirely comprehensible. And the babies didn't even need parental authority — the real-world analogue to Christianity's reward-or-punishment-based morality paradigm — to distinguish good from bad behavior. We're a social species, and it's human nature to want to get along. Sadly, it's only as we grow older, and are exposed to whatever social, political, or religious ideologies appeal to us (or are forced on us), that we feel more inclined to divide ourselves and view our neighbors, our former playmates, with hate, fear, and suspicion.
Apparently we scored this rating due to repeated mentions of the words "hell," "death," "sex," "crap," "shit," and "porn." That's it. No more discussing the Old Testament around here!
Polygamist cult leader Warren Jeffs was sentenced today for being an accomplice to rape by running his "Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints" as a sex farm for himself and older male members, forcing teenage girls into marriages with cousins and other men often old enough to be their grandfathers. Good riddance.
Now, I wonder how our pal Rhology will assess this situation. I assert, based on "personal" and "societal preferences" (yes, that slurping sound you hear are my eyes rolling yet again), that was Jeffs did was morally wrong because it is harmful to force any unwilling person into sexual submission and/or a marriage that they don't want, and it's especially bad to further manipulate them into consent by scaring them that they might jeopardize their rumored "eternal salvation" if they resist, when what's really going on is that you have an oppressive theocratic society in which males dominate and subjugate the females and treat them like property. Freedom of choice, especially choices dealing with whom you marry and have sex with, should be left up to the individual. To remove that choice from a person simply because you wield power over them is abusive. I know these are not things I should ordinarily have to explain, but remember we're dealing with Rhology here. Basic human nature eludes him.
So, I invite Rhology to explain whether he approves or disapproves of what Jeffs did, based on his vaunted "objective morality" that he still has yet to define. I invite him especially to give better reasons than the ones I've listed, based on this "objective morality," as to why he think Jeffs was wrong for forcing underage girls into marriages, if indeed Rhology thinks he was.
Demerits for simply falling back on such unsupported presuppositions as "atheists don't have objective morality so they're in no position to condemn the acts of Christians." (Though I suspect Rhology doesn't consider Jeffs, leader of a splinter Mormon offshoot cult, to be Christian.) Remember, Rho, we've heard your premises over and over. We're still waiting for you to defend and explain them. And whether my reasons are just "personal" or "societal" preferences, are my conclusions about the morality of Jeffs' acts wrong? And if not, can we agree that your whole "objective morality vs. preferences" mantra is a big fat rhetorical red herring?
Matthew Hughes wrote a funny science fiction novel a few years ago, Black Brillion, which contains one the greatest lines of dialogue I've ever read: "You have only just begun to gauge the depth of your ignorance yet you use it as the foundation for a towering confidence."
In following Rhology's attempts to debate us on morality, one notes that the bulk of his argument rests on the stated assumption atheists have "no basis" to determine right from wrong. Naturally, any atheist reading that will immediately know that Rhology's full of crap. But why does Rhology feel so confident as to root his whole argument in such a bold and arrogant claim, and how does he think this claim will help support his conclusion that "the Christian worldview [is] a much more reasonable and fitting (not to mention existentially satisfying) alternative to the atheistic one"?
As the always interesting if long-winded Dawson Bethrick points out, presuppositional apologetics is rife with logical fallacies. And in this case, Rhology is taking a page from Greg Bahnsen's book and employing the argument from ignorance fallacy. When presuppositionalists state that atheists cannot account for morality or whatever, if they were honest, they would have to admit that they simply are not aware of what basis atheists employ to draw such conclusions. But presups like Rhology, rather than honestly admit to their simple lack of knowledge as to how atheists think, would rather declare as an axiom that atheists just cannot draw any conclusions on moral or other issues. Stated as a syllogism, what the presup wants to argue is this:
Where Rhology and his fellow presups fall on their faces is that they never present any evidence to support point 2. If any of them were actually able to state an example of any situation where the Christian, using only the Bible as his guide, was capable of accurately assessing the moral rightness or wrongness of the situation, and the atheist simply could not do so by using reason, then they might be on to something. But no presup ever does this, and I submit they cannot. On the occasions they actually confront atheists head-on with their declaration that we have no basis for right and wrong, as Rhology is balls-fully doing here, they are invariably shot down and given ample and detailed explanations of just how atheists do comprehend moral precepts. Yet they ignore or dismiss these explanations so as to hold on to what little argument they have — an argument which is propped up almost in its entirety by the ignorance fallacy, and which attempts to establish the truth of the Christian worldview and even the existence of God Himself based on the presumed inability of atheists to account for such things as right and wrong.
As long as presuppositionalists insist on rooting their arguments in premises that they not only haven't established as true, but which can easily shown to be false — like atheists' having "no basis" to account for whatever the presup wishes to claim validates Christianity — then their entire method of arguing will be undermined by fallacies from the get-go. In ignoring these fallacies, and by insisting on restating their flawed premises as axioms no matter how often they are corrected, the presuppositionalist is like a homeowner who thinks that brand-new wall-to-wall carpeting is sufficient to deny the fact that all of their flooring has been eaten away by termites.
Okay, so we all remember the recent series of scandals that has rocked Oral Roberts University in recent weeks, do we not? You know, where Richard Roberts and his family are accused of all manner of financial improprieties, as well as such sleazy activity as having ORU staff do their daughter's homework for her? Well, I thought this would be an excellent example to put Rhology's claims (see previous post) that Christian morality has a bulletproof foundation in God's word, whereas atheist morality has no basis to distinguish right from wrong at all, to the test. What, exactly, was God's word to ORU regents while the Roberts clan was skimming the university piggy bank for all they could get? Well, according to Chairman George Pearson, God was evidently an accomodating kinda guy.
When George Pearsons accepted the position of chairman of the ORU regents in May, he said in an address to the board: "I am standing here today because the Lord clearly spoke to me and said, ‘Do whatever Richard Roberts asks you to do,'” according to a copy of the address.
Wow. Carte blanche to do whatever. What a sound system of morals that is! God says it, I do it, that settles it. So if Richard Roberts decided, oh, "Let's fly my daughter and a bunch of her friends to Florida on an expensive senior trip, and charge the whole thing to the university," then that's okay by God. And if we picky atheists raise our hands and say anything like, "Uh, hey, isn't that a little dishonest and unethical, and possibly also illegal?" ...Well, what do we know? All we live by are our "personal preferences," and why should anyone else have to follow those if they don't want to?
Heh. It's always fun to have some pompous Christian turn up proclaiming the moral superiority of all Christians based on an ancient holy book, only to have the wind taken out of his sails by the mendacious and disreputable behavior of some of the most prominent Christians in our culture.
It's clear that in the real world, the only people rooting their moral behaviors in their "personal preferences" are the ones shouting their Christianity from the rooftops. They just tell themselves that anything they do is all pre-approved by God, and alakazam, wrong is right, war is peace, and freedom is slavery. And it's not like God can come down and correct them when he only exists in their minds, created in their own image. Christianity's "morality" is like getting a Visa card with no spending limit, and someone else paying the bills every month, so that you never have to learn to be responsible on your own.
A Christian blogger calling himself Rhology has discovered us, and is currently posting like mad in this comment thread with the usual run of "no morality without a God" canards. It's interesting to read, mainly for the way in which Rhology argues, which involves telling us what we think (mainly, that we don't believe in right and wrong), and just stating his assumptions, responding to challenges to those assumptions mostly by restating them. He demands we explain in detail what our basis is for deciding whether a situation is morally right or wrong, but does not himself provide a similarly detailed explanation for the basis he uses. It is sufficient for him to say, in essence, God lays down the law, it's all in the Bible, and that's all I need.
In repeatedly asserting the superiority of his "worldview," he never actually gives an example of any circumstance where theistic morality would present a person with the ability to more accurately assess the right or wrong of a situation than a reason-based, secular morality. Is there any example Rhology can give where a Christian, using only the Bible as his moral guide, could more reliably decide when a situation is good or evil than an atheist could just by rationally assessing the situation using his poor, imperfect brain? I'd love to hear it.
Rhology's vaunted "worldview" is chock full of deeply misanthropic presuppositions. Human beings are entirely evil and depraved, for one, with nary of hint of innate goodness. There is no difference in Rhology's mind between being good and being perfect. One cannot be good at all unless one is perfect. Therefore, no one can be good, and we all need God. It's a rather jaw dropping assertion, to be sure, and one that flies in the face of what anyone who actually, you know, interacts with people in the real world knows.
But it's a necessary premise for Rhology's arguments, because without that deep-seated misanthropic basis for his "worldview," he would have to entertain the notion that maybe people can think for themselves, and reach a consensus morality sufficient for the success of our species and our society on our own. (In Aristotle's words, that virtue arises from the proper application of reason.) If people can decide amongst themselves what's right or wrong, then God looks less necessary. And Rhology cannot countenance that. So human reason must be denigrated at all costs. Rhology does this by trying to deride reason-based morality as nothing more than one's "personal preferences," as if everyone on Earth lives in a vacuum and just makes this stuff up. He cannot comprehend that human moral precepts are based on our shared experience of living together as a social species, and learning through endless trial and error what works for us and what doesn't. There are things about human nature at a fundamental level that Rhology's Christian indoctrination has rendered him incapable of understanding.
So hop on over to the thread and have a read, and pitch in if you can find more flaws in Rhology's "worldview" than I and some other commenters already have. He's an interesting example of how a too-dogmatic adherence to Christianity's authoritarian teachings can cripple one's understanding of — let alone respect and empathy for — his fellow man.
