One Nation Under God

“It is doubtful that children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance feel oppressed or brainwashed as a consequence of muttering the phrase 'under God.' I didn't.”

--Barak Obama, “Call to Renewal” Keynote Address, June 28, 2006.

This quote was featured this morning on another atheist blog I frequent, Austin Cline’s atheism.about.com section.

Austin makes some good points, and points most of the people who visit this blog spot would probably think of themselves. That the phrase is openly discriminatory toward atheists, and that it furthers the disenfranchisement of atheists in our culture.

I certainly don’t disagree. Although, if I’m going to be honest, I personally also never felt that the Pledge thrust religion or monotheism upon me as a youngster. I honestly don’t believe that any child will become monotheistic by being compelled to say the Pledge every morning and recite the phrase “One Nation Under God.”

Let me be clear, however, that I acknowledge that the insertion of the phrase is completely in violation of the Establishment of Religion clause, and should be removed, if on no other grounds than that.

Also, just because the phrase never offended me, personally, I certainly don’t take issue with anyone else feeling uncomfortable with it. How it makes a person feel is just that--how it makes them feel. It’s not wrong to have feelings or to acknowledge them. And just because I don’t share a person’s feelings, doesn’t invalidate their feelings, or my lack of them.

So, it is a phrase that at the very least violates our Constitution and, therefore, our law, and also that may offend some citizens who like to think that they are just as patriotic as any theist, or that they don’t want their children compelled to say this any more than a Christian would want their child compelled to say “One Nation Without a God.”. And these are real problems.

In my humble view, however, as someone who has dialogued with quite a lot of theists, neither of these things comes close to what I consider to be the real harm caused by the insertion of this phrase into our Pledge of Allegiance. What disturbs me beyond these two very real concerns? The fact that there is a group of very vocal, very politically active theists, specifically Christians, who would insert this phrase and similar phrases all over our government and our government-sponsored public institutions in order to promote the view that we are, on some level, a theocracy.

The last time I was on AE, Matt Dillahunty pointed out that if a person says “This is a Christian nation,” and they mean by that that our citizens, by and large, are Christians, they are correct. If they mean by that that the vast majority of early Americans and founders of the United States were Christians or monotheists along Christian lines, they are correct. If, however, they mean by that that our laws are based upon the Bible, and that Biblical authority or Christian authority supersedes Constitutional authority, they couldn’t be more wrong, (and, I would add, perhaps dangerous).

I know that by posting this, I’m preaching to the choir. And I have no intention of launching into arguments that already plaster the Internet regarding why I disagree with the theocratic stance. I’m only writing to address that, to me, it is unwise to ignore a growing group who vocally express a wish to enforce their religion upon the rest of our society. And it is unwise to believe that simply because I’m not feeling particularly offended by something, it’s not potentially threatening or harmful. Did anyone see the early push that Huckabee got in the primaries? Anyone who thinks there isn’t a growing movement for theocracy in the Christian community isn’t paying attention. And anyone who isn’t concerned by that isn’t thinking it through to the end. Even Christians should fear that concept, because, historically speaking, believers haven’t been particularly kind even to other believers when they aren’t in complete doctrinal agreement.

I’m not going to slam Obama as a uniquely insensitive or unaware, here. I’m sure Obama isn’t the only person--or politician--to share this sentiment. I actually have heard many atheists say the same thing: “It doesn’t bother me, why get all worked up over it? It’s harmless recitation.” But to that, I have to respond that there is a larger world out there, beyond me and how I feel. And it would be wise of us all to take notice of how others around us “feel,” because we might find they feel that our government should require us to adopt, if not their beliefs, at least their behaviors with regard to their religious perspectives. And they use these seemingly innocuous items to promote that agenda. Since it shouldn’t be there in the first place, by law, is it wise to endorse it, retain it, or defend it as “inoffensive,” while supporters of a U.S. theocracy begin to rally and test their power?

I’m thinking, “not.”

Wikipedia can be useful, you know

Because today, I learned a lovely (and very tres science) term I can use to describe the behavioral pathology of creationists: The Dunning-Kruger Effect. Good ol' internets!

Another day, another load of creationist lies and hypocrisy

These people just can't not lie.

From the Expelled blog:

Big Science doesn’t like it when they can’t control the message: it’s why we made EXPELLED.

From a report on an Expelled press conference [emphasis added]:

Now if Expelled can be said to have a theme, it is that all sorts of ideas should be batted around the ballfield of science and theology, that there should be freedom of expression... This makes it ironic, at least, that they expected the Orlando Sentinel to sign a nondisclosure agreement. Freedom of expression is unseemly at an Expelled press conference. There was no give-and-take, no open marketplace of ideas, in fact, scarcely any questions at all. Ruloff and Stein batted one softball after another out of the park from those posed by Paul Lauer, a representative of the film's public relations firm. Questions from non-employees had to be submitted by email. Lauer (or somebody at his firm) screened them.

I've participated in a lot of press conferences in my thirty years as a journalist. I once bumped into President Gerald Ford on the front lawn of the White House. I had a question for him, which he politely answered. I went to a press conference by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who took all of our questions and hung around afterward to talk with me. I've had press conference questions answered by physicists Hans Bethe and Edward Teller, "father of the hydrogen bomb"; by Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson; by John Wayne; by U.S, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney; by U.S. Sens. Alan Simpson, Craig Thomas, John Kerry, Malcolm Wallop and Gary Hart, and by lots and lots of other public figures whose time I've wasted. Some of my questions were argumentative, but all were thoroughly — if sometimes equally argumentatively — answered.

Until I got to Ben Stein. Though calling for the rough-and-tumble of openness and debate, Stein didn't have time for questions.

Hmmm. Who's "controlling the message" here again? "Big Science," or Big Fat Fscking Lying Asshats for The Magic Sky Fairy?

Go viral on this stuff, people, and let's expose to all the world just what two-faced dishonest scumbags are marketing this deceitful propaganda masquerading as a brave blow for freedom of inquiry. Sure, it'd be one thing if ID were all about an honest scientific pursuit into facts about biodiversity, and had actual research to show for it and an actual theory out there making predictions in the real world. But they have none of those things, and must resort to despicable conspiracy theories about the evil ninja Big Science baddies suppressing their brilliant work at every turn. Evidence? Pshaw.

This quote from the Colorado Confidential article sums things up with admirable bluntness.

...not only is Expelled and the intellectual movement behind it hypocritical in its supposed defense of "freedom of expression," it's an attack on the entire superstructure of science and technology that has created the modern world. Expelled is anti-rational.

And disgraceful.

I can haz lite?

Okay, I know the whole LOLcat thing might be getting old, but I actually got a number of hearty chuckles out of this: a translation of the Bible into LOLcat-speak.

Busy last few days, which is why no posts of substance, but hopefully this will tide you and your funnybone over. Really, anyone who sets about translating the Bible into LOLcat is a living example of the many imaginative ways the internets have found to help people fritter away their spare time. But it's funny, so who am I to complain? You'll probably get your fill after just Genesis 1:1, but you've got to admire the dedication it takes to create something this silly. And it must be said, the Ten Commandments are priceless. Wonder if we'll get any Ceiling Cat Schisms now?

SBOE forced to table adoption of Donna Garner's "alternative" Language Arts curriculum

The TFN reports today that angry responses from educators as well as the general public have persuaded them to hold off, at least temporarily, the adoption of an "alternative" language arts curriculum put together by a former teacher and current Christian-right homophobe and ideologue named Donna Garner. Creationist Dan McLeroy, who heads up the SBOE, favored Garner's curriculum, which had already been rejected as too rigid and outdated (in the TFN's words) ten years ago when the governor of Texas was none other than the clod who's been stinking up the White House since January 2001. Had the SBOE adopted it now, it would have utterly derailed a very intensive revision of language arts standards that has been underway for a couple of years, and which has the blessing of educators.

However, this is only a temporary setback for the fundies. The SBOE has put together a subcommittee (with McLeroy on it, surprise surprise!) to further study the matter. Expect the fight to protect students from these troglodytes to continue.

Typical, typical, typical

The dishonest morons who produced Ben Stein's comedy masterpiece Expelled posted a ridiculously deluded rant against Darwin Day to their blog, in which they lie so copiously and egregiously about the positions of Darwin and Dawkins that PZ Myers couldn't resist laying down the pwnage, which he did with his usual masterful command of all those doggone facts IDiots find so inconvenient.

In response, it now appears that anyone clicking over to the Expelled blog from the link provided in PZ's rebuttal gets a 404 error. The stupid Expelled post is still up, you just can't get to it from Pharyngula. Presumably the link provided here will be good for a little while, anyway.

So let's see what we have here. A movie that claims ID has been "expelled" from academia due to some sort of hostility towards free speech and academic freedom on the part of "Big Science"* has expelled criticism by a legitimate scientist who happens to be one of the scientists they got to agree to an interview in their movie through false pretenses. Hmm. Sounds about typical, all right.

Welcome to the world of ID creationism. Where we tell more lies before breakfast than most people do all day year.

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* I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark and submit that "Big Religion" is far bigger than "Big Science" ever dreamed of being.

Texas SBOE promoting the policies of lunatic fundie homophobe?

An email sent out today by the Texas Freedom Network alerts us to the latest shenanigans of the Texas State Board of Education, as it's currently being run by Dan McLeroy, lackey to Governor Rick "Oh, The Evil Liberal Elite Atheists Are Persecuting Us, Now Drop to Your Knees and Pray, Mofo" Perry. I'll just post the main section of the email in full.

Today we learned that the far-right faction controlling the State Board of Education wants to torpedo new language arts curriculum standards that took teachers and education experts two years to develop. The Texas Education Agency has even been paying a consulting firm $85,000 to help develop those new standards, which govern what more than 4.5 million children learn in Texas public schools.

The Dallas Morning News is reporting that the State Board of Education’s chairman, Don McLeroy, wants to throw away that money and all of the hard work put in by Texas teachers and education experts. McLeroy is instead promoting an alternative curriculum – one developed more than 10 years ago by a far-right activist more interested in promoting the religious right’s agenda in public schools than making sure Texas schoolchildren get a sound education.

That activist, education gadfly Donna Garner, has promoted her alternative curriculum ever since the state board and then-Gov. George Bush’s education commissioner rejected it in 1997. Now McLeroy and other far-right members who control the state board have breathed new life into Garner’s efforts.

In e-mails to supporters, Garner suggests that her standards are the solution to a host of ills in public schools. She is particularly critical of the use of “multicultural authors” in classes, contemporary literature she deems as inappropriate, and a perceived promotion of the “gay lifestyle.” Her proposed standards even includes specific reading lists – lists that would allow the state board to censor the works of any authors the religious right doesn’t like.

Even though education experts and the board have spent two years working on the revision of the language arts curriculum, McLeroy sent Garner’s alternative to board members just a few days ago! That last-minute surprise prevents parents, teachers and even board members from giving the 100+ pages in the document the thorough review it should get. This is a classic bait-and-switch tactic the religious right has used often in the past.

Now, I support TFN, but I like checking these things out for myself. I Googled Garner, and was disturbed by what I came up with.

I found what I think might be the program TFN is warning about, that Garner endorses, here. Garner declares that she's more interested in "classrooms where the teacher, an authority figure, teaches curriculum that is academic and knowledge-based, and students are tested primarily through objective testing (i.e., right or wrong answers). The other camp supports classrooms where the teacher is the facilitator who emphasizes a performance-based, constructivist curriculum (e.g., projects, discovery learning, inquiry-based learning) which is subjectively assessed."

Certainly I support the notion of making sure kids get facts first and foremost. But if Garner is the Christian-right agent provocateur the TFN is making her out to be (and which seems to be the case the more I learn), then my own dealings with average creationists lead me to wonder exactly how accurately she's portraying the dichotomy between how she'd like to see students taught, and how students actually are being taught. Garner's tendency to use emotionally laden language like this also sends up red flags:

Texas teachers have been led by the TEA into utilizing failed fads such as whole language, teacher-as-facilitator, holistic scoring, self-esteem movement, inventive spelling, group grading, outcomes-based-education, fuzzy math, rain-forest algebra, block scheduling, open concept, portfolios, integrated curriculum, year-round schools, subjective scoring, etc. The public is disillusioned with the public schools and rightfully so. Parents are tired of their children being used as guinea pigs in education experiments.

Just what in tarnation is Garner babbling about when she throws out terms like "rain-forest algebra" or "inventive spelling" or "holistic scoring"? Once this kind of rhetoric starts getting tossed around, I have a hard time taking anything the person is saying seriously. And even good points about making sure kids get the best education they can get washed overboard once the crazy comes out. I was a student in Texas public schools from the fifth grade on, and I can't ever remember learning "rain-forest algebra" or being told I could just make up my own spellings to words. I'll be the first to admit our public schools are in major need of a firmware upgrade, and that lazy policies like "teach to the test" do nothing to get a child excited about learning, instead resulting in the indifferent, assembly-line processing of mediocrity that only cares that a student does well enough to pass with a C- and go away. But bizarre rhetoric tends to cloud good solutions.

Now we get to the more disturbing stuff. I discovered that someone who may or may not be the same Donna Garner posted to a Christian-homophobe hate site. The email on this article is different than the one Garner uses on the Lone Star Foundation page, but that doesn't mean anything; I have at least five email addresses, two of which I never even use. I was inclined to believe it was the same Garner, as I then found this article in which she goes off on illegal immigrants, titled "This Is Not Being Racist," but which is also inexplicably titled "Promoting Homosexuality in the Public Schools" in the header. Maybe she meant to write the one, then chucked it and wrote the other instead.

In the Americans for Truth (gag!) post, Garner talks about her experiences dealing with Wal-Mart, where she warns all red-blooded American apple-pie eating straight folk that, using Wal-Mart's search engine, "I typed in the words 'gay and lesbians.' In the top, lefthand corner, it states, '576 items found for ‘gays and lesbians.' Wal-Mart still has some cleaning up to do before it can say it is not supporting the gay and lesbian agenda." Oh yes, the empire is sure to fall!

In my effort to make sure that the teacher Donna Garner was the same person as the homophobe Donna Garner, I narrowed my Google search to "donna garner homosexuality," and this article at Baptist Press essentially confirmed it, in which it's written that...

Donna Garner, a retired English teacher, is an example of a leader in the grassroots effort to help Wal-Mart live up to the family friendly description the company gives itself.... One of Garner’s main concerns is that adolescents can easily stumble upon the homosexuality-promoting books and be drawn into a lifestyle that is proven to be detrimental to their health. “I have extensive medical data to show how very dangerous the homosexual lifestyle is,” she told BP.

So that pretty much nails it then. The Donna Garner who writes so passionately about improving students' learning skills — only to overplay her hand with weird rants about presumed hippy-dippy new-age teaching techniques that are supposed to be state-approved — is the same hateful homophobe who thinks a store merely offering products to a certain segment of their clientele involves some kind of organized push to force teens everywhere into sodomite gangbangs. Apparently Garner missed the shelves in Wal-Mart that are stacked to the ceiling with delusional monkeypoo like this. Wal-Mart stocks more fundie drivel than any other major retailer I've ever seen. But for Garner, even that's not good enough. It has to be all Christianity, all the time, with no room allowed for anyone "unsaved." And they say gays are the ones with "an agenda."

For the record, I did an "entire site" search at WalMart.com for "gay and lesbian," and got 37 results total. "Gay" alone got 153, and "lesbian" got only 43. "Homosexuality" only got 5, and "homosexual" a mere 3. "Christianity" got 1,829 results, and "christian" got 4,385. ("Atheist" only got 6, and half of those were lame Christian attempts at rebuttals such as the fake Antony Flew book.) So where's the big "gay agenda" promotion, Mrs. Garner? Or are you still threatened by the fact those search numbers are any higher than zero?

Here's another stupid rant on a website with the hilariously inappropriate name of belogical.com (well, you know, Socrates was a cat), in which Garner continues her vendetta against Wal-Mart and bolsters it with such asinine nonsense as this:

Race and ethnicity cannot be changed; they are inherent. Homosexuality can be changed and is not inherent. The proof is that thousands of homosexuals have walked away from the homosexual lifestyle and are now happily married heterosexuals. No one has ever met a person who was born an Anglo and who has changed himself into an Afro-American. Putting homosexuality under the same umbrella as race/ethnicity is a ploy developed by the homosexual movement to give legitimacy to their terribly destructive sexual practices, and Wal-Mart and HEB have bought into the lie.

"...Terribly destructive sexual practices." Remember, in the mind of the Christian homophobe, being gay is about nothing more than fudge-packin', day in and day out!

So I guess I have to join TFN in opposing any influence Garner may have on the course of education in Texas. Even if her ideas about teaching were entirely valid, that fact that she's such an obvious and unrepentantly frothing bigot and hatemonger — and one who validates her hate with brazen lies — frankly disqualifies her from any respectful consideration. She needs to be relegated to the fringe and ignored, where she can spew her bile without splashing it on decent folks.

But then, that idiot McLeroy ought to be out on the fringe too. And look where he is. Looks like education in Texas is going to be a bigger battleground than we originally thought. And you thought it was just about evolution!

Happy 199th, Chuck D!

You don't look a day over 162!

Thanks to Google Books, there's no reason not to read On the Origin of Species. It isn't the last word on evolution, of course. But it was the first word that actually meant something, that stated the theory in clear terms and defended it with sufficiently sound science that the following 150 years of science were able to build upon it and refine it, supporting its claims with such then-unknown disciplines as genetics. The deniers may follow Ray Comfort in preferring to wallow in their feeble "imaginations," while the rest of us celebrate the vivid understanding of reality Darwin gave us. Tip of the hat to the man whose work literally changed the world! Happy Darwin Day, gang!

This is what we need to see more of in the papers!

In today's Statesman there is a wonderful editorial by Steve Bratteng, a science teacher at Westwood High School, in which he takes on the IDiots and evo-deniers the right way: not by going into the usual routine of debunking creo canards and falsehoods (which is certainly necessary to do, but likely to fall on deaf ears), but by introducing a series of 13 examples of real-world situations having to do with health and biology that evolution explains (e.g.: Why does each of your eyes have a blind spot and a significant tendency for retinal detachment, but a squid's eyes, which provide equally sharp vision, do not have either problem? Why do people of European descent have a fairly high frequency of an allele, which, in the homozygous condition, confers resistance to HIV infection?). Then he challenges readers who might think these can be explained by recourse to intelligent design to do so. I can't wait to hear what answers the creos try to invent for these.

This is what I want to see more scientists and pro-science citizens getting into our media: positive presentations and understanding of science, not just the usual bashing of "creos as morons" that makes them all defensive and further resistant to education. A lot of creos are pig-headed and stupid, sure, but most, I think, simply accept ideas like ID because they haven't been taught science very well and ID "sounds pretty good" to them.

I know the answers to #5 and #11!

Lena, care to give the creationist answers to Steve's questions?

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Here are the answers.

Darwin Day fun tomorrow

Here in Austin, the fine folks at CFI have another little Darwin Day celebration going on tomorrow afternoon at Book People. Just like last year, there will be talks by UT professors on the subject of "The Relevance of Evolution to Our Everyday Lives," while for the kiddies, there will be storytime and science activities on the second floor. All of which culminates in the most important part of all, cutting the birthday cake. Check here for more info. Hope every pro-science Austinite can come and bring a friend.

Rick Perry: lying, meretricious asshole

There. Let it never be said I didn't have gift for bluntness.

If he wasn't already a big enough tool for appointing young-earther Dan McLeroy to head up the State Board of Education — an act comparable to appointing a person who believes automobiles are powered by big wound-up rubber bands to the presidency of General Motors — Texas' kendoll governor Rick Perry has now, according to today's Austin American Statesman, written a book blasting the ACLU, "liberal elites," and anybody else who doesn't belong to his golf club, and he's done it to raise money for the Boy Scouts. Pompously titled On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For, Perry's polemic essentially reveals that he thinks the most important and precious of those fine American values is hating anyone different. But of course, it's only because they're persecuting the poor widdle Christians! Right?

You got to love this button mashing bullshit:

Whether it is protecting the rights of pornographers, molesters, perverts, terrorists, garden-variety thugs, or those merely hostile to a belief in God, the ACLU is there to provide aid and comfort, in addition to a well-funded legal arsenal.

Hey, nice one there, asshat! Slip the atheists in with the perverts, terrorists, and "garden-variety thugs"! Tell me, who's the one making "unwarranted attacks" here?

If the blurbs in the Statesman article are anything to go by — and the article itself defines "puff piece" to a tee — the book is a veritable buffet of straw man attacks against the aforementioned "liberal elites" (is Perry suggesting there's nothing "elite" about the circle he runs in?), who apparently prefer to "worship the false idol of self." Well, I'm not sure if I belong to said group of elites or not by Perry's determination, but since I believe in elitist ideas like equal opportunity and treating your fellow man with respect and dignity (note: this does not mean I refrain from criticizing stupid beliefs and idiotic thinking), I guess I must. So I can only say that I certainly don't worship anything, let alone myself, but even if I were inclined to be the mindless worshipful sort, I would at least know that I exist, as opposed to the "idol" in the sky Perry and his ilk favor.

Then again, there are passages where Perry seems actually to have a clue.

The faith that permeates the lives of so many middle Americans is often derided as a crutch for weak people.... They think the public simply doesn't know better and is easily manipulated by the emotional appeals of troglodyte, conservative commentators.

Et tu, Ricky?

Ray Comfort's imagination

If there were any lingering question that Ray Comfort deserved the appellation of World's Dumbest Apologist, it would surely be put to rest by reading the exercise in vacuity that is his blog. Mr. Banana calls it "Ray Comfort Food," and that's a fairly apt title: perhaps tasty for undiscriminating people looking for a quick snack, but not healthy or nourishing in the least.

Ray's latest post typically reflects how little is going on between his ears at any given moment. In "The Atheist's Battle" (a puzzling title, as he never actually addresses what he thinks that is), Ray actually spends two out of three paragraphs simply restating Pascal's Wager. Yes, Pascal's Wager. Then, in his third paragraph he asserts that what allows Christianity to trump atheism is the Christian's willingness to confuse imagination with fact and entertain all manner of delusions.

Like many nowadays, John Lennon imagined only sky. His mind was limited. However, the Christian’s mind isn't closed. By the grace of God, he has expanded his horizon. For him, nothing is impossible.

Until, I suppose, the Christian tries to put that assumption to the test by standing on the roof of a 40-story building, flapping his arms with the intent to fly to the building across the street, and jumping off. In his final seconds of life, he will have an admittedly brief opportunity to contemplate that, whatever the religion you've chosen to embrace has told you, perhaps there are a few things that are impossible.

Like most people who've allowed delusion to guide their lives, Ray confuses mindless gullibility with being "open minded," and cares not a whit whether what he has chosen to believe is actually true as long as it provides "comfort food." What Ray lacks the ability to understand is that one's mind is not "limited" by adopting the intellectual integrity and honesty that enables you to distinguish fantasy from reality. The believer may feel all warm and fuzzy by thinking he has "expanded his horizons" to the point where delusion and reality are a blur. But he is still living in delusion. I'm sure I could follow Ray's advice, and choose to believe that when I die, I will go to Candyland on the Island of Misfit Toys and live in the Popsicle Palace for all eternity, and that anyone who doesn't share this belief has a "closed mind." But would that be sensible?

A common element I've heard from my fellow atheists, particularly those who were formerly Christian or otherwise religious, is that we all reached a point where we realized that it mattered whether or not what we believed was actually true, and not just comfort food. And the way you determine what's actually true is through the reliable methodologies of science.

When you read the sad prattlings of a guy like Ray Comfort, who has decided this distinction clearly doesn't matter, you realize that the "imagination" he so eagerly touts as the key to "open minded" thinking is really a feeble thing indeed. There's nothing in Ray's imagination, except the god Ray has made in his image and the fear of his own mortality he has disguised as eager anticipation of "eternity."

If he were even a smidgen less scientifically illiterate than he is, he'd quickly find that the wonders and majesty of the real universe that science reveals to us are immeasurably more awe-inspiring than the bereft and self-centered fantasies he has embraced. Ray just doesn't know much. He doesn't even know how limited his mind is. If he only had a brain. But there I go imagining again.

15-year-old Boy Scout massacres family

You know what they say: Be prepared.

Hey, at least he wasn't gay or an atheist. That would be immoral!

MySpace reups Atheists and Agnostics group

I suspected this wouldn't be any sort of a long-lasting thing. In any event, the 34,000-plus member MySpace group Atheists and Agnostics is back up. It would appear that any fears of Murdoch-imposed religious bigotry among site management might be premature, though the inordinate problems this group has had are a bit absurd and could have been dealt with by the site more efficiently and effectively. The group went down originally because some Christian hackers broke into it and renamed it "Jesus Is Lord," which goes to show what happens when you take people with too much time on their hands and feed them a steady diet of religious intolerance. But with luck, the group — whose only goal is social interaction among unbelievers, many of whom are likely to be young people living fearfully in this religion-addicted culture, unaware that there are other atheists they can make friends with — will be left alone now. The hostility and attacks it's had at the hands of angry Christians do not exactly redound to their credit.

PS: It has come to my attention that a Christian MySpace group has been victimized by similar hackery. And yes, the people responsible for that are just as full of shit for doing it too.

Creationist logic!

How can we ever stand up to this!?

Zakim [sic], we're going to try a little logic exercise here. I say the sky is blue.
You say the sky is green. Just because you never say the words " the sky is NOT blue" doesn't mean you're not disagreeing with me. If you tell everyone you meet "The sky is green, no matter what anyone else says" then you are saying, by NEGATION, that the sky is not blue. When a teacher asserts that "the world was created when stuff blew up" they are teaching, by negation, that it was not designed. When they say that everything came about by accident, they are teaching, by negation, that there is not design!
Simply put, the sky cannot be both blue and green. So, if I teach my children the sky is blue, then I'm teaching them it is NOT green.

That came to us from Lena, our latest creationist commenter, who's over in this comment thread. I guess it must be a brilliant analogy, because Lena assures us she's not some dipshit trailer trash hick, but that she's been "educated above the master's level," which I take to mean she has a master's degree but hasn't yet gone for her Ph.D., though it may not actually mean that at all. Indeed, she isn't clear about what she means by "educated above the master's level." You'd think if she had a master's degree, why wouldn't she just say, "I got a master's from [name of university]."

Anyway, I had a little trouble with her logic, such as it is. Somehow I was able to reconstruct the argument this way.

When a teacher teaches students that the first president of the United States was George Washington, they are teaching, by negation, that it was not Daffy Duck. Simply put, the first president could not have been both George Washington and Daffy Duck. If I'm teaching children it was George Washington, I am teaching them it was not Daffy Duck.

Apparently, when you teach childen anything, you are in fact teaching them the "negation" of whatever thing it is you aren't teaching them. Or something. So, like, if you teach children that 2 + 2 = 4, you are, by "negation," teaching them that 2 + 2 ≠ 5,622. And that's bad, I think she's saying. Or not.

Oh well, it's a little hard to noodle out what stunning point Lena thought she was making there, especially if she was trying to draw some analogy to the whole "teach the controversy" argument. I mean, anyone can go outside and see the sky is blue, at least if the weather's clear. We cannot go outside, however, and look at the sky and see the Christian God. Except in that scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but I'm informed that was a special effect. So I guess, above-master's-level education or not, creationists seem to be chock full of stupid when it comes to arguing their beliefs.

Head on over there, and have fun.

Expelled: even lamer than we all thought

The Orlando Sentinel has the first mainstream media review I've seen of Ben Stein's ID propaganda film Expelled, and it ain't pretty. The film's egregious dishonesty is evident from the outset, as it attempts to confuse the issue in the minds of an uninformed public and present the ID-vs.-evolution argument as an academic freedom issue, rather than a simple matter of which of those two things is science and which one isn't.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed [is] a rabble-rouser of a doc that uses all manner of loaded images, loaded rhetoric, few if any facts and mockery of hand-picked "weirdo" scientists to attack the those who, Stein claims, are stifling the Religious Right's efforts to inject intelligent design into science courses, science curricula and the national debate....

[Stein] uses anecdotes from a few Fox-over-publicized cases of people who claim to have lost tenure/their jobs/their position in the scientific world for daring to suggest the hand of a supernatural being in the creation of life. He hasn't a scintilla of proof of, well, anything. Then he has the audacity to whine, "Where's the data" when questioning cellular biologists and other real scientists who build their lives around doubt, and finding testable, legitimate answers to those doubts. Where's YOUR data, Ben?

I imagine this writer's experience with the levels of irony, meretriciousness and hypocrisy one confronts routinely when one deals with creationists is fairly limited. Otherwise it wouldn't surprise him at all that the movie demands all kinds of data from scientists (which actually exists in heaps, but which the IDiots ignore), while not feeling any great urgency to back up its own claims.

One of the movie's most repugnant lies is its repetition of the "Darwin = Hitler + Stalin" mantra. As anyone with three brain cells to rub together (which would be four more than Stein has) and has actually studied the history knows, both the Third Reich and Stalin were deeply opposed to Darwin, with Stalin supporting Lysenkoism.

But this is all par for the course for the intellectual wasteland that is creationism. They're scared of evolution because they believe that if it's true, then God can't be true, and thus their lives are meaningless because they have no shot at the promised afterlife. But scientifically, creationism cannot be supported by any facts. So all that can be done is to discredit it by associating it with all that is evil and bad. For all the movie's whining about "academic freedom," the truth is that supporters of ID have never been about achieving a stronger scientific understanding of our world and have always been about protecting their religion, their "scientific" posturing towards that end merely the cheapest of dog-and-pony shows. And isn't it funny how, for all their claims that they are the ones whose ideas are being "censored," every prominent creationist blog on the web (like Uncommon Descent) actively censors pro-evolution arguments out of their comments or deletes entire posts if creationism cannot be made to look superior even through the most extreme rhetorical sleight of hand.

I'm actually looking forward to this movie's release now, limited as it will be, because I think it will be the greatest gift to real scientists the IDiot crowd has ever offered. The tidal wave of articles, editorials, interviews and discussions that will follow in its wake, correcting and attacking all of its easily refuted falsehoods with just-as-easily verified facts will lay bare just what shoddy scholarship and sleazy emotional button mashing the IDiots have to resort to instead of, you know, actual scientific research to develop a workable theory of intelligent design. ID was essentially killed in Dover, but this "documentary" is like the movement's lurching zombie corpse, shuffling along unaware that it's dead. It's a last-ditch act of desperation, and we can only hope that the reaction it's sure to receive will prove the final bullet to the head needed to put ID down for good.

Coming up on the TV show: Growing up atheist

I've been drawing a blank on new show topics this week. It doesn't help that we're apparently going to be broadcasting opposite the Superbowl this Sunday, and so it's likely we won't get many callers to carry the show. This doesn't matter to people who listen via podcast, but it does make it difficult to plan how to fill the time.

I did a show on atheist parenting once. I got some email after that which said "How about a show about YOUR experiences as a lifelong atheist?" Everybody knows Matt's story by now, about how he was studying to be a minister before deconverting. By contrast, my story is probably a lot less exciting because mainly it involves just having a normal childhood, apart from the fact that my parents happened to be atheists. Seriously, I never felt particularly persecuted, I had lots of Christian friends who didn't bother me very much, and my parents loved me. No big falling out. It's kind of boring, really.

There are a few things I guess I can draw on. I had some interesting encounters with Christian kids while I was growing up in Alabama. My atheist, scientist parents taught me somewhat different lessons about life and morality than the standard "Do this because God said so" lessons. And also, the fact that I'm a Jewish atheist and I had a bar mitzvah is kind of interesting.

Hope this topic isn't too egotistical -- just remember that it wasn't my idea. And if there are some Austinites out there who care as much about football as I do (i.e., you don't) then please plan to help fill out our phone lines if we appear to be struggling.

The MySpace kerfuffle

The atheist blogosphere erupted with indignation earlier this week, and quite justifiably, when it was revealed that the massive social networking site MySpace had summarily deleted the 35,000-member-strong Atheist and Agnostic Group without so much as a by-your-leave, even though the group had violated none of the site's terms of service. This is seen as rampant religious bigotry and it probably is, although two groups I belong to, "Atheists" (4,828 members) and "SkepticSpace" (989 members) are still alive.

So I'm not sure what's going on here, but it does seem as if the big group was targeted by angry Christians who complained loudly enough to force the deletion. If so, it just makes the fact that Christians still whine about being the ones censored and persecuted and "expelled" all the more egregiously self-serving and dishonest.

A lot of atheists are deleting their profiles, which I can't imagine will hurt MySpace in the tiniest. After a lot of thought on the matter I've decided to keep mine up, but add the complete text of the Secular Students press release along with a comment voicing my own condemnation of MySpace's apparent religious bigotry in a nice large font. Two days later they haven't deleted me, which leads me to think there was some personal targeting going on and there isn't (so far) some wholesale campaign to rid MySpace of the godless.

Lots of people slag MySpace, and I can see why, but I've actually found it quite useful. Mainly I'm using it to promote the documentary I'm working on (and working on and working on), and have so far "networked," as it were, with lots of folks in indie film. I've also discovered a buttload of good bands I'd never have heard of otherwise. When my friend Hollye ran her cat shelter, she raised about $300 in Paypal donations through her MySpace page. So yeah, for all that it's cheesy — no matter how big MySpace gets, it will probably never live down the rep it's gotten in the media as "that teen site" where all the pedo stalkers hang out — I have no reason to think it sucks. Like anything else, it's all in how you use it. (And to everyone who's likely to raid the comments with glowing endorsements of Facebook, I must say I find that site completely boring and useless. I have a profile there but have almost never had a reason to log onto it.)

I'd suggest that if you've still got a MySpace page, then deck it out with proud proclamations of your atheism and your disapproval of the Atheist and Agnostic group's unwarranted deletion. As MySpace is a privately owned (by Rupert Murdoch, surprise surprise) enterprise, I don't see that anyone involved with the deleted group could have recourse to legal action or anything, but IANAL on that score. Just use your freedom of speech and use it loudly. We're here, we're godless, get used to it. If they delete you, well, it's not like you've lost an investment or anything. And it will just prove that the site is run by reactionary, stupid religious bigots after all.

Religious choral music

Kazim here. I know I've mentioned before that I sing in the Austin Community Chorus, and that we do a lot of religious music. I did a whole show about justified acknowledgment of religion in art and education a while back. The fact is that historically, MOST classical music (along with other forms of art) was sponsored by the church. So in general, if a song is much more than a hundred years old and has words, there's a fairly high chance that it will have something to do with Jesus.

This doesn't stop the music from being very uplifting and well written. A couple of years ago I was doing Bach's "Saint Matthew Passion," which ranks high among the best music I've ever heard from any era. Of course, the words are in Latin, so it's easy to just ignore what you're saying unless you grew up Catholic, which I didn't.

This season we're doing a piece called Saint Paul by Felix Mendelssohn. I'm not familiar with very much Mendelssohn. I've heard the overture he wrote for A Midsummer Night's Dream and it's fine. Apparently, this upcoming performance is a fairly big deal. Mendelssohn originally wrote the piece in English but then later translated it back into his native German, and the German version became the standard while the English got lost to history.

Apparently some music historian dug up the original English lyrics and republished it. There have been other translations before, but our concert will feature the world debut of THESE PARTICULAR English lyrics, or something like that. Musicians get excited about the weirdest things.

Anyway, my point in writing this is that I don't particularly like it. The music doesn't really do it for me, but singing the English words just makes it generally much more unpleasant. The story is the most tedious kind of apologetics. It is all about how Saint Paul used to persecute Christians, then was blinded and visited by Jesus. He converted to Christianity and then went on to write most of the most awful sexually repressed parts of the Bible. (Okay, that last part isn't in the piece, it's just my spin.)

Probably my least favorite passage is when he's condemning a Christian to death. The basses chant "Stone him to death!" and then the tenors (that's me) join in "Stone him to death!" and then the altos and then the sopranos, and so everybody is yelling in unison. Frankly, it's a little bit creepy and uncomfortable. Supposedly it's about the Jewish power structure persecuting the Christians, but I can't help flashing forward on the Spanish Inquisition and other acts of atrocity, as well as the modern reconstructionist movement, who ironically want to bring back exactly the punishment that is used to portray Paul as a bad guy. It kind of feels like being part of a lynch mob.

Much of the rest of the piece follows the kind of simpering glurginess that you often hear in praise of Christianity. It's a lot of "Oh blessed are they who have endured" and even something that goes like (paraphrasing because I don't have the score) "You are so grand and mysterious that you are beyond our comprehension." Bleah.

Next season, though, we get Beethoven's Ninth (Ode to Joy). Now that's something worth sticking around for.

Mid-week schadenfreude

And another lying fundagelical scumbag goes down! Daniel Thompson ran a video store and online video club called Clean Flix, where people could rent "family friendly" versions of R-rated movies that Thompson had personally edited the sex and profanity out of. Thompson had already raised the ire of Hollywood for possible copyright violations in doing that. Now he's charged with paying a 14-year-old girl for sex and has further embarrassed his supporters following the discovery of — all together now — a massive stash of porn he kept tucked away in his "family friendly" store. Police are now investigating whether the whole Clean Flix thing was a bogus front for distributing porn all along.

Chuckle along with the video report here.

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Update: It gets nastier. According to the news item on IMDb, Thompson allegedly told one of the girls (there were two) that he and a buddy are charged with raping that "his business was actually a cover for a pornography studio and asked them to participate in making a porn movie." Awesome.

Nothing but liars

Those of you who were, like me, children of the 80's might remember that song by Thompson Twins: "Lies lies lies yeah..." Here it is in all its 80's cheesy retro glory. With a chorus like that, they might as well have been writing about creationists.

There are three certainties in this life: death, taxes, and that when a creationist opens his mouth a flood of lies will pour out. Their lie du jour at the moment appears to be trying to link Charles Darwin and evolution to racism and Nazi ideologies. Even for born pathological liars like creationists, it's pretty low to stoop. Over at the Texas Citizens for Science site, Steve Schafersman has published a handsome rebuttal to this calumny, so the next time you hear this bullshit from some creo swine, kick his lying ass over there for some schooling.

Imagine living a life in which you cannot help but lie all the time, a life in which reality itself must be fought and warred with and denied all the time. Really, if creationists didn't sicken me so, I'd pity them.

Shalini just e-mailed

It's bad like a very bad thing.

No details are allowable right now, other than I can assure anyone worried she may have come to physical harm that this is not so. Until such time as she is ready to make her own announcement, we'll let it lie.

What a Nuckolhead!

There's this homeschooled scientific illiterate named Dan Nuckols who's got a blog where he offers dippy anti-science cartoons like this one, amongst other twaddle. Pharyngula readers have been having good fun today knocking the poor dope around, and I, being the mischievous little scamp I am, decided to fuck with him via email. Here's the email exchange in progress, starting with my response to the linked cartoon.

MW:
Subject: I wuz robbed!
You mean I've been an atheist evilutionist all this time, and nobody told me about the porn and the sacks of money!? What a ripoff!

Dan: Dude, you are robbed. Of eternal life. Repent and Trust Jesus.

MW: But the Flying Spaghetti Monster hath touched me with his noodly appendage, granting me not only eternal life but all the pizza I can eat without getting fat, and free digital cable! Plus I don't have to go to Sunday School. Just seemed like the better deal to me all around.

Thanks though. Tell Jesus I suggested he offer some additional perks to the eternal life deal. Say, NBA seasons passes or something. Otherwise eternity can get awful boring without anything to do!

Update: Hours and hours later, and no followup? How pathetic. Maybe this is another example of what Stephen Rogers was calling half-hearted evangelism.

Johnny B. Goode Stoopid: the Discovery Institute keeps the laffs coming!

They can't offer any peer-reviewed research, but they can publish indignant tirades against "Darwinism" in various forms, the latest of which is a sure-to-be-laff-a-minute diatribe entitled Darwin Day in America, written by John G. West. West's main schtick is to attack evolution by Godwinizing it; i.e., blaming it for eugenics and, in turn, the Nazis. An indication of the emotionalist, rhetorical word salad this book is sure to be is suggested by the wording of its online press release, a paragraph from which is excerpted below. And remember, when dealing with creationists, you can always expect at least one 20-megaton irony blast; I have highlighted it.

Based on extensive research with primary sources and archival materials, John G. West’s captivating Darwin Day in America tells the story of how American politics and culture have been corrupted by scientistic ideology. Marshaling fascinating anecdotes and damning quotations, West’s narrative explores the far-reaching consequences for society when scientists and politicians deny the essential differences between human beings and the rest of nature. It also exposes the disastrous results that ensue when experts claiming to speak for science turn out to be wrong. West concludes with a plea for the restoration of democratic accountability in an age of experts.

Don't you just love that highlighted bit? Especially coming from a clown who's been a poli-sci and history professor, and never, you know, a biology professor. I can't think of anything similarly head-smackingly dishonest, except for the day O.J. got acquitted, and immediately announced he was going to launch a search for "the real killers."

But get a load of the sentence after the highlighted one. Another of West's obsessions is that he cannot stand that there are people in the world who are "experts" in a field, who have an annoying tendency to correct uninformed regular folks who just want everything to be "fair and balanced." When West makes "a plea for the restoration of democratic accountability in an age of experts," he is essentially admitting that he is not an expert in the field he has decided to criticize, and his only way of dealing with this is to try and discredit the idea that there can or should be any experts at all, and that "democracy" ought to reign. And by "democracy" he means, like all religious ideologues, "mob rule," the idea that if the majority doesn't like how reality works, they can just vote it different.

Bad news, Johnny. Science is not a democracy. Facts are what they are, and they don't care what you believe or what ideology, religious or political, you've chosen to embrace. None of the experts whose expertise you resent (because you lack it) deny that evolution takes place, any more than they would deny the sun rises in the east. And tell me, if evolution is "racist," why is it, I wonder, that the KKK burns Christian crosses instead of, say, giant wooden Darwin fish or effigies of the double helix? Why do white supremacists call themselves things like "World Church of the Creator" and "Church of Jesus Christ, Christian," instead of "Darwin's Badasses" or "Chuck D.'s Master Race Society"? Why is it that Darwin's works were banned in the Third Reich, as we see in this list from 1935 (scroll down the page), in which, among works promoting pacifism, bolshevism, communism, and liberal democracy, the Nazis also gave the thumbs-down to...

Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (Häckel).

Hmm. Could it be, John, that you are simply full of shit? Why, I think it could!

But hey, writing this crap is at least easier than actually producing research that offers scientific (or is that "scientistic") evidence for intelligent design, right?

---

For more debunking of nonsensical creationist attempts to link Darwin (who opposed slavery, for instance) to the Nazis, here's some worthwhile reading over at Panda's Thumb.

American Idol beats up defenseless Christian virgin!

Over at Christian website CNSNews.com, they're all in a kerfuffle over how mean the judges and host of American Idol were to poor Bruce Dickson, a 19-year-old from Bastrop (about half an hour from here) who, when asked to tell something about himself, admitted that he had never even kissed a girl.

"What?" Randy Jackson asked. "On purpose?"

"On purpose," Dickson said. "On my wedding day, that will be my first kiss."

Jackson's advice to Dickson after the judges sent him packing: "Go kiss some girls."

Simon Cowell, eyebrows raised, told him: "Avoid Ryan (Seacrest) on the way out."

Seacrest himself ended the segment featuring Dickson with these words: "Maybe next year he'll come back less a boy and more a man."

Dickson, of course, didn't take the ribbing well and went into full persecution mode.

"I respect women and don't think of them as a sexual object, and I'm the freak?" Dickson said.

Dude, fer fuck's sake! There's such a thing as being a sleazebag who sexually objectifies women...and then there's kissing a girl, something that is widely done by most heterosexual males at some point in their developmental cycle, and is not only not considered disrespectful (unless you're forcing it upon an unwilling kissee) but entirely healthy, normal, and — you'd better sit down for this — fun to boot!

I cannot help but notice that there's a big distinction to be made between the idea — perfectly sensible and sane — that you are the master of your own body and it's up to you what happens to it, especially sexually, and the way in which Christianity reframes and sells this message, heaped with great globs of guilt and fear-mongering designed to make young people think the proper way to confront their budding sexuality is to consider it "sinful," and suppress it until the magical day of your wedding, at which point everything bad about your body becomes good and holy and you can touch your pee-pee without fear of a lightning bolt up the back door.

There's a healthy way to promote abstinence, and it's not the way it's promoted in Christianity. Rather, what Christianity sells are some bitterly unrealistic expectations of marriage. I mean, what do Christians think they're protecting here? Do Christians really believe that if they remain virginal — and not just virginal, but refrain from any physical contact with the opposite sex at all — until holy matrimony, that this will have some kind of talismanic effect upon their marriages, rendering them perfect and idyllic in every way? No arguments, no financial strain, 100% contentment and happiness, and angelic obedient children? Well, it wouldn't be the first foolish thing Christians have chosen to believe, I suppose.

If you're looking for reasons why the divorce rate among Christians is so much higher — especially among Bible Belt Baptists — than any other demographic group, you might look to these "sexual purity" programs. These aren't about giving young people healthy, sex-positive messages that incorporate abstinence at all. It's about plugging this concept of "purity," which comes, naturally, with the inevitable view that failure to live up to purity's criteria means that you are impure and probably in danger of hellfire and damnation. Attaching the baggage of sin to sex is a recipe for some pretty debilitating neuroses.

Of course, a Christian reading this would offer the obvious false dilemma as a retort: "So what, I should just go out and have sex with everyone I see?" No, just be aware that your sexuality is part of you, and a good part of you, not something the Devil scotch-taped to your crotch in order to lure you into a fall from grace. Realize that part of acknowledging and growing in your sexuality means that it's something you control. The choice to take command of your body and not engage in sex until you're emotionally ready for it is a rational decision, and shouldn't be one based on hangups over your body and fear of God's punishment.

As for young master Dickson, well, if he finds it hard to get over Ryan Seacrest's taunts, I suspect he can always find a sympathetic shoulder to cry on over at Clay Aiken's place. Malicious rumors suggest he's not all that into kissing girls either.

Shalini in some kind of trouble?

Shalini Sehkar, whose blog Scientia Natura is full of hilariously foul-mouthed rants against "theistards" (she certainly embraces the "bad cop" role in atheist blogging with gusto), has been locked out — see for yourself — and some commenters over at Larry Moran's Sandwalk are indicating that some theists have allegedly gone off the deep end at last and are doing things to make her life miserable. As always, the lack of details being offered means the rumor mill is going to be churning overtime, and it would be nice to nip that in the bud if possible. So if anyone knows any real details (of the kind that can actually be spoken of, in the likelihood there are legal issues in play here), and how we can help her out if possible, please let us know.

(flat, deadpan voice) ...wow man that's just like so totally cool

Toddling along on the intarweebs tonight, trying to find some equilibrium between this week's dose of sad (poor old Heath) and glad (looks like the HD format war is over!), I came upon this enlightening press release about a new website at Nicthus.com, which offers apparel for young Christians "with a message that it is cool to be Christian... Some of the messages on the clothing are intentionally ambiguous, fun and often with an ironic twist."

But hey, don't just take their word for it! Want to see just how cool they really are? Check the logo!

There. If that isn't officially the coolest thing ever, I'll eat my copy of Pat Boone's In a Metal Mood. I mean, shit, the fact that the fish has got shades would have been enough to make me want to be him in the worst possible way. But look! The motherfucker's got shades and a goatee! Damn, dawg! Creamed jeans are made of this! Even James Bond is gonna have to pack up his license to kill and go home, now the fish is in the house. Finally I see what I've been doing wrong all these years. If I'd known about the tsunami-like levels of mad cool that just radiates from the shades/goatee combination, damn, I bet by now I would have already worked my way through the waitstaff of every Hooter's in town and would be halfway through the Texas Bikini Team. But no, the best I ever managed to figure out on my own was a pair of my dad's old bifocals and a Charlie Chan moustache. Clearly, coolness has eluded me as a concept. Where have you been all this time when I needed guidance, Mr. Hipsterbeatnikfish?

Thing is, though, I looked at some of this apparel on the site itself. And, well, I don't see that it's really as cool as all that. I mean, it doesn't seem like the sort of thing the fish would wear, you know, if he was gonna represent. And some of them don't seem especially Christian, either. Like, there are these designs promoting Intelligent Design, for one thing. And as we keep being told by its proponents, Intelligent Design has nothing to do with religion. Right? So I guess I'm confused about that. I'm also confused by shirts that say things like "thump thump" with no explanation. And the explanation the website gives me doesn't help to clear anything up.

Who's that knocking and what do they want?

We think it might be God trying to get our attention. He just might have something to say to us. Do you think we would respond better if we actually heard the knocking or, um, thumping?

What is a thump? Is it the sound your heart makes? A peck on the shoulder to get you to notice something? A knock on the door? The bass note in a great song? Granted it's a shirt that will get a lot of attention and more than a few questions.

I'm still not sure if that's an actual explanation of what the shirt means, or an exercise in free verse. I'm even more baffled by the shirt that says "splat!", whose meaning is explained in this way: "What is the sound of creation? When God creates someone, and there is no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Uh...what? Is this like Zen Christianity now? And are they referring to God, the act of creation, or the created someone by the word "it"? And are they really telling us that the creation of the universe was accompanied by the monumental sound of a splat? Are they replacing the Big Bang theory with the Big Dump theory? Or is this, like, a joke, and is that what makes it "cool"?

I have so much to learn!

Really, I have to admire the way the gang at Nicthus went about their, um, market research. You know, for how to appeal to 21st century youth by being all "humorous, edgy, thought-provoking," and "stylish." I don't see how you could fail with a campaign like this:

...the brand name Nicthus was formed from a combination of the words 'beatnik' for young, hip and cool, and 'icthus.' The beatnik was an icon of the "cool" generation in the 1950s...

An icon of the 1950's!

That is sooo fucking 2008, dudes! What an ironic twist!

Irrefutable proof there is no God

The immensely talented actor Heath Ledger was found dead in his apartment today of what appears to be a drug overdose.

In related news, Britney Spears is reportedly still alive.

Interesting map

This map shows the dominance of various religions in different parts of the country.

Creationism in Texas: "One of the worst situations that I've ever seen."

Last night I attended the meeting sponsored by the tireless folks at CFI-Austin, "Will Texas Support 21st Century Science Education?" I arrived a little early and bumped into Matt Dillahunty. Soon I was glad I hadn't walked in the door ten minutes later than I actually did. The room filled up quickly, soon swelling to SRO status and quite possibly violating fire codes. I did a quick head count and stopped at 60, guesstimating about 20 more faces buried in the back of the crowd I couldn't fully see.

The enormous turnout was heartening for many reasons, not the least of which is that when the forces of ignorance and scientific illiteracy begin their campaign to dismantle science education in Texas this year, they're going to meet with some organized and vocal opposition quite prepared to humiliate them in their efforts every step of the way. The Christian Right may have a stranglehold on politics in this state. But as their ill-advised firing of Chris Comer, a bit of local political shenanigans that quickly became an international outrage once word got out through the intertubes, illustrated, when they try to mess with the realities of science, the real world is not so accommodating to their ideologies.

Steven Schafersman of Texas Citizens for Science was first to speak. Schafersman has spent 27 years on the front lines fighting creationists in their attempts to infiltrate schools, so he's seen firsthand just how much creationism has evolved in that time. But he described the current situation in Texas as "one of the worst situations that I've ever seen."

As many of you may not know, Texas has long been what's called an "adoption state" in terms of how textbooks are chosen for public schools. A small group of people in state politics chooses all the textbooks for the entire state. (Many states let each individual school board choose.) In Texas, the selection process had long been influenced by a fundamentalist Christian couple, Mel and Norma Gabler. The Gablers ran roughshod over every textbook submitted for approval, demanding deletions to evolution in biology texts, deletions to information about contraception in health texts, and other things. Censorship of textbooks in Texas got so bad that a number of textbook publishers would simply release "Texas editions" of their books. The idea that religious ideologues can effectively censor students' access to knowledge is chilling, to say the least.

Mel Gabler died in 2004, Norma last summer. With their passing, fundie whitewashing of textbooks stopped, though the selection process is still mired in politics. The pro-science community succeeded in thwarting the efforts of creationists and their well-funded leaders at the Discovery Institute in 2003 — a process that several ACA members including Kazim and myself participated in directly — but failed in 2004 when health texts came up for review, with the result that teenagers in this state are still not getting health texts informing them of the proper use of contraception to avoid unwanted pregnancy and STD's. Hey, what's a few dead kids as long as you're standing up for Jebus, eh?

Here's why the situation for science is so dire right now. Science standards are coming up for review later this year, and right now, the State Board of Education is not only run by a YEC, but out of the SBOE's fifteen members, seven of them are YEC's. Schafersman has described them as "very aggressive" and certain to make a set of standards that has already been graded an "F" even worse. (This was done by the Fordham Institute, a conservative organization, interestingly enough, but not one with a fundamentalist agenda.)

Chris Comer's firing in 2007 was part of an effort to purge pro-science individuals from positions of influence in Texas education. The whole thing of sacking her based on supposed insubordination and bad performance was just their little dog and pony show. The real goal is to remove anyone who has anything nice to say about evolution — let alone anyone who recognizes it as the foundational principle underlying all biology — from the rolls.

Now this part is important: Right now the fundies are running some fundie wingnut against Patricia Hardy, a non-fundamentalist, non-creationist Republican. If Hardy loses to this person, then the YEC's will flip to a majority on the SBOE and every schoolchild in Texas will be assured of a 19th century education. In other words, they'll be fuct, and Texas will become as bad a laughingstock as Kansas was a few years back.

What about the Democrats, you ask? Who are they running? Well, no one. Apparently the Democratic party in Texas doesn't care about the SBOE, preferring to devote its efforts toward the legislature. So that means there's no outright progressive, solidly pro-science candidate to vote for. The best we have is a moderate Republican. But that's better than nothing, I imagine.

Anyway, Schafersman reiterated that there is a "great deal of apprehension about what's going to happen this year." How exactly are the creos going to strike? Well, ID has failed stupendously, despite the efforts and the millions spent by Discovery. After Dover, even Dan McLeroy, the cretinous YEC dentist who heads up the SBOE (and who I remember seemed to think he was onto something at the 2003 textbook hearings by constantly asking UT biology professors if evolution was as well-supported by scientific evidence as gravity), is careful openly to acknowledge the lack of support ID has from the scientific community, and that it is thus inappropriate to teach.

But this is simply McLeroy's (and the rest of the YEC's) grinning Cheshire Cat face for the media. The agenda now is to demand that the "weaknesses" of scientific theories like evolution must be discussed in classrooms. You know, fair and balanced and all that. This is bogus for several reasons, not the least of which is that the things the creos trumpet as "weaknesses" — Jonathan Wells' foolish "icons of evolution"; Behe's broken record about "irreducible complexity" — aren't "weaknesses" at all for evolution. They're merely made-up hand-waving nonsense the creos throw out to impress the scientifically illiterate. Also, while the idea of addressing "weaknesses" in scientific theories is, in principle, supposed to be applied to all fields of science, when the rubber meets the road, it's only evolution that finds itself under the weight of that demand. Hypocritical much? Why yes. But these are creationists. What do you expect? Integrity? Honesty? Knowledge? Ha.

Remember, these are not people who care about knowledge. These are people desperately attempting to protect a bronze age religion from the modern ideas and scientific facts that defy its magical claims. Their whole lives are rooted in the desperate belief that there's a god willing and eager to grant them eternal life, and if this belief is debunked, then they're doomed to plunge into a whirlpool of existential despair and hopelessness they probably cannot escape. So if it's a choice between understanding science and hanging on to the hope they'll never die, they'll pick the latter, thank you. They're the modern day equivalent of the people who imprisoned Galileo and murdered Giordano Bruno, and make no mistake about it.

More shenanigans from the "Goddidit" crowd involve the Institute for Creation Research attempting to get accreditation in Texas so they can offer master's degrees in science education here. They'd been trying to do the whole process under the table, with the help of creationist sympathizers in the Texas GOP. Once Texas Citizens for Science got wind of what they were up to and made it public, things have been a little bit rougher for the ICR's efforts. Right now, the hearing to determine what to do about the ICR's application has been pushed back from January 24 to April 24. We'll be following this closely.

Schafersman then introduced Chris Comer, who got a huge round of applause for being, in effect, evolution's first "martyr" in Texas. Chris didn't and couldn't say much, as Schafersman had cautioned us there could be litigation pending concerning her firing, and so Comer was under orders from her lawyers not to take questions about the firing itself. (Good, I hope she takes the assholes to the cleaners and leaves them there naked.) But Comer did tell us that the "forces at play here are huge" and that the whole situation concerning science education in Texas is "far worse than I ever, ever dreamed it would be." As an indicator of just how thin the ice is on which we're all skating: there is an end-of-course biology test, currently optional, that will be required of all Texas students as of 2012. Last month there was an attempt to remove all references to evolution from this test, and it almost worked.

Schafersman told us all that, unlike Dover, where fed-up citizens finally got their own back by voting out all of the creationist idiots from their school board after the trial that had damaged their community was over, in Texas it will be harder to rely on the electoral process alone to fix the SBOE. Once again, the Christian Right controls the GOP here (mavericks like Hardy notwithstanding), and the Democrats don't want to play. So the key to saving science — and saving students — in Texas will be grassroots movements that constantly shine a light on what the creos try to pull whenever they try to pull it. Comer's firing was met by unanimous condemnation in newspaper editorials not merely throughout Texas, but the whole country and overseas as well. By keeping this kind of attention on creationism's sneaky BS, pro-science Texas citizens can ensure that science education in Texas does not fall victim to a religious auto-da-fé anytime soon.

If you want to keep up with this (and you want to keep up with this), bookmark the Texas Citizens for Science page as well as the Texas Freedom Network's Stand Up for Science campaign.

A final note. During the lengthy Q&A, a high school teacher whose name I didn't catch made an interesting point. Whatever goes on with the textbooks, it was his experience that students didn't really read their textbooks anyway. What with the internet able to provide all sorts of information to students directly, regardless of whether it's been vetted by Christian Right ideologues, wouldn't it be an easy thing for science teachers simply to encourage students to visit such sites as the Talk Origins archive, the Panda's Thumb, and others, to get the lowdown on the down low about real science? It was a neat idea, and certainly a fun suggestion of the way teachers can rebel if education standards are in fact undermined as badly as the creationists want them to be. I think teachers should do this anyway...but we still have to keep up the fight, and keep it as bloody as it needs to be.

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Addendum, Monday: If you're one of the folks who's popped over from Pharyngula, welcome...and please Digg this article to spread awareness of what's going on in Texas. Thanks.

Why hasn't Uwe Boll thought of this?

Worried that your movie is going to tank in the wake of unavoidable, relentless mockery and abuse? Just pay people to see it anyway!

The latest news making the rounds of science blogs is the remarkable revelation that the producers of Expelled, the farcical ID faux-documentary soon to be released and hosted by the foolish Ben Stein, have come up with a campaign essentially to bribe Christian schools to take entire classes on "mandatory field trips" to see this hokum. Let us marvel at religion's great contribution to science education in America: pulling a bunch of kids out of classes, filling their little heads with disinformation, and raking in the bucks.

You really have to read all about this stunning campaign here. It means this movie is less likely to be profitable than it already was — the idea is these Christian schools send in the ticket stubs, paid for by the students, and the more stubs they send in the more money gets donated to the school, up to $5000 for 500 stubs. That's $10 per ticket stub, which is right around the full ticket price for a movie in a lot of big cities, and far more for the average ticket in the kinds of Bible Belt small towns where this movie is likely to be well received. (My parents go to the movies in Marshall, TX, population about 25,000; they pay $3 to see movies at the one theater there.)

What's also hilarious is the way this movie is openly defying the Discovery Institute mantra that ID is not religious, no ma'am! Seems to me the next Dover trial ought to be even easier, since the record of this online campaign will be right out there in the open, calling attention to itself like a streaker at a football game, for the pro-science side to destroy them with. It's even better than Barbara Forrest's brilliant tracking down of the absurdist publishing history of Of Pandas and People, which gave us all that masterpiece of Christian copy editing, "cdesign proponentsists."

Frankly, the more bullshit like this the anti-evolutionists pull, the better things are in terms of exposing their mendacity and dishonesty. Come on, these people really think they're morally superior? The lack of moral integrity in their every action is repugnant and depressing. When it isn't merely hilarious.

Ten (plus) things I've done you probably haven't

Scalzi started this, damn him, so I'm now caught up in the meme. Nothing especially atheisty, but entertaining all the same. What are yours?

1. Attended a Beduin Arab wedding in the middle of the desert in the UAE.
2. Driven round and round Loch Ness with my family looking for the monster, to no avail. (Stupid monster.)
3. Met XTC.
4. Sailed first class on the QE2 from Southampton to New York.
5. Sailed on the Persian Gulf in a fishing dhow.
6. Spent ten years as a comic book artist.
7. Hung out with Billy Bob Thornton at his rented house during shooting of The Alamo.
8. Been an assistant director on several independent films.
9. Hung out with Ron Livingston in the backyard of a house during one of those film shoots, while his fiancee Lisa Sheridan did scenes inside.
10. Worked as a driver on the most recent season of The Bachelor.
11. Met Terry Gilliam in the 80’s while still in film school, where he came to talk about the controversy surrounding the just-released Brazil.
12. Cockblocked Nic Cage. (Details by request only.)
13. Played with a leopard cub.
14. Married a topless dancer. Then divorced her.
15. Hosted an atheist TV show.

I was going to add “Hung out with Quentin Tarantino,” but then realized that probably two-thirds of Austin has done that, so I left it off.

Next Wednesday in Austin: Chris Comer at Texas Citizens for Science meeting

From the Texas Citizens for Science website:

Forthcoming Appearance: 2008 January 16 - "Will Texas Support 21st Century Science Education? A Briefing by Texas Citizens for Science"

Time and Location: Wednesday evening, January 16, 7:00 p.m., Mangia Pizza-Mesa location, 8012 Mesa Drive, Austin, Texas. Maps are available here and here. There is no charge, and you can buy all the pizza you want.

Texas Citizens for Science President Steven Schafersman will discuss the mounting threats to science education in Texas. He will cover the forthcoming revision of Texas K-12 science standards, the forced resignation of Chris Comer from the Texas Education Agency, and the effort by the Dallas-based Institute for Creation Research to obtain Texas certification to grant masters degrees in science education. After the briefing there will be a Q&A session and open discussion. Chris Comer will also be on hand to answer questions about science education in Texas.

I'll certainly be there, and not just for the pizza. This will be the year the supporters of science are going to face continued histrionic attacks on quality education from well-financed creationist groups out to protect their Bronze Age myths at all costs. Florida also seems to be a state where the forces of organized ignorance are rattling their swizzle sticks. Despite the fairly comprehensive defeat ID suffered in Dover, they just aren't getting the message. That's what people are like when they think they can play "choose your own reality," I suppose. If this matters to you at all — and it should, for it will go a long way towards deciding America's relevance as a leader in science and innovation in the 21st century — turn up. Plus, Mangia's pizza is the shiz.

Oh no, not again

Today in the news:

A mother who is suspected of killing her four children, whose decomposing bodies were found in her home, appeared in court Thursday.

Banita Jacks, 33...told police that her daughters were possessed by demons and that each died in her sleep during a seven- to 10-day period, court documents said. Aja died first, she told police, then N'kiah, Tatianna and Brittany.

Okay, I know it's simplistic simply to blame religion in situations like this. You can make the same post hoc fallacy people make when they blame violent video games for school shootings, or porno magazines for rape. In the case of the wacko who killed and cooked his girlfriend a few days ago, and then told the cops God ordered him to do it, it's obvious he was trying to appear as crazy as possible so as to cop a sanity plea when his case goes to trial. There are cases of clearly religiously inspired violence, such as 9/11, gay-bashing incidents, the killing of abortion providers, excessive corporal punishment of children bordering on child abuse, the ongoing Arab/Israeli conflict, tribal violence in Kenya and the Sudan, Catholic/Protestant violence in Northern Ireland, and more.

Then there are cases where a lunatic does something loony, and, surprise, is found to have kooky religious beliefs as well. Kooky religious beliefs and kooks do go together well.

A case like this leans toward the latter, but still, I don't think religion can get off the hook entirely. Religion is the only thing out there that encourages people to believe in absurdities like demonic possession. It's bad enough that literally millions of people have their critical thinking faculties short circuited by the teachings of religion, and thus fail to know how to protect themselves from religious hucksters selling their snake oil. But add religion into an environment where mental illness is latent, and it's a recipe for unmitigated catastrophe. While the mental illness is ultimately the cause of this woman's actions, religion only enhanced its severity, rather than helping her to overcome it.

Science, on the other hand, has made great strides in treating mental illness. There's nothing in the article to indicate Banita Jacks was on any medication for any psychological disorder. But clearly she should have been. Had she been, this might not have happened. But by putting her faith in her religion, what happened? She believed her babies were possessed by demons, and butchered them. Religion can't always be blamed for the bad things people do. But I see precious few examples of its actually doing anything to help or prevent such tragedies either.

If you're running a con, go for the richest mark you can!

The fad of Kabbalah mysticism, that seems to have conned nearly as many Tinseltown hangers-on as Scientology, has such a transparently silly racket that, because it's so obviously stupid and fraudulent, it's no wonder some of the richest and most high-profile celebutards are falling for it. MSNBC reports that Madonna, who popularized warding off evil spirits with a few inches of red twine around your wrist, is now spending $10,000 a month on "specially blessed" Kabbalah water! Yoiks! I always thought most bottled water was a big scam (a suspicion long-since confirmed), but to spend as much money in a month on the stuff as someone with a serious cocaine habit really makes me cringe at the way fate (or whatever) always seems to dictate that the people with the most money in our world are those with the fewest brains.

Maybe I'm just in the wrong business. Damn these morals of mine! They keep me from slicing into the lucrative religion pie.

Pitching in to help P-Momma

I'm a little behind the curve here, but scanning some blogs I haven't visited in a couple of weeks, I learned that Possummomma, everyone's favorite atheist in a minivan, has lupus. And it's really messing with her lately, making her so sensitive to sunlight that even walking around her house gives her a hard time due to UVs bouncing all over the place. Over at his blog, Berlzebub has taken it upon himself to set up a Paypal donation thing so that P-Momma's family can afford to get UV-filtering films, which are naturally expensive as hell, installed on her windows. So far donations have been pretty good, so I thought I'd let AE readers join the charity if they see fit. Here is the link to Berlzebub's blog's donations-tag page, where you can get up to speed on everything.

It should come as no surprise that some Christian bitch called Heather has leapt upon this situation as an excuse to troll P-Momma's blog with snarky and insulting comments. I guess that's what comes from being morally superior to everybody, eh?

Religion's latest contribution to mental health

Moron looks at own hand, sees what he thinks is "Mark of the Beast," freaks, slices off hand with bandsaw. For added dose of crazy, microwaves hand. As Voltaire once said, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." Even when the victim is yourself.

More faux-intellectualism: the appeal to other ways of knowing

In this comments thread, we've been visited once again by Rhology, who says:

I don't agree that God is unprovable or unproven. Not provable by naturalistic means, of course, but there's no reason to restrict ourselves to solely naturalistic means.

What, exactly, are the "non-naturalistic" means that Rho proposes? How do they work? What are their methodologies? Can one use them to test a falsifiable hypothesis and formulate a theory which has predictive power? Rho seems to imply this, since his statement suggests God's existence can thereby be (and actually has been) proven. But if you're looking for a real explanation of how to go about seeking knowledge using "non-naturalistic means," then Rho will disappoint you.

This is the appeal to other ways of knowing, a common bit of hand-waving employed not just by religionists, but practitioners of all manner of woo. Skeptico has also written about this. And I hate to say it, but it seems to be a view that not only has traction amongst the anti-science clods you'd expect, but among people in the scientific community who should know better, usually in a misguided attempt at offering a sop to the ignorant in the belief that those people would simply be too scared of the threat science poses to their precious belief of choice unless the olive branch of appeasement is offered.

Case in point: the National Academy of Sciences has just released a booklet for the lay reader (you can download the whole thing as a free PDF) spelling out the case for evolution and against ID in a very clear, accessible, and commendable way. But the book makes the concessions to religion that has caused guys like PZ Myers and Larry Moran to roll their eyes. "Science and Religion Offer Different Ways of Understanding the World," trumpets one chapter heading. But they don't. Not even remotely. Science offers ways of understanding the world, religion offers supernatural beliefs in place of understanding, which actively impede many people's ability to achieve understanding. It really is a big blemish in an otherwise scientifically sound book. Then again, if the way in which this "different way of understanding" actually works, and how its conclusions can be determined to be just as epistemologically valid as those of science, were actually explained in detail, then I'd happily sing a different tune. But no, we just get the assertion that a "different," "non-naturalistic" means of examining truth claims exists, and that it's better, and that anyone who tries to rebut this is simply "making excuses" for science's own presumed failings. That's religion for you. No evidence is ever needed, only that whose existence conveniently resides in some "non-naturalistic" realm only discernible to those who have thrown off materialism's presumptions.

Yikes!

The only thing crazier than killing your girlfriend and cooking her flesh for supper? Calling the cops to tell them you're doing it.

Obligatory non-PC Martin-remark: It occurs to me this could be a guy who'd be the ideal test subject for CNN's poll question...

Seems like anyone who'd answer "yes" would be dead

"Is execution by lethal injection so likely to cause pain that it is unconstitutional?" That's the poll question today on cnn.com. It doesn't really have much to do with theism or atheism, but I think it says a lot about irrationalism in the media. There are only two answers allowed for you to choose, "yes" or "no." Seems to me that, unless you're an actual executioner and you've witnessed the process taking place, or have undergone the process yourself (in which case you'd hardly be in a position to respond to the poll), then how could you possibly know? You might as well ask, "Which hurts more: being shot with a .45 caliber hollow point or a 9mm caseless?"

I've seen similar polls all over websites, especially ones like CNN where they'd at least like to think there's some respectability involved. Readers are asked to give an authoritative answer to a question to which they couldn't possibly have any expertise either way. I took a phone poll once that was all about gasoline. I was asked which gas station I preferred to go to (I kept saying "whomever's cheapest," which didn't go down well considering they wanted a company name), and who had the better gasoline. How, I asked, was I supposed to know whose gasoline was actually "better," unless I were a chemical or petroleum engineer and could analyze samples in a lab? Hell, I put gas in my car, and if my car goes, then I guess it's pretty good gas in my book. I have no expertise in this field. Why was I being asked to give some for a stupid poll?

This kind of thing, I think, is all part of the same climate of faux-intellectualism that allows creationists to flourish. People with no expertise in biology or any other science are preening around like they know all there is to know about the subject, and that the science (they haven't studied) is wrong. And this attitude — perfect pig-ignorance validating and congratulating itself with arrogance — is openly encouraged. It's all just one more sad little symptom of our culture's war on reason.

Today on the show: Conspiracy theories

Rather than spend a lot of time today actually debunking those 9/11 conspiracies, I'm going to tackle an even less plausible one: the reptile people who live among us.

No, I'm not making this up. See the Wikipedia page on it. Also see pages by crackpots supreme, John Rhodes and David Icke. This interview with Icke is pretty priceless, not least because of the credulous tone of the interviewer.

The point, of course, is to talk about conspiracy theories in general, as well as phony skepticism and the nearly religious devotion to some nonreligious ideas. And yeah, that is a backhanded way of smirking about 9/11 conspiracy theories, but I am emphatically not going to bring that up unless a caller does.

But if that's your thing, then here are a couple more hilarious 9/11 links for you to enjoy:

• Penn & Teller's Bullshit does 9/11 conspiracies
• The "Cracked" website asks "Was 9/11 an inside job?" (It gets funnier on page 2.)

And for general skepticism:

• The conspiracy theory page at The Skeptic's Dictionary

Oh, and one last reptoid link:

• OMG George Bush Sr. has slit eyes!!!!! It MUST mean he's a reptoid, because it couldn't possibly be a camera glitch.
  

Evolution video podcasts

An organization here with the slightly odd sounding name of Scientific Qualitative Research and Education, Inc., has a series of little Quicktime video podcasts you can view or download here or here, designed to give teachers and students the skinny on both the creo/evo "controversy" as well as an understanding of the scientific method itself and the ramifications of what may happen if religious ideas are actually allowed to be taught as science. Interviewees include the usual suspects of strong science supporters: Barbara Forrest, Eugenie Scott, Kenneth Miller, Kevin Padian, and others. Two dozen of these are up now. Worth checking out.

Iowa: so far, so good

Well, 2008 is looking less like a lost cause for the progressive side, with Obama's decisive and most welcome win in the Iowa caucuses. I dislike Hillary intensely, though not for the same reasons conservatives do, of course; mainly for the fact that she's a pure careerist who'll do whatever she thinks is necessary to ensure her own advancement, such as repeatedly siding with BushCo on supporting the war. (Also, the fact that she didn't promptly divorce Bill the minute he left office made it abundantly clear that she wanted to ride the coattails of the Clinton name to her own victory, despite ostentatiously adopting her maiden name — Hillary Rodham Clinton — in the early years of Bill's administration.)

So the fact Hillary got her ass handed to her yesterday indicates to me that I may well be able to vote this year, and moreover, have someone to vote for, not simply against. I like both Obama and Edwards, though I think Obama has a huge charisma/honesty edge, whereas Edwards has his Kerry baggage to dump. And if it comes down to Obama vs. Huckabee in the general election, polls so far indicate it'd be Obama by a long chalk. So the next caucuses will be most interesting to follow. Here's hoping Hillary's opportunism and dishonesty aren't overlooked by Democrats in New Hampshire, either.