The Empirical Infidel

Possibly my very last Freshwater post, maybe

2011-01-11T20:51:00.000-05:00

Last Friday the referee in the John Freshwater termination hearing released his recommendation that Freshwater should be fired (here) and last night the Mount Vernon School Board voted 4 to 1 to terminate his contract (here). The one dissenting vote was from Steve Thompson, a vocal supporter and fund raiser for John Freshwater, who didn't recuse himself but did complain about Paula Barone not recusing herself. The hearing cost the school district about $900,000.

Now the excitement is all over unless Freshwater decides to appeal the decision, or, maybe I should say; if the grandstanders and theocracy advocates don't push him into another appeal. It seems to me that John Freshwater has, from the beginning, been pushed in directions that were not in his best interest by people who used him to fulfill their own agendas. I don't mean to absolve Freshwater of responsibility. The fact that he tried to conceal his actions is clear evidence that he knew he was breaking the rules, but with media-whore, bully, Dave Daubenmire and ignorant clown of a lawyer R. Kelly Hamilton in his corner, not to mention all the fundies who always want to try evolution in the court of public opinion, he was doomed from the start.

This fiasco was predicated on the fundy belief that their religious opinions should supersede legal and moral codes. From the very beginning supporters were incorporating creationist, Christian nation rhetoric that made it clear that they intended the hearing to be a referendum on the incorporation of religious dogma in public education instead of a simple determination of guilt or innocence. If their goal was to siphon off $900,000 of taxpayers' money that should have been spent on kids' education; if their goal was to bankrupt the teacher they professed to be supporting; if their goal was to prove that the court of public opinion is always trumped by real courts, they were very successful. However, if their goal was to prove that their fundy beliefs were true, they failed, and they did a hell of a lot of damage in the process.

More About the Pope's Trip

2010-09-19T13:15:00.000-04:00

At times, during the visit, you could cut the sexual tension with a knife.

The Pope Met the Queen

2010-09-19T13:11:00.000-04:00

QEII officially welcomed the Pope in Edinburgh. The Pope wore the official trappings of the Catholic Church. The Queen wore a hat from the Hogwart School.

The Pope Went to Britain

2010-09-19T13:00:00.001-04:00

The Pope arrived in the UK on Thursday with his armored car and plenty of security to protect him from police officers with arrest warrants.

Signs, Signs, Everywhere Signs

2010-08-08T20:22:00.000-04:00

The other day, as I drove toward our county seat, about 15 mi. from my house, I was marvelling at the interesting signs that regularly are present along the way. Of course election time is usually the most interesting but on an average weekend I can usually find at least a couple of things to ponder.

I first pass a church whose marquee, until a couple of days ago had, "God is the start of wisdom," written on it. This is a modification of what it said a couple of weeks earlier, which was, "Fear of God is the start of wisdom". The original message was apparently too irrational for even the deluded fundies. Or, maybe the sign was changed because, according to their book, God made a tree that would give wisdom to anyone who ate the fruit, but if Eve had really feared God, she wouldn't have eaten the fruit and wisdom would never have started.

My favorite message on that marquee was a while back. It said, "There can be no America without God." I'd really like to see someone try to prove that. It seems to me that, even by the most conservative Xian estimate of the age of the earth, there were people living here who knew nothing about their god for 5000 years, and they were doing just fine until Europeans showed up.

Up the road from the church is a farm market. Below the farm market sign is one that says "Jesus is Lord." I'm guessing you won't find a lot of kosher food there. Oh! It also has "Elect Ron Paul" written in huge letters on the building's side. I'm guessing you won't find a lot of democrats there, either.

Further up the road is a modest private home that one day had a sign that said "Impeach the imposter!" All I could think when I saw it was: that delusional person's vote counts the same as mine. I went back later to take a picture, but the sign was gone. Perhaps, it was only there while the residents hosted a tea party.

A few miles on, at the outskirts of Mount Vernon, there was a large portable sign that stood next to the road for about the whole first year of the Freshwater fiasco. It read; "If the bible goes the student should follow." Those were the good old days, when the bible was gone and the student's family had yet to been driven out of town.

The last special sign sits in front of what looks like a typical ranch house, on a lawn that seems never to get mowed. The sign consists of a Xian cross tilted toward the road at about 30 degrees from verticle. Nailed to cross is a white depiction of an amputated human hand with blood running from its palm where the nail pierces it. I'll bet the neighbors love what it does to their property values. Other signs near the cross identify the building as a house of worship whose name seems to change frequently. Most recently, these signs said something about Mogen David Tabernacle. Maybe they worship sugary wine.

Going back the other way, heading home from a motorcycle ride today, I noticed the church marquee held the question, "Where is your journey taking you?" I was going home, thanks for asking. As I was about a half a block my house, I noticed a bumper sticker on the back of a neighbor's car. It was one of those that says "Coexist" spelled out in symbols of various world religions. It reminded me that things aren't so bad.

That Doggone Christian Nation Stuff

2010-07-29T21:43:00.000-04:00

This post was supposed to come out on the 4th of July, but it never quite got finished. I was probably too busy playing with sparklers and singing patriotic airs.

Every US Independence Day Hobby Lobby, a company that blatantly prostitutes its Xian religious views to sell craft supplies, puts out a full page ad in news papers to promote their errant belief that the US is a Xian nation. The 2010 version can be viewed here. I have some problems with this as you might guess.

First, there are the quotes:

George Washington- “Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor.” This is probably the most legitimate quote presented as evidence. It was part of a speech announcing a national day of thanksgiving.

John Adams- “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.” Let me first say while I was researching these quotes I discovered that the theocracy folks love this quote; a huge number of their websites came up when I googled it. All of those sites conveniently left out the sentence that goes between the first and second sentence, which is, “Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.” The omitted sentence hints at the real context; it was from a letter to the officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts (11 October 1798) and was basically a lecture on behaving in a civil and moral manner, rather than an advocacy of any religion

Thomas Jefferson- “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.” This quote also is not about advocating for religion as the Hobby Lobby would like us to believe. It was part of a speech to the government of Virginia arguing that slavery was immoral. It should also be noted that in Jefferson’s hand written version neither god nor the associated pronouns were capitalized.

Benjamin Franklin- “I've lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing Proofs I see of this Truth — That God governs in the Affairs of Men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that except the Lord build the House they labor in vain who build it.” Today, it’s hard to imagine that there was a time when Ben Franklin was not highly respected, but at the time of the Constitutional Convention (27 June 1787) when this speech was given he was neither respected nor trusted. Franklin had just returned to America, having been Ambassador to France from 1776 through 1785. Most of the members of the Constitutional Convention felt that he was completely out of touch with the American people and they suspected that his long association with the French aristocracy had turned him into an advocate for monarchy and Catholic theocracy. Comments like the above just reinforced their suspicions.

So, there you go. The quotes presented to support the argument that America was intended to be a Xian nation are not particularly good evidence. More importantly, however, is that not a single one of the quotes either mentions or alludes to Christianity. Believing in a god does not equal being a Xian. Of the four men quoted, only one of them, John Adams, declared himself to be a member of an organized religion, and that was Unitarianism, not Christianity. Furthermore, even if all four of these Founding Fathers had identified themselves as Xian, it still doesn’t mean that they wanted it connected to the government.

Bear in mind that, unlike today when the opposite seems to be true, one of the founding principles of the Baptist Church in America was the separation of church and state. “A wall of separation” was not first coined by Jefferson, as some believe, but by Baptist leader Roger Williams, and Baptists and other evangelical churches were strong campaigners for Jefferson for president after he assured them that he would keep church and state separate. So there!

Spiritual But Not Religious? Danger, Will Robinson!

2010-06-05T19:25:00.000-04:00

I just read an article on CNN’s website; “Are there dangers in being 'spiritual but not religious'?” Apparently, it is “trendy” to say that one is spiritual but not religious, which as I understand it, is an assertion that the SBNR person feels free to pick and chose from various religious traditions those things that best reflect their own beliefs, without being tied down to the dogma of a single religion. It seems to me that this is a step in the right direction, if it steers the individual away from blind religious fundamentalism and closer to rejecting religion all together, but it still sounds like most of them are inclined to imbue philosophical writing with mystical, magical powers that don’t really exist.

The article asks (but doesn’t really answer) the question “Are there dangers in this?” As a slightly outspoken atheist (and observer of more outspoken ones), I can answer; yes. That is, narrow-minded religion bullies may try to get you fired from your job, driven out of your community, or even get you killed. However, none of the above was mentioned in the article.

Not surprisingly, Jesuit Priest, James Martin, who arguably has zero experience outside of organized religion, doesn’t like it and thinks it’s driven by egotism. "Being spiritual but not religious can lead to complacency and self-centeredness," says Martin. "If it's just you and God in your room, and a religious community makes no demands on you, why help the poor?" Gee, I don’t know, Father. Maybe you should get out of your church and ask some of the many, many non-religious people who are out helping the poor. Or, alternately, maybe you could talk to all the conservative Xian tea-baggers who prefer to spend their spare time advocating for the elimination of all government help for the poor. And do I have to point out all the complacency and self-centeredness that has had the Catholic church in the headlines recently?

The bottom line is that the dangers in being spiritual but not religious are that those people aren’t under the thumbs of purveyors of organized religion and could ultimately realize that the rigid, dogmatic demands of said religions are pure hogwash. Then they may point out to other people, maybe via, oh, I don’t know, a blog, that Catholic priests want to control everyone else’s bedroom although they can’t control their own, and fundy protestants want to quote-mine the Bible to legitimize the advocacy of bigotry and intolerance, and Islamic fundies just want to kill everyone who disagrees with them. Or maybe the danger is that the SBNR folks will miss out on all the fun of spending eternity with the aforementioned religious groups.

It's Your Kids' Future, Stupid

2010-05-02T16:19:00.001-04:00

I stumbled on an article the other day about the upcoming primary election here in Knox county and how some people are tying their voting decisions on the Mount Vernon City School Levy Renewal to their views on the Freshwater controversy. The article pointed to examples in KnoxPages.com, a local forum site, of people stating that they would vote against the Renewal because of all the money the school board wasted on the Freshwater Hearing. Of course, in the real world, the MVSB was legally required to give Freshwater a hearing, and it was Freshwater and his legal team that turned it into a 2-plus year, half million dollar fiasco.

That news didn't surprise me, particularly, but some of the other reasons given for voting "no" did surprise and frustrate me. For example, the teabagger mentality was expressed, where they viewed all taxes as a uniformly bad and wasteful use of citizens' money from which no one benefits but bureaucrats. Other writers insisted that funding should be withheld until the school system demonstrates more fiscal responsibility (how this can be demonstrated without money isn't explained.) Others think this is an additional tax rather than a continuation, or think this is a "bail-out", but many just think voting this down will not have any negative effect on them or their children.

I have a niece who is a primary school teacher in Reynoldsburg, OH. She was recently talking about the effects of Reynoldsburg residents voting down school funding several times in a row. As might be expected, there have been teacher layoffs, elimination of courses, parents having to pay for student participation in sports and other extracurricular activities, and a general deterioration of the quality of education. But the problems haven't stopped at the school doors.

Anyone with the financial wherewithal to move to a better school district is doing so as fast as possible. As a result, the per capita income is dropping, the city is losing money and cutting services, neighborhoods are deteriorating as lower income people, who can't afford home maintenance move in, and the crime rate has gone up. In short, everything that the forum participants insist won't happen in Mount Vernon are already happening just down the road.

In the big picture, the American student is becoming more ignorant and less competitive compared to the students of other nations. Kids from crummy neighborhoods are less likely to do well in school, especially if its a crummy school. If we can no longer produce college graduates with advanced degrees to keep us on top, other countries will be more than happy to fill that niche. The best paying jobs will go to immigrants with better skills and more of the jobs will go overseas. So let me paraphrase a line I read a few times in the forum; If you couldn't afford to pay the taxes that keep the schools open and support the community, maybe you shouldn't have had any kids.

Rebutting the Creationists at the Evolution Exhibit

2010-03-16T20:31:00.000-04:00

Just for fun, I thought I would take the creationist criticisms from the "At evolution exhibit" article (see earlier post) and rebut them one at a time.

1. "these students ... believe God created the Earth in a week, some 6,000 years ago."

The geology of the earth clearly shows that it is billions, not thousands of years old. Archaeological evidence shows that not only were there modern humans, but organized civilizations thriving before 4004 BCE. The law of superposition states that older sedimentary layers underlie younger. Fossils within the layers show that hundreds of feet of sedimentary layers containing evidence of life preceded the first evidence of humans. If Genesis were true, all life-forms that occur in the fossil record, including humans, would be in the bottom layer.

2. "210 million years, that's arbitrary. They put that time to make up for what they don't know,"

The above quote refers to the age of the Morganucodon rat, considered our first mammalian ancestor. This date is not in doubt. In addition to relative dating methods like superposition (if A is deeper than B, A is older than B), and biochronology where associated fossils in a layer are compared to biological forms that are known to precede or follow them, absolute dating methods like thermoluminescence and radiometric dating may be used. Thermoluminecence dating requires the sample to be heated until it releases electrons in the form of light that can be measured indicating the last time the sample was heated. Radiometric dating involves the analysis of radioactive decay of elements in the sample. Decay occurs at a steady rate converting a radioactive element always to its non-radioactive counterpart element making it easy to measure the ratio and determine age. Some radioactive elements do not fully decay for billions of years. By the way, the advent of mass spectrometry has made it possible in recent years to get even greater accuracy with smaller samples.

3. "There is no scientific, biological genetic way that this, this rat, could become you,"

There is no scientifically proven way other than evolution. If this creationist student had actually read the exhibit, I suspect he would know the scientific, biological genetic way.

4. "In order to be the best creationist, you have to be the best evolutionist you can be," said Marcus Ross, who teaches paleontology and says of Adam and Eve: "I feel they were real people, they were the first people."

Evolutionist? I do not think this word means what he thinks this word means. As I said before, there is no geological or paleontological evidence for biblical creation. If the evidence were there, scientists with other religious backgrounds would reach the same conclusion as creationists. That just isn't happening.

Also, if Adam and Eve were the first people, they would be more than 10 times as old as the creationists' earth and they would have lived in Africa, not central Asia where Eden is usually placed.

5. "Creationism and evolutionism have different ways of explaining the evidence. The creationist way recognizes the importance of Biblical records," said Ross.

OK. The goal of the scientific method is to filter out preconceptions and biases and reach conclusions based purely on the objective evidence -- all the evidence. The biblical records fall under the categories of preconceptions and biases. Creationists glom onto the bits of evidence that appears to support their interpretation of the book of Genesis and discard anything that doesn't fit. For example, creationists frequently say there is evidence of Noah's flood because sedimentary rocks cover the earth. However, they disregard the fact that the sedimentary layers, as they appear on Earth, could not have been deposited in a single flood event or even in only 6 to 10,000 years. Nor can they explain why fossils separated into different, consistent layers or why a flood would kill more marine species than terrestrial species.

6. "He says carbon-dating techniques that have been used to suggest the Earth is in fact billions of years old are simply not reliable. "

First of all radiometric dating with isotopes other than carbon date the Earth to about 4.5 billion years old. Carbon 14 dating has been the whipping boy of creationists for a long time, but is actually very reliable. It is however good to only about 60,000 years due to its rate of radioactive decay. Creationists have always been happy to accept C14 dates that appear to corroborate bible stories, but they insist that it doesn't work past 6000 years ago. Coincidentally, 6000 years is about the half-life of C14, but the decay of one half-life doesn't end its usefulness. Creationist have also claimed the C14 would be useless after 12,000 years because you'd have 6000 for a half-life plus 6000 for the other half. Nope. Half of the C14 decays, then half of the remaing C14 decays, then half of that decays, etc., until the remaining sample is too small to measure; at about 60,000 years.

Creationist literature also likes to list reasons that C14 cannot be dated accurately. A little research by the reader will make it clear that the listed problems are taken directly from scientific papers that explain the methods by which a scientist can eliminate or compensate for the problems.

By the way, the age of the earth is corroborated by astronomical observations. Visible stars have been measured at more than 4.5 billion light-years distance. A light-year being the distance light travels in a year, any light we see from that source has been traveling for at least 4.5 billion years. If the stars had been created the same week as Adam and Eve, 6 to 10,000 years ago, there could be no visible stars of more than 10,000 light-years away.

7. "He doesn't reject one prominent theory that dinosaurs were wiped out by a massive asteroid that collided into Earth, but suggests the collision coincided with the Biblical flood."

Although the asteroid theory isn't universally accepted within the paleontology community, the presence of a world-wide layer rich in iridium that coincides with the end of the Cretaceous and beginning of the Tertiary Period (hence the name C-T boundry layer) is universally acknowledged. The problem for the creationist teacher is that everyone agrees this occurred 65 million years ago and that much of the C-T layer material was deposited on dry land. So, it's clear that the creationist doesn't really believe the asteroid theory at all; he just agrees that an asteroid hitting the earth is a good way to explain mass extinction, but, unfortunately it doesn't explain the survival of Noah.

Texas Board of Education is Preventing Education

2010-03-16T18:56:00.000-04:00

The good news is you will probably be more learned than the next generation. The bad news is you will probably be more learned than the next generation. Thanks to the conservative majority on the Texas Board of Education who wish to rewrite history to reflect the way our nation should have been founded, the Texas school curriculum will no longer include some of those inconvenient facts, like those in the US Constitution, that might cause students to think that our founders hadn't intended the US to be an ultra-conservative theocracy. They tried earlier to insert creationist dogma into the science curriculum without success, but they've achieved some of their goals by filtering out some of the extraneous and irrelevant characters like the author of the Constitution and third US president, Thomas Jefferson. “I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state,” said David Bradley.

This might not be such a big deal if this enforced ignorance were only limited to the state of Texas, but this has national implications. Unlike most states, Texas buys the same books for the entire state public school system, making them one of the biggest school book purchasers in the US. All the textbook publishers want to win that contract, so they write their text books to cater to the desires of the TX BOE. For the rest of the country, the textbooks available for them to purchase will be slanted toward the bias of Texans. Parents at the other end of the nation may not even realize that their kids' school books have had historical facts replaced with evangelical conservative dogma.

The problem is, as Steven Colbert pointed out, "facts have a liberal bias." Ever since the conservative evangelicals have become a strong voting bloc, they have tried to insert their beliefs into the government and educational system in defiance of the Constitution and the laws. The result is a conservative political policy that reflects the fundamentalist mindset of, "If I believe it, it's true, and no amount of evidence can change my mind." The efforts to inject creationism and Xian ceremonies into the public schools has been part of this, as has been the need for politicians to flaunt their Xian credentials in order to get elected.

We are reaching a point in American culture where actual facts have no value. The dogma handed down by religious leaders and the talking points presented by politicians carry more weight and verisimilitude than all the observable data and documentation that can be presented. To a large percentage of the US population (for young earth creationism, some surveys suggest 40%), Pat Robertson, the TV evangelist, knows more about geology and biology than doctors who have spent their lives actually studying and testing the data, and Rush Limbaugh, the conservative pundit knows more about global warming than the scientists who've been measuring the increasing CO2 % in the air and the decreasing size and thickness of glaciers for decades. A lot of people are only willing to listen to information that reinforces their preconceptions. They rail against opposing views and may react violently to anyone demonstrating the invalidity of their beliefs. And they refuse to learn.

That is the legacy too many people are trying to insure we pass on to our children. Learning to think critcally and analytically is discouraged. Unquestioningly accepting the words of leaders is encouraged. Chastising the intellectually superior while canonizing the dull witted athlete is the norm. Then when the nation turns to crap and other nations become technologically and academically dominant everyone can blame it on the liberals with their elitist, commie, homo, atheist agenda, oh, and the need for more religious zeal.

An 18 Year Old High-Schooler is Destroying America, Apparently

2010-03-11T17:58:00.000-05:00

18 year old Constance McMillen was the subject of an AP article today because she requested that she and her gay girlfriend, another student in the same school, be allowed to attend the prom as a couple. The school, in Jackson, MS has a rule that prom couples must be a boy and a girl. When McMillen's request was denied, she sued, with the backing of the ACLU. The school's response was to cancel the prom for everyone rather than allow two girls to dance together. Of course everyone knows why the prom was canceled so this girl is likely to be the target of anger from her fellow students.

People in Mississippi have demonstrated their bigotry and willingness to deny people their civil rights many times before, so this event isn't surprising, but the bigots always end up losing in court. So, when will experience teach them that people they dislike have just as many rights as those they like?

The prejudice against homosexuals is completely irrational, any way. No one just decides one day that they would like to be shunned, avoided, and have the crap beaten out of them by fellow students, co-workers and neighbors just because it might be fun to share a bed with someone of the same sex. The only reason the anti-gay people can present to rationalize their hatred is their religious beliefs supported by cherry-picked lines from their favorite book.

Religious beliefs, however, are not civil law. If these people want to deny homosexuals access to their religious ceremonies, that's OK. If persons choose not to act on their own homosexual urges, because their religion doesn't allow it, that's fine too. But, when one leaves the religious environment and enters the secular, as, for instance, a public school, civil law applies and insisting that persons outside of the religious community must abide by rules that apply only within the religious community, is not only ridiculous, it's illegal.

Creationists Go to Smithsonian and Learn Nothing

2010-03-10T21:50:00.000-05:00

I just read a truly awful article in the Yahoo News entitled; "At evolution exhibit, creationists are unswayed". The article wasn't awful because creationists were unswayed, that's to be expected. It was awful because the author, Virginie Montet, was incredibly ignorant about evolution and wrote as if evolution and creationism were equally scientifically valid.

The article is about a group of biology students and instructors from Liberty University in Tenn. who traveled to the (presumably Smithsonian) Natural History Museum in Wash DC to view an exhibit on evolution and came away from it thinking that the national museum of the United States (and all other legitimate natural history museums in the world) were wrong because they differed with the teachings of a podunk fundy xian school in Tennessee. The creationists quoted in the article regurgitated the usual ID claptrap, including the odious, misleading assertion that they use the same evidence to reach different conclusions, to support their views.

The folks from Liberty U can't help the way they are. The instructors are paid to deliver fundamentalist dogma and students, or their parents, choose the school specifically because they are guaranteed to be insulated from all those inconvenient facts that might tempt them to choose reality over religion. I don't, however, understand how they can ever learn any science. Science is about assessing ALL the available evidence to reach the best conclusion. These guys treat scientific evidence like the bible in that they think they can pull a statement or 2 out of context and use it to support their position and disregard everything else. If the students don't understand the most fundamental thing about scientific method, they can't possibly be any better at physics and chemistry than they are at biology and geology, yet at least one of these kids is planning to be a doctor (stay the hell away from my pancreas).

As I say, the students can't help it, as for the writer of the article, getting the facts straight is only her job! She refers to creationism as a theory, as if it had the same scientific weight as the theory of evolution. There should be a rule that no person can write about evolution until they can recite the definition of "scientific theory".

The writer goes on to say "But Darwin's explanation for why giraffes have long necks -- that they evolved over time so they could reach higher foliage -- ...failed to sway them." This is not Darwin's explanation for anything, nor does it represent any aspect of Darwinian evolution. This is the most commonly used example of Lamarck's "inheritance of aquired characteristics" where Lamarck got evolution wrong; animals don't evolve characteristics to fulfill a desire for something. Darwin's explanation would be more like -- a random genetic mutation caused part of a proto-giraffe population to have a longer neck. The longer necks allowed the animals to exploit a niche, higher foliage, where there was less competition and, as a result, reproduce so the long-neck-mutated-gene was carried into later generations -- or something like that.

I have mixed emotions about other parts of the article. Virginie Montet writes for AFP, a world news service based in France, so people all over the world will read about these creationist collegiates, that 44 to 46% of Americans believe the world is 6 to 10,000 years old, and that the Smithsonian Institute is apparently so lame that it can't present enough evidence to change the minds of the ignorant.

At the end of article Marcus Ross, who teaches at Liberty U, was quoted as saying, "The attitude is when you are a creationist you are ignorant of the facts." That's not quite true for me. I believe they are willfully ignorant; that is, they actively avoid and disregard any facts that don't fit their preconceptions, rather that analyzing all available data before reaching a conclusion.

Health Care, Tea Bags and Non Sequiturs

2010-02-24T21:54:00.000-05:00

I've been listening to some of the discussion about the health care summit that will happen in Washington tomorrow and frankly don't have high hopes. Legislators from both sides of the aisle insist that they represent the views of their constituents; the Dems insisting the health care is wanted, while the GOP insists that their constituents oppose the health care legislation. Both sides probably speak at least partial truth, but little has been said about how the voters have arrived at the views they currently hold.

It's little wonder that people are confused about health care legislation, with people on both sides trying to spin the information to make their assertions sound better. And with thousands of pages of legislation, and proposals it's inevitable that some things will be unintentionally misinterpreted. The most reprehensible activity has been from people who intentionally lied to misrepresent the facts, creating fear and mistrust where no real problems existed.

While supporters of the Democrats have done some of this, most of the blame lays at the door of the Republican supporters. Those of us whose memory extends back more than a year may remember that Republicans boasted that they would prevent any health care bills from passing just so they could call the Obama Administration ineffective and some of them stated before anything was even written that, no matter what the legislation said, they would characterize it as a government take-over of health care. They've been committing premeditated obfuscation.

Death committees, mandatory abortions, giant bureaucracies, elimination of Medicare and the like became part of the mythology spread by pundits and tea parties, until large numbers of people, including some who would benefit most from the legislation, became convinced that the opposite was true. Tea party organizers, some of them white supremacists or militant theocracy advocates, were far more interested in sewing distrust and discontent with the Obama Administration than in advocating for the benefit of anyone.

The fact is, there are tens of millions of Americans without health insurance or who have to buy it for themselves (according to an AP article, 50 million uninsured and 27 million self-insured) and they're not all deadbeats or illegal aliens. Many are self-employed or working in jobs like construction where benefits are rarely provided. Others are among the many previously financially secure people who have lost their jobs as a result of the recession. Some of them are convinced that as bad as their situation is, they would be even worse if health care legislation passed.

The time has come for those of us with health insurance to let our personal desires take a back seat and start making the health care stuff be about helping those who are in a bad situation right now. We shouldn't let people who would rather be working and children who have no control of their situation die, just because it might also benefit a welfare queen, or because it might increase the popularity of a politician you dislike.

A Thought on a Gambier Bomb Scare

2010-02-24T18:37:00.000-05:00

There was a bomb threat hoax at the Wiggin Street Elementary School in Gambier, OH on Monday according to the Mount Vernon News. Gambier, home of Kenyon College, is just east of Mount Vernon and tends to represent a more rational, secular view of mid-Ohio. That being the case, I cannot help wondering how long it will be before the MV evangelicals blame the bomb threat on secular humanism, the teaching of evolution, bigotry against Xians and the impending downfall of American morality. It just seems unlikely that they would want to miss the opportunity. I almost forgot; they'll probably blame the Obama Administration, too.

On Valentine's Day

2010-02-14T15:42:00.000-05:00

OK, today is Valentine's Day but my wife is back in Iowa providing aid and comfort to her family as her dad's Alzheimer's and general health get worse. I've never been good about getting romantic, but short of being castrated by ugly lesbians, I can't think of a much less Valentine-ish Valentine's Day, except maybe the first one.

I went looking for information about ol' St. V. but nobody seems to know much about him except that he was a martyr and his day doesn't seem to originally have had much to do with romantic love. Being killed while no one associates you with romance is probably one of the all time most crappy Valentine's Days. Some say that romance was only connected to the day after Geoffry Chaucer wrote something about it, which he probably did to hit on some comely wench.

Be that as it may, I sent my wife a (free) e-card to mark the day. The e-card wasn't very memorable because the selection is always pretty lame (I think I chose it because it had a yak), but at least it didn't cost anything. I mean, I don't mind telling my wife I love her, but give me a break, I'm not going to waste my beer money.

Actually, I'm planning to make her a gift using my wood turning and leather crafting skills. Inspired by all the pajama-gram ads, I'm thinking of knotty pine and saddle leather lingerie with rivets and splinters in all the right places.

Anyway, happy Valentine's Day to those who wish to celebrate it, happy Anti- Valentine's day to those who prefer to celebrate that, and happy dividends to those who have stock in a greeting card company.

The Case of the Black Bag; A Freshwater Boys Mystery

2010-02-12T18:18:00.001-05:00

The Freshwater fiasco has gotten even weirder with the Freshwater team's acquisition of new evidence via a scenario that sounds like it's straight from a bad detective novel; a really, really bad detective novel. The Mount Vernon News had and article, as did Dick Hoppe in Panda's Thumb (here and here) detailing a story of an anonymous voice mail that tipped Freshwater to a black bag full of evidence clandestinely removed from the school to help Freshwater's case. Uh huh.

Nothing in the whole story makes any sense to me. The items in the bag don't sound like anything that would blow this case wide open, as they say, and if the stack of papers and whistles in the bag were that important, why would the anonymous benefactor wait until the eleventh hour before passing the stuff on. Then there's that whole bit about Freshwater's Pastor Matolyak taking an armed escort while retrieving the bag, in case it was some kind of a trap.

Perhaps it makes some sense viewed through the eyes Freshwater's supporters. As I have mentioned before, some of them seem to view anyone who disagrees with them as the enemy. It's not that great a leap for them to assume that Freshwater's opponents reciprocally view the supporters as enemies. There's no evidence to support this, but one shouldn't let that stand in the way of a strong opinion. If friends of Freshwater thought that they were evading malicious enemies, they might act in the manner described.

As for the stack of papers, whistles and stopwatch contained in the black bag, if they were found at the school, it was probably a case of misplaced boxes rather than anything sinister. Some friend of Freshwater may have stumbled on the items and returned them to Freshwater anonymously because the friend didn't get permission to remove items from the school. The Board has nothing to gain by withholding evidence; that could only lead to more delays and lawsuits.

Another possibility is that the contents of the bag had been in the possession of Freshwater all along, as has been asserted by the board's attorney. If Freshwater removed these items from school, he may have eventually realized their discovery could lead to him being charged with withholding evidence. The anonymous friend would be an invention to explain how the items ended up in Freshwater's hands at this late date.

We may never know the whole truth about the source of the mysterious evidence, but, since a large part of the defense strategy has been to suggest that items in evidence have been doctored or forged, the onus is on them to demonstrate the veracity of their story and to demonstrate that the contents of the bag wasn't tempered with during the time they admit holding and examining it prior to turning it over to the police.

Ultimately, I can't imagine anything the Freshwater team could have acquired that could exonerate John Freshwater. No matter what anyone has to say about a bible, an injured student or evolution vs. intelligent design, what this hearing is actually about is whether or not the school board has just cause to fire John Freshwater. The evidence and testimony, including some very damaging testimony from the defense's own witnesses, seem to indicate that there were valid reasons for the firing.

The new evidence, whether real or concocted, is likely to merely prolong and increase the cost of the hearing and cause greater fiscal damage to the school district. I hope those involved feel it was worth it.

Scientology Is Going Up-Scale in Columbus

2010-01-18T13:54:00.000-05:00

The Columbus Dispatch had an article last Friday about the church of Scientology purchasing the old Time-Warner building on Dublin Rd to use as their new "Ideal Church of Scientology." This places them conveniently near the up-scale neighborhoods of Grandview Heights and Upper Arlington whose residents can, presumably, afford the monetary demands of participation in Scientology. I don't have any problem with this as long as they don't teach it in public schools. They can follow the teachings of a sci-fi author and ignore the fact that "fi" is short for fiction if they want.

What cracked me up was the quote from Scientology spokesperson, Frank Dean. He stated that the new church would be "an island of sanity in Columbus." Sanity? I do not think that word means what he thinks that word means. As I understand it, scientologists oppose main stream psychology and psychiatric medications. Since their religion (pretty much by the definition of religion) isn't rational, and they steer their followers away from the only proven treatments for insanity, could he have meant to say "an island FROM sanity in Columbus"?

They spent $3.2 million purchasing the property and estimate the cost of renovation at $3.5 to 4 million, but they have only raised $500,000 so far. They obviously need to sell a lot more Dianetics books, which makes me wonder what would be the effect on their recruitment if they filed for bankruptcy.

Pray or Shut Up

2010-01-07T19:57:00.000-05:00

Here's a little followup to the last post about a xian prayer gathering to support the police and firefighters. I also expressed my opinion on the Columbus Dispatch website that the event should have been more inclusive. Although I didn't indicate my beliefs other than to say I was a non-xian, a response to my comment included this little gem: "Keep your godless garbage out of this forum, you have other vents for your thoughts, go find one."

It's funny how often I get responses like this when I suggest that people other than conservatives and/or xians have a right to exist . Maybe it's my writing style that some people find irritating. Actually, as I think about it, although I've frequently been disagreed with in forums (no, really), conservative xians are the only ones who have actually told me to shut up and get off the forum.

I just now recalled when someone sent me an email that advocated supporting George W. Bush and fundy religion. I think I responded, and I'm paraphrasing here, "I'd rather eat vulture crap with broken glass." He responded by saying "That's just your opinion and it's not welcome here." I guess he should have sent a selection of acceptable responses with the email.

I think I may have mentioned before that I've noticed some people seem to feel that only people that agree with their beliefs and opinions should have a right to exist. They're not all necessarily conservative xians but they're all fundamentalists in the sense that there are things they believe wholeheartedly in spite of mountains of evidence to the contrary and their first response to any suggestion they might be wrong is rage. I kinda like getting them to tell me to shut up, but I almost never do.

"Bless the Badge"; Stopping Crime for Xians Only

2010-01-06T18:13:00.000-05:00

The Columbus Dispatch had an article today entitled, "Crime Stoppers organizes 'Bless the Badge' prayer service," where three local pastors led about 75 in prayers to bless local law enforcement officers and firefighters. The event was scheduled to fall on the anniversary of the death of Columbus Police Officer Bryan Hurst so that he might be memorialized at the same time.

I'm all in favor of doing everything possible to support law enforcement and firefighters, but I don't see the point of this prayer service at all. To me, the event seems like about 75 people gathered in a room to talk to themselves about police and firefighters. Except to make those gathered feel good and the subsequent article which lets law and fire persons know that some people are thinking nice things about them, I don't see that the service has any effect on anything at all. I mean, this gathering doesn't raise any money, or organize a neighborhood watch, or provide any protection from harm (since god always answers prayers, but sometimes he answers "no"), so the whole event, pretty much, is just a Christian publicity stunt.

My next question is; why is Crime Stoppers organizing a Christian event? I can find nothing on their website that indicates that the organization has a religious affiliation or sponsorship, so why are they organizing an event that stops no crimes and alienates everyone in the community that is a non-christian? Has no one ever called in a tip to inform them that other religions and beliefs exist in Ohio or are they like the conservative evangelicals who believe all non-christians are the evil enemy?

A lot of us infidels would like to be involved in a gathering that showed support for these brave public servants and we'd like to be able to honor our fallen heroes, but we don't think we should have to have a gathering separate from the Xians and we don't think our participation should be contingent on our willingness to engage in the religious ceremonies of a belief system other than our own. Crime Stoppers is supposed to be about the whole community and they might want to start be ending their own participation in the crime of religious bigotry.

Is Freshwater Losing Supporters?

2010-01-05T16:44:00.000-05:00

I've kinda been hanging back and watching the reactions in the news and blogs to the most recent days of the John Freshwater hearing. Of the news coverage, the articles in the Mount Vernon News by Pamela Schehl provide the most detailed information and are available here and here, although the Columbus Dispatch articles by Dean Narciso, here and here, are also quite informative. Most importantly, now that the MVSB's lawyer is questioning Freshwater directly, it is becoming increasingly clear that Freshwater's testimony has major inconsistencies and that he is being very evasive about answering the questions.

Comments to the articles reflect that an increasing number of people have determined that Freshwater's pants are on fire. Comments for previous articles consisted of little more than proponents and opponents hurling insults at each other, but, with these latest articles, which quote the actual testimony, a larger number of self-identified Christians are reaching the conclusion that A) Freshwater is guilty, and B) that he is not a good Christian either. It's refreshing to see comments from Xians who, at least in this case, say that lying for god is as immoral as other lies.

A lot of blogs with an anti-creationist leaning have recently discovered the hearing and are reporting on it, although in some cases, they seem to be relying on 1 1/2 year old information. What the heck. At least they got here in time catch the finale.

The blogs I was trying to watch most closely are the ones that support Freshwater. Some of these were actually set up specifically to follow the hearing and most indicate support of teaching creationism in school as well as most of the other conservative Xian crackpottery. I was anxious to see how the blogs would deal with Freshwater's testimony a few weeks ago when he denied ever teaching creationism in his science classes and insisted that he was opposed to the teaching of creationism. The bloggers dealt with it as they would most scientific evidence; they ignored it.

The pro-Freshwater bloggers (does that make me a pro-saltwater blogger?) prefer to quote Freshwater's testimony where he insists he never did anything wrong and to promote the idea that he was the innocent victim of an evil conspiracy. I thought the description on the header of agoodchoice.blogspot.com pretty well summarized the viewpoint of a lot of these supporters; " America is in the midst of a raging cultural and spiritual war. Forces of Good, Light, Conservatism and a Judeo-Christian Worldview daily battle the forces of Evil, Darkness, Socialism and False Religions and Philosophies. A Good Choice is on the frontlines exposing evil across America’s political and social spectrum." Um, OK, that sure sounds like a fair and balanced perspective to me. Sign me up in the evil column, please.

In general, it would seem that more and more people are reaching the conclusion that the Mount Vernon School Board had valid reasons for firing John Freshwater and that it was always his plan to lie his ass off if it was necessary in order to win. I can't help wondering what will happen as more Mount Vernon residents realise that Freshwater knew he was guilty of at least some of the reasons for his firing and yet chose to insist on a hearing that has cost the taxpayers half-a-million dollars so far, just so he could gamble that he could outsmart the school board. At least his closed-minded agree-with-me-or-die friends will stand by him.

About Christmas

2009-12-24T20:31:00.000-05:00

It's Christmas Eve and my wife read me a post from a forum she follows. A woman wrote that she didn't know why atheists would celebrate Xmas except, maybe, for the presents. My cool wife responded that she did indeed do it for the presents; she loves making and giving them.

I really love Xmas and I don't care whether Jesus was perceived as a deity, or whether he was a religious leader, or whether he was just a composite of several 1st cen. messianic types. I gladly take the day off and enjoy the time on Martin Luther King Day and Presidents' Day and I enjoy the green beer on St. Patrick's Day without once thinking of any of them as my god and savior.

I often read Xian writers who assume that unless one buys into the Jesus mythology, that they cannot, or perhaps, should not enjoy any aspect of the celebration. For one thing, many assume any reference to Jesus in song or activity would be an irritant that atheists would try hard to avoid, I think that's because so many Xians assume that atheists hate their religion when, in fact it's just that we don't believe any of it. So, they probably think we are tolerating unpleasant experiences just to get to the cookies and presents.

I will assure the Xians that the lights are just as pretty, the music is just as melodious, the people are just as generous and joyful, and the warm feeling one gets from giving is just as warm if you don't believe in the divinity of the birthday boy.

To everyone who reads this; happy holidays, whichever holidays you choose to celebrate. For those who don't understand, if you see me smiling, singing carols, generally enjoying the season, it's because I sincerely love everything about Xmas except the parts about Jesus being a deity. It doesn't mean that I'm faking it for the treats and it doesn't mean I've become a Xian again.

The Shroud: Shrouded in Mystery

2009-12-19T16:05:00.000-05:00

By an interesting coincidence, I read an article yesterday in Discovery News about a burial shroud found recently in a 1st cen. tomb in Jerusalem that is very dissimilar to the shroud of Turin. Then, today, I watched an episode of "Mysteries of the Bible" on the National Geographic Channel that was on the subject of the Shroud of Turin. Then in yet another coincidence, I started thinking about shows and articles about the shroud of Turin.

The discussion of the famous shroud is, not surprisingly, very polarized, with commentators frequently saying either it is a medieval fake or it is proof of the resurrection of Jesus. Rarely have I heard anyone discuss any possible interpretations between these two extremes.

I'll say up front that I lean more toward thinking it is a medieval fake (probably not a big surprise to anyone) but I would also point out other interpretations. For instance, one book I've read (I'm sorry I can remember neither the title nor the author) suggested that it is a burial shroud of a 14th cen. man tortured to death in an imitation of Jesus' crucifixion. The author even referenced an article about postmortem occurrences that account for the creation of the image on the cloth. This brings me to my main rant.

Even if one could prove that the Shroud of Turin is a 1st cen. shroud from Jerusalem, it does not prove that the image on the shroud is that of Jesus. Hardly anyone has suggested in their discussions that this image might be of someone else. Who is to say that this is not the shroud of Smelly Joe of Jerusalem whose extreme body odor caused permanent damage to all his clothing?

Proponents of the religious relic view point to the evidence of injuries consistent with the descriptions of the crucifixion in the bible (off the subject: does anyone else think it's funny that bible is pronounced "buy bull"?) but we have no way of knowing whether Jesus' treatment was unique or whether lots of people received similar treatment. The Roman soldiers might have been giving him torture package #7, especially since they seem to have had robes and thorny crowns conveniently at hand.

Likewise, the opponents of the relic view rarely consider that the shroud might not be an intentional counterfeit and they therefore may be overlooking some processes of decomposition or chemical action that may be serendipitously useful in a modern application. While this kind of scientific scrutiny would probably be the most beneficial use of the cloth, the odds of prying it out of the hands of the Catholic church long enough to do tests are pretty slim.

Meanwhile, for the faithful the less scrutiny the shroud receives, the better it is for them. Since Jesus' existence has never really been proven, positively identifying the man depicted on the cloth could be catastrophic, although like all inconvenient truths, most likely they would just deny it anyway. Still, the thought that maybe we should really be celebrating Smellyjoemas on Friday is pretty funny to me.

God Loves Copyright Infringement

2009-12-18T21:37:00.000-05:00

What do you do if you want to attract young people to Xianity with references to pop culture? You break copyright laws. This artcle talks about Xian stores that sell shirts and things that take popular corporate logos and change them subtly to a Xian message, like, for instance, taking an Abercrombie & Fitch logo and changing the words to "Abreadcrumb & Fish."

Jay Reeves, the author of the article asked a manufacturer of Xian gifts about this practice and the manufacturer assured him that if the owner of the copyright wrote to ask them to cut it out, the manufacturer would stop production. Isn't that nice? I always thought that one of the 10 commandments said "Thou shalt not steal," but apparently it says "Thou shalt stop stealing after the victim finds out." It's just us heathens that believe stealing is wrong.

Needling Your Kids?

2009-12-18T19:38:00.000-05:00

The good news is; the boy is recovering from surgery and will be all right as long as he avoids magnets. The bad news is that he's a two-year old whose step-father shoved between 30 and 50 "blessed" sewing needles into his body and only the 4 most life-threatening needles have been removed so far.

A news article from AP tells of a Brazilian man who shoved needles into the body of his stepson during a month-long series of rituals wherein the man's lover would enter a trance and then direct the insertion of the needles. The lover had supposedly had the needles blessed by a woman connected with the Afro-Brazilian religion of Candomble and told the step-father that these rituals would allow them to be together.

Maybe I'm just too cynical, but I can't imagine agreeing to any of this, no matter how good a lover this lover was. I mean, if my girlfriend came over, went into a trance and started giving me instructions, even if it was something like making pickle-loaf sandwiches, I'm pretty sure that would be the minute that she became an ex-girlfriend. She'd never get the chance to explain why she had a shopping bag full of needles.

Then, who could listen to a person, with or without an altered state of consciousness, give instructions to stick needles in a toddler, and it doesn't have to be a step-son, even if you found a stray 2 year old by the side of the road and brought him home, wouldn't you get a weird feeling that somehow that plan was flawed. Seriously, I'd have trouble sticking a needle in a toad from the back yard; visualizing a sharp needle in close proximity to a helpless little child sends my stomach into gymnastics.

The bumper sticker says something like; People who believe absurdities can be made to commit atrocities. Or as apostates of fundamentalism have said; when they believe their religious leaders, they follow orders without question, they don't have to analyze the instructions or feel any personal responsibility. They're just a tool of the religion. Those horrible Brazilians just took it to the next level.

A girlfriend in a trance isn't responsible for what she says. She's just a conduit for a (higher?) power. The step-father isn't responsible because he's just following orders and he's using "blessed" needles that have magical properties. The baby is the only rational one of the bunch. It just goes to show how much it can suck to be in the care of believers in absurdities, but on the other hand, it shows there are worse things than threatening children with an imaginary hell.

Freshwater Defense Rests, Finally

2009-12-12T10:14:00.000-05:00

The defense rested in the Freshwater hearing after giving John Freshwater the opportunity to tell the "truth" about the circumstances of his firing. The Mount Vernon News has an article detailing the testimony wherein Freshwater denied any wrongdoing and asserted that the school board's case was based on misunderstandings, misinterpretations and big fat lies. Furthermore, he has never, and would never teach creationism in the classroom.

Now, I could either believe that Freshwater has been the innocent victim of a conspiracy to destroy his career, or I could believe that his pants are in dire need of a fire extinguisher. Let me review.

If Freshwater is innocent, investigators of good reputation from a respected company are incompetent to do the job for which they were hired. The school board suddenly decided to pick one popular teacher with 20-some years of service out of the entire school system to fire for no reason. All of the witnesses whose testimony supported the school board's case, including some defense witnesses who did so unintentionally, were either mistaken or lying. Also, all of the items entered as evidence were modified to look incriminating or were misrepresented (Freshwater testified that the creationist handouts were negative examples, used to represent bad science).

The whole hullabaloo about religious freedom and and freedom of speech that rallied supporters and polarized the town must likewise have been a big misunderstanding. It is obvious that the majority of people supporting Freshwater were evangelical Xians who advocate for prayer in school, creationism in science class, and generally relegating that whole separation of church and state thing to the garbage disposal. They must have been shocked and disappointed to learn last week that the man they have been supporting with fundraising, websites and rallies is, in fact, opposed to their views on Xian influence in public school and has argued against creationism in science class.

The other possibility is that a boy really did get his arm burned as photos and witnesses suggest and that Freshwater denied, evaded, and destroyed evidence to avoid punishment. It may be true that Freshwater had religious displays and taught creationism in his classroom as handouts, posters, records of complaints (dating back many years), and testimony of many witnesses would suggest and that he felt entitled to evangelise and impose his beliefs on his students in spite of rules and laws to the contrary. Then, when he and his lawyer saw the accumulation of evidence against him, he chose to lie his ass off under oath and throw all the people, who have supported him through the whole ordeal, under the bus to save his own skin. I sure do wonder which version is true.

Conservative Bible Projection

2009-12-03T21:13:00.000-05:00

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but some Xian conservatives, the kind of folks whom I have most often heard calling the Bible “the unalterable word of god”, have decided that the word of god needs alteration. According to an AP article, Andy Schlafly, the founder of conservapedia.com and son of Phyllis Schafly (demonstrating, that like apples, nuts don’t fall far from the tree), has decided that liberals have tainted the translations of the bible. He has, therefore, decided that the word of god requires editing to bring it more into line with conservative views of the world.

Schafly and his conservative wiki-buddies have decided that the translators of the bible are college professors, and because they think all college professors are ultra-liberal, then all the bible translations have a liberal bias and need fixing. They, for example, insist that, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." should be deleted from the Gospel of Luke because it doesn’t appear in some early versions and because that quote is very popular with liberals.

Anyway, they probably want Jesus to be less Allan Alda and more Chuck Norris and maybe Moses could be a little more like Dick Cheney. The Sermon on the Mount should probably say the republicans will inherit the earth and Revelations should specifically say that democrats, gays, and atheists will get the worst punishments. Most importantly, the bible needs to affirm that whatever 21st cen. conservative Xians believe is indisputably right and anyone who disagrees will be doomed to hell.

What this silly editing exercise really indicates is that many modern Xians don’t care what lessons the bible was intended to teach and have no intention of modifying their own behavior to more closely follow those lessons. It is far more important that conservative Xians be able to make the bible appear to condone their current behavior. They might as well come right out and admit that they’re just making this stuff up as they go along and any correlation to any religious text is purely coincidental.

Impeach Who for What?

2009-11-22T19:49:00.000-05:00

Driving through a nearby town, I passed a house where the owner frequently expresses his opinions on signs in his front yard. Today he had a sign that read "Impeach Obama". I'm not that knowledgeable about legal stuff, but I was pretty sure that one had to break a law before they could be impeached.

This reminds me a little of when Clinton was elected president. Conservative critics always insisted that they weren't conspiring against him, but they never explained why there were "Impeach Clinton" bumper-stickers everywhere even before Clinton had taken the oath of office. Had they had a premonition of future perjury?

I think some folks view presidential policy decisions that they disagree with as illegal acts, and right now some conservative pundits are doing their best to convince their fans that the presidential policies are disagreeable, even if they have to stretch the truth to the breaking point to accomplish it.

If more of the American people would (or is it could?) learn that being told what they want to believe isn't the same as getting the facts, then they might start focusing their outrage on reality, and actually accomplish something. Then the guy with signs in his front yard could go back to protesting the local egg farm.

Defending Freshwater Badly

2009-11-22T17:26:00.000-05:00

Today's Mansfield (OH) News Journal contained an editorial accusing the Mount Vernon School Board of singling out John Freshwater for punishment just because he's a good Xian. The editorial, written by Marvin Gassman of nearby Fredericktown, is a collection of the standard evangelical rationalizations for trying to force their religion on public school students; Xians are the majority, their rights of freedom of speech and religion are being violated, the bad guys are trying to eliminate Christianity, blah blah blah. In other words, the fundies should have all the rights and everyone else can literally and figuratively go to hell.

More incongruous is the assertion that although he (Gassman) has been at the hearing every day, he says he's seen no provable evidence that Freshwater has done anything wrong. I suppose if one is predisposed to thinking that proselytising in public schools is doing things right, and that anyone accusing a "Good Christian" of wrong-doing must automatically be a lying bad person, then Gassman's view makes sense. It's almost as if the editorial was written by a fundy preacher, and, son of a gun, it turns out Marvin Gassman is the pastor of the Morrow Bible Church.

The most gratifying thing about Gassman's editorial is that, at this time, all the comments disagree with the article and support the teaching of science without religious views attached. Maybe people are beginning to catch on to the fact that the insertion of religion into science classes is detrimental, as is any teacher who insists on inserting his religion.

News Flash: Congressman Does His Job

2009-11-09T18:04:00.000-05:00

All over the news this morning were stories about Representative Anh Cao, the lone Republican who voted for the Healthcare Bill in the House. His reason for voting in favor of the bill was that a large percentage of his constituency in New Orleans, LA are without health insurance and he felt this is what the voters wanted. Imagine that! It's become so rare that a Representative actually tries to represent what the voters in his congressional district want, that it's big news.

With all the political posturing, back-room strategising, kowtowing to special interests, and trying to embarrass the President, one Republican actually listened to the people who voted for him to represent them in Washington and voted accordingly. I don't actually know the motivations of the other reps. in their voting, but I do know that there has been damn little talk over the last few months about what the voters really want.

Any more that seems to be business as usual in Washington DC. During the campaign season the politicians all pay lip service to the needs of the voters, but once they're back in Congress all they care about is increasing their political power, raising more money, and trying to get reelected. They frequently have an open door to lobbyists or persons with a fist full of money, while voters from their district are lucky to get face time with one of their aides.

Maybe your rep. voted the way you wanted on healthcare, and if you are typical of most of the people in your area, that's great. Still, it's always good to remember that members of the House of Representatives are supposed to represent what their constituents want, not what their party leaders want, not what big corporate donors want, not even what they personally want. So, we all need to keep tally of the way our congress-persons vote and, when possible, note their motivations and if they don't seem to be doing the job we hired them to do, it might be a good idea to remind them that they are never more than two years from the next election are we're all paying close attention. If we all keep track, and use the power of the vote to keep these folks working for us, then a rep. voting for what the constituents want might be business as usual rather than front page news.

Celibate Marriage Experts?

2009-11-08T11:02:00.000-05:00

According to an article in the "Faith and Values" section of the Columbus Dispatch, Bishop R. Daniel Conlon is advocating a renewed effort by Priests to support faith based marriage. To that end, hundreds of priest have gathered at a hotel in Columbus, OH this weekend to increase their education and enthusiasm for supporting the institution of marriage.

The Bishop felt compelled to do this because he sees more threats to traditional marriage than ever before, probably because when Xians feel threatened, they always seem to see more threats than ever before in spite of any evidence to the contrary. Although divorce and cohabitation are mentioned, I'm pretty sure it's gay marriage initiatives that are freaking him out. It's also clear that the Bishop perceives a "traditional" marriage as one Xian man + one Xian woman (preferably of the same denomination) wed in a Xian church by a priest (or a man of the cloth of of another title).

I have a few problems with this (as if you hadn't guessed). First, why would you take marriage advice from someone who's never been married? That's kind of like taking flying lessons from someone who's never been in a plane.

Second, traditional marriage is not unique to Christianity or even the Abrahamic religions. Marriages are found all over the world, including societies that have never heard of a bible. "We have to teach what we know to be God's truth about marriage, perhaps in a more forceful way than we have," Bishop Conlon said. That would be fine if he confined himself to his Catholic flock, but that's not what he said. The jurisdiction of bishops and priests is their cathedrals and churches, beyond that constituency people shouldn't have to be subjected to the mythology called "God's truth".

Third, sometimes divorce, cohabitation, and even same-sex marriage can be the right answer. Rigid dogma and the threats of social isolation and eternal damnation have trapped people in abusive relationships and forced people apart who should be together. If the clergy wants to insist that certain rules must be followed or the offending person must leave the church and if they wish to advise that person that they believe such-and-so will happen after they die, that's their prerogative. It's not appropriate to call their unprovable beliefs "truth", or to insist that a person doesn't have the free will to change to different beliefs, and it is never appropriate to insist that a general public, with guaranteed freedom of religion, should be subjected to their dogma codified into civil law.

So if all the Catholic clergy that visited Columbus want to go home and tell their congregations that that they should only marry if their pretty sure they can stay together "till death do us part", or if you want to send same-sex couples away to get married elsewhere, or if they want to tell persons that they cannot be a church member unless they follow certain rules, that's their job, and best of luck. However, when the clergyman steps out onto the public street, his authority ends and everyone should be free to believe what they want, and participate in marriage according to their own rules, as long as it doesn't break the civil laws.

Amelia; Casualty in War on Xmas

2009-11-05T19:26:00.000-05:00

Amelia, OH has had a Christmas parade for the last several decades which, apparently, was sponsored by the Amelia Business Association, but this year the sponsor backed out because they couldn't get enough volunteers. The village council decided that was no problemo; the council would just sponsor the parade. The village solicitor, however, did see a problemo; using village money to sponsor a parade for a Xian holiday could make the village vulnerable to separation of church and state law suits. The village council said they'd solve that by calling it the Holiday Parade.

You might have thought that all the obstructions to the parade had been cleared. Enter the church people. If the parade wasn't going to be named after the birth of Christ, they didn't want to play, because, nothing makes people think about the Son of God like marching bands and floats. Unfortunately for parade fans, church parking lots were the staging areas at the start and end of the parade and those churches were saying; no Jesus, no parking lots.

As if that weren't enough heart burn for Amelia, Catholic League President, Bill Donohue saw an opportunity to escalate the animosity by declaring that this was part of "the War on Christmas" saying, “Make no mistake about it: The declared enemy of these cultural fascists is religious speech, and they will stop at nothing to censor it."

I don't want to suggest that Bill Donohue is an hysterical rabble-rouser who perceives anyone whose opinions differ from his narrow-minded views as a member of some great conspiracy to destroy the planet, because I'd be belaboring the obvious.
Also, I have never seen any evidence of any cultural fascists (look fascist up in the dictionary, Bill) whose declared enemy is religious speech, especially since in order to have a declared enemy, someone has to make a declaration (Anybody got a copy of that? Didn't think so).

What this hullabaloo is really all about is a village solicitor knew that there are laws that prevent a civil government from financing or advocating for a specific religion. It was a non-issue when the sponsors were private business persons, but a village council is subject to different rules. That the government of Amelia chose to abide by the laws should be applauded rather than vilified.

The churches that are angry about this don't want to admit that the laws exist and think that the opinions of church people should trump secular laws they don't like (because church people are always right and anyone who thinks differently is an evil anti-Christian, as well you know). Furthermore, the church people are not intimidated by the threat of law suits since the non-tax-paying churches aren't going to lose any money. The churches get a public venue to pontificate about their views and it's the taxpayers' money that disappears when the village is bankrupted.

This was a secular parade, not a religious procession and the outrage of the local churches is a ridiculous and egocentric overreaction, as is the so called War on Xmas. The truth is that the War on Xmas is really a war on all non-Xian beliefs. The goal is to support the Xian holiday while suppressing the acknowledgement of any other group's holiday that occurs around the same time.

Donohue noted that a "Holiday Parade" didn't point out which holiday was being celebrated which he sees as hypocritical since (in his tiny world) Xmas is the only holiday of relevance. The local church people may know how to google and therefore realize that Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, and other religions and cultural groups (including the odious Wicca) have holidays in December. They probably fear that a generic holiday name might imply to some that tacit approval has been given to the tolerance of all those "false" beliefs. Perhaps the "Ignorant and Bigoted Fundamentalist Holiday of the Only True Belief Parade" would be acceptable to them, although the parade would undoubtedly have lots of scary clowns.

Halloween, or Not

2009-10-31T12:38:00.000-04:00

It's Halloween and for me the scariest thing about today is how much money one must spend on candy to keep up with the demand in our town. Being a rural village, families come into our town from the hinterland to go trick-or-treating and we've had over 300 visitors in 1 and a half hours, but it's great for the kids having a nice safe environment in which to celebrate. I'm always a little curious, however, about how many local kids must be sitting at home unable to participate because their parents are evangelical Xians.

If you've been reading my posts (of course you have) or following the Freshwater hearing going on (well, off and on) a few miles up the road from me, you're aware that there is a large fundy population around here, and I've heard local parents express concerns about participating in a "satanic" holiday. So, there must be some especially paranoid Xians trying to shelter their kids from evil while making mental notes of which neighbors have devil-worship decorations (like inflatable ghosts or fake cemeteries) or dress their kids like witches or devils (because, if you dress like a witch, you either are or want to be a witch). Maybe the number of non-celebrants is lower here because the trick-or-treat activity is such a long-standing tradition in our town it seems more benign.

I first encountered fundyhalloweenophobia when I worked at a living history village. We put together programs for school groups to let them participate in 19th cen. style holiday celebrations but got requests from group leaders that the students not participate in our Halloween activities. I wasn't too surprised since many of our groups were of Xian home-schoolers, but it was irritating that apparently they not only didn't celebrate Halloween, they weren't even to learn that it was celebrated 150 years ago.

Our Halloween public evening programs sometimes drew complaints as well; some didn't like the fortune tellers or the ghosts or anything else they could find offence at. One incident stands out in my memory; we had a black woman that told traditional ghost stories in one of the houses. To add to the drama she had confederates who would scream or bang a door or make other noises at appropriate cues. One family, after visiting this story teller, complained to the organizers that Voodoo was being practiced in that house and they wanted it stopped! We'd scored a twofer; religious bigotry and racial bigotry at the same time. Of course she was shut down lest bigots stop buying tickets.

I suppose the most important thing is lots of kids get to enjoy a safe, fun Halloween that will leave them with many happy memories and if some chose not to participate, there's more candy for the rest of us. Have a fun Halloween and ,if you get a cut or something, wipe off the blood quickly so your neighbors don't suspect you of sacrificing a baby.

Could I Have an Opinionless Cashier, Please

2009-10-28T18:02:00.000-04:00

This article in Yahoo News about a Home Depot employee who was fired for refusing to remove a pin from his apron that read "One nation under God" reminded me of some of the discussions I had with co-workers when I worked at a Home Depot. I worked at a store in Ohio when Bill O'Reilly started his big campaign to try to force retail stores to greet customers with "Merry Christmas" rather than something more generic like "Season's Greeting".

There were some staunch fundie employees who were convinced that a generic greeting was, at best, political correctness run amok, or at worst, an atheist conspiracy to wipe all references to Christianity out of the US. Efforts to make the fundies understand that a generic greeting was more inclusive and less likely to offend non-Xian customers was responded to with "Jesus is the reason for the season!" and similar cliches. Their insistence that Xmas was the only holiday that needed to be acknowledged was especially absurd that year because Dec. 25th was also the first day of Hanukkah.

What my co-workers and the guy in Florida could not wrap their minds around is that they don't have the right to advocate their own beliefs when they are being paid to reflect the policies of their employers and when their customers perceive them at representing their employers' views. Furthermore, others have the right to expect as much respect for their beliefs as the Xians demand for their own, and that people of other beliefs have as much right to be offended by a store representative advocating for Christianity exclusively (or theism in the case of the Floridian) as the Xian would be if the rep appeared to be promoting Wicca. The sense of entitlement among some Xians is so ingrained that conceptualizing other beliefs as having equal value would probably cause a brain aneurysm.

I think most US Xians, but especially fundamentalist, are so conditioned to unquestioningly accept what they've been told in church that they just cannot force their atrophied brain cells to think outside the little church-shaped box. People in the US with other beliefs don't have the luxury of such rigid thought because they are constantly bombarded with the message they are members of a lower class. Why else would something as innocuous as the phrase "There might not be a god" cause paroxysms of rage, or the mention of the proposed construction of a mosque or Buddhist temple in a neighborhood result in picketing, vandalism and threats of violence?

I can't imagine a life where I was dependent on someone else to tell me my opinions, especially if I was expected to believe that those opinions were facts, but it obviously has a strong appeal to a large number of Americans. I guess it's up to those of us with less impaired powers of cognition to keep chipping away at Xian cerebral concretions until, if they still don't understand, they might at least come to accept the fact that tolerance is the rule. Also, if someone proposed a law requiring periodic dope slaps for fundies, I'd support that.

S. C. Talking Secession Again

2009-10-24T21:05:00.000-04:00

OK, it's just the Episcopal Church of South Carolina that wants to distance itself, but not completely divorce itself, from the national church. The S. C. Diocese doesn't like the way the national church has allowed Gay bishops in the church or their tolerance of same sex unions.

At least the S. C. Episcopals are remaining consistent with the state's historic level of tolerance for minority groups, and bigotry is really what this is all about. Although those opposed to rights for GLBT folk have always supported their position with scripture, it's often pointed out that the same oppossers are more than happy to disregard any scripture that forbids something they like (shrimp cocktail, any one?) and the signs of simple bigotry are obvious.

When there is irrational hatred of a group there is a constantly moving target that must be hit by that group for acceptance. For GLBT's, they were criticised for being out of the mainstream, so they demonstrated their value in all sorts of occupations. Then the target moved. They were told they were too promiscuous in their private lives, so they made people aware that they were settled in long term monogamous relationships. So, the target moved again. The bigots insist their relationships are a mockery of real marriage; and on and on it goes.

History has many examples of this moving target treatment, with Blacks, Native Americans, religious minorities as a few examples. Some people just seem to need a group or groups to hate. The hatred never completely goes away but when a group can no longer be attacked in polite society, one can watch the bigots test the waters by attacking different groups until they find one for whom they can show intolerance without social repercussions. Gays are a great choice, because if you defend the gays, you can be accused of being a bad Xian.

Since a fair percentage of people seem to live to hate others, there will always be victims of bigotry in this country, but if we could convince South Carolina to secede again, then quickly fence them off before they can change their minds, it just might send a message to the rest of the country; if you want to advocate intolerance in the name of an entire state, there can be some very negative consequences.

Slides from my Vacation

2009-10-11T19:21:00.000-04:00

Is this proof that the Christians are right?

What do they want to know? Spend my spare change? my free weekends? my momentum? What?

Actually, my wife and I laugh at these signs every time we pass them going west on I70. The people who put up these signs must think they are converting drivers to Christianity. We imagine the sign-posters visualizing drivers noticing the sign, slapping their foreheads and crying out, "Wow! Jesus and Heaven! I never thought of that before! I gotta get me some of that Christianity right now!" Call me a cynic, but I don't think that happens very often.

How to Shoot Yourself in the Foot

2009-10-04T11:15:00.000-04:00

I'm supposed to be packing for a trip to the inlaws' house, so I decided to goof off at the computer instead. Don't get me wrong, I love my mother and father-in-law, but my father-in-law has alzheimers as did my father for the last few years of his life. These men were 2 of the best examples, for me, of what Christians should be; moral, loving, generous men who gave a great deal of time to their churches and communities. They got one hell of a reward for years of faithful service.

An even more graphic example, from my wife's family, is what happened when her maternal grandfather died, survived by a maternal grandmother with alzheimers. Grandma, who lived with them, would, at least once a day, ask where her husband was, and my wife's mom had to explain that he had died, forcing both of them to grieve over his death again and again.

Most Christians, and people of all religions, dedicate great big chunks of their lives to trying to follow the rules in hopes of a reward and fear of punishment, but way too many end up spending their final years in agony. Meanwhile, at least in the US, their efforts to follow the rules of their religion include hamstringing any efforts to solve the problems they face. Organized efforts, especially in the name of Christianity, try to suppress and subvert education, science, and their applications.

Until we can convince these folks that education and scientific research are not biased against them, they'll keep protesting against misunderstood facts being taught in school, they'll continue to view scientific research only as potential for immoral acts, and they'll continue to elect representatives that can't understand that funding fruit fly research IS funding cancer research.

The dogma of religious groups, seem to make them their own worst enemies, and maybe it wouldn't bother me as much if they were only shooting themselves in the feet. They however keep bringing out the blunderbusses and insisting that everyone have a share in the bullet wounds. They can rationalize this by saying, "sure I've got massive trauma in my lower limbs, but my reward's in heaven.", but, to belabor the analogy, they're mostly going around with bandages and crutches for fear that something worse than cancer and alzheimers is awaiting them if they don't subject themselves and everyone around them to unnecessary suffering in this life. You could say Hieronymus Bosch's paintings of hell are why cancer hasn't been cured.

The Christian Grip on Our Schools

2009-10-01T16:24:00.000-04:00

John Freshwater was back in the news this week because the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that R. Kelly Hamilton, Freshwater's attorney, could not force members of the Mount Vernon School Board to testify at the hearing. The comments on the above linked article are a fair indication of the local views about the hearing except, this article having been printed in the Columbus paper, the number of comments supporting Freshwater are probably much fewer , and maybe a little less subjective, that if the comments had all come from the Mount Vernon area (but more numerous and subjective that most of Earth, I'll bet).

Mean while, the Christian Post had a couple of articles about the interaction of public schools and religion. I know I shouldn't go to the Xian home turf for material. It's unsportsmanlike, but sometimes I just need a laugh or to induce a headache when the aspirin's near its expiration date. Anyway, the first aricle was about the heart-break of having to tell public high school cheerleaders in Georgia that they could no longer display their banners with bible quotes at football games. The other article was about how 350 (I'm guessing public) schools in 43 states are offering courses in the bible (and I'm betting zero schools teaching the Koran or Rig-Veda. Any takers?). Texas has the most schools offering bible classes and #2 is (drum-roll) Georgia!

Comments supporting the cheerleaders' banners and the classes tend toward the "majority rules" rationale for perpetuating Xian bias in public schools, completely missing the point that the 1st Amendment's intent was to protect the rights of the minority groups against suppression by the majority. Also it is suggested that those on the other side of the issues are probably mean, immoral Xian-haters (and probably commie homo baby eaters). It is just like the way the atheist Muslims in Washington are taking away all their rights and destroying America. In summary; They're right and anyone who disagrees is the enemy. Most of these people couldn't shift a paradigm if it came with an automatic transmission and a copilot.

I'm sorry, I got a little off track there. My original intention was make early thoughts flow seamlessly into the next point I wanted to make (It could've happened. Oh yes it could. Could too. Could too! Could too infinity!). All right here comes the seamless part. Comments always seemed to express the problem as "keeping religion out of the classroom." It's like some book stores I've been in where the Religion section contains only books about Christianity and if you want a book about another religion, you have to look in the Philosophy section. It's not about keeping religion out of the classroom, it's about keeping A Religion and the blatant bias toward it, to the exclusion of all other beliefs, out of the classroom.

The problem in all these examples is that a protestant Xian majority has had a privleged place in American society for a long time and they have come to believe that it is part of the design of the US government and therefore anyone who suggests that a different belief is guarenteed equal treatment under the law is viewed as anti-America and therefore a legitimate target for their righteous hatred. I can only hope that continued court cases and public demands for equal treatment for all will slowly eat away at the strength of the intolerants until the vast majority of Americans see the obsurdity of their position and realize how ridiculous it is to support people like Huckabee and Palin who try to turn every political move into an evangelical sermon. Or maybe we could start by putting "kick me" signs on all their backs.

When the Hell Did Psychotic Become a Political Party?

2009-09-29T21:07:00.000-04:00

I’m not sure when paranoid psychosis became a legitimate voting bloc, but after reading more details about the How To Take Back America Conference, I’m pretty sure opposing drug use in the 1960’s must have caused brain damage. How the hell did so many people get so disconnected from reality and why are they so damn proud of it?

Granted, most of them are the same people who think the Adam’s family fed carrots to velociraptors until Eve started chatting up a tree snake (Go figure! You couldn’t swing a dead cat in Eden without hitting a friendly reptile and she managed find the only one with a hidden agenda!), but still, how can anyone seriously think that any US President could simultaneously turn the nation into Nazi Germany AND the Soviet Union? And how could that be one of the sanest things discussed at the conference?

Michelle Bachman, the goddess of truth and rationality (on Planet Wackoloonie) addressed the group. I don’t know what she said, but even if I had heard her, I doubt I would know what the hell she was talking about. The fact she was invited to speak is sufficient evidence that these people are out of their freaking minds.

Phyllis Schlafley, the woman who eschewed traditional female roles to make a career out of demonizing women that eschew traditional female roles, told a packed house “…that the feminist movement is the most dangerous, destructive force in our society today.” [...] I’m talking about drugs, sex, illegitimacy, drop outs, poor grades, run away, suicide, you name it, every social ill comes out of the fatherless home. Oddly enough, she seems not to have provided any statistical evidence to support her statements, but I suppose info from such a credible source stands on its own merits. Afterwards, Mike Huckabee presented her with the “American Hero of the Century” award. It wasn’t stated for which century the award was given, but I’m guessing the 17th.

Other highlights of the conference were calls to reclaim all the civil rights that have been taken away from upper-middle-class white protestants (WTF?), calls to be ready for armed insurrection against the legitimately elected government if they try to take over the legitimately elected government, and calls to fight to insure freedom of religion, as long as that religion is evangelical Xian and that those rights include suppression of all other beliefs, by violence if necessary (or if no one gets caught doing the violence, because the Prince of Peace hates it when righteous Xians go to prison for murder and stuff).

On the one hand I think a golden opportunity was missed during the conference to build a big fence around the whole bunch for the protection of the human race. On the other hand I think it’s nice that all these people got a weekend off from their normal routine of electro-shock therapy and straitjackets.

Ray Comfort and the Origin of the Feces

2009-09-25T21:17:00.000-04:00

First, let me say that if you take information and intentionally misrepresent it, you are a liar. If you have others point out where your assertions are wrong (on national TV), but you continue to repeat your lies anyway, you’re also a hypocrite. If, in addition to that, you call those who have demonstrated that you lied, immoral, ignorant liars, and you claim moral superiority for yourself, you are an evil, sociopathic scumbag, Ray Comfort.

I just read the 50 page introduction that Ray Comfort has added to “The Origin of the Species” in the editions that he is donating to Universities. He is doing this, in part because he says he has learned that up to 60% of psychology and biology professors in major universities don’t believe in a god. So, he sees that persons who, almost by definition, are much better educated and more intelligent than average, have used that education and intelligence to arrive at the conclusion that there is no god, and he thinks a book, that’s already ubiquitous, can be given away with 50 pages of untruths, misconceptions, and unsupportable suppositions added and convert these professors.

This is a very typical collection of Xian apologist arguments that every supporter of evolution has heard before. Inexplicably, (after a quick biography of Darwin) it begins with a section about the structure of DNA. Since DNA structure was identified 96 years after “The Origin of the Species” was written, it is quite clear that this introduction has nothing to do with the book it introduces.

Not only is the introduction not specifically about the book, it appears that Comfort hasn’t even read the book. He presents a quote that’s footnoted as from pages 133-134 of the 1872 ed. I checked and it is from those pages, that is, one must combine sentence fragments from both those pages to achieve that “quote”. Later he employs the famously misrepresented introductory remarks about the complexity of the eye. He does mention that Darwin thought he could (not, noting that Darwin actually did) explain the evolution of the eye, but Comfort didn’t buy it anyway.

In case readers are not persuaded by the blatant misrepresentation of science, Comfort brings out the big guns for his final argument. It’s his own special version of Pasqual’s wager. According to him everyone needs religion and, although there are many choices, Christianity is the best choice because, if it turns out to be real, the punishment of burning and torture for eternity is worse than for any other religion. What a great way to choose a religion! Pick the one that has to threaten you the most to get you to join.

In summation, Ray Comfort, in a stroke of brilliance that exceeds his miraculous banana theory, is giving away a book that includes an introduction that can be rebutted simply by reading the rest of the book and the people to whom he is sending this book are among those most likely to have already read the book and whose backgrounds make them among the best equipped persons to demonstrate what a load of crap the introduction is. I think we should all applaud Ray Comfort for publishing and donating these books, in fact, I think we should encourage him to do the same thing with all the books that Darwin wrote, anyone named Darwin. Let’s keep him spending his money in this way until he’s as financially bankrupt as he is morally.

They Must Be Crackers

2009-09-25T16:36:00.000-04:00

P. Z. Myers had a post on Pharyngula yesterday about the afternoon discussion he held in Fargo ND saying "My opening remarks were about being assertive atheists who challenge conventions and do things like desecrating crackers…", and then he commented on Catholics in the audience who expressed that they were offended. One can find examples of this kind of egocentric outrage any time a disregard for Christianity is expressed in the US (as in this later post).

They just can't shift their mental gears enough to understand that what they see as the "consecrated body of the Savior" is still just a cracker to anyone of a different belief. They think that because a priest said some words and made hand gestures over baked flour disks, everyone should perceive them as little chunks of human flesh that are part of their favorite person. A non-believer can do DNA testing, mass spectrometry, X-rays, fMRI's or satellite photos and still find nothing but flour and water. Unless one assumes that Catholics revere the Pillsbury Dough Boy, no evidence of a Savior can be found.

The point is that what is revered within a religion is perceived in a unique way by devotees of that religion, but for those outside that belief, these things are just mundane objects. Christians should understand this since it has been their attitude toward the religious objects of other religions for as long as there have been Xians. Missionaries have denigrated, defaced or destroyed religious objects of other people on every continent of the world (except, maybe Antarctica) and when the non-Xians rose up in outrage, the Xians would shrug and say, "What's the big deal? It's only a cracker."

Acts like Dr. Meyrs' "desecration" of a communion wafer need to occur to remind people that there are a lot of different views represented within the human population and one's own beliefs are no more valid than anothers. Most of the people that are outraged by the blasphemous acts of non-believers have themselves sneered at or desecrated what others believe to be holy. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Catholics should not be too surprised if a non-Catholic looks at a communion wafer and sees only a cracker, and those same Catholics should not be surprised by the outrage of Native Americans when something they revere is desecrated by ignorant or uncaring persons.

For way too long Xians in the US have had the attitude that their religious symbols are "the body of Christ" but everyone else's are just crackers. They need to learn that the trappings of their religion have no more value than anyone else's, and no less, but once that wafer is out of the hands of a believer, what ever special powers it possessed are gone and it reverts to cracker status and is not worthy of your outrage.

Devalued Voters Summit

2009-09-20T19:45:00.000-04:00

Big fat bummer! I missed the Values Voters Summit in DC this weekend. It sounds like it was quite a wingding with all the best and brightest of the Real Americans. Just check out the awesome subjects for the breakout sessions:
•SPEECHLESS - SILENCING THE CHRISTIANS
•THUGOCRACY - FIGHTING THE VAST LEFT WING CONSPIRACY
•DEFUNDING PLANNED PARENTHOOD
•ACTIVISM AND CONSERVATISM: FIT TO A TEA (PARTY)
•THE THREAT OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
•OBAMACARE: RATIONING YOUR LIFE AWAY
•MARRIAGE: WHY IT'S WORTH DEFENDING AND HOW REDEFINING IT THREATENS RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
•THE NEW MASCULINITY
•WAIT NO MORE: FINDING FAMILIES FOR WAITING KIDS
•TURNING THE TIDE IN YOUR GENERATION

So how do you suppose the summit went? Well, if the schedule was followed, everyone got together and congratulated themselves for being such upstanding, moral, Xian patriots and guardians of American culture. Then a bunch of conservative politicians reiterated the self-congratulation. At every opportunity, some Xian ceremony or religious lip-service was added just in case someone forgot that all Real Americans are evangelical Xians, then they talked about fixing the ruination of all that is good in the world that has occurred in the last 8 months. Before going home, they all did more Xian ceremonies to insure that god knows what he's supposed to be doing.

Judging by the synopses of the above topics, and knowing the track record of some of the speakers, these folks spent the weekend convincing each other that whatever they believe is the unalterable truth and the will of god, and anyone who disagrees, or any idea created by her/him, is the spawn of satan and must be completely crushed lest the world should come to a horrible end before the next teabag meeting.

In short, these folks get together, reinforce their self-centered belief that they're the ideal examples of the true American Xian and then proceed to demonstrate that anything good or moral in the bible is beyond their knowledge. They vilify and demonize those outside their group with bigotry, distortions, and bold faced lies. They demand their civil rights, which they interpret as the right to impose their views on everyone else any time they want and the right to suppress or destroy even the most benign opposition. They then discuss their methods of achieving their goals including what amounts to destroying the constitution and overthrowing the legitimately elected government. These are our great Xian patriots.

The most repugnant thing about this summit is the way conservative politicians cater to these people and even aid and abet their delusional agenda. The world will always have crackpots that live in a fantasy world, but there is no good reason to encourage belief in a 6000 year old world, the world ending in the next few years, CO2 not effecting the atmosphere, the president being the antichrist (from a foreign country) or any other anti-reality, anti-American nonsense. It's time for people to step forward and point out that delusional, treasonous behavior is not acceptable in our government representatives. We don't tolerate victims of alien abduction, Atlantians, or reincarnations of Jesus in office, so supporters of the Flintstones as history, or Satan in the oval office should be treated the same.

Fundamentalism Causes Babies

2009-09-17T13:13:00.000-04:00

A new article on LiveScience.com talks about higher teen birth rates among teens in communities that are "highly religious". Highly religious is their term, but what they are referring to, is areas with a high concentration of fundamentalist Xians. The article speculates about possible causes for the religious-preggers-ratio, but I have personal experience that strongly suggests that the main problem is ignorance.

In the distant past (1970), when I was a high school sophomore, my family moved from Danbury, Connecticut, which had one of the highest rated and most progressive public school systems at that time, to Avon, Indiana, that didn't. Danbury benefited from the sophistication spillover from New York City and as a result its High School health classes spent a great deal of time on human reproduction and contraception. Avon was a largely rural community that was just starting to become a bedroom community for Indianapolis and evangelical Xians who lived on farms were what the faculty still perceived as the student population. I don't remember health class in Avon, but I remember that many of the councilors and teachers seemed uncomfortable acknowledging that students had two sexes. The attitude of the educators was that ignorance was the best and only condoned contraceptive.

It was easy to see the effect of the different educational approaches: the "highly religious" community had a lot more teen pregnancies. Ignorance is one of the main objectives of fundamentalists. Since they insist that their members must believe the fundamentals of their group, the survival of the group is dependent on their ability to suppress or disavow any contradictory evidence. In addition to that, sex is icky and dirty and embarrassing to talk about so it's best to conceal the facts and hope the kids don't try to figure out what genitalia are for until after they're married.

Unfortunately, in spite of all the parents' prayers, or, according to fundies, because prayer is not allowed in school, hormones beat out ignorance when adolescents feel the need to insure the fitness of the human species. The result is a bunch of undereducated, emotionally unprepared children trying to raise younger children whose existence is frequently resented by the parents. The expectation would be a higher rate of sexually transmitted disease, more abandoned and abused children and more botched abortions. It seems like an awfully high price to pay for religious dogma.

Ignorance on Parade

2009-09-12T20:36:00.000-04:00

The Tea Party Express arrived in DC to protest government spending, rising taxes, destruction of the constitution, communism, fascism, and the eminent end of the world as we know it. As I've mentioned before, alluding to the Boston Tea Party when protesting taxes is already a mark of how misinformed the group is. The Boston Tea Party was to stop low priced surplus tea from being brought from England, thereby destroying the local tea business. If the people in Washington were protesting business monopolies, the tea party would be an appropriate symbol. As it is, perhaps it's an appropriate symbol for a large group that doesn't know what it's talking about, but nonetheless is sure it's correct.

The first thing I notice about these people is that they have amnesia of all things that occurred before Obama's inauguration. They don't remember that the recession and the bail-outs started during the Bush administration. They don't remember that there was a budget surplus when Bush came into office and a trillion dollar deficit when he left. They don't remember (or think is relevant) the unconstitutional acts of the previous administration, and they don't remember that, for most of them, they got poorer while their boss got richer. In fact, it's worth noting that while the "Tea-baggers" filled DC with anti-Obama signs and T-shirts, people were actually thrown in jail for wearing anti-Bush T-shirts at Bush's appearances.

The Atlantic just had an article about the economic legacy of the Bush administration, based on US Census statistics, which reinforces the bumper-sticker slogan; If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention. These protesters seem not to be paying attention to anything (except, maybe, the delusional rants of Glen Beck) and it's evident in their signs: Obama, depicted as Hitler, is turning the US to communism, government should keep it's hands off Medicare and Social Security, Obama's turning a Xian nation into an Islamic nation, and, if Obama's plans worked, everything should be fixed by now.

If these people really want to make this a better nation, they need to spend less time walking around with stupid signs, turn off the TV at home, stay home from the bible study meetings, and start reading some non-fiction for a change. When they learn that the spoutings of Glen Beck, Rush Limbo, and their anti-education fundy preachers are actually fiction, then, we can begin to have rational conversations about fixing problems and improving lives. Or, they can continue to parrot messages of ignorance and hate until we're all so angry and polarized that we annihilate each other. They have the freedom to chose.

Free Audio Books and the Beagle

2009-09-11T21:19:00.000-04:00

I like to put audio books on my MP3 player and listen to them while working around the house or down in my wood shop. I'd been getting them through the Columbus Library's website where they have a fair selection of nonfiction and the books are professionally recorded. If you have a library card somewhere, check your library's site. You might have a similar deal. Recently I found another source that's very cool. Internet Archive has a large collection of audio, videos and Ebooks that are in the public domain. There are also opportunities to volunteer to record books into the audio collection (I may do some, but I talk so slowly that it may take half an hour to listen to a book title). Check it out, volunteer, donate and enjoy the accumulated knowledge.

The last book I listened to was "The Voyage of the Beagle" by Charles Darwin. I'd read a lot of his writings, but thought this book, usually described as a travelogue, would be no big deal. Boy, was I wrong. I think this book gave me more insight into the way Darwin's mind worked and his amazing powers of perception than anything else I've read by him. While his later works display the end results of his brain power, "The Voyage of the Beagle" allows the reader (or the listener, as it were) to observe the gears turning. Darwin not only seemed to gather more information from his observations than most people, he was then able to compare species he observed to taxonomically similar species in other parts of the world and determine the direction and possible methods of migration of flora and fauna. After reading this book, natural selection seems a more natural conclusion from the accumulated data than I had previously thought. I don't mean that reading about the Beagle voyage would allow anyone to reach the same conclusion, that obviously didn't happen, but, rather that Darwin's incredible intellect was so apparent that of course he figured it out.

Joe Wilson's Always Been Loud and Wrong

2009-09-11T20:44:00.000-04:00

Everyone is talking about Joe Wilson (R. SC) yelling during Obama's speech, and some are even pointing out that Wilson was wrong. Apparently, this is an old habit. Daily Kos found a video of Wilson calling Rep. Bob Filner (D. CA) a liar and then insisted that he hates America when Filner pointed out, correctly, that the United States aided Iraq's biological and chemical weapons program.

It turns out Joe Wilson is the type of person that is frequently the subject of my blog; the type that that thinks everything he believes is correct and anyone who disagrees is not just wrong, but also the enemy. Another Rep. from SC declared that health-care would be Obama's Waterloo, but I'm hoping it be Wilson's Waterloo instead. Look over your shoulder, Joe. Is that Wellington gaining on you?

The Aftermath of the Scary Speech

2009-09-08T18:51:00.000-04:00

Obama's speech to the students of the US has come and gone and there are no reported fatalities. Of course, this could just the lull before the storm. When our guard is down, Nancy Pelosi might broadcast the trigger word that was implanted during the speech, then all the children will become ultra-liberal zombies who ravage the country with taxing, spending and creating social programs. Oh! The horror!

Now, Karl Rove has tipped us all off to what really happened; Pres. Obama was going to deliver a speech that would indoctrinate America's children into becoming communist-fascist, Islamic-atheist, terrorist-sissies. Thank goodness the outrage by the Real Americans forced the Antichrist administration to change their evil plan at the last minute, and, thank goodness we have the honesty and integrity of Karl Rove to thank for making that clear. Next, we need to demand to see the real speech as well as the real birth certificate.

Seriously, people like Karl Rove know that the most conservative, most fundamental Xians are very afraid of change and very easily swayed by religious talk, and are therefore easy to manipulate. That is, after all, what Rove did for a living when he worked for George W. Bush. He and other conservative pundits are intentionally tapping into this vulnerability to create a fictitious environment of fear that they know will scare the bejeesus out of a bunch of folks that don't have the rational tools to deal with it objectively.

There are people who were literally afraid to expose their children to a back to school speech. In an interview I read over the weekend, a woman said she didn't want her kids exposed to the President's speech, saying she was an American, the kids are Americans and she is very frightened right now. Does that seem rational to you?

The implication, of course, is that the President of the United States is not an American, that his plans do not consider the best interests of the US's people, and that something really, really, bad is this administration's real goal. They want to avoid their kids' exposure to our President in the same knee-jerk way that they would "protect them" from atheism, evolution and homosexuals. They're scared of the President in a similar way to how I'm scared of knee-jerk reactionaries who are armed with firearms but not with fully functional brains.

Let's Censor the President

2009-09-05T16:20:00.000-04:00

Censorship has gone crazy. Science classes have to be edited to avoid conflicting with religious dogma. Books need to be banned from libraries lest someone should perceive the contents thereof as socially acceptable in the community. TV and radio broadcasters are expected to remove shows that some people find offensive, but would never even watch, and some parents even forbid their children from associating with kids from families with different religious beliefs. The list goes on and on.

There used to be one thing that couldn't be censored; addresses by the President of the United States. When Pres. Obama announced that he intended to give a TV address to the students returning to school, parents, even here in Central Ohio, called the schools threatening to keep their children at home if the schools exposed their children to the corruptive influence of the duly elected leader of their national government.

We seem to have created an environment in the US where some people think it is acceptable to be completely intolerant of any opinion other than their own and have a right to demand that nobody is even allowed to be exposed to an opinion other than theirs. Sadly, these narrow-minded folks are frequently the same ones who claim to be the most patriotic Americans and they are also the quickest to scream about their constitutional rights if suppressed in any way. The best solution to this is to teach their children to think objectively and give them a hunger for all knowledge, then maybe the next generation will be more open-minded and have a valid reason for being embarrassed to be seen with their parents.

A Few of my Favorite Things

2009-09-02T19:55:00.000-04:00

I just found this article at Bloomberg by way of a reference to it in Pharyngula. The article is about an investment con where honest investors lost their life savings to 3 guys who promised great profits on their investments, but delivered nothing. The scam was what the article calls "affinity fraud",that targets a group of like-minded people who are especially vulnerable due to the mutual trust among the members. Here's my I-told-you-so moment. The targeted group was evangelical Xians and Mormons.

As I have ragged about a couple of times, some Xians make themselves easy marks for unscrupulous individuals because of their bias toward, and greater trust of, those that identify themselves as Xians. The members of the group lower their inhibitions because they perceive themselves as in a safe environment. The conference call meetings of investors included praying (as well as preying) and talk of using the profits for good causes. No matter how absurd the reasons that were given for needing more money or how many warnings they got from friends and relatives, the investors did what ever they could to come up with more money, even getting second morgages.

This brings me to another subject I've blogged about; avoiding cognitive dissonance. Fundies may be the all time champs at refusing to acknowledge the contradictions between their beliefs and facts that would cause the discomfort of cognitive dissonance. Just like the text books say, the people with the greatest emotional investment in the investment are are most likely to deny being ripped off. Some of the folks who lost everything, even though the con-men are all in prison, insist that they lost their money because the FBI stopped the process before the highly profitable deal could be completed.

I feel very sorry for these people who lost everything just because they trusted their fellow man, but as I have suggested before (and as G. W. Bush's political team said), fundies are very easy to manipulate. It's just a pity they don't read my blog, or they would have been armed and ready for the scammers.

Comparative Religion Classes are not News

2009-08-31T20:25:00.000-04:00

I got a Google Alert this morning about an article on John Freshwater in "Get Religion.org". As one would expect from a site with that name, the writer, E. E. Evans, seemed dubious about the charges against Freshwater, but what was also clear was that Mr. Evans and most of the commenters haven't found as much information on the case as I have and they don't understand why Freshwater was fired.

The article points out that Freshwater was charged with "teaching religion" in school, however schools are allowed to "teach about religion" as long as they don't advocate for a specific religion. The writer then points outs out that the press is more likely to cover a creationism vs. science story that a story about "teaching about religion".

First of all, Freshwater wasn't fired for just teaching religion in school, He was fired for teaching religion rather than the science curriculum he was being paid to teach. Had he been teaching ballet instead of science, nobody would have questioned his firing and nobody would have written an article, but religion gets a special status.

Secondly, articles are being written covering teaching about religion. I've read articles about teaching the bible as history in Texas and comparative religious studies being added to high school curricula. Religious studies that don't advocate a specific religion shouldn't be news. These courses have been available in colleges (and some high schools) for ages and although I can imagine Freshwater's friends being outraged about their kids being exposed to "false" religions, there's no rational reason for it to be any more controversial than studying comparative cultures in geography class.

Just like all of the hullabaloo about Mount Vernon Junior High, some Xians think that anything that relates to their religion should be the center of everybody's attention. In a rational world, Mount Vernon residents would have all looked at the Freshwater case and said, "If the evidence indicates that he injured one or more students and that he wasn't teaching the prescribed curriculum, he should be fired."
Instead they say, "This is about MY RELIGION! Not just that, this is about diminishing the general public's exposure to MY RELIGION!" Maybe some comparative religion studies would get a few of these folks to understand that THEIR RELIGIONS are supposed to have equal rights, but I'm not holding my breath.

The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch or Mansfield

2009-08-28T20:01:00.000-04:00

I've mentioned before how some Xians always assume greater honesty in others who identify themselves as Xians in spite of evidence to the contrary. I thought about that while reading this article about a youth minister convicted of 42 sex crimes in Mansfield, OH. Then I was reading about the kidnapper of Jaycee Lee Dugard who turned up 18 years later in Antioch, CA after Phillip Garrido, her kidnapper-rapist, drew the attention of police at UC Berkley when he and his 2 daughters (that he fathered with the kidnap victim) were passing out religious tracts. Garrido claims to be a devout Xian but his neighbors just think he is psycho.

I'm not saying all Xians are bad (although the ones I blog about usually are), I'm just saying that anyone who assumes that someone identifying himself as a Xian is automatically more trustworthy, honest or moral than average, should probably paint a target on their forehead and put a "kick me" sign on their back. There is no evidence that those who identify themselves as Xian are more honest than average and if anyone bothered to check, I suspect they would find a correlation between how loudly a person espouses his religion and how dishonest he is.

A last minute addition: The Friendly Atheist just posted something about one of the kind of person I was talking about.

A Little More from Mount Vernon Schools

2009-08-28T18:47:00.000-04:00

In further news from Mount Vernon School District, they have settled a federal law suit with a student whose family sued because the student was being taught religion in science class in violation of his constitutional rights. The school board's insurance co. agreed to pay $55oo to the the family and $1 each to 2 other individuals plus paying $115,500 of the plaintiffs' legal fees. A similar suit is still pending against John Freshwater.

An article from the Cleveland Plain Dealer mentions that the suit against the school was was brought by the family of the boy who said he was burned by Freshwater. At the end of the article, it is pointed out that 12 fellow teachers have testified on Freshwater's behalf. The article doesn't mention that most of those teachers are also members of the church Freshwater attends or that some of them had also been promoting their religion at school.

What angered me most in the Plain Dealer article was the mention that the plaintiff family has moved to another town and school district do to the backlash against them in Mount Vernon. Those doing the backlashing would, of course, be the loving, forgiving, good, evangelical Xians of the area who apparently feel that as long as their dogma is being taught, that trumps contractual agreements, state and federal laws, and any truth that might indicate Freshwater's guilt. Speaking of that kind of Xian, the photo in the Plain Dealer article shows Freshwater standing next to god's playground bully; Dave Daubenmire of Pass the Salt Min.

Instruct those MV Instructors

2009-08-26T17:41:00.000-04:00

Here's a bit of good news; according to the Mount Vernon (OH) News, all Mount Vernon School District staff will be instructed in what is legally acceptable concerning religion in school. If you've read my blog, or even better, The Panda's Thumb, then you know about the ongoing hearing related to the firing of fundamentalist Xian science teacher, John Freshwater who is accused (among other things)of teaching creationism to his 8th grade science students. Witness testimony in the hearing indicates that several teachers have engaged in evangelizing in the classroom and said they thought it was a good idea. This is probably partly a result of so many of the teachers in the school district having graduated from Mount Vernon Nazarene Univ. which seems to advocate evangelizing in the public schools.

Unlike Freshwater who was reportedly ordered to stop teaching creationism but instead just got more sneaky about it, most other teachers have said they were never told that they couldn't preach fundy dogma in their classes. This new instruction should prevent the all-week-long-Sunday-school-teachers from using ignorance of the rules as a defense. I'm not naive enough to believe this will completely stop teachers from trying to save all those captive heathens, but after going through a hugely expensive, drawn out, circus of a hearing, I doubt the School Board will be very forgiving of transgressions.

A Christian Nation is a Civil Right. Right?

2009-08-21T19:50:00.000-04:00

The insistence that we are and were always intended to be a Xian nation is much like other aspects of evangelical Xian belief, where they cherry-pick a few factoids and ignore or deny everything else, it makes me want to taze the whole bunch in hopes the shock makes some of their synapses fire ( Zap! Hey, I just noticed that opinions aren't the same as facts!). Yes, it's true that the Pilgrims were Puritans and Virginians were Church of England and, in fact virtually all the 13 colonies were Xian. That, however, does not mean that in 1776 the founding fathers wanted religion incorporated into their government.

Currently, evangelicals are the most insistent that we were always intended to be a Xian nation. This does a great disservice to their forefathers. The evangelicals at the dawn of our nation were the most adamant supporters of separation of church and state. Heck, Roger Williams, Baptist minister and founder of Rhode Island is credited with first using the term "a wall of separation," when talking about keeping church and state separate. The prevailing attitude at that time was, that anyone who felt their religion needed help from the government, had very weak faith in their religion.

Unlike today, the first generation of US citizens had seen plenty of examples of Xian nations for comparison. They viewed the Church of England as synonymous with the British government from whom they were seeking independence, they'd observed how the Catholic Church controlled the governments of other countries and, many of the people had themselves been driven out of their homes for following the wrong religion.

The colonies themselves were also examples. The Puritans of Mass. didn't come to America for religious freedom so much as they came to isolate themselves from the less conservative religions. They drove out or, in a few cases, killed those who wouldn't convert to the Puritan religion. At the same time, in Virginia, one could not get a government job without joining the C of E. Bigotry against Catholics and Jews was prevalent and it's estimated that only about 15% of the American population were members of a church when the Constitution was written.

All of that history is largely irrelevant since every time the separation or church and state is argued in court, the separation is reiterated. Still we get people standing up at school board or local government meetings insisting we are a Xian nation, therefore we have a right to blah, blah, blah. I think the problem is that since they have the right to freely practice their religion, any opinion shared by a majority of their church congregation must also be their religious right to practice.

They think subjecting the general public to Xian ceremonies is a good idea, then it must be their 1st amendment right. The same is true about what constitutes a fact, what media should be censored, what politician should be elected, what minorities should not be tolerated, or whether miniature marshmallows should top the jello salad at the potluck. It's not opinion; it's their god-given constitutional right. Right?

Pass the Gate-Crasher Ministries

2009-08-21T17:42:00.000-04:00

It sure can be interesting living in my county sometimes. A private fund-raiser for US Congressman Zack Space was held last night in Gambier, OH. The event was by invitation only. David Daubenmire of Pass the Salt Ministries was not invited but felt he needed to talk to Rep. Space so he acquired a copy of the invitation email and reproduced part of it with the RSVP phone no. then emailed it to Pass the Salt members suggesting they call the number and identify themselves as invited guests to get into the party. When the hosts found out about Daubenmire's email, they were forced to start screening RSVP calls and hire security.

David Daubenmire first came into the public eye when he was a coach at London (OH) High School where he refused to quit leading Xian prayers at practice and games. After being fired, he started Pass the Salt Ministries and Minutemen United. The ministries preach ultraconservative fundamentalism and insistence that the US is an exclusively Xian nation. Minutemen United is a group that protests, disrupts and tries to intimidate political groups and churches that express tolerance for gays, reproductive choice or the presence of other religious beliefs.

Daubenmire was also a highly visible supporter of John Freshwater and may have originated the bogus claim that Freshwater was only being fired for having a bible on his desk. He tried to get the board of education members removed who favored Freshwater's dismissal.

Zack Space, no doubt, is aware of the ideology of the Salty-Minutemen and also aware that they are media whores who seek out opportunities to get TV face-time where they can spew their narrow-minded, intolerant hatred. According to an article in the Mount Vernon News, the Salt Passers started showing up about 1/2 hr. after the fund-raiser started but were kept from approaching the home. Jeff Cline, speaking on behalf of the group, said they had a message that they needed to give to Rep. Space and then began to outline that message to the reporter.
It included lots of gems of enlightened wisdom like; “God is in control of this nation, not man. But our politicians seem to think they can do whatever they please. We believe that we, as Christians in this country, have to stand for what’s moral and what’s right. It’s pretty basic and pretty simple. [The hate crime bill] is they are going to legislate thought and speech on what we can say and what we can’t say. Jesus Christ should be the standard in this country, not Allah, not Buddha, not man. We firmly believe that God is bringing down a curse on this nation. We have turned our back on God in this country."

After the meeting, Zack Space offered to meet with two of the Salties without the media present. Not surprisingly, that offer was declined since that wouldn't allow them to tell the general public that the salty-minutemen are the most Xian, most patriotic, most knowledgeable about the best direction for the nation, most perfect interpreters of the desires of Jesus, and anyone who disagrees is a god-hating, America-hating, fag-loving, baby-killing, nation-destroyer who has no right to live in this country. What a fun group.

Based on Science!

2009-08-20T19:41:00.000-04:00

Wouldn't a Healthcare Riot Be Fun?

2009-08-18T17:47:00.000-04:00

I think I just experienced my first push poll. This is probably because I'm still registered as a Republican even though I'm not homophobic, xenophobic, or Xian, and I don't tell or believe lies that are labeled as facts (these appear to be the current prerequisites for membership). My wife and I just decided long ago that one would register as a Dem. and the other as GOP to get all the voting info from both parties. I lost the coin toss.

Anyway, the phone rang this afternoon (I wish I'd paid more attention before I realized what was happening) and a woman's voice asked me to participate in a poll, she then ask me something like "Do you believe the government is being reckless in their handling of health-care?" I said "no", and she said "thanks", and hung up.

It's my understanding that a push poll usually has only one question, and the intention is not to get the called person's opinion, but to plant an idea in the person's head; in this case that the new health-care legislation is reckless and will jeopardize my health insurance. Probably the most famous push poll was right before the SC primary in 2000, when a "pollster" called people all over So. Carolina and asked if they knew that John McCain had fathered a black child. G. W. Bush's win in that primary is attributed to that push poll.

By comparison, this one question poll was pretty darn subtle and obviously some people are still trying to screw up health care legislation every way they can, but this conservative win-at-all-costs attitude is enabling the lunatic fringe. The resulting tumult is building some very scary momentum. Booths are set outside town hall meetings offering info that perpetuates the lies about death panels, euthanasia, ruination of medicare, etc. Signs depict Obama as Hitler, accuse him of taking not just their health care, but their religion, their guns, their money and their civil rights. People are screaming in the meetings and carrying guns outside.

We have healthcare execs financing disinformation to protect their multi-billion dollar profits, conservative politicians gleefully egging them on because they think of a failure of the plan as a personal victory, pundits spewing lies and hate to feed their own huge egos and show ratings and the victims of these puppet-master wannabees are frightened, frustrated, misinformed people who are on the verge of blind rage and could become homicidally violent at any moment.

There is a point where manipulating political facts for personal ends turns to inciting riots and conspiring to commit murder and I hope we're not as close to that point as it appears. Not that any of those doing the pot-stirring would admit any guilt, but I'd like to know how many murders and injuries do they think a political victory is worth? Also, if the victims arrive at the hospital without health insurance as a result of their machinations, is that a victory too?

Not Perfect, Just Forgiven. So?

2009-08-17T18:30:00.000-04:00

Once again, someone directly involved with a Christian church has been indicted for a really heinous crime, but I doubt it will have any effect on the bias in the Xian community toward other Xians. A Sunday school teacher in CA has been indicted for kidnapping, raping and murdering an 8 year old girl and drugging a 7 year old and a 37 year old man in a separate incident.

This sort of thing occurs with enough frequency that it should give people pause before being more trusting of a person just because of a religious label, yet it never seems to work out that way. Some people will read a headline about priests or ministers molesting children in their care, or about a serial killer being an officer in his church, or about a religious leader conning people out of their life savings, then set the paper down and go vote for someone because that candidate is a Xian and therefore can be trusted.

When I was growing up, I always heard that someone, who added religious symbols or statements to their secular business, was prostituting their religion for personal gain, and was therefore neither a good Xian or a trustworthy businessperson. Nowadays it seems like every other business has a cross or a bit of scripture prominently displayed, knowing that plenty of folks will prefer that business because, "Oh! They're good Christians! We can trust them to be honest." The same thing goes for politicians, museum owners, book publishers, and apparently molesters, murderers and thieves.

Forrest Gump's mom always said, "Stupid is as stupid does," but I still am amazed that so many people can absolve themselves of responsibility for their own cognition. Yup, yup. Cross on sign, good, no cross on sign bad. Time to go back to thinking about dinosaurs on the ark.

Visitors Arrive from Planet Mendel

2009-08-16T18:52:00.000-04:00

Why Xians Need Rules

2009-08-13T17:37:00.000-04:00

Maybe I just need to stop listening to and reading anything Xians write about their beliefs. I feel compelled to write comments arguing against their assertions, but the Xians just ignore them and the free-thinkers have heard it all before. A case in point; In the middle of some forum, one of god's select had to throw in the ol' chestnut about atheists not having morality because they don't have a religion to tell them the rules. As always, a freshman college course, in this case Social Anthropology, is sufficient to rebut that assertion, but I also thought about the light this assertion sheds on the Xian.

The insistence that morality can't exist without religious guidance, in spite of the fact that they keep addressing this to atheists who clearly understand and practice morality as adeptly as their Xian counterparts, suggests that maybe the Xians have no capacity to act morally without threats of eternal damnation. If these Xians feel that they, themselves, would be unable to act morally without thinking a vengeful god is watching over them, maybe they cling to the structure of religion to help them control their sociopathy.

Let's see, what are the symptoms of a sociopath, or what they now prefer to call a person with antisocial personality disorder? They include persistent lying (where have I seen that lately? Oh yeah, Ken Ham's Museum-o-lies.), an extreme sense of entitlement (like when someone feels that his personal beliefs should be part of public school curricula and be codified into local, state and federal law), lack of remorse or empathy (like the way he doesn't understand or care when people become upset, or become the victims of prejudice, as a result of his personal beliefs becoming part of the curriculum or the law), a tendency to violate the rights and boundaries of others (like when he fights to keep other religions out of his neighborhood, also see above), aggressive behavior (like threatening to murder someone for breaking a cracker), and, of course, a general difficulty distinguishing between right and wrong.

Well, maybe there are some slight similarities between sociopaths and evangelical Xians, but they're mighty subtle. So if these Xian writers assert that morality requires adherence to religion, because they themselves are unable to be moral without adherence to religion, we may never know for sure. Oh wait! What's the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath? I may have looked up the wrong one.

Christian Peace and Harmony

2009-08-11T19:36:00.000-04:00

An article today in Yahoo news about a rift in a big Presbyterian church in FL, got me thinking about how often one sees claims that peace and harmony are among the benefits of being an Xian compared to the actual observed evidence. The above church is only unique in that it was one of the first mega-churches and that it has connections to Billy Graham and religious right leader D. James Kennedy. There's nothing at all unusual about seeing a headline that there is a rift within or between Xian denominations, and I suppose we should be glad that, at least in most places, the denominations aren't torturing and killing each other any more, but you'd think that when they make bumper stickers and song titles they might want to stick to claims that are less demonstrably false.

Most of the time when I hear of religious discord, I think of the bloody wars and suppression between Protestants and Catholics in Europe and Britain, but the first thing that came to my mind today was Africa. Have you ever wondered why there are so many followers of Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa, even though most of those nations were colonies of Xian countries? It seems that when the imperial Europeans decided to claim ownership of Africa, they included the traditional imposition of missionaries on the indigenous population, but the different Xian denominations spent so much time arguing with each other over who had more right to force their religion on the locals, that the Islamic missionaries were able to walk in with a monolithic message and convert everyone.

Maybe I'm the only one amused by this, but I'm always hearing about how the spread of Christianity, with all its manifest benefits, throughout the world is evidence of it being the true religion. Yet, it seems these guys are their own worst enemies and in spite of the constant discord, they'd like us to believe they are the primary force for achieving world peace and harmony.

Doing the Homework

2009-08-11T17:24:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking back on a lot of the conversations, or maybe they're arguments, I've had with creationists and one thing stands out. I've read their bible and I've read some of the books written by Xian apologists, but it is clear that most, maybe all, of the creationists with whom I've conversed have never read anything that actually explains evolution, not even a Wikipedia article.

They all think they know what they're arguing against, but I seem to spend a lot of time explaining that the ideas they oppose are not really part of evolutionary theory and the ones who think they are most knowledgeable on the subject have only read the books that argue against evolution so they're just more adamant about their misconceptions. Basically, they are like someone who thinks he's an expert on a book because he's read a few reviews.

I was going to say something about how I wouldn't base my opinions on a critique of an idea without researching the actual idea, but that may be a big part of why I argue in support of evolution, and education in general, and they don't.

What I plan to do, and suggest others who support reality based concepts may also want to try, is start insisting that before a person can argue evolution, they must read at least one real book on the subject. If it's someone I trust I'll even loan them a book by Dawkins, Gould or the like. I also think I'll recommend, especially to those who have read some the apologist junk, that they read On the Origin of the Species just so they can see how often it is misrepresented. Everything by Darwin is available on line, so they have no excuse for not reading it unless they're Amish.

I don't know how well this strategy will work; maybe some people will end up reading some real science or maybe I'll just stifle communication, but it seems to me that we need to be more insistent that those who oppose evolution demonstrate that they've at least done a little homework on the subject they argue against. What do you think?

Insights on Insights on the Creation Museum Visit

2009-08-08T19:21:00.000-04:00

One of the tweets about #CreoZerg contained a link to the site of Pastor Tom Estes, a man whose name I recognized from blog comments in defense of the Creation Museum. Estes’ blog contained a couple of articles relating his shared experience with the SSA group at the Museum which I thought were enlightening and a little baffling as to his point of view.
His first post described the visit itself beginning with him introducing himself to P. Z. Myers in the parking lot. He mentioned how relieved he was to not have to identify himself in front of hundreds of atheists, although he didn’t say why. Perhaps he thought they would pummel him with copies of Darwin’s writings. Anyway, Estes determined from his exchange of 5 or 10 words each that P. Z. was sarcastic.
Inside the Museum, Estes sat with Looy, the co-founder of AiG and one of the VP’s but later got up and listened to and watched the atheists go through the exhibits, but they were disrespectful, made fun of what the exhibits said and wore T-shirts that were against the rules (Actually, at least one student was taken to the restroom and ordered to turn his shirt inside out. Apparently he had ruined a family’s entire vacation by displaying a slogan with which they disagreed.) Furthermore, they said things like “That’s stupid,” without elaborating on why and he heard someone say he wished he had a 2 way radio to hear P. Z.’s comments. Oh yeah, the group looked like a bunch of misfits, and P. Z. was on an ego trip basking in the adoration instead of learning all the science there.
Incomprehensibly, what Pastor Estes seemed most concerned about was that someone might recognize him and take his picture! He even thought he caught some people surreptitiously trying to take a picture while he wasn’t looking. What is that about? Does he think the camera will steal his soul? Does he think his picture will be sent to freethinking hit men? Does he fear we will all draw a mustache and goatee on his picture and put it on a dart board? Sorry pastor, I don’t think anyone really wants your picture, except maybe to show a friend that this is that guy who was commenting on Pharyngula. As for hit men, I think you’ll find that when someone stalks and kills a person because they disagree with their beliefs, the atheist is usually the victim and the Xian the shooter.
As for P. Z. Myers, he is a hero to a lot of us and we’d never gotten to meet him before. Everyone would like to hear what he says, not because we’re little lost lambs in need of someone to define what we should think (that would be the Xians again), it’s because he is a Doctor of Biology and a college professor who is an expert on the science that is being desecrated in that museum. Plus we all admire his fashion sense.
Pastor Estes’ follow up article was a rebuttal to the post about the museum in Pharyngula. I think the Pastor’s view can be summed up by this quote from him: “In this statement he seems to show his complete lack of understanding in what the Creation Museum stands for. Obviously Ken Ham, Mark Looy, and the rest of us idiotic Bible believers believe in the flood, and if you believe the flood happened around 2348 BC, then naturally the fossils would be dated from that time.” He really thinks that starting with an untenable assumption and the cherry-picking and misrepresenting a few scientific facts so they appear to support his claim, is science. Quoting William Watkin from the ABC article about CreoZerg, "Everything they said about sediment deposition, about Mount St. Helens … anyone in first year geology would say 'wrong from top to bottom,”.
This is the whole point of what Estes saw and heard. This SSA group consisted of college students, college graduates, teachers and professors, who all know more about real science than he does. Of course they called things stupid without elaborating. They had all studied enough biology, geology, anthropology, paleontology, history, chemistry and physics, etc. to know why the entire museum and almost all its assertions are not scientifically honest or valid. One of the greatest exceptions being the display that talks about the irrelevance of race in our acceptance and love for the whole Human population. That was good.
If Pastor Estes would take a few undergrad science courses at a state university he might understand the difference between what Ken Hamm calls science and what people who actually do science call science. Then maybe he could put himself in the shoes, just for a minute, of someone like P. Z. Myers who has spent his entire adult life studying and teaching real science in real educational institutions and museums and see what a huge insult to and attack on every honest educator and student in the world this shrine to ignorance and propaganda, the Creation Museum, really is. And that's the Hard Truth.

My T Shirt

2009-08-07T21:15:00.000-04:00

Some people at CreoZerg said they liked the design on the shirt I was wearing so I decided to post it for the whole world to enjoy.

I Went to CreoZerg

2009-08-07T19:23:00.000-04:00

I went to the Creation Museum to meet all the godless heathens today. If you have to go there I highly recommend bringing a few hundred atheists just to help maintain your sense of humor. Also get the group rate, I didn't and the ticket cost $23.27 including sales tax. No wonder they can afford animatronic dinos.

I met P. Z. Myers and Hemant Mehta and lots of very friendly less famous (at least to me) folks. I think everyone showed good restraint in their actions but some of their overheard conversations may have freaked out the Mennonite tourists. Further proof that god doesn't exist can be inferred by the lack of lightning bolts and tornadoes while we were there.

While it was fun to laugh at the pseudo-science and anachronisms, when I thought about how many people tour this place and think all this crap is valid information, it starts to make me a little sick to my stomach. The museum inside and out screams of money. Huge amounts of currency must have been poured into the place and all for the expressed goal of teaching people that their public school education is wrong. It's like going to Disneyland and being earnestly told that Cinderella is historical fact. Investing so much in fairy tales while public schools are having to cut their curricula and activities for lack of funds is obscene. I think such a financial investment in propaganda is even more immoral than the multitude of lies that fill the building.

A Solution to Global Warming

2009-08-06T17:21:00.000-04:00

I just stumbled onto this article about people in a Swiss Village who since 1678 have been asking for intersession from the Pope to keep the nearby glacier from growing and destroying their village. It seems however that for the last decade the glacier receded about 12% due to the warmer winters and decreased snowfall, so they have asked the Pope to intercede again.

It is not clear whether the villagers think that the Pope is doing an exceptional job of fulfilling their original request or they think of it as a new problem that requires additional Papal blessings. If the villagers were unsure which it was, that might at least partly explain why it took them a whole decade to act.

Still this is really a slap-the-forehead moment. If someone requests blessings from the Pope for each of the receding glaciers, we'll nip this global warming thing in the bud in no time. I'd be happy to help out if it means I don't have to worry about leaving carbon footprints everywhere I go (Damn those bituminous Hush Puppies!) but we don't currently have a lot of glaciers in Ohio and the latest polls indicate that most Ohioans don't want any. If you know of a glacier that lacks representation, let me know and I'll dash off a note to Rome right away.

Eagles Populations Are Growing in Ohio

2009-08-03T16:41:00.000-04:00

Articles in the Ohio papers are reporting that bald eagles are continuing their resurgence with 215 nests reported last year. That is the largest number of nests counted since the time that they were put on the endangered species list. There were times I thought this would never happen.

When I was in jr. high school in the late 1960's my family would travel to the Everglades Nat. Park during Xmas break. On one of those trips I saw a bald eagle perched on a dead tree and felt very lucky because it was one of only fifty in the state of Florida. That was the largest breeding population in the US outside of Alaska. At the same time, it was a sad event as the few remaining eagles were still falling prey to hunters and the effects of DDT. I thought I might be seeing the bald eagle for the last time in the wild.

By the early eighties I was hearing reports of a resurgence in the bald eagle population but I didn't really believe them until one day while I was hang gliding in the mountains of Cleveland National Forest east of San Diego and a bald eagle flew right under me. I'd never even seen a good photo of one in flight and hadn't realized that they had white tails. I tried to follow it for a way, but the eagle had a much better glide ratio than my hang glider.

Later I ran into a National Forest Ranger and asked how the bald eagles were doing. He initially said there were none in the area, but after mentioning my experience, he confided that they were being kept a secret for fear they might get shot. You see, the area east of the big SoCal cities is still cowboy country where ranchers ride horses around their spreads with a Winchester by their side and many believe that raptors (the birds not the dinosaurs) are a threat to the livestock and, therefore need to be shot.

So the bald eagles still weren't out of the woods yet. I mean they were actually in the forest and weren't planning to leave, but there were still plenty of opportunities for them to join the list with the auk and dodo.

Now the news is all good. Bald eagle populations are increasing not just on the coasts, but also around my current digs, smack dab in the middle of Ohio. Finally I can relax and stop worrying about the extinction of our magnificent national bird, at least until its food supply dies off.

The Health Care Spit Ball Fight

2009-08-02T19:16:00.000-04:00

I've been trying to understand the proposed National health care plan and I was inspired to dig a little more today after Hemant Mehta brought up the subject on Friendly Atheist. Two of the most important things I learned today are; there is no such thing as "Obama's health plan" in that the current plan as written came from congress, not the President, and those who oppose the health care plan tell blatant lies to frighten people into opposing the plan.

Some good information can be found in an article in Yahoo news and from Politifact.com that indicate that many of the opponents of health care are not interested in objective discussion of pros and cons, they just want to be destructive. Why else would they say so many things that are completely false.

Part of the problem is that too many politicians, pundits and voters view politics as an us-against-them rivalry. The only goal is for the home team to win and the opposing team to lose and if lying, cheating and stealing are necessary to win, that's what you do for the sake of the team. It doesn't matter that legislation may benefit all Americans,if the opposing team wants it, they must be prevented from getting it or the home team loses.

It is as if the US' political system has created a government and constituency with a mean emotional age of twelve. The kids on this side of the street hate the kids on the other side of the street. What ever they like we hate, what ever they want to do we want to prevent and if they try to make friends, run away because they have cooties. Decisions are so much easier if you just do what your party or favorite pundit says and as you lay dying from a preventable disease for lack of health care, you can reassure yourself that it would have been worse if the other team had won.

Religion of Hate

2009-08-02T18:02:00.000-04:00

I just saw an AP article about the Idaho town near which the Aryan Nation had its headquarters. It sucks that the little upscale town of Hayden Lake is still stigmatized as the address of the neo-nazi group that was gone by '04 but for me it was more interesting to learn that the Aryan Nation compound included the leaders home and his church. Apparently the group is a religion and the leaders are referred to as pastors. A church with a pastor and crosses sure does sound like they at least thought of themselves as Xians.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised; they tried to emulate Hitler's regime where every Wehrmacht soldier wore a belt buckle embossed with a swastika and the words "Gott Mit Uns" (God is with us). This, however, is another example of how people can be motivated to hatred and bigotry by incorporating the message into the matrix of religious belief. If you change the message from Jews and blacks to gays and atheists, you pretty much have evangelical Xianity.

I Told You "The Family" Is Scary

2009-08-01T19:46:00.000-04:00

Pharyngula has a post about Jeff Sharlet's book: The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. I had a post about that a little while ago when I got freaked out by an interview with Jeff Sharlet. When I got no reaction except one from Mike Litch at Notions Capital suggesting I had little to fear, I calmed down. But now P. Z. Meyers has restored my paranoia, and judging from the comments, he's instilled that fear in a lot of his regulars.

I'm Starting to Read about the History of Psi Research

2009-07-31T19:31:00.000-04:00

I'm about halfway through "Ghost Hunters; William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death" by Deborah Blum. It is basically the history of psychic research from the beginning of the spiritualist movement in the mid-nineteenth century.
It is remarkable how similar it is to the attitudes and activities of psychic research today.

Many serious scientists, even at the beginning, like Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley, refused to have anything to do with what they saw as irrational superstition. Others, like Alfred Russel Wallace wanted to use the scientific method to study it empirically and others just wanted to debunk everything.

As is still true today, a lot of charlatans and con artists were exposed by the researchers and professional magicians were especially good at that kind of debunking, but there remained those who really preferred to study reports of phenomena that were less easily dismissed. This latter group tended to get marginalized by mainstream scientists and respected scientific journals refused to publish their papers. Not much has changed.

I don't know what direction the book will take from here, but if I think it's interesting, I'll write a review, (personally I think the butler did it).

The Power of Religion?

2009-07-31T18:32:00.000-04:00

The news over the last few days has included articles about the trials of parents whose children died and about a man who fell and broke his wrist. The trials were both for the prosecution of parents whose children died while family and friends prayed for a cure instead of taking a child to the hospital. In neither case have I seen it reported that the parents have given up their faith in the healing power of prayer, so apparently, no one has learned anything from these experiments. Could these people be so brainwashed that they can't see a simple cause and effect relationship, or could it be, maybe, that if they turn away from their religion they have to admit they killed their own children.

Oh, the guy who fell and broke his wrist was the Pope. It would seem that even he can get no special protection from his religious beliefs.

The Missing Birth Certificate Unsolved Mystery

2009-07-26T19:24:00.000-04:00

I thought the baloney about Obama's birth certificate would have died down by now, but it seems more conservative pundits are jumping on the bandwagon. Lou Dobbs, the self-appointed guardian of America's borders, picked up the birth cert banner and is keeping the story alive even though the head of CNN told him that researchers had determined that there is nothing to the claim of doubts about Obama's citizenship. This is yet another example of things that are good when it benefits the GOP but bad when connected to the Dems.

Remember a few years ago when the Republicans wanted to abolish the rule requiring the President to be born in the US? That was when they thought they could get Arnold Schwarzenegger elected President. Now that the shoe's on the other foot, a President born outside the US will put us on the slippery slope to anarchy. By the way, does anyone else think it's ironic that John McCain was born in Panama?

So, aside from being a Democrat, could there be any other reason why an Austrian might be a better choice than a Kenyan? Hmmm, what could be the difference between the two? It turns out that the answer was available in comments on some of the political blogs. Consistently President Obama is referred to, not primarily as a liberal or a thief or any of the usual labels, but as "that nigger." So, apparently the reason why people are clinging to this discredited paperwork problem is that they are so bigoted that they can't accept that a black man could be the legitimately elected President of the United States.

All through the 1960s and 70s as I was growing up the talk was about leveling the playing field and righting the wrongs perpetrated on the minorities up to that time. I honestly believed that racial prejudice would be a thing of the past by now. Of course, I also thought that we'd all be commuting in our personal flying machines. Still, if the Republican party doesn't disassociate itself from this kind of hate, the GOP will lose the support of everyone who at least needs to appear unbiased, like all the rich CEO's and be left as the party exclusively of white supremacists and religious fanatics.

The Facts Are Just an Opinion

2009-07-22T18:56:00.000-04:00

I was drawn to the Pew Research Center's website because of their recent survey on public perception of science, but I stuck around to look at some of their other data and, as readers of science and freethinker blogs already know, conservative xians and political conservatives are, on average, less educated, less knowledgeable about science and less trusting of science data. Although I don't have hard data to back this up, it's been my observation that conservatives are also much more inclined toward information bias.

I base this last observation on the proliferation and avid following of right wing TV and radio programs and the greater inclination of conservatives to censor and suppress opposing views in comparison to liberals. This combination of ignorance and information bias makes them the ideal targets for propagandists who want to obscure the facts.

If Rush Limbo says that global warming is a liberal conspiracy to destroy America, then decades of observation and testing become irrelevant and if the pastor says the world is 6000 years old, well you know. What I'd like to know is why is this legal?

We have libel and slander laws to protect individuals from having lies told about them, but if corporations and "think" tanks spend millions of dollars to spread lies that injure scientists, teachers, learning institutions and museums, that's just a difference of opinion and it's protected by our free speech rights.

I suspect that ignorant, fundy politicians and politicians worried about losing fundy votes have a lot to do with this difference in legal protection, but I can't help wondering what would happen if university presidents and museum directors started bringing lawsuits against groups like the Despicable Institute claiming that the plaintiffs' reputation and business were damaged by anti-science propaganda. In a perfect world it would bankrupt the lying scum.

Can’t Do Anything Constructive? Then Ruin the Ones Who Can

2009-07-21T18:54:00.000-04:00

Today, John Boehner (R-OH), the house minority leader, led a group of about 100 Republican House members in protesting against the Obama’s health care plan by giving one minute speeches that each included the question “Where are the Jobs,” according to an article on the Roll Call website. After about two hours of this, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) got up and reminded them that the job losses were worse under the Bush administration.
Boehner said that his constituents want to know about jobs, but I suspect his constituents also want to know how they’re ever going to afford health care. The truth is that this has nothing to do with what his constituents want. The Republicans just want to link all of Obama’s policies together, paint them as bad decisions and try to make them fail. They’ve even said as much in interviews, and it’s because they think if Obama’s efforts fail, more people will vote for Republicans in the next election.
Maybe this strategy will work for the Republicans, but if I were one of the 11.4% of John Boehner’s constituents who is unemployed or one of who knows how many that is working but can’t afford health insurance, I think I would be at least as interested in seeing some effort made to assure me that some disease or injury won’t leave my family bankrupt and homeless. The current Republican strategy has nothing to offer but a warm feeling because the GOP won. Hurray! The stimulus failed and we’ve lost everything in the recession. Hurray! My daughter has pneumonia but if I take her to the hospital, I can’t afford to feed the rest of my family. Hurray! The energy plan failed and I can’t afford gas or find any alternative fuel sources so I can’t drive to work or heat the house. Let’s all go vote Republican.

The Family at C Street Horror Show

2009-07-19T20:47:00.000-04:00

I just blundered onto the scariest things I’ve ever read concerning our government and religious fundamentalists. Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) and Gov. Mark Sanford of SC have both been linked to the C Street House run by a secretive, conservative religious group called the Family that seems to have strong political connections all over the world. All of the inside information on the group and the house seem to come from a single source; Jeff Sharlet, a journalist who stayed in the C Street House for a month and then wrote the book “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.” Here’s a link to an interview with Sharlet in the “Las Vegas Sun” and a video of part of the investigation being done by “The Rachel Maddow Show.” See what you think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dox4jdW4UyQ

2009-07-19T20:43:00.000-04:00

My Corgi Gave Up Her Legs for Science

2009-07-18T16:49:00.000-04:00

Jesse, my Pembroke Welsh Corgi is showing off her gams in honor of a study posted on "Not Exactly Rocket Science". Heidi Parker, leading a team of scientists from the National Human Genome Research Institute has found that short-legged dogs have and extra copy of the FGF4 gene for bone growth causing them to become, um, short-legged. It is hoped that this discovery will lead to effective ways of dealing with dwarfism in humans. Hurray for short legged dogs, oh, and Heidi Parker's team too.

Apparently I need to attack P.Z. Meyers

2009-07-17T20:14:00.000-04:00

In a recent post on Pharyngula, while P.Z. continued his verbal sparring with Mooney and Kirshenbaum, he mentioned that when people attack him on his blog, the regular Pharyngula commenters tend to go to the attacker's blog and leave comments. Well, I figured since I'm mostly only talking to myself over here, this would be a great way to increase traffic. So here goes: P.Z. Meyers is a big poopie-head! Wow I can almost sense outraged squidophiles racing to their keyboards now.

Ohio Churches Think They’re the Fun Police

2009-07-17T20:06:00.000-04:00

Governor Strickland of Ohio has decided to allow slot machines at horse racing tracks, because the state is out of money and he needs to find a new source. I’m not a big supporter of the idea, since I’ll never use the slot machines and the people who will use them the most are gambling addicts. At the same time I don’t think it’s the job of the government to illegalize everything that could be addictive, so, friends and relatives of gambling addicts, show some spine and take control of the car keys and charge cards. The Ohio church people, however, think that it is the responsibility of the government to illegalize anything that they think is immoral.

OK, church people, take a walk around the neighborhood and look at the other houses of worship. Do they believe all the same things that you believe in your church? No, that’s why they’re in different buildings. So what makes you think that whatever is believed in your building should be imposed on everyone else in Ohio?

Nonetheless, the newspapers all have articles about how church people have vowed to fight the Governor’s decision with law suits and protests. The governor, himself is an ordained Methodist minister (it hurts my brain to write that) so it doesn’t take much extrapolation to conclude that not all religious types are in agreement, but that seems to be irrelevant to the outraged guardians of goodness.

Here’s the thing, church people, there’s a place for you to dictate your version of morality; your church. The job of a religious group is to impose their beliefs and moral codes on the people who have agreed to be part of that group, then if one from your group breaks the no slot machine rule, they can be shunned or stoned or forced to clean up after the potluck or whatever. What you do not have the right to do is go out into the greater community and say “All you people who have no prohibition against video slot machines in your sacred texts, must, nonetheless, be deprived of video slot machines so that we are not tempted to break the no video slot machine commandment of our religion.” So, to use the popular sheep herding analogy: go tend your own flock and keep your nose out of other flocking people’s business.

Followers of Space Gods and Sky Gods Are a Lot Alike

2009-07-14T21:21:00.000-04:00

I started watching a program about people who believe extraterrestrials helped build our civilization, thinking it might be good for a laugh, but after several minutes of observing how much their method of collecting and presenting information was like the techniques used by creationists, I had to change channels or lose the will to live. When I first read Chariots of the Gods as a teenager, I thought it sounded kinda cool, but when I realized that it gave aliens credit for all the great works of civilization, reducing the humans to spectators or unskilled labor, it just pissed me off.
The show covered all the usual examples; the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Nazca Lines, Machu Pichu, Palenque, et cetera. The alien supporters first argued for what creationist would call irreducible complexity. These great works were far too complex, precise and big for measly humans to have created. The Nazca lines, they assert, are only visible from the air, so they must be for alien spacecraft and the sarcophagus lid at Palenque illustrates a man in a spaceship. Furthermore, all the petroglyphs and cave paintings show people in space suits.
The Great Pyramid must have been alien built because too many blocks had to be made and moved in too short of a time, the ramps would be too long, and the base is too closely aligned to the compass points. This makes perfect sense if you disregard the skilled workers’ village, the tools, the internal ramps, the ability to see the North Star, and previously built pyramids that clearly show their evolution of pyramid building.
The lines and pictures on the Nazca plain look a little like airport runways, they include drawn representations of animals that are hard to make out while standing on the plain and it’s weird because nobody lives there. The lines actually mark underground water sources, some of which are still there, all the designs are visible from the hills adjacent to the plain, so aircraft are not required, and even if they were only visible from above, most such art has a religious connection and many religions have sky gods who could be the intended viewers; spaceships aren’t necessary.
Machu Pichu is just amazing and no one is sure how or why it is there. Since Machu Pichu is largely still a mystery, space aliens is the only logical explanation, right?
The lid of the sarcophagus of King Palenque looks like an illustration of a man in a spaceship and he’s buried in the middle of a pyramid, so he must be really, really important, like a god from outer space. The biggest problem for alien adherents with this assertion is that the Mayans had a written language which has been translated, so we know exactly who King Palenque was (he was a king) and we know what the picture on the lid represents (the king going to his afterlife). While we’re on the subject of pictures, crude drawings of people with headdresses may look like they have space helmets, but we already knew that people wore headdresses.
Like I said, advocates of chariots of the gods are a lot like creationist; they start with a preconception and try to make the evidence fit their beliefs rather than basing their beliefs on accumulated evidence, they select the data that seems to fit and ignore, remain ignorant of, or disparage anything that doesn’t fit, and invent lies to cover whatever is left over. I wonder if the space alien gods taught them those techniques.

Supporters of Palin Unite, If You Can Read the Map

2009-07-08T16:52:00.000-04:00

I had a real WTF moment yesterday when I noticed an article that said, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll, 43% of Americans were at least somewhat likely to vote for Sarah Palin for President in 2012 and of that group 19% were very likely to vote for her. I thought it must be some kind of a joke; 19% of American voters couldn't possibly be that stupid. On reflection though, I realized that I shouldn't be surprised at all.

First, Palin is opposed to abortions and I've said before that pro-lifers would vote for Satan if he ran on a pro-life platform. Too many voters have only that one criterion for choosing a candidate, and all other information is either ignored or deemed irrelevant.

Second, she's a fundamentalist xian and fundies think only other fundies should be in office because a fundy would never lie, cheat, steal, fornicate or any of the other sinful things that fundy politicians keep getting caught doing in office. Furthermore Palin would understand that the founding fathers wanted everyone in the US to be xian and have xian teachings and ceremonies in all public venues.

Third, she's a young earth creationist and therefore knows that transitional fossils and Charles Darwin are mentioned nowhere in the bible. Furthermore she knows that all the millions of fossils and libraries full of scientific studies in universities and museums all over the world only represent a vague opinion that is part of a secular plot to undermine xianity. Besides, church ministers with bachelors' of theology degrees from xian colleges are far better educated in earth science than the intellectual elite with their hoity-toity PHd's in biology, geology, archaeology, astronomy, physics, chemistry and their ilk.

Fourth, she's not part of the intellectual elite that think they're so much smarter and better educated than the real Americans who made it all the way through high school and know that if that college stuff were really important there would be reality shows about it on TV. Palin is one of the people, and folks would feel like they could drink a beer with her. She understands that the most important requisite to the US Presidency is being down to earth. People will say of her, "She's just like me. I don't know if Africa is a country or a continent either and I don't think that information is important for someone involved in international politics."

Fifth, she supports the real Americans that are forgotten by most presidential candidates; the ones who scream racial epithets and death threats against the current president at her rallies, the ones who advocate secession from the US, the militant xian radicals who want to impose xianity on all Americans by force of arms, and all the other people who think that anyone who disagrees with their views is not a real American and should be driven out of the country or otherwise disposed of so that only real American ignorance, bigotry, xenophobia, hatred and violence can be found from sea to shining sea.

Boston or Madhatter's Tea Party

2009-07-03T19:19:00.000-04:00

I happened to catch part of an interview with an historian who was talking about what led to the Americans' Declaration of Independence, when the interviewer asked him about the Boston Tea Party. The historian described what occurred to motivate the colonists to destroy the shipload of tea and, although I had heard it all before I hadn't made the connection, that the Republican Tea Parties have gotten it all wrong. If you haven't heard about the GOP tea parties (lucky you), they were designed to be rallies against the tax increases under the current administration and trying to harken back to our founding fathers' protests against unfair taxation.

I always thought that these obviously contrived parties masquerading as a grass roots movement were pretty silly since 90% of taxpayers were receiving tax cuts at the time and the only tax increases were actually roll-backs of G. W. Bush's tax cuts for the richest 10% of taxpayers. I sort of imagined corporate boards of directors wearing slogan adorned T-shirts over their power suits while waving tea bags in the air.

What I realized after listening to the historian is, the Republicans who came up with the tea party idea got it all wrong. The Boston Tea Party wasn't about taxes. What happened was that the East India Company had a huge surplus of tea warehoused in England that was killing the old quarterly earnings. The British government had a cunning plan. They loaded the tea on ships and sent them to the American colonies where they would sell all the tea cheaply. The surplus turns to ready cash, the colonists save lots of money on discount tea and everyone goes away happy, right? Wrong; a lot of colonists were involved in smuggling tea into America and selling it. They saw the situation as a big company coming in, selling tea at artificially low prices to put all the colonial entrepreneurs out of business. Therefore, the Boston Tea Party was a protest against business monopolies by big companies and not about taxes.

So, as I said, the GOP got it all wrong because they thought they were protesting taxes like the patriots at the birth of our republic. Actually many of the wealthiest 10% represent businesses that are much more like the East India Company in the way they eliminate their competitors and try to monopolize the market than they are like their forefathers struggling to stay in business, so the modern tea party attendees not only are protesting the wrong thing, they are more likely to represent the side whose tea got thrown over the side.

It's All Science

2009-07-03T00:05:00.000-04:00

I read a lot of skeptics' websites because I mostly agree with them and I think they provide a good service by presenting a more materialistic viewpoint. Where my views diverge from some of theirs is, for one, I've seen evidence of ghosts so I can't deny their existence and two, I try to take an agnostic view toward most of the woo stuff.

This causes some confusion for people because (I think) they assume that believing in ghosts means I believe in afterlife as expressed by religions or that I support some of the other beliefs espoused by proponents of channeling and mediumship et al. What I'm really saying is that I've experienced something that I can't explain, but I think it is a phenomenon that others could also experience and I think it deserves more study. If the results of the studies indicated that temperal lobe epilepsy can be caused by visiting Gettysburg, so be it, but I still want to know what's really going on.

I also believe that other psychic claims should be tested and the results should be treated with the same respect as any other psychological study. There is so much we can learn about brain function, perception and cognition, especially with all the tools we now have to track the workings of the brain, that I think refusing to pursue such experiments or not treating the results with respect, is a wasted opportunity.

I realize that the way attitudes are right now, a scientist who even expresses an interest in psychic research could cost him his career, so there may be many people out there right now who would love to be involved in such research but dare not mention it for fear of being marginalized. There are many others, however, who have decided that psy is all bunk and any research, no matter how well done, deserves no concideration. These last mentioned people remind me too much of fundies. They have decided what does exist and what doesn't and no amount of evidence will sway them from their opinion. Anyone who decides before the experiment is done, what is or is not true and/or refuses to accept the results of an experiment because it doesn't match their preconceptions, is irrational, biased and a poor scientist. Results are all that matters. If some one does an experiment with good controls and that can be repeated which proves that under certain stimuli monkeys will fly out of a person's butt, no one has the right to say it isn't true, especially if they haven't even tried to reproduce the experiment.

Unfortunately there are way too many people in the skeptical community that have made up their minds before the fact and sneer at anyone who disagrees with their views. Insisting that psy experiments are useless and their results are invalid isn't very different from creationists insisting that the study of evolution is useless and the results invalid. Any hypothesis has a right to be tested and the proof that comes from it deserves to be accepted, whether you like it or not. Anything short of that is the suppression of knowledge and the intentional perpetuation of ignorance.

The Ghost Experiment

2009-07-01T19:49:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I was looking for an online video or transcript from the National Geographic Channel show "Is It Real? Ghosts" because it included an interview with Richard Wiseman about a study he did in Mary King's Close in Edinburgh, Scotland. It took a long time to find the video and in the process, I looked at a lot of other videos purporting to be genuine evidence of ghosts. First of all, every aspiring special effects cinematographer over the age of five makes a video that they post on YouTube as real ghost video. Some are really awful, most are obviously faked, but a very small percentage look very real and I couldn't figure out how they could be faked. None of the videos had enough context to give them any real credibility, though, so they were just fun to watch. Considering all the attempts to fool viewers, it would be almost impossible to present any evidence that could convince a skeptic that ghosts are real with anything less than a face to face introduction.

Eventually I got around to watching the show with Richard Wiseman. In case you don't know who he is, He's a noted psychologist, author, magician and skeptic with a really fun blog. On the "Is It Real" episode he was talking about an experiment he did in the reportedly haunted underground chambers of Mary King's Close. His interview didn't really give enough information so I had to do some googling for more information. Wiseman took pictures of four rooms; two are said to have lots of ghostly activity, and two, not so much. The pictures were posted on the internet, so people could vote on which locations looked most scary. The rooms supposed to be more haunted were picked by the internet voters as more scary.

the next step was to place volunteers in the rooms and have them report on the number and type of ghostly experiences they had. Once again, those in the rooms with the reputations reported the most sensations of haunting. Richard Wiseman concluded that a location that is perceived as scary causes people to feel a heightened sense of being haunted (that was my understanding of the experiment in the Cliff Notes version. Sorry, Richard if I got it all wrong.)

The video alone is less detailed and almost sounds like Richard Wiseman was saying that he put volunteers in rooms where ghosts are reportedly seen and the volunteers saw the ghosts, so that proves that ghosts are imaginary. Isn't that clear as mud?

What I would like to have seen as part of the experiment, that I didn't find in my internet search, would be a control group. If volunteers were placed in locations that had similar physical characteristics to the rooms in Mary King's Close, but had no reports of haunting, it would reenforce the results if the control group reported similar experiences. I don't think the experiment as I understood it would convince many people. Those that support the assertion that the Close is haunted would merely say that the participants experienced more ghostly phenomena in the scary rooms because those rooms are more haunted.

A Creationist By Another Name

2009-06-18T21:05:00.000-04:00

The comments to an article on the Freshwater lawsuit included a post by someone who, while not supporting Freshwater and identifying himself (I suspect it was a him) as an atheist, insisted that scientific thought was ideological dogma and that scientists practiced "Copernicanism". I left a comment based on my knowledge of the region and the articles I have read, then addressed the above person's comment, saying something defending scientific method and suggesting that I didn't get the point he was trying to make.

The person responded that I didn't get it because I was blinded by my "ideological righteousness" and questioned whether peer reviewed papers would get published if they were reviewed by right-wing fundamentalists instead of left-wing liberals. Then he said I'd never learn and left a link to a website. This person appeared to have issues, but I checked out the link anyway.

The link was to an article by Richard Ryals about the "anthropic principle". Since some of the phrases were very similar to the above comments I suspect they were the same person. The article is about how there's proof that the anthropic principle is valid and people are refusing to acknowledge the evidence.

As I understand the anthropic principle, the proponents believe that the universe is evolving like life on Earth, that there is a "Goldilocks zone" in the universe that has evolved especially to develop intelligent lifeforms and that the universe was predisposed to create intelligent lifeforms as its inevitable goal.

To me it sounds like creationism without the deity, but instead of a god existing to create people, the universe exists to create people and other equally intelligent life. I might have missed an issue of "Scientific American" but I don't remember hearing about proof of extraterrestrial life or a Goldilocks zone in the universe so currently this is untestable and unobservable which would make belief in it, to quote the commenter, "ideological dogma". Nonetheless, the commenter apparently thinks that the anthropic principal should be part of the eighth grade science curriculum.

I think the most important part of science education is to teach students to use scientific method to think objectively and throw out personal biases. Only those things observable, testable and reproducible should be considered in a science class. Gods and anthropic principals can be added when objective evidence can be presented, until then, they don't belong in a science class.

If insisting on factual evidence as a prerequisite to inclusion in science class and peer reviewed publications identifies me as a left-wing liberal, so be it. I think it's a lot better than believing in 6000 year old planets or predestined aliens.

Failure is the Best Option

2009-06-16T19:50:00.000-04:00

Some conservative Republicans are advocating a boycott of all General Motors products to protest the Obama administration's management of the failing car maker. The boycotters have made it clear that they want GM to fail so the administration will look bad. I think I sense bathwater and a baby flying toward a window. The conservatives involved have assured the workers that they have nothing against them, but if the boycott succeeds, the auto workers and employees of all the supporting industries will be just as unemployed. I don't think this is a very well thought out plan because:

1. The Obama admin. stepped in at the request of GM and both parties agreed that the collapse of the automaker would cause an economic catastrophy in the US.

2. These Republicans hate Obama's plan, but, as far as I know, nobody, especially these guys, has come up with an alternative plan, so if the administration stops helping, we'll all just stand around watching the barn burn down.

3. The boycott plan is being broadcast on radio and television shows, making it clear who is behind the scheme so if it's successful and hundreds of thousands of people loose their jobs and the economy collapses, who do you think will be blamed? Will people blame the govt. that's making an honest effort to help or the conservative activists whose declared goal is to cause GM to fail?

I sure hope this is as obvious to everyone else as it is to me, because if these reactionary morons continue to be perceived as the spokespersons for the GOP, the Republican party is headed for extinction, and Jon Stewart will have nothing to talk about.

Fix it if it is broke

2009-06-16T18:56:00.000-04:00

I went to the doctor's office today to get prescriptions to refill my meds for depression and ADD and it got me thinking. I think it's cool as hell that I can swallow a few pills in the morning and have a brain that functions better as a result, but I've known people that flatly refuse to even discuss with a doctor the possibility that they might benefit from such medication (even though they have obvious symptoms). I mean, if some one told me that there was a simple way to improve the performance of my motorcycle, I sure wouldn't stand around denying that the bike had a performance problem. Some people just seem to prefer being miserable and making life miserable for everyone around them, and I suspect their motorcycles run rough too.

Freshwater Hates Real Education

2009-06-12T20:03:00.000-04:00

John Freshwater is back in the news. It wasn't enough that for the last 20 years or so he has taught 8th graders to distrust and misunderstand science by teaching creationist propaganda, or that he burned a cross into a student's arm with a tesla coil and then accused the victim of lying, or that when he was fired, he insisted on a hearing even though the evidence against him was overwhelming and that has cost the school district at least $300,000 and still counting. Now he has filed a federal lawsuit for $1,000,000 in damages and his teaching job back.

This guy is more self-absorbed than an ingrown sponge. At the hearing they have presented pictures of the student's injury, examples of the creationist handouts that he passed out in class, examples of the posters with bible quotes he displayed in the classroom, and testimony from students, teachers and administrators that he was still teaching creationism after being specifically ordered to stop. So Freshwater's lawsuit claims that he has been defamed, misrepresented and has had his constitutional rights violated. Then he expects the people of Mount Vernon OH to forget about him bankrupting the school system, defaming his coworkers and students, practically causing a religious war, and just let him go back to his old classroom to teach whatever he damn well pleases for as long as he wants. If he cared one iota about educating kids he'd have shut up and gone home last June, but he's so convinced the he's always right and anyone who disagrees should be punished that he will probably keep fighting until he destroys the educational system of all Ohio.

History Through a Glass Darkly

2009-06-11T11:08:00.000-04:00

The well informed and objective folks at World Net Daily (aka Whirled Nut Daily) have come up with this thought-provoking, ignorant, crap, bumper sticker:

At the time of the American Revolution, our founding fathers would not have even known what this meant. Right and left political labels were the product of the French Revolution a few years later and then those that were said to be on the right were the Royalists and on the left were the Revolutionaries. The counterparts in the American Revolution would have been the Tories, those loyal to the King, on the right and the founding fathers of the United States on the left. I suspect they would have resented being called extremists as well since their goal was to create a well-reasoned representative government without any of the irrational emotionalism associated with extremists.

This is one of those things that really gripes my cookies. Politicians and pundits are always projecting their own attitudes and opinions onto iconic historical figures and then declaring them as historical fact. If George Washington knew all nonsense that people have said he represented, he'd come back and kick their butts.

When I have encouraged people to study more history, they frequently ask what value all those boring facts have in their life. The answer is simple. If you know the real historical facts, then you know when devious politicians and wind-bag pundits are trying to manipulate you into believing absurdities.

DHS is Right and Conservatives are Confused

2009-06-10T19:59:00.000-04:00

DHS are my initials so I may be biased, but last month the Department of Homeland Security released a report saying that they expect an increase in violence from right wing extremists who are frustrated by illegal immigration, the bad economy, and a black president. The DHS was referring to extremists like an anti-abortion wacko who might kill a doctor (like last week) or a white supremacist wacko who might start shooting at the Holocaust Museum (like earlier today), but conservative common taters are convinced, for no apparent reason, that the evil communist-fascist Obama conspiracy is out to get them.

Six months ago conservative journalists and friends were the most vocal supports of DHS and frequently reassured those concerned about the department's sweeping powers that they had nothing to fear unless they were doing something wrong. Now conservatives are concerned. Hmmm. The weirdest thing is they've all decided they are right wing extremists.

I think that they think that the Obama administration is labeling all conservatives as right wing extremists so they are adopting the term as a badge of pride and printing bumper stickers to reflect that. Of course, what the DHS is worried about is the real lunatic fringe that does seem to be coming out from under their rocks. The result is a bunch of good, law-abiding people plastering their vehicles with signs that suggest that they are avid supporters of Adolph Hitler, white supremacists and the Oklahoma City bombing. Do these guys think that will attract more people to the Republican Party?

Newt and Huck Channel Pilgrims

2009-06-08T21:43:00.000-04:00

In an interesting parallel to my last post about Pilgrims, Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee spoke at a Rediscovering God in America rally in Virginia last Friday. Newt said in his address that Christians in the U.S. today are "surrounded by paganism" This sounds kind of like the Pilgrims when they were seeking religious isolation by moving to a place already populated by people who's religions included nature worship.

Not to be outdone, Huck said that the CA proposition that made gay marriage illegal again was "a miracle from God's hands" completely ignoring the Mormons who rallied to vote for the proposition. This sounds a lot like the Puritans, when they gave god credit for the help that the Indians provided.

Most importantly, both politicians insisted that the US belongs to the (conservative evangelical) christians. They, like their Pilgrim forefathers, demonstrate and advocate complete intolerance to anyone whose beliefs are different. Furthermore, the rally took place at Rock Church which is connected to a group that advocates armed insurrection and martyrdom for their cause. So they, like the Pilgrims, may want all Americans either to follow their religion or they will be banished, jailed, or executed.

Enough with the Pilgrims

2009-06-07T17:16:00.000-04:00

Just about every time some one argues that the US is a christian nation they bring up the Pilgrims. Because the Pilgrims were christians of the puritan denomination that, according to legend, came to America for religious freedom, they somehow had something to do with the US Constitution about 160 years later. I think the proponents of a christian nation need to read more.

First of all, the Pilgrims were not the first North American colonists. It should be remembered that Native Americans with their own perfectly good religions were here for thousands of years before any of the usual suspects arrived. Then there were Norse, French traders, Spanish conquistadors, abandoned African slaves, and English colonists in Virginia, just to name a few, before the Pilgrims.

Second, they didn't come for religious freedom; they came for religious isolation. They had freedom to practice their religion in Holland, but what they really wanted was to get rid of the Church of England so they used the Dutch printing industry to print anti-C of E pamphlets which they smuggled into England. This naturally did not sit well with the head of the English Church, who also was King of England, James I. That made advocating the ouster of the head of the church sound remarkably like treason against the crown, because it was. Furthermore, they didn't much care for Holland with all those less pure christians running around practicing religious freedom too.

Third, when they got to America, they acted like a bunch of narrow-minded, intolerant jerks. The Native Americans in the region were helpful and tolerant, except when the Pilgrims stole food or desecrated their graves, and when the local tribes frequently saved the Pilgrims from starvation and death, the Pilgrims thanked their god rather than the people who actually did the work and provided the food. When any new English colonists arrived, they either had to follow the Puritan religion or they were banished, jailed, or, in at least on case, executed.

These are the great forefathers that advocates of a christian nation want to hold up as examples; people who would not have tolerated the religious beliefs of any of their modern admirers, who would have abhorred the kind of religious freedom advocated in the Constitution, and who were the kind of bores you would never invite to a party.

Only Sperm is Sacred

2009-06-07T16:15:00.000-04:00

The murder of Dr. George Tiller in Kansas and subsequent comments from anti-abortion people have made it very clear that they care nothing about any post-partum human, the sanctity of the church, or the constitution and laws of the United States, and, since they murder lawful citizens and blow up buildings, they really are indistinguishable from other terrorists. While I'd like to see all the supporters of anti-abortion violence hauled of to Gitmo, what I find most disturbing is that the so-called pro-life advocates obviously don't give a crap about what happens to any life after it has left the womb.
An on-line forum my wife follows contained a thread about abortion attitudes and after a lot of the usual back and forth some one posted this:

"In every abortion thread I've ever been apart of I always ask the same questions and get ignored...

If you are anti-abortion how many children have you adopted or will you adopt? Do you donate money to helping children who have been given up by their parents?

Does anyone know the statistics of how many anti-abortion people adopt children in the US every year?

If you are going to offer no solution to the problem...

Because really, who is going to take care of these unwanted children? The already overburdened system?"

As predicted, all those previously chatty pro-lifers suddenly forgot how to use a keyboard and I don't think it was because they all rushed off to adopt a child. Most of them just want to spit venom and brag about their moral superiority but when the living, breathing children that their actions created needs help, they're too busy picketing clinics and threatening staff to step up to the plate.

A little post-script: My wife has a cousin who actually walks the walk. He and his family are pro-life evangelicals who have adopted a lot of these unwanted children, so they're not all hypocrites, but this cousin is obviously a rare exception to norm.

Cognitive Dissonance is Our Friend

2009-02-22T22:26:00.000-05:00

As I understand it, cognitive dissonance is the discomfort one feels when that person’s strongly held beliefs conflict with facts that the person encounters. Articles I’ve read like to use the example of cigarette smokers who can read right off the pack that smoking is bad for their health, yet they always have an excuse for continuing to smoke. So if we could get more people to recognize the cognitive dissonance in themselves, they might stop to analyze the facts and make more rational decisions.
Of course, the more one has invested in maintaining their errant belief, the more likely the person is to avoid cognitive dissonance; which goes a long way toward explaining the actions of creationists. So the people that need to understand this concept the most are the ones least likely to even listen and the more I write about this the more discouraged I get. Now I’ve completely forgotten the whole point of this post.
Anyway, I’m going to endeavor to keep cognitive dissonance in mind so I will be less likely to stick to dumb opinions that don’t fit the facts and when I encounter a person who begins a sentence with “I refuse to believe…” I’ll hit them with a brick, because they won’t listen to the facts even if I try to inform them.

Skeptical About Skepticism

2009-02-11T16:48:00.000-05:00

I’ve started to become increasingly skeptical about the people who refer to themselves as skeptics. I consider myself a skeptic because I try not to take anything at face value and always want to analyze any available data to support assertions. Isn’t that skeptical of me? The problem is that I’ve been looking at skeptics’ websites and they seem to define the word differently. The site owners seem to have decided that some things don’t exist or work and no proof of their assertions are necessary.
I know that it’s advisable not to open your mind so much that your brain falls out, but I think it’s also advisable not to close your mind so much that no facts get in. For instance, I’ve mentioned before that I know ghosts exist because I’ve seen them under circumstances that leave no other rational explanation, but many of the internet skeptics say simply that ghosts don’t exist because they’ve never seen one. Of course they’ve never gone looking for one; they’ve never spent time in a haunted house or battlefield or any place else that ghosts frequent and they’ve never done any research on the subject. It’s sort of like only believing in the existence of animals if they can be seen from the skeptic’s front window. They are equally dismissive of any evidence collected by ghost hunters; everything’s a fake, a flaw, or a misinterpretation of data. How do they know? Well, they figure ghosts don’t exist, so supporting evidence can’t exist either.
Although you might never notice by reading this blog, my life goal is to collect knowledge and in so doing, separate facts from general assumptions. That is why I consider myself a skeptic; because I don’t automatically accept statements as fact just because I read them in a book or see them on TV, but instead reserve judgment until I see some credible corroboration. Accepting information on faith or dismissing out of hand information that doesn’t fit my perception only limit my efforts to become more knowledgeable and increase understanding. Suppression of knowledge and bending information to coincide with preconceptions are the job of religions. I try to remember that the correct answer to the question is frequently “I don’t know.”

The Death of Hope

2009-02-11T14:29:00.000-05:00

The one thing that everyone agreed should be the very first thing that the new govt. in Washington D.C. accomplish; implement a financial stimulus package and, I (and I think most Americans) hoped both parties could join together to make it happen. A package was put together and presented to the House and was widely criticized by the Republicans, but passed without a single Republican voting for it. The stimulus package then went to the Senate where the Republican senators held it up and demanded that a lot of cuts which they’re still arguing about. So much for bipartisan compromise.
It seems the Republicans in congress have decided that they are the fiscal watchdogs, protecting the American people from large govt. debt. That’s great if the public has the memory span of a gold fish. The very same Repubs for eight years voted on things that took us from the largest budget surplus to the largest budget deficit in history. Furthermore, everyone agrees we need a stimulus package, even if we’re not sure what it should contain. Up until a few weeks ago the fiscal watchdogs were spending the money on a made-up war where subcontractors were hired to do the same thing at the same time as the US military except they get paid ten times as much and where billions of dollars just disappeared, and they found lots of other places to spend money too, on things that were nowhere as important as a stimulus package, plus they cut taxes for the biggest taxpayers; until they got to a trillion dollars of debt.
So what kind of wasteful spending are the newly minted fiscal watchdogs interested in cutting? Well here’s a hint; it’s not the law that the Dems slipped in that allows congress to decide if you don’t need the expensive things your doctor prescribes. They want to cut all the science support, since new technology, alternative energy sources, and applied science can’t stimulate the economy. They want to cut money going to education, because making taxpayers pay more to keep their children’s schools open doesn’t have anything to do with the economy. Also, they want to cut bailout money to the states so you can have higher state taxes to offset any tax cut you get from the feds
Meanwhile, the GOP congresspersons still vote in lockstep, but give it a different label so business as usual sounds like new and improved, and the latest polls suggest that most people view them as obstructionists rather that defenders. So help for the economy gets delayed and the Republicans may be insuring that even fewer voters support them in the next election.

The New Administration

2009-02-04T17:55:00.000-05:00

Obama has recently proven he's not perfect, especially when it comes to cabinet appointments and he may have a lousy bailout plan, if the Republicans in Congress are right (although they haven't much credibility based on the last 8 years), but at least he's getting some things right. He's reversing some of W's most stupid decisions, especially ones that pandered to the Fundies or were unconstitutional and he's obviously been working his butt off since day one. The most refreshing thing I have heard from the new Prez is the statement "It was totally my fault". After eight long years of verbal acrobatics by the last administration to avoid accepting blame for anything, we finally have an adult in the White House who's willing to acknowledge mistakes and then try to fix them.

Armageddon a Happy Marriage

2008-12-06T11:26:00.000-05:00

A news article came out today on Yahoo News entitled “ Bush: Marriage has gotten better in White House” (read it at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/bush_marriage). It’s all about how the pressures of the presidency have brought W and his wife closer together. Isn’t that peachy keen. We’re fighting a huge made-up war where thousands of Americans have died and tens of thousands of the people we were liberating have died. Our government has alienated almost every country in the world. The Environmental Protection Agency thinks the only environment it should protect is in the board rooms of big corporations, and the American economy is swirling down the bowl before our (increasingly unemployed) eyes. But George W. Bush is fine because he was able to take time away from orchestrating the end of the world as we know it to make his marriage work. Is there a better example of how far up his own ass George W. Bush is?

Peace on Earth and Kill the Atheists

2008-12-05T18:28:00.000-05:00

I worked at a retail store the year that Bill O’Reilly started his “War on Christmas” nonsense. Among my regular customers were people that I knew were Jewish. I also had customers from Japan, China, Arab nations, India and a bunch of other places. My first inkling that some Xians were outraged that stores’ employees were saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” was when a very angry looking sixtyish woman came into the store, stomped past the Christmas trees, past the decorations that spelled out “Merry Christmas” and past the inflatable lawn ornaments with “Merry Christmas” printed across them, to the customer service desk, where she demanded to know whether the customer service rep greeted customers with “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays”. The CSR responded that she preferred to say “Happy Holidays”, triggering a “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” tirade from the woman before she stormed back out of the store leaving puzzled employees and customers in her wake.
There was no store policy about holiday greetings. Staff members were free to address customers in any civil manner they liked and virtually all of us would respond to a customer’s “Merry Christmas” greeting with something like “and Merry Christmas to you”. It’s just that some of the employees, like me, realized that our customers were not exclusively Christians, and that there were other holidays to celebrate at that time of year. Coincidentally, that year Hanukah began on Dec. 25th. , but some of the employees were obviously Bill O’Reilly fans or attended the same church as fans and “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” discussions occurred in the break room as well as at customer service.
Ultimately, the “Jesus” people were sure that there was some kind of conspiracy to completely remove all reference to Christianity from the month of December and they seemed to feel that Xmas was the one and only legitimate holiday in Dec. The “holiday” people lived in the real world and were aware that other people have a right to exist too.
I don’t know what Bill O’Reilly’s motivation is. He may believe there’s a war on Xmas or he may get off on creating nationwide outrage among conservative Xians. It is clear, however, that conservative Xians, who seem to require an enemy in order to feel fulfilled, believe that their world is under attack from the usual suspects and that they need to gird their arms and join the crusade before society collapses into an orgy of abortions and godless communism. So, the Jesus people get to feel enraged and outraged and persecuted and at war with everyone whose views differ from theirs (and who are therefore EVIL). Of course, if they win the war (oops, I mean when they win, because god is on their side) the world will be a better place because salespeople will say “Merry Christmas” to everyone as they kill each other while fighting over the last got-to-have-it-now-toy, and maybe they’ll say “peace on earth, good will toward mankind” too.

Another Good Reason for Atheism

2008-12-02T19:19:00.000-05:00

In a news article: (http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/ODD_100_MPH_WRECK?SITE=WCMHTV&SECTION=STRANGE&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-12-01-20-13-17) a man crashed his pickup into a woman’s car. He told police he did it because God told him to. Chances are you’ll never hear an atheist say he committed a crime because his imagination told him to. Oh, and speaking of commitment, the article said that the man would be given a psychological evaluation. Pat Robertson says he speaks to god a lot, can we send him to a mental hospital for a while?