scientism and balderdash

An article in Catholic News tries to defuse the evolution "controversy" (itself a product of deranged creationist minds) by claiming that evolution is not to blame for the recent surge in atheistic books and the open spread of atheism. Rather, scientism is the evil beastie here (an old claim!). And they define scientism as "the use of science beyond its proper sphere of investigating physical nature".

Of course the dolts do not realize that such a definition is certainly begging the question of whether there is anything at all "beyond physical nature". Meh, they never cease to amuse me.

Presidential Debate '08

If it ever happens (yeah, right: none of the leading candidates seem to have any interest in participating, but we may be able to persuade them to), it looks like it will be in my front yard: at the PSU.

I, for one, would not miss that for all the oil in Iraq.

In other news, aren't democrats supposed to be the open-minded ones, with a well-known liberal bias, especially in places like Chicago, IL? ;)

Apparently not.

Yeah, I'll just repost this part of an exchange between Rep. Monique Davies, D-Chicago and Rob Sherman, on the question of the grants of public monies in the state of Illinois to churches!

Here (my bolds):"Davis: I don’t know what you have against God, but some of us don’t have much against him. We look forward to him and his blessings. And it’s really a tragedy — it’s tragic — when a person who is engaged in anything related to God, they want to fight. They want to fight prayer in school. I don’t see you (Sherman) fighting guns in school. You know?

I’m trying to understand the philosophy that you want to spread in the state of Illinois. This is the Land of Lincoln. This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children.… What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it’s dangerous–

Sherman: What’s dangerous, ma’am?

Davis: It’s dangerous to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! Now you will go to court to fight kids to have the opportunity to be quiet for a minute. But damn if you’ll go to [court] to fight for them to keep guns out of their hands. I am fed up! Get out of that seat!

Sherman: Thank you for sharing your perspective with me, and I’m sure that if this matter does go to court—

Davis: You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon. "

Leaving aside a problem with Lincoln (he certainly was not a Christian, if one believes his own words, and was probably the most atheistic President this country has ever had), don't public servants have a responsibility to be familiar with the foundational laws of the land they serve? I have given up on demanding any signs of actual intelligence from them a long time ago, but simple knowledge of the laws they are sworn to uphold and defend should really count for something. Davis is obviously a bigoted idiot and all my friends living in her district should think about this very hard the next time they vote.

reality has a well-known liberal bias part 37

A funny bill is moving towards approval in the state of Oklahoma. HB2211 has passed the House and is moving right up, into Senate. It will do this:

"The bill requires public schools to guarantee students the right to express their religious viewpoints in a public forum, in class, in homework and in other ways without being penalized. If a student's religious beliefs were in conflict with scientific theory, and the student chose to express those beliefs rather than explain the theory in response to an exam question, the student's incorrect response would be deemed satisfactory, according to this bill.

The school would be required to reward the student with a good grade, or be considered in violation of the law. Even simple, factual information such as the age of the earth (4.65 billion years) would be subject to the student's belief, and if the student answered 6,000 years based on his or her religious belief, the school would have to credit it as correct. Science education becomes absurd under such a situation."

Doesn't the world already have enough to laugh/weep over when looking at the USA?

The sponsor of the bill is one Sally Kern, who appears to be one of the most bigoted, nasty religio-robots in this country; a vile human being by any standards. She claims that there is a vast gay conspiracy infiltrating our schools, among other nasty remarks; apparently, her son is gay and has been disowned by her. So it goes in the land of religious hypocrisy.

the idiocy never stops

I may be somewhat late in finding this out, but I suppose better that than after the fact.

Colorado, this year, is trying to put on the ballot a state constitutional amendment stating that a fertilized egg is legally a person. "Voters would decide if a fertilized egg is entitled to the Colorado constitutional protections of inalienable rights, equality of justice and due process of law."

Apparently one does not need any differentiated organs at all, much less a brain, to be considered a person. That certainly plays in the hands of the majority of this amendment's supporters, who cannot be distinguished from tree-stumps in most cases. Yes, this should go a long way towards recognition of their civil rights. Tree stumps and sea cucumbers of the world unite! Your lack of capacity for cognitive function does not mean you can be denied full human rights!

This is so fascinating: would menstruation then be considered negligent homicide? Or involuntary manslaughter (since obviously this amendment has little to do with women's rights)? What about all those frozen embryos? Wow...

??????? Words fail, as often when dealing with brainlessness of this magnitude. Even if, as is likely, the amendment sinks without a trace, the willingness of our legal system to allow such a ridiculous travesty of democratic process to proceed does not bode well for the future of liberty in this republic.

slowly losing Florida part 2

Taylor county, Florida, refuses to accept the teaching of evolution in schools! The link is to a pdf of the Nov 20th meeting. They are—get this!—opposed to "teaching evolution as a fact". It probably is one of the most idiotic statements that could be made by anyone; soon they'll be voting on changing the value of pi to 3, and, I am sure, on even more idiotic measures.

Among the gems in that product of arrogant ignorance is this statement: "we are requesting that the State Board of Education direct the Florida Department of Education to revise/edit the new Sunshine State Standards for Science so that evolution is presented as one of several theories as to how the universe was formed". The morons not only have no clue about scientific method and biology, but they seem to be conflating the Big Bang theory with that of evolution. And then, people like them have the nerve to state, when speaking of atheists, "Because their arguments are really quite lightweight intellectually, they resort to nastiness.".

No, we resort to nastiness because your idiocy is so overwhelming that we are at a loss for words. Not that logic and rationality would make an impact on your tiny benighted rudimentary brains even if we regained our power of speech. Sheesh.

A simple solution?

"Pope Benedict XVI has instructed Roman Catholics to pray "in perpetuity" to cleanse the Church of paedophile clergy. All dioceses, parishes, monasteries, convents and seminaries will be expected to organise continuous daily prayers to express penitence and to purify the clergy."

Now that is a cheap and easy way of doing it, and, most likely will be endorsed by the paedophiles themselves. I suppose it fits within Christian ontology, but, for my money, more efficient, even though naturalistic, ways of solving the problem can be imagined.

How stupid can people get?

I know who did it!

Huckabee go away!

Recursivity has a list of 10 reasons why Mike Huckabee should NOT be our next president. They are pretty obvious, but go there anyway, and give him some support already!

Here's a copy:

Ten Reasons Not to Vote for Huckabee

The picture that has recently emerged of former governor Mike Huckabee is that of an intellectually incurious, greedy, and corrupt fundamentalist Christian.

So here are just some of the many reasons not to vote for him.

1. He thinks that scientists believe the earth is "six billion" years old. He also thinks we "just don't know" how old the earth is.

2. He covered up an incident where his son hanged a stray dog.

3. He lied about having a theology degree.

4. He claims ‘‘The Holy Bible . . . has truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy.’’

5. In 1992, he wanted to quarantine people with AIDS, even though it was well-known then that AIDS could not be spread by casual contact.

6. He improperly claimed furniture given to the governor's office as a personal gift and then didn't list it on an inventory of office items.

7. He freed criminals who committed heinous offenses if they said they had become born-again.

8. He wants a regressive national sales tax in place of a progressive income tax.

9. In 1998, he signed a statement saying that "A wife is to submit graciously to the servant leadership of her husband".

10. He doesn't accept the theory of evolution.

agnes on faith

Stolen from RDN

Destroying the planet again? + juicy idiotic religious tidbits

Are you using electrical power bought from companies that engage in mountain-top removal? You can find out by going to My Connection and entering your zip code. If your power is purchased by a destruction of a mountain top, the site will link you to a photograph of said mountain top. For example, my zip produces this.

Get involved; they are killing OUR mountains!

In other news, the Pope is pissing blood about atheism again (the full text of the new encyclical, Spe Salvi). What else is new? The old authoritarian asshole would be kind of amusing if so many people didn't take him seriously. As it is, he is rather frightening, in a cheap B-movie horror kind of way. He may eat you whole but at least it'll be funny.

I've been eating them for six or seven weeks now , haven't got sick once

So, occasionally I meet a rational religious person and have an interesting conversation/debate and walk away unconvinced by their arguments--of course--but, at least, feeling that they should have the right to hold their opinions and promote them in peace. And then, right about then, some asshole like Jerry Falwell pipes up and says that global warming is Satan's tool and that Christians should not concern themselves with it because God will take care of Earth until the Second Coming and I just want to...want to...

Such idiocy is not just, ahem, idiotic. It is positively dangerous and detrimental to society, just like the moronic Moslem concepts of heaven and jihad are dangerous and detrimental. This is why Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Victor Stenger call for active intellectual opposition to religious garbage in general; no matter how insipid, religious--i.e. unfounded subjective--belief of any kind protects and supports violent fringe garbage of Falwellian/Wahhabian type. Karl Popper said that our tolerance of different points of view should not extend to those philosophies that are violently intolerant of others. Damn straight.

It's bloody amazing: we cannot medicate ourselves or get a hooker in most places, but we can spout such trash without fear of legal repercussions just because we claim religious protection. Fuck that. I am done being friendly to bigoted idiots (unprejudicedly so, even without extreme prejudice...;)).


On the third hand, printable cold sores is rather funny, in a sickening sort of way.

Naturally, I wouldn't be fulfilling my contract with the universe if I didn't point you to yet another fascinating blog: Molecule of the Day. Check it out: today's entry, chlorogenic acid!

An OH! YES!