One thing most creationist promoters really abhor is publicity. Not all of them hate it, of course; the Discovery Institute craves it like an addict, but the irony is that when they get it, their lies, machinations, and political sleaziness get exposed.
Other creationist organizations want to avoid publicity for that very reason. So the Texans involved with forcing Chris Comer out of her job are probably taking blood pressure medicine at this point. Not only has their utter contempt for reality and decency been exposed, but the exposure is gaining momentum.
The group Texas Citizens for Science (go team!) has posted a very public evisceration of the Texas Education Agency. This essay really pounds home just how evil these people are:
The real reason she was forced to resign is because the top TEA administrators and some SBOE members wanted her out of the picture before the state science standards–the science TEKS–were reviewed, revised, and rewritten next year. Plans are underway by some SBOE members and TEA administrators to diminish the requirement to teach about evolutionary biology in the Biology TEKS and to require instead that biology instructors “Teach the Controversy” about the “weaknesses” of evolution, that is, teach the Creationist-inspired and -created bogus controversy about evolution that doesn’t exist within legitimate science. There are no scientific weaknesses with biological evolution as the natural process is understood by scientists. At the level at which it is taught in high school, evolutionary biology has no weaknesses, gaps, or problems. Therefore, it is duplicitous to pretend such “weaknesses” and “controversy” exist.
This is not an opinion being expressed here. It’s a fact. The Texas State Board of Education is trying to change the way they review and edit the science standards in the state; the basic ideas students get taught in class. Get this: they want to have a single person (called without any conscious irony on their part a facilitator) who will have the final say on how the standards get written. Sure, there will be a panel of experts and all that, but if the panel says evolution needs to be a standard, and the facilitator disagrees, then evolution won’t be a standard. It’s that simple.
And what are the odds the facilitator will be someone who can be trusted on these point? I’d say a big fat zero.
This violates the very nature of education on nearly all levels. Without any expert input whatsoever, a single person (chosen by a Board of Education with decidedly creationist leanings) gets to decide not only what is science and what isn’t, but also decide this for all the public school students in the state.
How doomed can one state be? The answer is none. None more doomed. Unless people rise up and do something about this. If you are an educator, scientist, parent, or student in the state of Texas, and you’re as angry as I am, contact the Texas Citizens for Science and do something. Make your voice heard!
Tip o’ the ten gallon hat to PZ.
November 29th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
Thank the FSM for you, Phil. Keep on doing what you’re doing- it’s only folks like yourself with a stage on which to speak who can help educate the masses.
I’ve been a faithful (oxymoron?) follower of Badastronomy for well over a year now, and only recently picked up Bad Astronomy The Book recently. I’m about halfway through, and I have to admit, you’ve even shown that someone like me, who was convinced I knew the science behind the ‘facts’ I understood, still has things to learn. I have been, unwittingly, a purveyor of bad science. I have learned things from your book, which I must admit, I only bought to help support you. So it’s a double benefit to me- I learned I was wrong about a few things, and I helped to support someone I respect and admire.
Good on you, Phil. Keep up the good work, sir.
November 29th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Feel free to remove a ‘recently’ from my previous post, at your discretion.
November 29th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
I was born in Texas, but I currently live in Western Australia. I cannot express in writing how angry this sort of stuff makes me and how happy I am that this sort of evil does not yet happen in Australia.
A big Thank you goes to the Bad Astronomer for fighting against this sort of corruption. I don’t know what good it will do from Australia but I will be putting my name in the fight agaist people who think its ok to force their religous beliefs on others.
November 29th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
It’s a little old but good for a laugh. Check out the ultimate definition of Irony:
http://www.swnebr.net/newspaper/cgi-bin/articles/articlearchiver.pl?162418
November 29th, 2007 at 8:03 pm
“All right class, open your Bibles to page 3…”
November 29th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
Dan,
After page 1 in the Bible, there isn’t anything related to the creation.
November 29th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]
November 29th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
10 gallon hats for 10 ounce heads.
November 29th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
When I was a teacher in Minnesota (about 7 or 8 years ago), a recruiter for the Texas school system found me at my part-time job and gave me the hard sell, trying to convince me to uproot and move south.
Among the reasons that I didn’t was that apparently years spent teaching in Texas didn’t count towards seniority anywhere else in the nation (according to the union rep I spoke to later).
November 29th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
jrkeller,
Actually, the creation story is told twice in row, in Genesis I and II. The second one is very different–even the order of events is changed. It often starts a couple pages in. (I’ve never seen a creationist mention the second version of the story for some reason.)
November 29th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
Hats off to Phil and PZ for doing what they can to shine whatever disinfecting rays of sunlight they can on this maddening foolishness going on in Texas.
Unfortunately, if this keeps up, there are going to be a lot of under-educated students pouring out of the Texas school system, and that doesn’t benefit a damn one of us in this already struggling nation.
November 29th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
jrkeller,
Actually, the creation story is told twice in a row. It often makes it to a couple pages in. (The second story is very different than the first–funny how creationists always seem to ignore it.)
November 29th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
Oh, Dan G., there’s a reason creationists never mention the second creation story in the Bible. It seems most of them haven’t read that far into the book.
November 29th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
Apparently, people think this will only affect Texas. It will not only affect Texas. Texas is one of the largest textbook buyers in the nation. If textbooks get changed for Texas, they will get changed for smaller states as well. So this would not be a travesty for Texas students, it would be a travesty for many more students.
November 29th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
Well, I said in the previous thread that the BOE would try to find a way to avoid the very public browbeating they got last time the science standards reviewed, so it’s not surprising to find they’re trying to pull out all the stops already.
I wonder if we’ll discover that the Disco Institute has their dirty little fingers in the pie. Now that would be a story for an enterprising reporter to uncover–not that it would surprise anyone much.
This may end up being bigger than Kansas was, given that as Texas goes with the textbooks, so goes much of the rest of the USA.
November 29th, 2007 at 11:29 pm
Though I’m not a Texan, I fear for the state of your system of education in that it may one day be as bad here in my home as it is in yours.
I’m Canadian and as a parent, I’m accutely aware of the crap my kids can be exposed to, including and above all, ones personal religious beliefs.
My experience is that most people do not understand the application of the word faith and that if a thing requires it, it must then lack evidence. This must be understood!
Where the science in our text books is based on facts, observable phenomena and testable predictions, thus eliminating the need for faith; the other lacks facts and therefore requires it.
Already I know that my kids will have to wait until college to be taught Mendel’s genetics, or the Hardy-Weinberg Law where as their UK counterparts will have been intimately introduced to these historical figures and their contributions to science in highschool.
Creationists, if I may use the term, fear that Mendel and Hardy-Weinberg will lead to Darwin; much the way that they fear dancing will lead to teenage pregnancy.
They cannot be allowed to influence education.
“There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the pomotion of science and literature”. A quote from one of your own forfathers I believe.
November 29th, 2007 at 11:38 pm
Dan,
My point is that the entire creation is described in short order and by page 3, the Bible is done with creation. Unfortunatly, we have these peachers and their massive “theories” such as dinosaurs on Noah’s ark that go well beyond what is in the Bible. The same holds true for the rapture/end times and the propersity Gospel.
Note: The Bible is not a scientific text.
November 29th, 2007 at 11:46 pm
Well, unless there is a major shift in current trends, the demographics point to a future where the religious right do not have near the influence they have today. Today’s generation of young Americans is the least religious in history, with around five times more non-believers than 40 years ago. It’s still only 20%, but there is no sign towards non-belief that the trend is slowing.
So any victory they win in Texas next year (and they will not get it without one hell of a fight from the rest of us) will be temporary. It may take a decade or two before this type of thing is a thing of the past, but I am confident that it will be the case one day.
November 30th, 2007 at 12:07 am
Personally, I doubt anything will happen. My kids barely use their textbooks. Most of what they do is from handouts and online research. In TX, I believe the new science textbooks come out in 2012.
Also, the textbooks are a collaboration of dozens of people – the majority who do not live in Texas.
November 30th, 2007 at 1:18 am
My sister recently moved back from Germany and settled in Texas, enrolling her two daughters in the El Paso system. After three months she pulled the younger one out and enrolled her in a private school. This is probably a stop gap measure, as she and her husband are now looking into relocating to Alamagordo, New Mexico. My sister has a master’s in education and was pursuing certification in Texas. Now New Mexico is likely to get the benefit of her years of teaching in a bilingual school in Berlin.
November 30th, 2007 at 3:07 am
Actually I would put a call out to all the technology companies in Texas to take a deep look at what future workers they will obtain from the Texas curriculum. If this is any indication of the quality of the education in that state, it would be advisable for the technology companies either stop this or make plans to pull out of the state.
November 30th, 2007 at 3:26 am
jrkeller,
Also, the textbooks are a collaboration of dozens of people – the majority who do not live in Texas.
But are published by one of three companies (there are more imprints, but there are really only the Big Three) who know that, as Matt and tacitus said, Texas is the biggest purchaser. Any book that the Texas schools won’t adopt is seen as a loss or a ‘niche’ book, and is that much less likely to be picked up for publication.
I’ve never quite understood why that is, given that CA’s population is larger, but I’ve worked in schools and so do several members of my family — my mother has written textbooks, in fact — and the publishing companies don’t even try to pretend otherwise.
College textbooks may escape, as the scene there is somewhat different, but elementary and high school textbooks are subject to Texan whims.
November 30th, 2007 at 3:46 am
First, I´m portuguese, my english isn´t perfect, so sorry!
There is a documentary from U.S.A., your home, that speaks and shows what crazy faith can do to people. It`s “Jesus Camp” or “Camp Jesus”, I´m not sure, it shows children becoming allucinated, literally, with Jesus, beeing trained to work as an army, as Jihad soldiers do.
You should watch it, if possible.
It was shown in Lisbon, on a Documentary Festival: Doc Lisboa.
Thank you.
November 30th, 2007 at 3:50 am
This is just yet another reason why religion needs to be fought against – not simply tolerated. It’s completely unacceptable for anyone to lose his/her job because he/she does not promote the fairy tales of the loon in charge.
Ultimately, America will get what it deserves for allowing this nonsense to continue.
November 30th, 2007 at 6:08 am
Unbelievable! Iron Age superstition stunts science teaching in American schools. I would say this is some major news indeed.
November 30th, 2007 at 6:20 am
On the subject of Creationism:
“And on the sixth day, God showed a shocking lack of judgement…”
November 30th, 2007 at 6:56 am
Somewhat off topic, but pertaining to politics in general, I found this gem on a “Murphy’s Laws” website:
“Putney’s Law:
If the people of a democracy are allowed to do so, they will vote away the freedoms which are essential to that democracy. ”
http://roso.epfl.ch/dm/murphy.html
And remember, “Politics” is from Latin:
Poly = Many
Tics = Small, annoying, bloodsucking parasites.
November 30th, 2007 at 7:02 am
As a former resident of Texas, and someone who spent his formative years there, I can only say I am glad to no longer live there, as well as being thankful that my children will never attend school there.
Period.
There is a reason this ID crap isn’t going away, and the reason is that all these people are ‘infiltrating’ legitimate posts that are supposed to be for education, not for the furthering of a religious agenda. It is time to demand that the people making these decisions are properly educated and knowledgeable about science, NOT fundamentalist christians.
The other option is we become so stupid and religious that we become a third-world country with no-one able to perform the most basic of functions, because ‘God said it’s a sin.’
November 30th, 2007 at 7:24 am
Forgive if any of my comments are repeated from Pharyngula.
NathRuss: Same here, except I am living in South Africa. I haven’t been home in some time, and can’t believe what is happening. Not that Texas was ever a bastion of rational, scientific leaning (at least as far as ed policy goes), but this is … … there are no words.
My children are here, but I still feel a responsibility. Like you say, it is hard when you are half a world away, but I am still registered to vote, and you can bet I will. But other differences? When I send email back home exposing this kind of travesty to our state, to our CHILDREN (again figuratively, my children are here), almost all of my family and others I email will respond by saying that I am wrong, they will pray for me, yada yada the whole shpill. Sometimes I feel utterly hopeless, that the BA is right: My home state: DOOMED.
However,
tacitus: I agree with the demographics changing. This brings back some hope, as it does when things like Dover happen. Not the trial, which was a great victory (or a huge bullet dodged if you like), but the fact that the voters booted the asses of the pathetic school board members right out the building.
Again, living half a world away, it is hard to keep a finger on the pulse, but it certainly seems that the intensity of these assaults on reason is increasing because the religious (kooks and moderate) feel threatened and are becoming more and more desperate. Don’t get me wrong; I know they are still a huge majority of the country, and I am not prognosticating their imminent downfall (though they seem to be predicting ours). I just think that they see reason becoming more common and label it as evil or Satan’s work or whatever, and it rouses them to fight the fight.
I will also continue to fight the fight because I’m GATVOL (South Africanism, sorry), of this nonsense.
November 30th, 2007 at 7:45 am
You know, I am a product of the Catholic school system, and I’ve heard the whole dog and pony show on intelligent design since it started to gain popularity.
But it also turns out that I was born with half a uterus. So I’m a walking argument *for* evolution and *against* ID.
It’s kind of a hoot.
In the end, I don’t see why you can’t be spiritual and also believe in REAL science. It’s sad that these people see the two as mutually exclusive.
November 30th, 2007 at 7:51 am
Hopefully there’ll be a revolution and at the great Houston TEA Party they’ll throw the Texas Education Authority into Galveston bay.
November 30th, 2007 at 8:02 am
“The answer is none. None more doomed.”
BA: Is this a play on “The answer is none. None more black.”, from “This is Spinal Tap”?
November 30th, 2007 at 8:07 am
Kevin,
Why wait for highschool or college to teach Mendelian genetics? My 2nd and 5th graders have already been exposed to the concepts – at home. It’s not all that difficult to teach, a brief explanation of who Mendel was and what he did, and some quick drawings of Punit squares. I think it went over the younger child’s head, but he’ll see it again later so I’m not worried.
My kids go to a *good* school, but I still suppliment their education any time I come across something they haven’t learned that I think they can grasp. Hopefully by the time they’re teenagers and think they know more than I do, they really will.
November 30th, 2007 at 8:16 am
> It’s sad that these people see the two as mutually exclusive.
It’s also sad a lot of people here see the two as mutually exclusive, but from the opposite side of the fence.
Science is a methodology; when it becomes an ideology, things tend to go just as swirly as when religion becomes the foundation of wahoo ideologies. Science in schools should ideally teach scientific methodology and be totally devoid of ideology; therefore, anything non-scientific (like religion or anything supernatural) should have a fifty-foot restraining order at all times. The only ideology schools should teach is the ideology of the State (which in this case are the Western liberalism ideals of the equality of all people under the law, egalitarianism, balancing individualism with social regard, so on and so forth) but civics classes died out a long time ago.
> This is just yet another reason why religion needs to be fought against – not simply tolerated. It’s completely unacceptable for anyone to lose his/her job because he/she does not promote the fairy tales of the loon in charge.
Last sentence: totally true.
First sentence: let the jihad begin, then. What shall we do with the heathen Believers who refuse the enlightenment of our ideology? Shall we put them to the sword? Shall we re-educate them? Shall we break them down and remold them in the form of the New Scientific Man?
Tolerance, even and especially grudging tolerance, is the cornerstone of modern Western liberalism. People are allowed to be as wrong-headed and loony as they care to be so long as they don’t go about harming all of society in general–which is where the marketplace of ideas and the battle of viewpoints come in. Religious encroachment on the magisterium of science needs to be fought against, certainly, as there is no scientific debate and it is duplicitous to say there is one. To say religion itself must be fought against, though, is the matter of an misotheistic ideology (rather than the atheistic-by-assumption-and-definition scientific methodology) fighting a theistic ideology and is equally divorced from science.
Naturalistic Materialism (the philosophy) != Science (the methodology)
After all, even if the final battle against God ended in favor of the forces of “free thought” (which, like many other ideologies, take the banner and only let thoughts equivalent to their own be free), then we’d just be having the same pointless struggles, except with string theory versus QED and whatnot.
Anyway, I make no commentary on Texas at large for what the idiots in charge do. Such a thing would be equivalent to claiming perfect knowledge of the people of Iran because they happen to be under an oppressive theocratic government that rules through hate and fear because it lacks any real popular support.
November 30th, 2007 at 8:20 am
@Megan
“In the end, I don’t see why you can’t be spiritual and also believe in REAL science. It’s sad that these people see the two as mutually exclusive.”
I suspect that the difficulty that such people have with combining belief and science is that for moral issues science doesn’t always offer easy answers (e.g. the question “Is killing wrong?”). This means that they’d have to give up a degree of “certainty” and be forced to think about the issues themselves on a very personal level.
On average, people will prefer certainty over uncertainty, and will avoid the work of thinking whenever possible.
As a guideline for combining religion and science, I find some of the ideas of William James to be helpful.
James set out three rules for a belief to be “acceptable”:
1. The belief must not be easily disproven.
2. The belief must not cause harm to the believer (or others?).
3. The belief must bring pleasure to the believer.
It makes for a clear distinction between knowledge and belief, with new knowledge trumping any existing belief. The stickiest point is in #2 where one must determine what constitutes “harm”.
November 30th, 2007 at 8:44 am
Still connected.
Phill, if possible, go and check on Ted Talks, Design, Will Wright, explaining how his new game, “Spore”, works. It´s about evolution and creating or destroying universes, planets, sistems of planets, and playing god. You can figure out the creatures you create, make them dance, etc…
Please check!
November 30th, 2007 at 8:48 am
“Houston, we have a problem.” Will NASA pull its
center out of Houston?
November 30th, 2007 at 8:54 am
To Clara Pinto:
To be fair, a deistic evolutionary game (as opposed to what Spore was) game would be fairly dull. “Set the initial conditions of life! Sit back and watch! See what you get!” It could be interesting as a screen saver, though, that you can playback in sped-up time.
I suppose the argument could be made that Spore is a theistic evolutionary game (here’s your critter; modify it to better deal with the circumstances around it) more than an Intelligent Design game, because the designer need not be intelligent in the least.
November 30th, 2007 at 9:08 am
Centipede,
How’s this for a deistic evolutionary game/screensaver? I’ve been running it for years. I have to be careful though, or I spend lots of time just watching the screensaver as the critters evolve.
http://www.io.com/~spofford/
November 30th, 2007 at 9:12 am
Feel free to contact the TEA (please be polite), especially if you’re a resident of Texas (and you have my condolences if you are).
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/tea/contact.html
The Texas Education Agency is located in the William Travis Building
1701 N. Congress Avenue
Austin, Texas, 78701
(512) 463-9734
November 30th, 2007 at 9:16 am
Doc:
Ooo, that looks keen. It may finally displace Rosetta@HOME as my cycle waster of choice.
Then again, the entire point with Rosetta was that it doesn’t waste cycles, hmmm. I have it running in the background constantly… so all I have to do is disable the graphics, make it not the screensaver, and I can have my SCIENCE! and my little evolving critters too!
As the guys in the Guinness ads say, “Brilliant!”
November 30th, 2007 at 9:37 am
As the Mentat(Dune) said,” Fear,,,is the Mind killer,,,”
Theists are afraid their value system is being over turned and that the technocratic world we are creating will be a heartless one. They see their children questioning old beliefs and that implies that the old systems were wrong. For one who has based their life on such belief to be shown they were wrong is terrifying. I expect as the world tries to become more rational, the reaction from the theistic right will become ever more vociferous. Texas is obviously a pivotal state in the educational book busines. A theistic win in Texas can effectively win a chance to affect every childs education in the USA. As Adolf Hitler said,”Give me a child from age five and I will give you,,,,a slave,,,(slight rephrasing there),,,”
Rationalists MUST win in Texas, if only to maintain a decent standard of education throughout the rest of the country. We must also be cognizant of the other big buyer,,,California. I expect the right will target my home state as well. We need to be aware this conflict between faith based politics and rationalism is bigger than a game of chess and will continue until the right has been stomped into the mud. This is a war of idelogies, one which rationalists MUST win. If we lose, this grand experiment in the development of sentience will fail and we’ll all be running around in burkas(or their christian equivelant).
,,,which is perhaps why we’ve never been visited by another techno culture/species,,,
Gary 7
November 30th, 2007 at 9:50 am
Phil: You are already high on my awesome list, but when you throw in a veiled Spinal Tap quote, you have reached new levels of Rawking…
November 30th, 2007 at 10:12 am
[...] creationists: the story that keeps on giving Posted in Dating by on the November 29th, 2007 Jay Brewer wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptGet this: they want to have a single [...]
November 30th, 2007 at 10:15 am
Gary:
All fundamentalists are theists, but not all theists are fundamentalists. The implied notion that atheists have cornered the market on rationality is also demonstrably false, given the number of atheists who believe in other wahoo things. There is an ideological struggle going on, and a very important one, but you need to get the sides right.
One one side is the fundamentalist of any character and any ideology. He demands that his way is the only way and, be it through the sacred book or the sacred science, his knowledge is Truth. This mindset is inherently stifling. It answers questions with either dogma or with outright suppression. That which does not fall in line with the Truth is anathema and must be obliterated.
On the other side is the truly free-thinking individual whose knowledge and beliefs–two separate things–are in constant tension and reanalysis. This mindset is inherently inquisitive, curious, and questioning. It tries to expand knowledge and belief, see how they interact, and understands that what it has is not Truth but merely a step towards and portion of Truth. That which does not agree with its worldview is questioned, looked over, and individually accepted, discarded, or modified as fits the questioner.
This basic conflict between entrenched dogmatism and explorative self-discovery is the real threat, because all the entrenched dogmatists are fighting over the self-discoverers, and every ideology held as Truth Above All has its own little weaknesses and flaws which, as time progresses, will turn into chasms. The ideological struggle, then, is to make people questioning, active participants in their own ideological development, not simply cattle to indoctrinate with the religion or areligion of the week.
November 30th, 2007 at 10:17 am
Well, it’s good to hear that there are some local rational folks in Texas who are willing to fight the theocrats at work in state government.
November 30th, 2007 at 10:20 am
Lubbock, TX, where I live, was ranked the second most conservative city in America by Forbes magazine. You might suspect that Lubbock would therefore be a hotbed of creation whackiness. Interestingly, this is not the case. There are plenty of creationists here but they don’t seem to have the same influence as in other areas. There are no creationist axe grinders on the local school board, for example. I suspect the reason might be the great prestige and importance of earth science at Texas Tech University. When Tech professors talk, the locals listen; since the university is a very big part of the city’s economy.
There are also some prominent Christian leaders here who do not countenance creation nuttery. They tend to do keep a low public profile about it but they are very effective behind the scenes.
There is in fact an economic agenda behind creationism, since it is a major tenet of many home-schooling and school voucher advocates. These people want a slice of the education budget for home schoolers and private, nut-job superstitionist schools. Home schooling, in case you didn’t know, is something of a growth industry, with many millions being spent on dubious textbooks, supplies, and instructional programs, all selected individually by non-professionals. This market is already very lucrative for quacks of one kind or another, and it would be absolute heaven for them if state money started pouring into the hands of their gullible market.
I have a copy of a textbook called “Earth Science for Christian Schools” (teacher’s edition no less). Somebody like Phil would have to see it to believe it. Suffice to say that it is shot through with creationist propaganda, young-earth creationism at that.
The TEA is part of the problem because some members know a lot more about cutthroat politics than about science and they want to blunt the voucher crowd’s creationist complaints; while others are voucher and home-schooling advocates.
As usual, the bottom line is money.
November 30th, 2007 at 10:24 am
[“Houston, we have a problem.†Will NASA pull its
center out of Houston?]
No, but future space missions will fail because NASA will be forced to use 3 as a value of Pi, like it says in the Bible.
November 30th, 2007 at 10:29 am
I really can’t help but wonder just what these ideological lost causes hope to accomplish. Do they honestly think that they can change objective reality if they lie hard enough?
Do they honestly think that all the clear, direct, objective, compelling, and concise evidence supporting the theory of evolution and natural selection will simply go away if they get enough saps to buy into their marketing campaign?
What happens to these kids, who are fed unscientific nonsense in grade school, should they decide to pursue biological sciences at the university level? What good will it do them to see that creationism, in all its forms, is scientifically useless when they actually start reviewing the data and analyzing their own scientific findings?
Do these fools just want science to pay lip service to whatever cherished cultural beliefs they’ve sold themselves on? It’s not like their beliefs are capable of being empirically validated in any honest fashion.
What do these people hope to accomplish by attempting to popularize a charade as elaborate as intelligent design when at its very core it is incapable of producing any useful scientific data? Sooner or later, they’ll have to face up to the fact that it simply doesn’t work.
What then?
November 30th, 2007 at 10:29 am
[...] Bad Astronomy: Texas creationists: the story that keeps on giving [...]
November 30th, 2007 at 10:31 am
> No, but future space missions will fail because NASA will be forced to use 3 as a value of Pi, like it says in the Bible.
Hey, I just thought of something which would ‘apologize away’ the whole ten-cubit-across-thirty-cubit-around cauldron. A cubit is a nonstandard unit of measurement based on the length from the tip of a man’s middle finger to the tip of his elbow, right?
Obviously they used one man’s cubit to measure the circumference and another man’s cubit to measure the diameter. Or, something which makes more sense, they got a bunch of different people to line up and go tip-to-tip with their cubits and, as you really can’t have a fractional person, they rounded or without a clearly defined centerpoint they measured a chord of the circle but not the diameter. Or they did know the center of the cauldron but the cauldron was elliptical, and they measured from some point closer to the semi-minor axis.
Or it’s a silly early Iron Age book which really shouldn’t mean diddly in modern science. I dunno. I just like thought experiments.
November 30th, 2007 at 10:34 am
@Ad Hominid,
Would it be possible for you to post a few of the more astounding bits of that textbook for all of us to enjoy/revulse?
(revulse – the condition of being revolted? I know, I know, revolted is what happens to an electrician who gets a second chance…)
November 30th, 2007 at 10:40 am
Yeah, belief in Christianity in the UK is dying quite simply out of apathy more than any other reason. There just isn’t a large enough group of hardcore fundamentalist activists to rile up moralistic opposition to abortion, gay marriage, teaching evolution, Ten Commandments monuments etc. etc. and it’s exactly those battles that continue to sustain and motivate the religious right in the USA.
Ironically, one of the key things that has helped keep the religious fundamentalist community so strong in America is the one thing they hate the most — “separation of Church and State”. In the UK there is no such thing — schools have daily religious assemblies and put on plays about the Christmas story, bishops are appointed to the House of Lords, and the Prime Minister appoints the head of the Church of England, and so on. And yet Christianity in Britain barely has a pulse.
The religious right should be careful what they wish for!
November 30th, 2007 at 10:40 am
> What do these people hope to accomplish by attempting to popularize a charade as elaborate as intelligent design when at its very core it is incapable of producing any useful scientific data? Sooner or later, they’ll have to face up to the fact that it simply doesn’t work.
Hate to break it to you, but they don’t care. They’re ideologues and dogmatists, not scientists. They’re like O’Brian in 1984; objective reality is less important than subjective reality being controlled by the Party. It doesn’t matter what’s really true when it comes to controlling people, what matters is what people think is true.
They believe they are in the Right. They’re saving souls and sending people to Paradise, and there is no greater calling. The only difference between them and suicide bombers is a matter of severity, desperation, and what exactly the ‘no greater calling’ is.
November 30th, 2007 at 10:49 am
> Ironically, one of the key things that has helped keep the religious fundamentalist community so strong in America is the one thing they hate the most — “separation of Church and Stateâ€.
My ex-roommate and one of my best friends–the kind where you can ‘read minds’ at a distance because you think so alike–is an atheist from a Jewish-Catholic family. He attributes it to Catholic schooling.
Separation of church and state is still a good thing–just look at Iran–but it is amusing to consider that church and state combined, along with the free marketplace of ideas characteristic of Western liberalism, could be the slow, quiet, peaceful death of organized religious thought.
November 30th, 2007 at 11:20 am
True. As an atheist, I see non-fundamentalist Christians as much less of a threat to good science and good governance based on non-religious, rational decisions. Even if it was possible, I actually see little point in actively trying to stamp out all religious beliefs since the gap left will simply be filled by some other set of irrational beliefs, like psychics, astrology, New Age mysticism and the like. It’s in our very nature to assign supernatural causes to things and events we don’t fully understand.
It’s also true that fundamentalists are perhaps even more critical of “liberal Christians” than they are of non-believers. They correctly recognize that any weakening of their faith in the absolute truth of the Bible leaves a believer open to questioning everything about their religion. That is why creationism and, now, intelligent design creationism in schools is such a vital tool in the war against the force of secularism. It enables them to continue believing Genesis is literally true and so bolsters their faith in the bible as a whole. It’s also why theistic evolutionists are often treated with barely concealed contempt.
But any allegiance between atheists and non-fundamentalist Christians can only go so far. The Catholic Church’s leaders’ policy on (non-)condom use is criminal and has been the cause of tens of thousands HIV infections and deaths in Africa and South America which otherwise could have been avoided. At the same time millions of moderate Catholics in Europe and the US ignore their leaders’ teachings and use condoms on a daily basis, but where is the outcry against their leaders’ irrational and dangerous condom policy? The leity’s continued support of the Catholic church and its hierarchy enables this outrageous policy to continue in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence that it is killing people.
So people like Hitchens and Dawkins, firebrands and rabble rousers that they are, do have a point when they criticize the moderate Christians and Muslims as enablers for the more radical elements within their midst. If they are not willing to join in the battle to stamp out such irrational and dangerous beliefs and doctrines from within, then they are complicit in their fellow believer’s actions.
November 30th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Looks like the locals disagree…
http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2007/11/an_unexpected_s.html#c705938
“By the way, if we’re really doomed, you probably ought to get the word to your pals at NASA. They might want to know that their children, many of whom go to public schools a few miles from my house, are in danger.
Now, I honestly appreciate your efforts to monitor efforts to teach intelligent design in Texas schools. But please, for the love of Gene Roddenberry and Data, both native Texans, stop lumping our entire state in with a few folks who don’t fully appreciate the scientific method.”
November 30th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Be careful … there is more than one paul around here.
Centipede,
I still hold that religion must be fought against, but there are different levels of fighting. Atheists and scientist must not hide in the closet and quietly tolerate the harm that religion does to our society. I do not make a call to arms, but a call to *action*.
Not *everything* needs to be tolerated, even in a tolerant society. All tolerance has limits, otherwise there would be anarchy. By necessity individuals must give up some freedoms in order for society to function. For example, we cannot drive our cars anywhere we want: there are traffic laws that need to be obeyed in order for society to function. Nor can we solve our civil disputes with duals to the death – even if both participants are willing.
Limiting religious nonsense in our society is beneficial – everything from faith healing to snake handling to vaccination deniers to the poor kid in seatle who refused a transfusion. In all these cases religion and personal rights go to far and should be curbed.
November 30th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Tacitus:
Good point. Thing is, you narrowed things down quite a bit. Many particular religious policies are dangerous: abstinance-only sex education, no-condoms, virgin sacrifice, so on and so forth. My argument, however, is on the level of ideas rather than individual ideologies. It’s not atheism versus theism because dangerous wahooery occurs on both sides. Therefore, the ability for people to irrationally believe -something- with minimal impact on the naturalistic world isn’t the issue, which is why I take issue when the rabble-rousers try to make it the issue.
I’m not even a theistic evolutionist. I’m about as deist as one can get; other than being the instigator of causality itself, my god essentially doesn’t exist as far as nature is concerned. I do admit I find the emergent ordering of stars, galaxies, planets, ecosystems, animals, and consciousness itself from very simple constituent parts spiritual, but not in terms of “god is the cause” so much as “god is the effect.” What Christians would call the Holy Spirit in terms of a universal divine ‘force’ is what I see in emergence, but along the lines that it is spiritual in nature rather than causal. Simple things ‘create’ more complex things not because they are God or because God tells them to, but because they are god-like… and they do it in entirely naturalistic ways so no supernatural influence is required.
In short, the universe is so naturally exquisite and beautiful in its purely physical and materialistic mechanisms that Nature is the only ‘active god’ we ever need. The Mandelbrot set, the veins and leaves and twigs and branches and trunks of trees, that you and I can discuss these things despite the fact that the basic information used to build us up fits into a good-sized book and nothing more… other people sing hymns and go to churches to feel better about where they are in the universe, while I just live and learn more about the universe I’m in.
Anyway, I digress. The point is that the rabble-rousers include my admitted but decidedly limited irrational beliefs as equivalent to the “enemy” which must be destroyed–all irrational thought, not just the dangerous ones–and I of course take very natural exception to that.
After all, centipedes are generally harmless but violently attack anything that goes out of its way to poke them first.
November 30th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
paul (all undercase letters, seriously, how do I specify more?
)
> Atheists and scientist must not hide in the closet and quietly tolerate the harm that religion does to our society.
Not denied. But religion, and irrational beliefs in general, do not do nothing but harm. There are good things to be derived from them as well, for I consider anything that inspires one to be better than they are now a good thing.
Should irrationally be allowed to cause undue harm? To some extent, I think so. Snake handlers and faith healers have very small clienteles of the desperate and the willfully ignorant, and I don’t believe in protecting people from themselves, only from each other. If a person chooses to gamble, let them gamble, even if the game is rigged and the person running the casino knows it’s grift. That’s pretty much how legal house odds work anyway, but again…
In other things, where religious precepts are clearly causing harm to people who, due to lack of education, know no better, yes, they should be challenged as loudly as possible. The education should be provided, the pressure should be placed on the leadership to change their attitudes… but it is the choice of that leadership to change and the choice of the people to learn.
Tolerance also has absolutely nothing to do with standing quietly in closets. You can tolerate something, and be very very vocally against it. If one tolerates something, that means he puts up with its existence. He doesn’t have to do it quietly. All he’s barred from is by actively working to destroy it via imposition (but conversion, on the other hand, is a different matter entirely).
November 30th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Sgt Zim,
“For the Christian, earth science is a study of God’s creation. As such, it is subject to God’s infallible Word, the Bible. The final authority of the Christian is not man’s observation but God’s revelation.”(Earth Science for Christian Schools, p. v)
“As we can see, scientific work is fallible and prone to error. Scientists often make mistakes because their senses are limited. Perhaps you have experienced some of the optical illusions that are published in books. Or perhaps you have been fooled by some “brain teaser” that took advantage of the tendency of the human mind to be distracted by irrelevant data. These shortcomings of the human being make science fallible, and this is another reason science changes. As strange as it may seem, science is limited by the fact that it is often forced to deal with models rather than with reality. What a scientist dreams up in his mind is not necessarily what really exists. Remember, his senses are fallible, and he cannot understand God’s creation fully or correctly. He sees everything through a clouded glass (1 Cor. 13:12).”(Earth Science for Christian Schools, p. x)
There is actually quite a bit of astronomy in this book, of a sort anyway. It omits any discussion of the expanding universe, states that methods of determining celestial distance are entirely speculative, and repeats the “created en route” absurdity about light from distant objects as a valid hypothesis.
Throughout, the emphasis is on Biblical authority trumping scientific observation, since the latter is fallible and the former is allegedly not.
It is published by the notorious Bob Jones University.
November 30th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
I realized as soon as I posted the last comment that I should have pointed out that I don’t deny that materialists of all stripes also indulge in dangerous irrational beliefs.
After all, Communism didn’t work out too well for certain atheists, did it? (And no, I’m not blaming atheism for Communism, far from it. It’s just that atheists are no more immune to dangerous ideas than religious people.)
But I do have to say that currently, the religious folk are certainly doing their best to maintain their strong lead in the wahooery department, and that is probably because their religion does provide a long shopping list of irrational dogma and religious tenets (i.e. the Bible) to choose from, that atheism lacks.
November 30th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Doesn’t a certain imbecile president of the U.S., who supports “faith-based initiatives”( unconstitutional), and prefers to get his answers on foreign policy from an invisible man in the sky rather than from foreign policy experts, come from Texas?
November 30th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
> But I do have to say that currently, the religious folk are certainly doing their best to maintain their strong lead in the wahooery department, and that is probably because their religion does provide a long shopping list of irrational dogma and religious tenets (i.e. the Bible) to choose from, that atheism lacks.
I’d say the problem arises from exactly that dogma rather than theism in general. Hindus (and other polytheists) don’t have much problem with evolution, comparatively, and neither do animists for the most part. Classical monotheism is a queer animal because it absolutely demands we’re-right-you’re-wrong thinking. Now, to be fair, polytheists and animists have a heeeyuge number of snake-oil salesmen, but that’s usually a function of poor education.
November 30th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
I am a science teacher in Texas. I have to walk on eggs every time a subject near evolution comes up. I just discussed this issue with my department chaiman. She thinks that it is a debatable issue. (?) Most of the teachers and administrators in this area of Texas are very religous. I argue that it isn’t a debate. We are supposed to teach science not religion!
I have had aides ask me during class, “Do you really believe that stuff?” (evolution). I was once called into the principal’s office and confronted by a parent that said I was persecuting his Christian daughter. After an argument in class about evolution, I had finally told the student that Bible scholars themselves state that the Bible teaches with myths and fables and doesn’t include details. I have been on yearly probation ever since.
That is why I like to see pure science here. A place where I can send students to get real facts. They can at least begin to form their own opinions based on knowledge.
fos….
November 30th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Eek, that’s a tough position you’re in, fos, I don’t envy you one bit. But sadly, I doubt that even the most perfect depiction of evolution in text books, and a sympathetic BOE would make your life much easier in the near future.
Until people stop equating faith in God with literal Biblical inerrency then there is no scientific evidence that will persuade them that evolution isn’t the work of Satan.
Only the threat of law sanction will dissuade such people, and even that will not make your working environment any easier, as I’m sure you will confirm.
November 30th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
“Dear God, please save me from your followers…”
Tacitus has got it, though, and that’s the tricky part. Good luck, though, fos.
November 30th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
@Gary Ansorge:”
“As the Mentat(Dune) said,†Fear,,,is the Mind killer,,,â€
Actually, IIRC, it was the Bene Gesserit ‘witches’ that used that little litany to allay fear.
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
November 30th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Aww, all my comments were deleted.. :^(
You can delete this one too, but hopefully you’ll read it first.
Sorry i don’t believe what you believe phil… didn’t know what I said was censor worthy though.
And to think I just took the time to send you a pic of the BA book. Talk about lack of appreciation towards your fans.
And yes I am a fan! I admire your determination in try to prove evolution as a fact, and I respect your quest towards only allowing good science in schools. I also support the removal of any religious indoctrination, as matters of faith should be a choice.
I just don’t believe in the soup, or things like dolphins being hairy, and coming from land.. sorry, I just don’t.
But the deleting thing is childish… I know PZ does it too– however I afforded all my opponents the right to speak their opinion on my old blog as long as they didn’t curse too much.. silly me.
After you dogged me on the Eris thing, which I was proved correct on by the way, I allowed you, PZ, and all your cronies the luxury of telling me off on my own blog, instead of deleting comments, I defended myself.. you and PZ actually spent about 3 days slamming me for no particular reason, and never retracted your stories labelling me a freakin’ neo-con.. even though I made my voting records known, and despite the fact that Michael Brown said “he could understand” how the Eris naming “it could be construed to be political” whatever the hell that means.
but hey , that’s ancient blogging history.. let bygones be bygones.. and yes, I’ll continue to turn the other cheek and let you pummel me again and again.
Sometimes I ask myself ( and my wife asks too by the way ) why do I even bother to debate w/ this guy, why do I try to understand his arguments?
Seriously this is a good question. One I don’t really know the answer to I think. For some reason I have found myself praying for you, hoping that God will reveal himself to you like he did to me when I was an atheist evolutionist. I tune in to your blog here and there to see if your heart has been softened, to see if your hatred of people like me has abated.
Also, a good question is .. why do you blog? If not to engage people on serious topics (like you do) then what?
Why do you bring up creationism, God, and other esoteric topics, and then shout down those who hold differing views, why do you speak so boldly against people of faith, what does this accomplish except to hurt people you’ll never meet, and make you feel good when putting others down?
This is your blog, no one can tell you what to write, and they shouldn’t! But to delete comments without any warnings first, that stinks!
November 30th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
fos,
I would like to ask you if you are comfortable, where do you teach? Not specifics, but city, town, county?? I asked this on PZ’s site of a University teacher as well, and I am just curious. As my monicker suggests, I could be where you are if I had made different decisions a few years ago. My passion for reason based education is much stronger now than when I was there.
November 30th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
moniker…
sorry, it’s very late here.
November 30th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
MikeJ, for the record, I don’t delete comments (unless they are spam, extremely rude, or use “bad” words). I don’t know if your comments disappeared in the spam filter or what. I went through the moderation queue and approved all the non-spam comments.
November 30th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
MikeJ,
I have been on the BA site for … hmmm, well I don’t know how long, but a hell of a long time. I was one of the first who saw the blog when it became a blog. I may be wrong, but I don’t think Phil HATES anyone. Oh he has strong enough opinion about people who spew venom and damage our society, but I have never seen him single out someone and say that he hates them; some ideas maybe, but not a person.
Like you have said, and Phil has said himself: it is his blog and he will blog as he pleases.
Keep praying.
November 30th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
“# Jeff G.on 30 Nov 2007 at 1:27 pm
Doesn’t a certain imbecile president of the U.S., who supports “faith-based initiativesâ€( unconstitutional), and prefers to get his answers on foreign policy from an invisible man in the sky rather than from foreign policy experts, come from Texas?”
Jeff-
He was born and educated in the north, not Texas. Probably the same area you are from?
November 30th, 2007 at 9:09 pm
> Ye who said tolerance is the cornerstone of our democracy… I will happily tolerate the insanity of these peoples’ beliefs where they do not interfere with my life. Once they start trying to teach my children to be bronze-age idiots, I no longer need to be tolerant. We cannot afford to be that tolerant anymore.
*sighs*
And if you’d kept reading, you’d have noticed we are in agreement there. Tolerance only comes into play when their views are kept out of scientific methodology and the application of science, because, like every other ideology from scientism to anarchism to New Age hippyism, they have the right to be heard in the free marketplace of ideas no matter how silly or stupid it may seem.
December 1st, 2007 at 4:34 am
fos,
You have my sympathy and my respect. Thanks for trying, but it’s a shame that in 21st century America, you’re sounding like a voice of reason in the wilderness.
December 1st, 2007 at 6:37 am
Well, come on, people! Give those poor Texans a break! Of course they don’t believe in evolution! They weren’t affected by it! You know minerals haven’t evolved much since the magma cooled. Gee, how would you feel? Be nice now!
December 1st, 2007 at 7:23 am
It looks like the Taliban are alive and well and living in Texas. In this day and age in America, to hear them denouncing science, you just want to strangle them!
Some innocent little boy or girl is going to come home from school and think that the world is only 6,000 years old not 4.5 billion years old etc, etc. etc…
December 1st, 2007 at 9:23 am
Gary and Doc — you’ve hit on important points. In some ways, life is so much easier for people who see the world only in black and white. But for those who traffic in reality, the world is just millions of shades of gray.
To be a hardcore conservative religious person, you have to go for black and white, or I think you’d go crazy trying to rationalize your baseless radical beliefs. But plenty of regular theists I know, including almost everyone in my extended family, believe in evolution, support Planned Parenthood, proudly vote Democratic, recycle, and firmly agree that science shows the existence of global warming trends.
So it’s not black and white there, either — there are millions of shades of gray in the beliefs of the theistic public.
December 1st, 2007 at 9:28 am
Oh yeah — and don’t forget, George W. Bush is actually a prep-schooler from an New England family, born in Connecticut. He didn’t head down to Texas until he got that sweet deal with the Texas National Guard during the Vietnam War. My Texan husband (who, incidentally, believes in both evolution and God) will tell you that W’s “Texas” accent is like no legitimate accent he ever heard in Texas.
December 1st, 2007 at 9:29 am
“Seriously this is a good question. One I don’t really know the answer to I think. For some reason I have found myself praying for you, hoping that God will reveal himself to you like he did to me when I was an atheist evolutionist. I tune in to your blog here and there to see if your heart has been softened, to see if your hatred of people like me has abated.”
Well, speaking for myself, please don’t pray for me, OK? Thinking somehow you need to intercede to God on my (or anyone else’s behalf) strikes me as arrogance on an extreme level.
December 1st, 2007 at 10:14 am
During the summer drought year before last, Lubbock’s esteemed mayor, David Miller, issued a proclamation urging residents to pray for rain. This was widely mocked in the press but, sure enough, it did rain a few days later. The prayer lobby naturally took credit. Fortunately, it even rained on my agnostic-owned property just outside Lubbock, which these folks would no doubt regard as an example of God’s grace and mercy toward the wicked.
December 1st, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Centipede:
What Christians would call the Holy Spirit in terms of a universal divine ‘force’ is what I see in emergence, but along the lines that it is spiritual in nature rather than causal. Simple things ‘create’ more complex things not because they are God or because God tells them to, but because they are god-like… and they do it in entirely naturalistic ways so no supernatural influence is required.
Cool! Getting right to the core of things.
Gary 7
December 1st, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Gary:
Well, it does get me all shivery-fuzzy-cool inside when I think about it, like theological debates in church used to, and so my emotional reaction to it and my attraction to it is not particularly rational. I don’t even know if other people get that feeling, so I’m not certain I can describe it with sufficient clarity to communicate the concept.
See, my theology and philosophy, such that they are, are full of shades of grey, which is why it really does irk me when I constantly see false equivalences made by good-meaning, otherwise perfectly rational people. The average Creationist is not equivalent to the Taliban. They share some ideological traits (fundamentalism) but do not have an equivalence in those traits (yes, one person can be more fundamentalist than another, just like one person can be more scientific than another), much less other, perhaps more important unshared traits like activism or violence. To prevent this from becoming a long-winded rant, such oversimplification rarely makes the quest for understanding easier.
December 1st, 2007 at 8:40 pm
Regardless of the religious questions, it isn’t science. It is an emotional explanation of something. It isn’t science. It is the foundation for a philosophical perspective on the world. Evolution is the foundation for a debate on the origins of specific biological conditions. Just like you need to understand algebra and geometry to understand calculus, you need to understand basic scientific concepts like evolution to cure cancer, to discover new fuel sources, or to find a way to predict earthquakes.
Understanding creationism does not form the foundation for any scientific pursuit, so it has absolutely no place in the scientific curriculum of a public school.
Keri
December 1st, 2007 at 9:11 pm
Mess with Texas.
December 1st, 2007 at 10:32 pm
I am a scientist – a retired specialist in nuclear medicine and an amateur astronomer. I accept the theory of the big bang as one of the explanations for the origin of the universe. I agree with the estimates for the age of the universe and the earth and I also accept the fact that life on earth developed through an evolutionary process. BUT, and that is a big BUT, I do not accept that all this took place spontaneously. I regard this as statistically most unlikely. I believe in God as the Creator of it all. What does this make me? A creationist? Or am I simply a scientist who believes in God as the Creator? I am certainly NOT a fundamentalist.
I can never prove that God exists and any attempt to do so is futile. It is a question of faith and faith alone.
I was always amazed by how many of my medical colleagues believe in God. It is no wonder when one studies the immense complexities of the human body on a daily basis and realizes that such an intricate factory of life could just not happen without Divine intervention whatever Richard Dawkins and his faithful disciples believe.
I do not apologize for that fact that I am a Believer and I respect the achievements of science. But never ever ask me to prove that my God exists. Atheists will continue to mock me and ridicule me but this is to be expected and I accept this as part of my life as a Christian.
December 2nd, 2007 at 11:36 am
Philip:
Being made fun of by jerks (any particular ideology aside) is sort of part of the human experience and therefore I don’t consider it as qualifying as being a “martyr for the faith” (whatever faith or un-faith that may be). Now, when you’re passed up for promotion, put on notice, or otherwise properly oppressed like fos up there, I’ll be a bit more willing to accept the Stoic Martyr persona.
Some atheists give me flak about being a deist. Some Christians give me flak about being a deist, or a secularist. Some monarchists and Romantic “big men lead” elitists of various stripes give me flak for being an egalitarian/meritocratic/democratic populist. Some Creationists and IDers give me flak for being an evolutionist. Some spiritualists give me flak for being (essentially) a materialist. Some AGW-skeptics give me flak for supporting AGW given my own thoughts on the matter (hockey sticks and whatever aside; empirical knowledge that greenhouse gases exist and we emit them is good enough for me). Some Democrats give me flak for having some traditionally “fascist” and “Republican” views. Some Republicans give me flak for having some traditionally “socialist” and “Democratic” views.
Welcome to what’s called “having an opinion.”
If I’m not going to brook broad-brush tarring from atheists, I’m not going to brook it from theists either. Sauce for the goose.
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:45 pm
as a christan I deplroe what the texas education department is doing i don’t suport it in any way. but to respond to some of the commints you can not ban religon nor take the rights away from people who beleve in god if you do then you are no better then those who in the south had jim crow laws witch took away the rights of blacks and you will only give thes extremists a cause to fight for . what do you propse to do with people who wont give up ther fath put them in death camps? you will create sympthy for people of fath and then public oppoin will be with them and agaist you the way it was in the 1960s with african americans
as for young people being less religious when I was young but became more so as I got older why don’t you show some of that tolerance you talk about and tolerate all people and belefs insted of picking and choseing .I may be christan but I am tolerant of all people and belefs even if you have none
December 2nd, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Phil, I doubt whether MikeJ’s comments were deleted because I strongly doubt he made any previously. Just as I strongly doubt he was an “evolutionist” who “saw the light,” since I don’t see how you go from understanding a subject to arguing from personal incredulity. However, both rhetorical devices–complaining about being ’silenced’ and claiming to have once been an ‘evolutionist’–are parts of the creationtroll toolkit. I needn’t explain what I mean by that, I trust.
By the way folks, The Centipede and Mr Burkhart are quite right–for many people, religion is a vital part of themselves and not one they inflict on other people. You might think religious people are all goofballs, but if they aren’t trying to shove crap down your throat, have the decency to keep your opinion to yourselves. Or at least not shove your contempt down their throats. I’m not at all religious but I am the descendant of Russian Jews and I get a little ancy about arrogant, gratuitous disrespect of another person’s religion.
I’m also married to a Brit, and have adopted just enough of the culture to believe that religion is properly a private matter, and that private matters should be left private.
Frankly, I’m not even sure mocking people like MikeJ is in good taste, since I suspect he is a deeply troubled individual, probably in need of good counseling or meds. However, Phil might consider reformatting his comments in comic sans.
December 3rd, 2007 at 8:11 am
Centipede a lo-oo-oong way above said :
“let the jihad begin, then. What shall we do with the heathen Believers who refuse the enlightenment of our ideology? Shall we put them to the sword? Shall we re-educate them? Shall we break them down and remold them in the form of the New Scientific Man?”
My vote’s with putting them to the sword – a quick beheading of anyone believing in religion will raise the planet’s average IQ & solve the overpopluation crisis – & reduce the environmental crisies caused by that – all in one (or afew billion) fell swoops.
Followed by a few billion fell thuds [of severed heads]
.. splurt, splurt ..splurt …
[Goes the blood from the necks ..]
Huzzah!
Instant atheist utopia!
_____———–_______———-________———–________
PS. Do I really ned to tell y’all I’m NOT actually serious here ..? Ihope not but just in case yes folks that was a joke.
December 3rd, 2007 at 8:19 am
D’oh!
ned = need
& yes, Mike J, the secret has been discovered :
IAU = well see above (& below) rather than Internat’l Astronomical Union!
Instant Athiest Utopia = IAU
Its a code, they’re out to get us ..!Oh no! (Covers eyes eyes, smacks forehead, doe scloseimpressionof Munch’s ‘Scream’ painting.)
Yes, it is very late at night here in Adelaide, yes I am feeling in a particularly silly mood & yes I am going to bed now!
December 3rd, 2007 at 9:16 am
StevoR:
Good plan. Now what part of the intellectual elite, again, will milk the cows and till the fields?
March 8th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
As an outsider to the American way of life, I find it strange that the culture there seems to want to tear down all the things that they feel they have a right too.
Could it be because the people there are well off and can offer this lunacy? And another question, why this way of thinking, ie anti-science, does not show up as much in other countries.