religion
mikethemadbiologist | August 7, 2006I'm swamped with work, and I plan on linking to this post from the old site, so I've resurrected this from the archives of the Mad Biologist.
I go away for a meeting and vacation, and the most important court case regarding evolution in a decade is decided. Of course, I liked the outcome, so maybe I should go on vacation more often...
Anyway, there's no point in rehashing the Dover decision: it was exceptionally well-written. An added advantage is that it was written by a laywer (obviously). Since our political system is chock full o'lawyers, having a laywer restate the arguments…
mikethemadbiologist | August 5, 2006...check out Ed Brayton's post. The poor attention span version: ID isn't serious science because it's 'founders' don't have a scientific agenda, but a cultural one. A must read.
terrasig | August 5, 2006Driving back home from the beach yesterday through the very red part of the state that surrounds my very blue hometown/county:
License plate on white Mazda Miata: THX GOD!
Bumper sticker on said Miata: "Support the Troops, IMPEACH BUSH"
Perhaps they just need to pray a little harder?
clock | August 3, 2006A three-fer from Echidne:
Divorce -- Preparing For Travels in Wingnuttia
Christian Lady Blogging -- Part One Of Travels in Wingnuttia
Divorce: Part Two of Travels in Wingnuttia
clock | August 2, 2006You should really go now and read the "Meet The Enemy" interview with me on a satirical blog called God, Country & Apple Pie. Check out the rest of the far right-wing Christian, anti-science, fascist-theocratic fare there as well.
mikethemadbiologist | August 2, 2006It looks like supporters of reason won out over sectarian ideologues in Kansas. Josh at Thoughts from Kansas writes:
The Board is back in moderate hands no matter what. The night is, on balance, a victory. It'd be nice to further marginalize the extremists by winning the remaining races in November, but we've got a majority that will implement the science standards recommended by the scientists, educators and parents of the science standards committee. The Board can focus on bigger issues. They can dig into ways to address the special challenges of rural districts, and to find solutions to…
clock | August 1, 2006It's been a while since I've written anything about one of my pet topics - the way the changes in the society are resulting in the change in attitudes towards sex and gender, and the change in the institution of marriage, and how it all relates to politics of the moment.
I've been playing it pretty carefully since my move here to SEED scienceblogs, not firing away with my biggest artillery yet. I want to get back there again, gradually, so this is going to be just a summary and an opportunity to get you to read some of my older stuff to see where I stand. It is a also a test balloon to see…
neurotopia | August 1, 2006The latest soon-to-be casualty to the Bush administration's attempt to break all useful government programs is 1-800-SUICIDE. Given their track record of scrubbing information oriented to LBGT youth (who happen to be a major at-risk category) from other such sites receiving government money, I think it is clear that we can't trust the Culture of Life Strife on this one. Imagine that.
Click. Read. Act.
razib | July 31, 2006Alex points me to this Rebecca Goldstein op-ed in The New York Times marking the excommunication of Baruch Spinoza. I am actually reading Goldstein's biography of Spinoza, Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity, and just finished Matthew Stewart's The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World. Most of you probably know the name Spinoza from Einstein's assertion that he "believe in Spinoza's God," the pantheistic entity which suffused existence itself.
Update: James H. has more at The Island of Doubt.
Stewart, and Goldstein from…
stcynic | July 31, 2006The New York Times has an article about the situation in Indian River, Delaware where a Jewish family has filed suit over a long list of instances of Christian intimidation of their children. Some of the examples are absolutely stunning.
Mrs. Dobrich, who is Orthodox, said that when she was a girl, Christians here had treated her faith with respectful interest. Now, she said, her son was ridiculed in school for wearing his yarmulke. She described a classmate of his drawing a picture of a pathway to heaven for everyone except "Alex the Jew."...
A homemaker active in her children's schools, Mrs…
stcynic | July 30, 2006Joseph Farah has a column at the Worldnutdaily about the drought in Lubbock and the resolution from the city council there to ask residents to pray for rain. It's standard religious right rhetoric - the media is full of pagans who laugh at Christian faith, but they all have their own religions like worship of money, government, etc. But what I find interesting is this prediction at the end:
It makes sense to me to pray. But oddly, or maybe not so oddly, this UPI story appeared under the newstrack heading "quirks." Evidently, some editors at UPI consider prayer "quirky." I don't. In fact, I…
mikethemadbiologist | July 30, 2006The NY Times has a very interesting article about an evangelical minister who decided that subordinating his religious beliefs to the Republican Party and the Holy Defender of the Blessed Blastocyst was a bad idea:
After refusing each time, Mr. Boyd finally became fed up, he said. Before the last presidential election, he preached six sermons called "The Cross and the Sword" in which he said the church should steer clear of politics, give up moralizing on sexual issues, stop claiming the United States as a "Christian nation" and stop glorifying American military campaigns.
"When the church…
clock | July 29, 2006Disowning Conservative Politics Is Costly for Pastor:
Sermons like Mr. Boyd's are hardly typical in today's evangelical churches. But the upheaval at Woodland Hills is an example of the internal debates now going on in some evangelical colleges, magazines and churches. A common concern is that the Christian message is being compromised by the tendency to tie evangelical Christianity to the Republican Party and American nationalism, especially through the war in Iraq.
Interesting, even for the usually conservatively-slanted results on AOL online polls:
What do you think of Rev. Boyd's views on…
clock | July 28, 2006
This post from September 09, 2004, was my first education about Rapturists:
Read these articles carefully (some are long, but please persist) and freeze. You'll get goosebumps...at least.
Apocalypse Bush!
Why Care for the Planet When the End Times are Almost Here? Vote Bush and Hop On the Salvation Train!
The Covert Kingdom
Thy Will be Done, On Earth as It is in Texas
"Thank you Gawd for giving us strawng leaders like President Bush during this crieeesis. Praise you Lord and guide him in this battle with Satan's Muslim armies."
The Church of Bush
What liberal infidels will never understand…
mikethemadbiologist | July 28, 2006
(from firedoglake)
By way of Pam at Pandagon comes this story of the moral values of the 'heartland', which is apparently a place where gays are considered to be the moral equivalent of Nazis. A store owner hung a rainbow flag outside of his inn/restaurant. He had purchased the flag for his son at a Wizard of Oz museum, because his son thought it reminded him of "somewhere over the rainbow." Up rose the good Christians of Meade, KS (italics mine):
Knight says the radio station has called him threatening to remove the restaurant's commercials if he does not remove the flag. A local pastor…
clock | July 27, 2006Orcinus: Conserving orcas, and humans too
Shakespeare's Sister: Off-Limits Humor
Echidne Of The Snakes: Divorce -- Preparing For Travels in Wingnuttia
stcynic | July 27, 2006There is an amusing thread going on over at Dembski's blog concerning the religious views of Howard Van Till, who recently made available this speech that he gave to the West Michigan Freethought Association. Howard is a friend and a fellow board member of Michigan Citizens for Science; he is also an emeritus professor of astronomy and physics at Calvin College, a theologically conservative Christian university. Dembski wonders whether Van Till should be an emeritus professor since his religious views have strayed so far from Calvinist theology.
That question doesn't concern me a bit. Howard…
stcynic | July 26, 2006In the midst of a drought, the Lubbock, Texas city council and county commission are expected to adopt resolutions asking residents there to pray for rain. Here's what amuses me about this: if they adopted a resolution asking Indian leaders to come to city hall to perform a rain dance, the good Christian folk would condemn that as superstitious nonsense. And so it is, in both cases.
razib | July 25, 2006Jason says in a post which addresses the religion & science issue:
...Either the Bible is the holy and inerrant word of God, or it is an ancient document written by people with no more claim to authority than any other document that has survived from that time. It's hard to find a logically consistent middle ground.
I regularly made this argument until a few years ago. It generally remains my own personal view, though my estimation of the likelihood of the first possibility is so low that I don't know if it is judgement that is worth making when social considerations are removed. I…
mikethemadbiologist | July 25, 2006400,000 to-be-discarded embryos? The Mad Biologist has a very evil, nefarious, and sinister idea for them:
(photo from here)
They're mine. All mine! I will rule the world galaxy! I will adopt a menacing deep, baritone voice!
It's really hard to take the blastocyst liberationists very seriously...