religion
gregladen | April 7, 2008Following up on our discussion of how it is OK to be an Atheist as long as you know your place, we find a classic example of the kind of thinking that rationalist non-believers encounter all the time, even if it is not spoken out loud. This time it is spoken out loud:
This is a conversation between atheist Rob Sherman, presenting testimony before the House State Government Administration Committee in Illinois, and Democratic Representative Monique Davis, last Wednesday:
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…
gregladen | April 7, 2008Louisiana now has an Academic Freedom Act in the works. Academic Freedom Acts are right wing ploys to force specific issues ... or more commonly, specific politically or religiously motivated version of issues ... into the classroom at various levels. Academic Freedom Acts also typically are designed to silence faculty who teach things that conservatives, evangelicals, global warming deniers, and so on do not want to hear.
From a commentary in The Daily Advertiser:
Gov. Bobby Jindal's first regular-session legislative plan is designed to help Louisiana schools train a better work-force. So…
evolvingthoughts | April 6, 2008
While it's always nice to see a scientists step up to argue that intelligent design or creationism ought not to be taught as science because they aren't science, this worries me somewhat:
Scientists have failed to explain the limits of science, Peshkin said. Science deals in what can be observed and measured through experimentation. Assertions or beliefs are not part of it. A theory, he said, is a hunch about how the world works that is then subjected to experimental observation.
Religion, on the other hand, accepts revealed knowledge. The two, therefore, take different approaches to…
gregladen | April 6, 2008Catholic Ex Wife looking rather holy.The players:
Dad. David Ryan, atheist. Plaintiff, represented by Ed Kagin of American Atheists.
Mom. Susin Bisig, Catholic (That's her in the photo, wrapping herself around the cross, it would appear.)
Kid. Michael.
The question: Where does Michael go to school, a Catholic School where both he and his mom want him to go, or to an academically equivalent public school, where his dad wants him to go?
This is a case being decided in Kentucky and pertaining to state constitutional law regarding religion. The case was effectively decided several…
gregladen | April 6, 2008When you get a chance (but not right now, only when you have absolutely nothing whatsoever else to do) have a look at Matt Nisbet's latest thinly veiled attack on PZ myers*.
It is the usual crap. Atheists are not allowed to express annoyance, disgust, or anger, or to vilify, sillify, or nullify the religious, no mater how whacked-out those religious individuals are. If PZ reads this, he'll probably ignore it, but it is entirely up to him to respond (or not), if he does indeed view it as a veiled attack.
I just wanted to point out one thing about Matt's post.
The following comprises sections…
pharyngula | April 3, 2008Did you know that it is assumed that if you are a Christian and a teacher, that you oppose the teaching of evolution and want to introduce creationism into the classroom?
Did you know that people purporting to represent you will be going before state legislatures and telling your representatives that creationism is the Christian perspective?
Did you know that people are collecting stories about getting slapped down for teaching nonsense in science class, and are telling politicians that it's because they are Christian?
You know, I think Christianity is awfully foolish anyway, but I'm a…
jrosenhouse | April 2, 2008I can't quite believe I'm saying this, but I actually enjoyed David Berlinski's talk yesterday in Washington D.C.
Berlinski might be familiar to you as the author of a number of boneheaded articles in Commentary magazine over the last ten years. He has decided to jump on the anti-Dawkins bandwagon with his new book The Devil's Delsuion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions. The publisher is Crown Forum. Among their other authors: Ann Coulter and Michael Medved. Get the idea?
Speaking as someone who thinks Dawkins et al get it right far more often than they get it wrong, I was not…
gregladen | April 2, 2008As she accepts her 2008 TED Prize, author and scholar Karen Armstrong talks about how the Abrahamic religions -- Islam, Judaism, Christianity -- have been diverted from the moral purpose they share to foster compassion. But Armstrong has seen a yearning to change this fact. People want to be religious, she says; we should act to help make religion a force for harmony. She asks the TED community to help her build a Charter for Compassion -- to help restore the Golden Rule as the central global religious doctrine.
laelaps | April 2, 2008Although the initial flurry of posts about framing has died down, the debate about what framing is, is not, or should be continues. In an effort to go back to square 1, Chris has posted up a basic rundown of why framing is important, item #6 on the list getting to the heart of why this issue is so controversial;
Rather, you have to pare down these highly complex issues--or "frame" them--selectively highlighting just those aspects of the issue that will resonate with the core values of the particular audience (and there are different audiences, of course, and different frames will work for…
oracknows | April 2, 2008This happened last week when I was feeling under the weather, and somehow I never got around to it. Fortunately, however, I've learned that there may indeed by justice in the case of Madeline Neuman, the 11-year-old child whose parents let her die of diabetic ketoacidosis. This story was widely reported thusly:
"We just believe in the Bible, that's all. This is our faith," said Leilani Neumann, the mother of 11-year-old Madeline Neumann, who died from a treatable form of diabetes after her parents chose to pray for their daughter in place of seeking medical attention.
Madeline Neumann had…
tqa | April 1, 2008
Given that today really is April 1st, let me start by saying that although Behe is a fool, this post isn't a joke. Everything you're about to read is real. This is the third part of my post on the summary judgment decision in the California Creationist Case. Part 1 is here, and part 2 is here.
It would seem that Mike Behe has, once again, managed to shoot an own goal in the courtroom. The last time that he was an expert witness, during the Dover case, the judge quoted extensively from Behe's testimony, but not in a way that he particularly liked. Ultimately, it seems that he scored more…
tqa | April 1, 2008
(This is Part 2 of a three part post on Friday's summary judgment ruling in the ACSI v. Stearns creationism lawsuit. Part 1 is here; Part 3 will be up later today.)
If you read Judge Otero's ruling on the summary judgment motions in the California Creationist Case, you'll see that he discovered something that most of us already know: if you're looking for dubious argument tactics, you'll almost always find them when you're reading things written by professional creationists. In the case of the California lawsuit, the Christian schools are being represented by the law firm of Wendell Bird.…
tqa | April 1, 2008
On Friday, Judge James Otero of the Central District of California issued a ruling granting the University of California's request for partial summary judgment in the California Creationist Lawsuit. I've written about this case several times before now, but it's been a long time since the last update, so before I get into the details of the ruling, I'm going to quickly review the details of the case.
In 2005, a group of plaintiffs that includes the Association of Christian Schools International, Calvary Chapel Christian School of Murietta, and the parents of several students filed a…
razib | March 31, 2008Well, it turns out that there isn't a handy-dandy reference for the numbers for various religions in the past. Mark Kirkorian over at The Corner linked to my earlier post where I expressed skepticism about the contention by the Vatican demographer that a larger number of Muslims than Roman Catholics is new. Other people have contacted me as well. In any case, my hunch is that in fact Muslims were more numerous than Roman Catholics in the period between 950 and 1750, though the window could be shorter. My reasoning below the fold....
1) By about 1000 most of the core Islamic lands had…
pharyngula | March 31, 2008What an awful story: a young woman is murdered by her own father for online chatting.
A woman was beaten up and shot dead by her father for talking online with a man she met on the website Facebook.
The case was reported on a Saudi Arabian news site as an example of the "strife" the social networking site is causing in the Islamic nation.
I don't think it's a web page causing the strife: I think it's a hateful cockamamie belief system. Don't blame our openness for your derangement, or our tolerance for your daughter-slaughtering monsters.
A leading Saudi preacher told Al-Arabiya.net that…
razib | March 30, 2008The Islamic Republic of Harvard?:
But the decision put Harvard in the awkward position of having to arbitrate what constitutes legitimate religious practice. Marine claims there was a "moral and ethical responsibility" for the administration to act on this request, telling the Associated Press last month that "it's a pretty big breach of their moral and religious code ... and it's just not possible for them to be in a mixed environment." But according to Aljawhary, "It's not like we can't work out when men are around." In fact, "we were not 'demanding' women-only hours," Aljawhary said. If…
laelaps | March 30, 2008A number of science bloggers, myself included, often write about the current manifestation of creationism that is presently popular, but lately I've been starting to wonder why creationism is so well-received in the first place. Despite the fair amount of attention Expelled has attained on science blogs, it seems that most members of the public don't even know it's going to come out. Creationists have published their own technical journal for years, yet outside of a handful of "creation scientists," no one seems to care. Dozens of creationist books, essentially rehashed tracts of previously…
razib | March 30, 2008Update: Follow up post with some numbers and logic laid out.
Muslims more numerous than Catholics: Vatican:
Monsignor Vittorio Formenti, who compiled the Vatican's newly-released 2008 yearbook of statistics, said Muslims made up 19.2 percent of the world's population and Catholics 17.4 percent.
"For the first time in history we are no longer at the top: the Muslims have overtaken us," Formenti told Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano in an interview, saying the data referred to 2006.
I'm willing to bet that Formenti is wrong. What do others think? Consider that Catholicism was the…
pharyngula | March 29, 2008…but there is a good argument against it: many religions are sickening.
Wow, that set you guys on fire. Just to clarify: I think Wilders is a flaming nutcase; I deplore his racist angle and his desire to exclude and oppress rather than educate.
However, here is the problem: when people ask me if we should keep religion away from kids, I say no: I think comparative religion classes are an excellent idea. Think about this, though. Would such a class show beheadings? How about voluntary crucifixions in the Phillipines? Jim Jones? Suicide bombings? I think we know the answer. Even here, where…
oracknows | March 29, 2008Hilarious, particularly "big-pimpin'" Daddy Dennett:
I can't make up my mind if it's meant to skewer Dawkins or whether it's meant ironically as a way of making fun of ID creationists and how they view Dawkins...