Archive for March, 2007

Well, it appears that tomorrow is the annual episode where the first half hour is preempted by Mormons. So it’s going to be extra short. You should tune in anyway at 5:00; we will start taking calls as early as possible, but if there aren’t enough calls then I’ll do my topic on easy evolution stuff. In my February episode, I started what I intended to be a series on evolution. The February episode was about the reasons why evolution and atheism are so often linked. This episode will be mostly about incredibly lame anti-evolution arguments, many of them advanced by young earthers, that are even discredited by the saner creationists. First I’ll be covering the generic “argument from incredulity” that is the cornerstone of many anti-evolution arguments. We’ll talk about evolution being only a theory, and being a theory of chance, Then I’ll briefly go over the motivation behind young earth beliefs, and some other arguments such as Lord Kelvin’s mistaken estimate of the age of the universe, the moon dust argument, and probably the Paluxy dinosaur tracks. If there’s time, I’ll wrap up by talking a little about the overall problem with the creationist approach, where they mistakenly believe that a solidly established scientific theory can be instantly dismissed with a single “magic bullet” argument. If I don’t have time to do all this, the subject may continue into next month; I’m in no big hurry. Otherwise, next month Matt suggests that I temporarily turn away from creationism and go after the positive evidence in favor of evolution. This is assuming that I have time to appear, since I have to study for spring final next month. In any event, after that episode I’ll do one on intelligent design, likely recapping my review of Darwin’s Black Box and either my experiences at the Texas school board hearings or a recap of the Dover trial, which I know Matt has...
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Well, blustery Catholic League bigmouth Bill Donohue has made it clear now. It’s not that there’s a statue of Jesus made of chocolate that’s sent him into apoplexy. It’s that you can see the Son of Man’s sainted peter. “They wouldn’t show a depiction of Martin Luther King Jr. with genitals exposed on Martin Luther King Day, and they wouldn’t show Mohammed depicted this way during Ramadan. It’s always Christians, and the timing is deliberate.” Can someone please explain to me Christians’ pathological fear of human genitalia? I mean, it’s like, the mere sight of a dick or a pair of boobs, and they run screaming into the hills, where they’re soon to be found shivering under a tree trunk and eating grass and bugs to stay alive. Historically, if Jesus had been executed by the Romans by crucifixion, then it’s practically certain he’d have been stripped butt naked. It’s not as if the Romans had such tender sensibilities that they’d respect the dignity of someone they’d declared an enemy of the state and sentenced to death by covering him up with a loincloth. Good grief. Donohue’s right that you wouldn’t create a statue of MLK on MLK Day showing him nude, because there’s no valid historical context for showing him nude. Duh. Now we have this gallery director looking like he’s going to resign over this preposterous flap. Good grief. Seriously, Christians. What is it with you and naked bodies? What’s the big deal? Grow up already.

A fine quote from this most worthwhile essay by A.C. Grayling, criticizing religious belief as a practice and analyzing the roots of the “quarrel” between believers and atheists. Grayling, along with Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, argued for the atheists’ side in a debate in England on March 27, which ended in a decisive victory for non-belief. The premise of the debate was “We’d be better off without religion.” And it carried by audience vote, 1205 to 778. Arguers for theism — Rabbi Julia Neuberger, Roger Scruton and Nigel Spivey — found themselves thoroughly pwned. Seriously, America is slipping into becoming an intellectual third-world country compared to the UK and Europe.

One common whine of theocratic Christians is that mean ol’ atheists “took God out of the schools” with the 1962 Murray v. Curlett decision, and that America has been going to hell in a handbasket ever since. The omnipresence of 24-hour media makes rare, isolated crimes like Columbine stand out, creating a sufficient atmosphere of fear that people ignore the fact that overall, things like violent youth crime and teen pregnancy rates have been trending downwards steadily over the last few decades. (Unlike the Christians, I am not arguing a direct causal link here; only that the argument that crime increases if people aren’t having Christianity shoved down their throats is demonstrably false.) Christians respond to the lack of state-mandated religion for students by complaining that this is anti-Christian presecution in action. And yet, a scan of the real world whenever religion rears its ugly, pock-marked head in a scholastic environment very often shows that the reverse is true. Christians take on a mob mentality and mercilessly harass and intimidate anyone who even suggests that open, unconstitutional religious activity in public schools might be inappropriate. When a teacher in a Florida school complained that the principal was inappropriately placing Christian paraphernalia around the flagpole, she found herself suspended on trumped-up charges of helping a student cheat on a test, and has been blackballed in the rest of her community. A more open-and-shut case of religious harrassment you couldn’t find. It’s entirely legal for students to do the babble-to-your-invisible-friend-around-the-flagpole-after-school thing, just as it’s entirely legal for them to take their Bibles to school, for them to pray on their own when they get a free moment, or whatever. The only thing the Constitution prohibits is the school itself, as a government-run institution, either making religious exercises mandatory, or creating an atmosphere...
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Man, and I thought Piss Christ was funny! A Manhattan art gallery has begun displaying a life-sized statue of a nude, crucified Jesus made entirely out of 200 pounds of chocolate! Hey, chocolate, Easter &#151 the connection makes sense to me. Predictably, Catholic League blowhard Bill Donohue has blown a gasket. Thing is, I’m not entirely clear what he’s offended by — that Jesus is made out of chocolate, or that he’s in the nude (which he most likely would have been had he really been a victim of crucifixion). I know there’s a scriptural ban on graven images, but the Catholic church has ignored that one for centuries. So what’s a little chocolate hurt? Well, it could have been worse. Think how livid Donohue would be if the artist had had colored eggs falling out of Jesus’s…uh… Okay, okay, I’ll stop. This is a family blog.