It’s quite obvious, actually. Say we have a gigantic economic competitor (like, for example, China) that’s creeping up on our accomplishments in science, while our schools are struggling with idiots demanding that we waste time teaching the non-controversy of creationism. One approach would be to shut down the nitwits and fund good science education…yeah, like that’s ever going to happen. But how about the alternative? Instead of correcting our own problems, let’s start poisoning other countries!
We’ve got great examples that show it can be done. Turkey, of course, is now a center for Islamic creationism stolen wholesale from American missionaries. The latest news is that South Korea is stripping evolution out of their textbooks, another victory for Christianity.
I’m going to suggest that every American church do their patriotic duty and stop sending missions off to poor countries, like African nations, and instead start pouring them into China, Japan, Taiwan…places where their Stupidity Induction Fields will do us more good in the struggle for economic dominance. I suppose the European Union would be good, too — they’re getting too damned secular over there.
Wait, no, not Cyprus — they’ve got enough problems as it is. Come on, Christians, wreck wealthy economies for us, OK? No more of this cowardly picking on the little guys.
Yes, for God’s sake, let’s go with our strengths, ersatz “science” and anti-intellectual religion. We rule there!
Anyone with all sorts of religions can do evolution. Just look at the evidence, and there it is. It takes “special knowledge” to know that “jeebus did it” (John 1 for Dumbski), and we have just the cretins who know that.
Now if only they all could be persuaded to become missionaries, education could be screwed in other lands, while we get back to teaching evidence-based science.
Glen Davidson
NOOO!!! South Korea is my parents’ country. And Christians are ruining it. ;_;
Hmmm… Isn’t South Korea pretty wealthy? At least for now?
Oh, I get it… that’s the point. *NEVER MIND*
There’s another way: you can just wait until the oppressive and utterly corrupt chinese regime end up producing more intellectuals that he can feed and or buy their complacency, you open up your border, and you take in millions of smart people in, strenghtening your country while weakening your competitor with a minimum of efforts.
Oh, wait, there’s the “open up your borders” thing.
***
Oh, come on: the majority of austerity fetichists which have been so good at sabotaging the EU come from christian-democratic parties.
Ok, their doing this by loyalty toward the upper-class and not because the bible told them to do it, but hey, if you start questioning the sincerity of the motives of right-wing politicians, you may end up concluding that class warfare is a real thing and we can’t have too much of this marxist aknowledgement of reality, now, do we?
They already did it.
What wealthier economy was there, than that of the United States?
Amphiox:
Depends whether you refer to the nation as a whole or per-capita.
(If the latter, a number of them)
No! No! No1 Leave the missionaries in America. They’ve already broken that country so maybe it’s time to leave it to it’s fate and get on with being well educated in the rest of the world. It would be a kindness really.
日本が大好き！
Keep Christians out of Japan. Don’t ruin it for people like me! :(
rumleech @8
So are you saying all of us sciencey non Godbots so go elsewhere and let the fundy/creationists to stew in their own juices? Where do you suggest that we go? Galt’s Gulch
Somebody pointed out to me that Christian missionaries were very effective at converting South Koreans, but failed miserably in Japan. Yea Japan!!
Matthew: Part of that was due to harsh persecution during the Edo period.
So far the best idea posted here is that we should import Chinese scientists. We can lure them with decent pay, larger apartments, and sweet freedom. That’s only if we don’t turn into a police state.
BTW, Why should we care about how well other countries are doing? Shouldn’t we care about how we are doing? Seriously. I highly recommend Paul Krugman’s book Pop Internationalism. In it he makes the case that “national competitiveness” is a notion completely without basis. Trade policy, and productivity rates of other countries just aren’t that big a deal. A nation’s own rates and income distribution are.
This case is basically what Krugman got his Nobel for.
—-Is anyone else getting a ton of pop up notices?
Mark Twain said (slightly paraphrased): They want to “civilize” China. They ought to think about that. Once “civilized” China can never be uncivilized again.”
A little later he calls for all the missionaries to “come home and save these Christians”.
Sometimes we Canadians, New Zealanders and Australians are lucky you people overlook us.
I thought that someone else might have pointed out the obvious by now – the easiest way to undermine the United States would be to kill R&D by changing the tax system (lower the rates on the top, leaving them free to harvest as much wealth as possible instead of spending it on R&D to avoid taxes), undermine the health, safety and general welfare of labor so they can’t compete in a global marketplace and use the most regressive social elements to reinforce these tactics. If anyone with a competitive nature figures it out, keep them distracted with the richest honeypot ever and suggest that their sweet deal could be sweetened even more if they would lobby their government on behalf of even better honeypots (for example, a few wars would yield some real money).
In short Gentles (I know, too late) we’ve been in a three decade trade war including attacks not only on our economy, but also on education, healthcare, infrastructure and oh yeah, our democracy. Sold to whichever jackals think they’ll get a chunk of Shenzhen for next to nothing. Naturally, after the US crumbles, all of those amazing, low cost factories will be nationalized and the jackals will be sent packing. Maybe they’ll be lucky and they can rule what’s left of us like warlords from their walled compounds.
In this situation, I don’t think that undermining other nation states (by encouraging the same madness that has already infected us) would be effective. I don’t think it even makes a good joke, considering our dire our national illness has become. I think it would be more effective if we created some good metaphors, told some great stories or blew some loud trumpets. Let’s point out how these Grima Wormtoungues, these Manchurian Lapdogs, these Nekid Emperors are betraying their country.
Maybe we can wake King Théoden.
My guess is that when the missionaries reach some level obnoxious irritation, that China is smart enough to say “fuck, no!” and simply refuse them thereafter.
I don’t particularly like China, but as the next global hegemon, that’s where I’d put my money.
I need to clarify that… I guess I do like China. I do some hobby gadgeteering…. and for a *lot* of little things, it seems they’re not made here any more (or if they are are several times the costand barely if any better quality). About twice a month I wind up ordering some electronic thingie or mech widget on EBay that I can find **nowhere** locally … China.
— TWZ
Actually as a Chinese I can say that the Xtians have been doing this for quite some time in China, starting from attempts to remove evolution from high school biology textbooks. Their attempts have not been very effective though (maybe because of the govt system).
That’s good news for US? Not sure. You know, if the number of Xtians suddenly increases by a billion or more…
It probably will happen if such missionaries are “controlled by foreign govts/orgs” (which has always been the primary target), but you know, there has been quite a few “native” Xtians in China now…
No point there – Europe’s economy is already well in the process of going down the gurgler.
@17. colonelzen :
Yes. But The Peoples Republic of China is a very nasty totalitarian oneparty state and the things it has done in Tibet and Xinjiang and to its own people in Tian-An-Men square should have our blood running cold at the thought of them ruling the world.
I’d far prefer even another George “Dubya” Bush to the Chinese who ran over their own childeren with tanks and set their bodies aflame. The Chinese do not value human rights, himan lives or the environment. Their culture is, IMHON, very cruel, callous and dreadful.
As for
BrotherGilburt, you mean ALL of Japan or the modern shiny version? This is, remember, the nation responsible for Unit 738 and the Rape of Nanjing…
@14. otrame :
China has been “civilised” if you can call it that and in their own culturally cruel and brutal way fror thousands of years. They are along with theIndians and Jews among the very oldest of stillexisting civilisations and have survived several horrific changes of dynasties over the centuries. So it’s a bit late for that!
Incidentally I’ve got nothing against individual chinese people – I know a few personally and am sure many others are really good people. But the PRC’s ruling party gives me the shivers and I’ll never forget watching the news of the TianAnMin Square massacre in 1989. We shouldn’t forget how many Chairman Mao murdered with his cultural revolution too. An evil man whose party is still ruling with an iron fist and dissidents are still being brutalised and slaughtered.
Free Tibet! Free Xinjiang! Free China!
(Many minorities sucha stehManchurians are also badly mistreated and discriminated agisnt by the han majority I understand.)
PS. Oh & leave Taiwan the fuck alone too China “People’s Republic thereof!
Taiwan is an independent nation and should remain so.
Just a pity the Chinese nationalists lost that famous Chinese civil war.
D’oh. Typos again. Must. Remember. To. Preview. Better. Sigh.
Correction :
See :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_minorities
Wait, so that’s why I was invaded by Mormons earlier this week? In Wales? Thanks a lot.
You’ll have to do better; I don’t think they’ll be coming back.
Hey, a whole new culture and civilisation for StevoR to exercise his brilliant intellect and piercing insight on!
It’s no democracy, and it’s certainly corrupt and oppressive, particularly in Tibet, but by the standards of 20th century totalitarianism (Stalin’s USSR, Nazi Germany, China itself under Mao) it’s pretty mild.
If there are any top universities with a chair in Chinese history and civilisation vacant, look no further – StevoR’s your man! Three thousand plus years of a breathtakingly complex and sophisticated culture, brilliantly summed up in a single sentence!
I bet you’d even let them use your toilet.
Yes indeed, that fine upstanding democrat Chiang Kai-shek would have… What’s that you say? Oh, it appears he was the corrupt and brutal boss of a one-party state, whose regime fell because almost no Chinese were willing to fight for it.
Amusing idea but falls into the ‘capitalism works’ church.
The US financial system would collapse without functioning technology driven economies generating the wealth they parasatise on. China can grow the way it is growing because it hasnt got a capitalist financial system holding it back.
madtom1999:
Satire can be amusing, yes.
The financial system is parasitic on wealth? :)
Not because it’s been doing so from a low development base?
Er, yes. Wealth is useful stuff, and human skills. Without those, there could be no financial system, but the converse is not the case.
KG, perhaps I misunderstand parasitism vs. symbiosis.
Hi all, Marc here from Cyprus Freethinkers. I’m the one who wrote the post linked at the end of the post. A very large thanks goes to PZ for highlighting it.
I want to take this opportunity to give more information on this new breed of textbooks, because all the news is obviously in Greek. You can download the texts here; all in Greek, but if you look at the 2a one, you’ll see the page with Noah’s Ark that we’re complaining about.
The books were produced because of a change in the biology curricula of the public schools. They’re aimed at the first grade of secondary school, so ages 12-13. The six sections are: Biology as a science; Classification and taxonomy; organismal biology (tissues, organs, cells); human reproduction; photosynthesis; trophic relationships.
At no point anywhere is evolution mentioned, at least not in the texts available online. Noah’s Ark is mentioned in section 2, as part of the section on biodiversity. I personally haven’t seen any mention of this in any news articles about these new books, and I can suggest two reasons for it:
– Cyprus is one of the most religious countries in Europe, with among the lowest acceptances of evolution in Europe. The wrongness of Noah’s Ark in a biology book will probably fly over the heads of everyone, including many parents.
– There was another, larger controversy in the books. The human reproduction part had an extra paragraph about morality. Of course, it’s Christian morality – married heterosexual sex > all else. This caused a furor among LGBT and human rights groups here, and there were enough complaints that it’s now removed; I can link to articles, but all the news is in Greek. But this controversy probably eclipsed this sneaky bit of Christian propaganda.
It’s worth noting that the person responsible for setting and approving the biology curricula is a biologist but also a priest. We’re still asking about whether he wrote the texts, but he surely is responsible for overseeing them and approving them.
I hope this sheds some light on the situation here. We’ll be doing our best to get rid of this idiocy. FWIW, the other sections in the textbook are okay, if not detailed enough for my tastes.
Don´t worry PZ. Here in Europe we are spending what´s left of our money buying gold hats for our various monarchies (who everybody agrees do a very important and difficult job). Here is Spain the new right-wing government has already announced plans to reduce funding for r&d and education. But don´t despair, they´ll still be sending a cheque for 6 billion euros of taxpayer´s money to the Vatican like they do every year.
South Ko… oh, fuck. :-S
Fun is, most Taiwanese don’t want official independence, they want to unite all of China on their terms. That’s always been the official party line of the Guomindang.
Frankly, I don’t know if the quasi-fascists or the communists were the lesser evil. Taiwan only became a democracy very recently, more recently than South Korea, and the Guomindang’s language policy, for instance, has always been on the fascist side of things.
Most of us haven’t got monarchies. What’s going on is that Merkel insists on having all debts repaid as soon as possible.
Given the way the last few regional elections went in Germany, Merkel isn’t going to stay for much longer.
the Xtians in South Korea seem to be as loving as the ones in the US:
http://buddhapia.com/eng/tedesco/2.html
most Taiwanese don’t want official independence, they want to unite all of China on their terms. That’s always been the official party line of the Guomindang. – David Marjanović
Your first point appears to be wrong. As does your second.
The tactic of disrupting the competition rather than promoting your own products is standard tactics in the IT world.
Be careful what you wish for. The largest war in human history, the quaintly named Taiping Rebellion, was Christianity-fueled, and in a global society would surely not remain within any national borders.
Oy! Wrecking your own country is enough! >:D
What I’ve read in several places.
The Korean version of xianity seems to be just as violent and intolerant as the American fundie version, probably because they are basically the same.
According to wikipedia, Korean xians have been attacking and burning down another religion’s shrines and temples. In this case those of Buddhism.
Not surprising. The liars, haters, ignorants, and sometimes killers for jesus are so predictable. If you can’t firebomb someone else’s church, why bother being a christian?
The only act of terrorism in my nearby area was carried out by xians. They firebombed the local mosque.
If you put “South Korean Christians attack Buddhist temples” into google, a whole lot of hits come up.
Apparently this is common and happens a lot.
It’s just what we all know and expect about xianity. This is just more xian terrorism. Again.
julietdefarge,
The Taiping rebellion was not the largest war in history by any measure I know of. It killed about 20 million people, compared to roughly 60 million for WWII, and was confined geographically to south-eastern China. Whether it can fairly be described as “Christianity fueled” is also doubful. Its leader, Hong Xiuquan, appears to have been mad. He had had limited contact with missionaries, tracts, and Chinese converts, but doesn’t seem to have known very much about Christianity. He declared himself the younger brother of Jesus, and also assigned God a wife. The rebellion did result at least in part from foreign intervention, but more in the form of the Opium Wars than of the missionaries, and in most ways followed the pattern of earlier risings against the Ching (Manchu) dynasty, such as that of the White Lily Society in 1795, and the Society of Divine Justice in 1813.
More.
According to this source, the Korean xians have control of the government and are trying to eradicate Buddhism in Korea.
No surprise. Xians discovered two millennia ago that, while it can be hard to convert someone, it is always easy to terrorize or kill them.
Not really. Or no more so than any other religious leader or cult founder. Look at Moon, Hubbard, Koresh, Martin Luther, Hagee, Bachmann, Palin, Falwell, or Joseph Smith.
That is typical of xians. They all just make it up as they go along, cafeteria xians.
So do the Mormons. God on Kolob has a fleet or wives although no one knows their names or even the number. So does jesus. Jesus’s brother is satan. And you and me. We are all god’s literal children from his collection of women.
The leader of the Taiping rebellion is usually described as a “heterodox xian”.
Didn’t the Australians already launch a pre-emptive dumbing-down strike against the US in the form of Ken Ham?
Sure. The South Pacific Alliance did launch a first strike cognitive impairment attack on the USA.
New Zealand sent Ray Comfort.
It wasn’t the best strategy. The USA has one of the world’s largest stockpiles of nuclear grade religious morons. We could send them back to the tree shrew stage with a small fraction of our religious kooks.
He went of course and ended up in Shitsville, Kentucky. Whilst he is a nuisance to the locals, he poses no threat to the intelligent parts of the US.
raven,
I know you feel obliged to blame absolutely everything on Christianity, but do try thinking before you type.
Yes, really. Hallucinations and delusions of grandeur are generally considered signs of insanity. Some of those you list are or were arguably mad (Koresh, late Hubbard), others were con-artists (early Hubbard, Smith), others vile and fanatical but sane (Falwell), others again not even religious leaders (Bachmann, Palin).
No, it isn’t. Most Christians grow up with Christian parents, in a predominantly Christian social milieu.
Yes, that’s why most Christians who have any knowledge of their beliefs, do not consider the Mormons to be Christians.
It’s not even Merkel: it’s the FDP: they are the austerity hardliners, and at the same time pollsters have been predicting that they’ll lose 4/5 of the voters next time: so they’ve basically decided that since they’re going to lose power anyway, they might as well have some fun abusing it while it last.
I’ve read that Japan’s population is about 1% Christian and that’s one of the reasons I’ve lived here for more than 30 years. There are missionaries here (I was often mistaken for being a Mormon one when I first came–young, white and clean-cut) but they don’t get much traction. Most of the Japanese I know pay lip-service to Buddhism and would probably think Christianity is just a silly way to complicate one’s life. I say probably because the concept of Christianity is about as interesting to them as rodeos–quaint but no connection to their daily lives.
You mean the “don’t use that money to reduce debt, use it to lower taxes” party?
My understanding is that they’re not so much pro-austerity, as they’re pro-let-them-solve-it-without-German-money and pro-coalition-with-Merkel.
Mostly what you would expect from slightly-less-radical-than-in-the-US libertarians.
There are, it seems, some FTP politicians who want to reanimate the almost-dead-for-a-long-time civil rights wing of the party (just large enough for providing the traditional minister of justice, whose ideas usually find no traction in her own party, only in the opposition parties). If they manage to do that (I’m rather skeptical), the party may stave off the end for a while longer – but really, it would be a rather different party. And they’d need different coalitions.
My impression is that the austerity ideas come mainly from Merkel and Schäuble – a physicist and a minister of finance. I suspect that Merkel does not understand why the German economy is so much better off than most everyone else, even though it happened under a Merkel government – back when they had a coalition with the SPD, when the big crisis was just breaking, and they created a number of short runtime programs to help the economy, such as funds to repair schools, or to replace old cars with environment-friendly new models. Oh, and allowing businesses to use state support for short-time working outside the usual applications (such as building trade during winter), leading to those businesses not firing the workers they’d need as soon as the economy got better again. And probably more I forget right now.
In short, all those evil government-supports-economy-with-actual-money things that she now says she doesn’t want, suggesting (I don’t really remember) that the initiative for these things came from the SPD. If so, that’d be more evidence that the left understands economy and finance better than the right, opposite to the usual claims. We’ve had a number of those in the recent decade or so, and popular belief is slowly changing.
If there are South Koreans reading this, please answer:
Are the 70% of non-Xtian South Koreans sleeping or something?
@redwood, #49:
Has the kawaii culture got hold of christian iconology yet?
Yes: has austerity hardliners ever meant anything else? Pro-austerity is a doxa with two important axioms:
Axiom One The budget of the State must be perfectly balanced otherwise the state will undoubtedly go bankrupt
Axiom Two Taxes must never raise otherwise it will cripple the economy.
Both axioms are false, and dare I say, both axioms are first and foremost lies invented by a parasitic upper-class trying to protect its parasitic lifestyle no matter what.
*
I’m pretty sure that Merkel is pretty much aware of the necessity of public spending.
Believe it or not, Merkel is an European Federalist: that is she believes that sooner or later the EU will have to stop pretending being an international organization and openly aknowledge that it was meant to become a federal republic built around a powerful central federal state.
The problem is that she was util now stuck between austerity fetichists at home and the other head of the EU (Sarkozy) who needed the far-right voters and therefore placated them by slowing down european integration. The result is that most proposition which came from Germany were baroque legal constructs meant to increase european integration (common budget policy) without causing the ire of the austerity fetichists (so it had to be a legally enforceable budget discipline), nor the anger of the french nationalists (so it could not be a big european federal budget): the result? Legally enforceable by european courts discipline of the national budgets
*
The center-left has always had a better understanding of economy than the right, which always had the handicap of existing to protect the wealth and insularity of the upper-class.
Does anyone have any (preferably recent) links for the creationism in Turkey? This would interest me greatly, and I do not recall it having past the revue here before on Pharyngula.
anonion, google Adnan Oktar (Harun Yahya), i.e. the one who, a few years ago, posted out a creationist ‘atlas’ across the world. A lot of his creationism, like much of recent European and even Islamic creationism in general, is directly regurgitated US creationism talking points.
But in the North Rhine-Westphalia regional elections, their vote went up, while that of the CDU went down (by a greater amount). I wonder if normally CDU voters are voting FDP to keep the party going, in which case they might do the same in the federal elections next year.
Probably: In 2010, the CDU won by itself 34,6% of the vote. This year, the CDU/FDP coalition won 34,9% of the vote: the FDP may very well have lost virtually all of its original centrist voters, but managed to compensate this loss by sucking a bunch of pro-austerity votes from its CDU “partner”.
*
Right now national polls predict that the CDU may earn 35% of the vote and the FDP 4 or 5%, which would force the left parties to accept a CDU dominated “black-red” coalition, but if what happened in North Rhine-Westphalia were to happen during the next federal elections, it could end up with a FDP at 15% yet unable to take part to the government, and a very weakened CDU with 25% of the vote forced to become the junior partner compared to the SPD/Greens.. or even be kicked out of government altogether by a SPD/Greens/Pirates coalition (which would be the most ridiculously funny “fuck you” sent by voters in a long time: I can already see republicans panicking “Europe has been taken over by ecologically minded socialist pirates: they’re even worse than the atheist-muslim-kenyan-anti-colonialist-socialist! Send the navy!”)
Hmm, I wonder how possible it would be to replace the nuclear warheads in the MIRV buses of Minuteman III and Trident missiles with fundies… We can haz Mutually Assured Dumbing?
Careful with those cunning plans. They never quite worked out for Blackadder.
This story it turns out, is considerably overblown. For a more complete picture, see this helpful blog post: http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2012/07/no-evolution-in-korea.html.