Perkins for president!

You may recall Thomas Perkins, the multi-millionaire who recently said that the attacks on the one-percenters is similar to the rhetoric that the Nazis used to inflame people against Jews and thus may be the precursor to a something similar happening here. He must be feeling pleased with the reception those remarks got because he is back in the news, with new and even more profound insights.
[Read more…]

Why evolution by natural selection and belief in god are incompatible

There were several commenters who disagreed with my assertion in an earlier post that belief in both god and evolution by natural selection are incompatible and forces one to choose one or the other. They pointed out that there were large numbers of people who believed in both god and evolution or that the tremendous suffering that occurs in nature was incompatible with only a loving omnipotent god or that I was being parochial and equating all religious people with the young Earth Christians in the US.
[Read more…]

Mixed day for LGBT rights

A US district judge in Virginia ruled today that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional because it violated the due process and equal protections clauses of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. This follows Wednesday’s similar ruling in Kentucky and earlier rulings in Oklahoma and Utah. Like those rulings, the order was stayed pending appeals, so that this issue is being fast-tracked to the US Supreme Court.
[Read more…]

Republican leadership forced to stop leading from behind

Kevin Drum describes what happened in the US Senate two days ago. The Republican party leadership clearly wanted to avoid another knock down, drag out, fight over raising the debt ceiling that so hurt them the previous times they have tried it. But the Tea Party wing has decided that raising the debt ceiling is the Greatest Evil Ever and was demanding that the party oppose it.
[Read more…]

Backlash for the NFL

I think the anonymous NFL people who were interviewed by Sports Illustrated and said that they thought that Michael Sam coming out as gay would make him less desirable for teams in the NFL draft because of the ‘controversy’ he would generate, must be regretting their words because they have been getting a beating over those remarks, by critics saying they showed how backward are the views of the NFL administrators, while players seem to be more accepting. [Read more…]

The one true math

In the clip from the film Questioning Darwin, we saw how a creationist pastor said that if the Bible said that 2+2=5, he would believe that and work everything around that ‘truth’. He was speaking in hypothetical terms but he has a chance to prove his commitment because the Bible actually does say that the number pi is exactly 3. It would be interesting to see how he deals with that. [Read more…]

Making Questioning Darwin made filmaker an agnostic

We know that Charles Darwin slowly changed from being religious to agnostic as a result of his research into how species originated. In an interview, Antony Thomas, the 73-year old British filmmaker who produced the documentary Questioning Darwin that looked at the worldview of creationists, says that during the making of the film, he too changed his views from believer to agnostic. [Read more…]

Government viewpoint neutrality

The Establishment Clause requires the government to be neutral in matters of religion. But is the government required to be neutral on other issues? Clearly not, since the government can and should be able to advocate on behalf on one side of some issues, say the evils of drug use. This principle was established in the 1977 case Wooley v. Maynard (in which a New Hampshire resident objected to being forced to display the state motto “Live Free or Die” on his license plate) in which the court ruled that the state may advance an ideological message but this freedom of government speech is not without restrictions because the government cannot force others to be couriers or disseminators of its message. [Read more…]