What a strange argument

Melanie Phillips is fulminating against Dawkins for the strangest of reasons. She chews him out for dismissing dowsing, crystal healing, conspiracy theories, reptoids, etc. as charlatanry — not because she believes in any of that nonsense, but because, in essence, it’s all Dawkins’ fault. You see, once upon a time, everyone was too busy believing in rational religion to dabble in magical thinking, but once science caused the collapse of Christianity, the irrational woo-woo silliness rushed in to take its place.

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Land of the Sodomite damned!

Fred Phelps is coming to Minnesota to protest the funerals of those killed in the 35W bridge collapse. This is more than a little ridiculous, besides being hateful. Apparently, any death for any cause is actually the result of a vengeful act of God, and is a message against gays.

I wonder what happens on the day a blood clot stops Phelps’ black and shriveled lump of cardiac muscle. Will his followers stand around at his funeral, howling about damned fags and fag enablers?

Books for the Fall 2007 semester

It’s that time of the summer again, when classes loom all too near, and enthusiastic students start asking for the reading ahead of time so that they can both find the books from a cheaper source than our bookstore and get a jump on the material. So to handle all those requests at once, here is a list of my fall term classes:

  • If you’re an incoming freshman biology major, you’ll be taking Biology 1111, Fundamentals of Genetics, Evolution, and Development (FunGenEvoDevo, for short), either in the fall or the spring term. This course is primarily a qualitative introduction to the basic concepts of the scientific method which will also give you an overview of the fields described in the title. It has two textbooks, but you’ll also be getting some assigned readings from the scientific literature as the term goes on.

    • Science as a Way of Knowing: The Foundations of Modern Biology(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by John A. Moore. This is the primary required text for the course; you may be surprised when you read it, since it doesn’t fit the usual expectations of an introductory biology textbook. We did tell you this was a liberal arts university when you enrolled, though, didn’t we?

    • Life: The Science of Biology(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by David Sadava, H. Craig Heller , Gordon H. Orians, William K. Purves, David M. Hillis. This book is optional, but highly recommended, and will be used as a reference text throughout the course. You can get by using the copies in the reference section of the library, but since this book will also be used in our required biodiversity and cell biology courses, you might as well bite the expensive bullet and get a copy now. The links above are to the 8th and latest edition; it’s fine to use the 7th edition.

  • A smaller number of more advanced students may be taking Biology 4003, Neurobiology. This course will be taught rather more socratically than your usual lecture course, so be prepared for more external readings (and you can also propose your own interests), but there will be one reference text and a couple of general books on the subject that we’ll be reading together.

    • Neurobiology: Molecules, Cells and Systems (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Gary G. Matthews. This is a traditional neuroscience textbooks — you aren’t escaping this term without knowing the Goldman equation and a little anatomy and pharmacology.

    • Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Jonathan Weiner. Why should we care about neuroscience? This book will help you figure it out, and it’s excellent description of the research enterprise might nudge a few of you towards grad school (or scare you off, but either outcome is good.)

    • Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain—and How it Changed the World(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Carl Zimmer. We’ve got to at least touch on the history of the field, and this book will give you an fine overview of what people have been thinking about that blob of goo resting in your cranium. Those students planning on med school will also find the perspective here useful.

Feel free to order them ahead of time. Be sure to have them by the first week of classes, though … I tend to plunge in right away with a stack of assignments on the first day!

What Would Jesus Do … with a cruise missile?

It’s frightening to see religion poisoning our military, but it’s happening. A group of generals is facing disciplinary action for promoting an evangelical religious organization, and they admit to being oblivious to the problem of a general declaring that his “first priority is his faith in god”, or in supporting a fanatical Christian group that wants to target foreign diplomats, ambassadors, and other representatives for conversion to Christianity. These fellows lent the dignity and responsibility of their positions to a weird cult, and now they defend themselves with this particularly chilling argument:

Brooks told investigators he believed he did not violate any rules. Due to Christian Embassy’s long tenure of working with Pentagon employees, Brooks said he saw the group “as a sanctioned or endorsed activity.”

Catton’s response was similar. Christian Embassy had become a “quasi-federal entity,” he told investigators, and he believed he was taking part in a program approved by the Defense Department.

So because they blindly assumed that Christian proselytization was a normal activity for high-level military leaders, they went ahead and contributed to a movie that portrays our government as a hotbed of Christian crazies … which is true, unfortunately, but we don’t need to pretend that that is a good thing.

You can watch the whole movie — it’s an embarrassingly treacly pile of crap in which politicians and soldiers profess their reliance on morning bible study and advice from the Lord to do their jobs. For instance, it’s got representative Gresham Barrett of South Carolina piously declaiming the moral guidance he’s been given, saying “You have to think about what’s right, what’s right for the country” while the video shows a picture of him smilingly shaking hands with Donald Rumsfeld. It’s got Pentagon chaplain Ralph Benson providing his solution to the “war on terror”: “What more do we need than Christian people leading us?” Christian Embassy, by the way, seems to be affiliated with Bill Bright and the Campus Crusade for Christ — that’s all we need is crusaders taking over the military.

These displays of piety from our leaders always make me want to sit them down and pin them down on precisely how Jesus is advising them. They seem bereft of any sense of ethics at all, which is making Jesus look like a right clueless bastard whose sole interest is in promoting the careers of self-serving maggots like Tom Delay.

I wonder what the king is doing tonight?

You’ve got to take it with a grain of salt — a politician’s self-reporting of what books he is reading is more about image than a reflection of what they are actually reading — but it’s revealing what British members of parliament think will impress the citizenry:

In the annual survey of MPs’ holiday reading, released today by the bookshop chain Waterstone’s, first place was taken by William Hague’s biography of William Wilberforce, which was published to coincide with the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade. It came well ahead of books that received more hype at the time of publication, such as the latest Harry Potter fantasy, or the diaries of Alastair Campbell.

It is perhaps not surprising that Mr Hague should be the top seller among Conservative MPs, but what is less predictable is that the survey showed the same book to be the Liberal Democrat’s top summer read.

A new mood of religious scepticism seems to have taken hold of Labour MPs, who have made The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins, their main choice. This follows the loss of Tony Blair, who looked to God as the ultimate judge of whether it was right to invade Iraq.

I am reminded of Bush’s announcement that he was reading that godless Frenchman, Camus. Now there was a cryptic message to the electorate…I think he was relying on the likelihood that his base wouldn’t have any idea what the The Stranger was about, so he was actually just trying to convince them that he is too a smarty pants. The title The God Delusion doesn’t leave a lot of room for ambiguity, though, and is well-known enough that everyone knows what it’s about.

Maybe some reporter should ask W if he has read any Dawkins lately…

(By the way, the Wilberforce biography is also on my to-read list, although I don’t know that I’ll get to it before the new term slams into my face.)

Down with the DCCC

It’s a perfect example of the failure of the Democratic party: they allowed the FISA bill to pass, and essentially revealed that they don’t give a damn about civil liberties. Revere is right: don’t support them. Don’t donate to the DCCC. He recommends ActBlue, which does look like a very good organization that actually promotes progressive politics rather than the craven do-nothing politics of the current party organization.

You should also voice your displeasure with your representatives. I gave Senator Amy Klobuchar grief for her spinelessness, and also yelled at my representative
Collin Peterson, who allowed the house bill to pass (and other Minnesotans might cuss out Tim Walz, if you’re in his district). What good is a party that won’t represent any ideals, and instead seems to be a gathering of cowards who do nothing to oppose the Republican bullying?