It must be something about the promise of spring

Next week, we’ve got the Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne, Australia (with a side event, the Freethought University Alliance meeting, just for students). At the end of the month, it’s the Northwest Freethought Converence in Renton, Washington. If none of those are close enough for you, here’s another: the Atheist Alliance International is meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark (nice lineup, too).

Come on. There’s got to be room in your schedule for a godless vacation somewhere. There are probably other meetings going on, too — they seem to be popping up like mushrooms.

Reality rejection syndrome

This is old news. The NY Times has an article on the expanding agenda of creationists to include denial of lots of other phenomena that make them uncomfortable. We’ve known this for years! It isn’t just creationism; those beliefs have a surprisingly high correlation with denial of climate change, denial of HIV’s role in AIDS, anti-vax nonsense, rejection of the Big Bang, dualism, etc., etc., etc. At the root of these problems is discomfort with modernity and change, resentment of authority, anti-intellectualism, and of course, goddamned religion, which is little more than a rationalization for maintaining barbarous medieval values. So, yeah, face the facts: creationism isn’t just a weird reaction to bad science instruction and those annoying godless liberal college professors — it’s just one symptom of a deep-seated mental derangement.

One example from the story:

In Kentucky, a bill recently introduced in the Legislature would encourage teachers to discuss “the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories,” including “evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning.”

They often do this, taking the opportunity to try and get a whole slate of dogma incorporated into law. This one, from State Reprehensible Tim Moore of Kentucky, is just particularly stupid, but characteristic of the genre. I’m just impressed that now human cloning is a theory — I thought it was a technique.

They also mention the recent South Dakota resolution.

“Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant,” the resolution said, “but rather a highly beneficial ingredient for all plant life.”

Change the wording a little bit, and substitute “shit” for “carbon dioxide”, and it’s still just as true.

I have been repeatedly told that going to the root of the problem, the unwarranted deference given to religious views, is a tactical error if what we want is to improve the citizenry’s understanding of biology. What these kinds of absurdities reveal, though, is that creationism is just one wretched excrescence of a whole body of pathological thought…and that focusing on one symptom while avoiding the cause is pointless.

Injustices and ironies

Allow me to purge a few interesting stories from my mailbag:

  • Keshia Canter was working the drive-up window at a burger joint when a sanctimonious customer handed her a pamphlet.

    Scripture tells us that when a man looks on a woman to lust for her he has already committed adultery in his heart. If you are dressed in a way that tempts a men to do this secret (or not so secret) sin, you are a participant in the sin. By the way, some rape victims would not have been raped if they had dressed properly. So can we really say they were innocent victims?

    To answer the question, yes. Yes we can. If a woman walks in front of me stark naked, and I rape her, it is entirely my fault. I have will and a desire to treat people fairly, and no amount of sexual provocation justifies violence and abuse.

    This particular attitude is another reason to throw “scripture” in the trash.

  • In a scenario that plays out all the time, a student at a private Christian school was outed as gay. The kid was ordered to the school office and summarily kicked out.

    There is a poll with this story, asking whether the school can kick students out for their sexual orientation. If it’s a private school, yes they can — it’s a silly question. The only answer, of course, is simply to never send your kids to private religious schools. You should recognize the problem with a school established to promote superstition anyway.

    Unfortunately, that isn’t all there is to the story. The parents are religious morons, and instead of loving their child for who he is, they want him to “repent” and plan to send him to a church “cure”.

    You can choose your school, but you’re stuck with the parents you get. Isn’t that a shame?

  • There is an airport in Liverpool named after John Lennon, which is nice. Not so nice is the fact that the UK has a law, the Crime and Disorder Act, which apparently makes religious irreverence illegal — which ought to mean John Lennon is illegal, too. Anyway, Harry Taylor left some cartoons mocking religion at the airport, and then…

    The leaflets were discovered by Nicky Lees, the airport chaplain, who told the court she felt “deeply offended and insulted” by their contents.

    She has a right to be offended. Being offended does not justify what happened next: Taylor was arrested and charged with three counts of “religiously aggravated harassment, alarm or distress”. I guess you can offend atheists in Great Britain, but offend a chaplain, and you’ll find yourself in court.

    Good one, UK. You’ve got insane libel laws, and now it turns out you provide special privileges to shamans, too.

  • I suppose it’s not fair to pick on the English when we’ve got our share of idiots in Minnesota. Our governor, Tim Pawlenty, has been trying to destroy something called General Assistance Medical Care, which provides support for 30,000 of the poorest people in the state (of course — he’s a Republican!) Among the many inane excuses Pawlenty gives us that the state of our citizens is God’s will (of course — he’s a Republican!). Seriously. He’s making it an important principle of his administration.

    One of the first principles that we should turn to always, and remember, is that God is in charge.

    Now here’s the ironic part. Many religious leaders are opposing Pawlenty’s heartless campaign, and I commend them for it. Keep fighting for the poor — I would have thought that that was an important principle in Christianity. However, this reason, from Lutheran pastor Grant Stevenson, is ridiculous:

    Governor, please stop talking to us about God. The governor is going around saying, ‘God is in control.’ We elected you to be making decisions for this state that will help everyone in this state. Things that will lift up the poorest in this state. Don’t pass this off on God. That’s no God we’ve ever heard of. And please stop lecturing us about God. It’s offensive.

    All right, pastor, come down from that pulpit. You lecture your flock every week about God, and you have no better knowledge of that imaginary being’s will than does Governor Pawlenty.

Pick on someone your own size!

Weep with me.

You know, the rotten little crunchy, jointed thing wouldn’t have stood a chance if he’d been fighting within his own weight-class. I found this video on a blog called Arthropoda — a clearly biased advocacy site for violence on molluscs by the world’s dominant, bullying metazoans.

Here’s what happens when the odds aren’t stacked against the cephalopod.

Although…notice the bit near the end where the narrator refers to “a mere invertebrate”? I think that guy at Arthropoda and I would team up to thump him for that.