South Africa’s strange fisheries policies

This set of objectives for South African fishing policy contains a very strange phrase.

(c) Co-manage oyster fishery with other spheres of government and the fishing industry in a manner that recognizes government priorities, strategic objectives of the spheres of government, the interests of fishing industry and most importantly in a manner that would please, praise and glorify that one who provided and gave man the power to rule over the fish (including oysters)

All the fish, including oysters? You mean molluscs are fish too? Those scale and fin-less ocean-dwellers that Leviticus 11:10-12 tells us are an abomination? South African molluscs will no doubt be relieved to hear that they’ve been upgraded – perhaps oysters from your part of the world will be equally blessed in the near future. And instead of managing the industry to do things like make a profit, feed people, or keep the “fish” population sustainable, it’s all about pleasuring Jesus?

I’m not bothered by the inclusion of molluscs in “fish” here: folk taxonomies twist biological taxonomies all the time, and it’s traditional to include anything in the sea, including whales, anemones, sea urchins, and squid, in the category “fish” (see also all the grains that get included in the generic term “corn”).

But specifying that their policies are for the purpose of pleasing, praising, and glorifying a god? I would like to see the metrics they’re using to determine whether their policies are meeting that goal. I think God told me that he really, really loves all molluscs, including oysters, and the only actions that would please him are a complete prohibition on killing and eating them. I’ve even got Biblical support on that one!

At least that simplifies South African fishing policy. Oh, yeah, also God told me that all violators are to be turned into chum and used to help replenish shark stocks.

El Censo Mundial de Ateos ahora en español!

An important message from the Atheist Census: El Censo Mundial de Ateos ahora en español! Más de 220.000 personas han sido contadas en todos los países del mundo – asegúrate de serlo tú también!

(For us non-Spanish speakers: “The World Census of Atheists is now in Spanish! More than 220,000 people have been counted in all countries of the world – be sure you do too!” And actually, there are options to translate it into a whole lot of languages there.)

At least Ohio kids seem smarter than their school board

You sure can spot the creationists by their use of slogans — “teach the controversy,” “strengths and weaknesses,” “teach both sides,” “think critically about controversial subjects” — and they’re all on display at an Ohio school board that is currently debating opening up the curriculum to creationism. The parents and students are resisting, at least.

Please. There is no controversy here. Evolution happened, teach it.

The best argument that one student provided is that “I don’t feel like the people here are educated or prepared enough to deal with it.” Yeah, that describes most school boards.

My poor children didn’t reap the benefits of gay marriage

An Australian survey of the children of same-sex couples has some shocking news: gay marriage may be better for children.

An interim report found there was no statistical difference between children of same-sex couples and the rest of the population on indicators including self-esteem, emotional behaviour and the amount of time spent with parents.

However, children of same-sex couples scored higher than the national average for overall health and family cohesion, measuring how well the family members get along.

But actually, the current hypothesis isn’t that gay marriage is better for you, it’s that people open to gay marriage are more tolerant and make for better parents.

”Because of the situation that same-sex families find themselves in, they are generally more willing to communicate and approach the issues that any child may face at school, like teasing or bullying,” lead researcher Dr Simon Crouch said.

”This fosters openness and means children tend to be more resilient. That would be our hypothesis.”

Mother of three Kate Coghlan concurred. ”We talk about everything: from how they were conceived to the different relationships that people have,” the 39-year-old said. ”They are very accepting and more tolerating of diversity.”

So don’t weep, heterosexual couples, there’s nothing wrong with your relationship, and your children have every hope of being just as happy as children of gay parents. There are these things even we straight people can do, like talking and sharing and helping our children. So do it more.

The Church of England just wounded itself

You may think this is good news, but you should be deeply troubled. The Church of England has officially decided that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry.

The Bishop of Leicester, who leads the bishops in the House of Lords, said they would now concentrate their efforts on “improving” rather than halting an historic redefinition of marriage.

It represents a dramatic change of tack in the year since the Church insisted that gay marriage posed one of the biggest threats of disestablishment of the Church of England since the reign of Henry VIII.

“Troubled?” you ask, “This is exactly what Myers has favored for years!” But, you see, I didn’t factor in the theological implications. When the source of all objective morality (as we’ve been told God and his priesthood are, many times) undergoes a major revision, we ought to think about what it means. Let us consider the possibilities.

  1. There is a god who cares very much what you do with your genitals, and sometimes he changes his mind. You should find this terrifying. Here’s this all-powerful deity who can send you to paradise or to hell, and the rules for admission can change at any time. Your absolute objective morality is suddenly in flux! You could be cruising along, living the rules of your religion meticulously, and there could be a revision at any time — what if god, on a whim, decided that all marriage was an abomination, and you were supposed to practice free love? Are you prepared to obey?

    1. Related concern: is this retroactive? So if a pair of randy, lonely medieval goatherds were getting it on in a beautiful French meadow and were condemned to hell for it, do they get released now? What’s the PTSD like after a thousand years writhing in unthinkably intense agony?

    2. I’d assumed getting into heaven is like getting tenure — you’re set for the afterlife. But apparently it’s more like working for a psychopathic boss and the rules can change on the fly. This doesn’t sound like a particularly pleasant, stress-free existence.

  2. There is a god who cares very much what you do with your genitals, but the priesthood has been consistently misinterpreting him. This should shake your trust in organized religion — they can get God’s will totally wrong. What if God gave you your genitals for a reason, and you’re supposed to be using them joyfully in all sorts of ways, and the communication between heaven and earth is just totally garbled? He’s up there raging at the phone line like Bill O’Reilly muffing his lines, while the priests are straining to understand what he’s saying in all the bellowing and crackling static. “What’s that you say? Something about penises? Cut off what?” We could be committing all kinds of crimes of omission and emission without even knowing about it!

    1. What if god said, “I gave you men a prostate for a reason, you should be using it”, and all those straight males in a committed relationship who haven’t been getting pegged regularly by their wife are damned to hell? That would be a shocker at the pearly gates.

    2. We don’t know that the priests are getting it right even now. Maybe god really is a bronze-age patriarchal chieftain with bizarrely restrictive rules about sexual behavior, and those untrustworthy priests are translating those rules with more and more errors. You really can’t believe anything they say, whether you like their conclusions or not.

  3. There is a god who really doesn’t care much about what you do with your genitals — he has greater concerns that matter more. Maybe he only has two commandments, “Be excellent to one another” and “Party on!” and all this fussing over specific sexual practices is a gigantic distraction — you’re not going to get grilled about where your penis has been or what has gone into your vagina when you get to heaven at all. All this angst about sexual behavior is simply a reflection of the psychological hangups in the heads of the kinds of people who appoint themselves morality monitors.

    1. I have a suspicion that chopping off young women’s heads for losing their virginity won’t be compatible with “Be excellent to one another”. Neither is beating up people you meet at a gay bar.

    2. We really don’t know what the rules are any more. Maybe we should stop trying to imagine what a cosmic overlord in the sky wants us to do, and look to our fellow human beings for guidelines, instead.

  4. There is no god, no afterlife, no eternal punishment or reward. The priests have been making it all up, using this invisible boogeyman as a goad to get you to serve their earthly whims. You’ve been had, people, rise up and throw off your chains, cast down the church!

I kinda like #4 best.

I have to admit, though, that the most conservative religious people actually have one thing right: if you go around changing any of the rules, if you exhibit any flexibility in interpreting the faith, it means you have cause to question the whole elaborate edifice of religion — every wobble has the potential to cause the whole structure to come crashing down. The church is extremely rickety, which is why reason is such a threat to them.

But I also think that demolition would be a good thing.

At least we know he watched the video

Ken Ham has replied to the conversation we had last night. We talked about the importance of a secular education, deplored creationism, and challenged Ken Ham to a debate in Houston when he’s there to speak at a homeschooling conference.

But what does he respond to? He cries, “Lilandra called me an ape!”

Yes, she did, because humans are apes. It’s not an insult, it’s a statement about what larger group your species is nested within.

Alternatively, maybe Ham objected because he feels a greater kinship to another clade, and would rather be grouped with them: he’s clearly part chicken. He was challenged to a debate; he earlier refused because it was beneath him to debate a non-Ph.D. (his degree is only honorary, but he apparently puts much stock in it), but now that there will be a person with a doctorate on the side of evolution, that excuse has evaporated. And now he’s nattering on about a minor point rather than addressing the bigger issues? For shame.

Aron Ra also comments.

Turkish creationists are creepy

The big kahuna of Turkish creationism is Adnan Oktar, better known as Harun Yahya…in fact, he seems to be the only major player in Turkish creationism. He’s a known con man, and a bit of a playboy, and his organization is more cult-like than any other creationist group I know of. He also is using an unusual ploy: he uses sex and a group of heavily dolled-up young women to promote Islamic creationism. Only in Turkey!

On one recent day, as he often does, Oktar was talking about one of his many exhibitions of fossils that he says disproves evolution.

Oktar and his cult-like organization have been in the Turkish media space for decades. But only last year did he deploy his new weapon in the battle against Darwinism: A flock of ostensibly attractive, curvy young women.

The “kittens,” as he calls them, call him “master” and generally guffaw at the right moments and nod their heads in agreement with whatever he says.

He’s been up to this for a while. He has a series of youtube videos that feature his Stepford houri droning about the miraculous nature of cell biology. If you have some sick fetish about having Barbie read a biology textbook to you in broken English, here you go.