Project Blitz: another assault on our freedoms

This isn’t new — Christians have been demanding the right to invade public schools for years — but now there’s a new coordinated effort to push the Bible into classrooms called Project Blitz.

Activists on the religious right, through their legislative effort Project Blitz, drafted a law that encourages Bible classes in public schools and persuaded at least 10 state legislatures to introduce versions of it this year. Georgia and Arkansas recently passed bills that are awaiting their governors’ signatures.

Among the powerful fans of these public-school Bible classes: President Trump.

“Numerous states introducing Bible Literacy classes, giving students the option of studying the Bible,” Trump tweeted in January. “Starting to make a turn back? Great!”

You want to teach the Bible as a historical document? Fine. I have no problem with that. But that’s not what they want, because teaching it as one would, say, the Iliad, means contrasting it with the archaeological evidence, discussing its role, good and bad, in society, and examining its values critically. Achilles was a petulant, selfish killer…and so were those Hebrew warriors who committed genocide to secure their conquered territory. It would have to be taught as a piece of human literature, not some divine and infallible word of a god, and the theocrats who are pushing these laws are not intending that at all.

There is no critical thinking anywhere in their agenda. Take, for example, this teacher who eagerly leapt for a Bible class, because it was “easy”.

Maggie Dowdy said she picked this course because she thought it would be easy. After all, she already knew the Bible from church.

When the class started with the very first Bible story — the story of creation — she was glad she had chosen it. Here at last was the story of human origins that she believed in — not the facts of evolution that she had been taught in her high school science class.

“When I started learning about [evolution], I thought: ‘That’s not true. Here’s what I believe,’ ” Dowdy said. “I just kind of push it aside now. I know what I believe in. It’s just something the teachers have to teach us, but, no, I believe in creation.”

Other students echoed her. “We’ve always in science learned that perspective, evolution and the big bang,” Morgan Guess said. “This is the class that allows us the other perspective.”

That’s familiar: that’s Ken Ham’s relativism. If you’re ignorant of the evidence and don’t care about weighing the facts, you can just say that every interpretation is mere opinion, and that believing the earth is 6000 years old is just as valid as recognizing the evidence that it is 4.5 billion years old. But that’s not any kind of education or science! It’s saying that “I have a prior belief, I choose to only look at the assertions that reassure me it’s true.” It’s not “another perspective”, it’s willful ignorance, and it’s the antithesis of teaching and learning.

Americans United has a campaign to monitor and stop Project Blitz. There’s also a coalition of secular groups called Blitzwatch working to oppose it.

One danger is that even critical articles, like that one from the Washington Post, always portray the people implementing these religious practices as nice, normal, well-meaning people, the pastor next door type, who just wants their students to know how lovely the Beatitudes are. That’s the mask. It’s how they build popular support. But at some point the mask will slip — gosh, isn’t it a shame that gay people don’t obey the loving word of God? Then it falls off — the gay kids at this school are wicked and need to be expelled. Next thing you know a pious electorate is passing referendums to punish anyone who doesn’t heed their interpretation of dogma.

Stop them now, before it’s too late.

Goin’ to the doctor

I broke down and made a doctor’s appointment for this morning. It’s nothing serious, but I’ve had this nagging back ache, this deep-down soreness between my ribs that hurts horribly when I twist just so. Normally, I’d ignore it and just enjoy my misery, but yesterday someone made me laugh and I discovered that the pain doesn’t like that at all. I started to laugh and the whole left side of my chest spasmed, so that what came out was something between a gasp, a snort, and a scream — something like “HaGNORTeeeeeeeeee“, which was terribly embarrassing. Once the word gets out, I was afraid people would start coming around to tell me jokes.

I can tell you because you’re all thousands of miles away and aren’t going to show up at my door with a knock-knock joke. There are advantages to isolation.

Also, I’ve got to mention to her this ‘noxious tinnitis thing. It’s getting worse. Right now I’m treating it with loud music, like the Led Zeppelin howling away in the background here at home. Hey, maybe I can treat the aching ribs by never laughing ever again?

Also, I’m cranky all the time.

Yeah, I’m goin’ to the doctor to ask if she’s got a cure for getting old yet.

A price gladly paid for a new spider legion

As you sit on your throne, savoring your power, a beautiful woman comes before you.

“I have been searching the kingdom, and have found a gift for you,” she says. She lays an army of spiders at your feet.

You gasp with joy. “Exactly what I wanted! What boon can I grant you in return?”

She looks deeply into your eyes. Her full lips part, and she says, achingly, “There is but one thing I desire most of all…”

Eagerly, “Yes?”

“A soufflé.”

“A soufflé? You mean for dinner?”

“Yes. I crave your soufflé.”

You are taken aback. Your kingdom is small, little more than a snug hovel. You have no servants. You have never in your life made a soufflé. You’re not quite sure how to make such a thing.

What do you say?

[Read more…]

Man, incels are messed up in more ways than one

In this fascinating article about incels getting plastic surgery to help them get girls, we learn yet more about the twisted minds of that cult-like subculture. I think it’s fine that people who want plastic surgery can get it, even if some of them are clearly getting a little too obsessive about it (multiple surgeries to tweak slight asymmetries? Get over it. Everyone is asymmetric to some degree). If they’re doing it to appeal more to women, they’re operating on the wrong organ. This one paragraph says it all.

Mike recently got a jaw procedure called BSSO, plus a hair transplant. After the surgeries, he met two girls at his other job, teaching comedy, whom he considered “cute,” and he took this as a sign of success. Now he’s investing in cryptocurrency in hopes of getting more procedures with Eppley [the incel’s favorite surgeon]. In a recent forum thread, he posted a selfie specced out with angles and degrees, measurements of his features; he then found a photo of Tom Cruise and gave it the same treatment. (Mike’s jaw angle was 69.02 degrees; Tom’s was 76.31.) “I want to solve this woman thing,” he told me.

Women aren’t a thing to be solved. A jaw angle isn’t an objective measure of your attractiveness. Cryptocurrency isn’t going to get you rich. Your problem isn’t your skull, but what’s inside it.

The article has photographs of various incels and their ideals. They all look fine, although I sympathize with people who find their looks unsatisfactory. It doesn’t matter how much money Eppley makes off repeated surgeries, or whether they end up looking like Tom Cruise — it’s not going to fix their problems. Maybe one step forward would be to get off those self-loathing incel forums?

The first and only reasonable defense of prayer I’ve ever read

Really, if religious people made this kind of argument more often, I’d regard them far more charitably.

OK, but personally I regard Mr Rogers as a nice guy and all, but not someone who reflects my attitudes very well. I think I’d have to pray to an unfeeling void, or possibly an arbitrary lethal force that might kill me or allow me to live with no reason necessary.

It’s a valid choice. 🤷‍♂️

Egnorance, political propaganda, and transphobia

I should be linking to others on FtB more often — there’s good stuff here. I just take it for granted that you’re all looking at the groovy stuff on the sidebar, as I am, so I’ll just mention a few things that jumped out at me this morning.

  • What the heck is wrong with neurosurgeons? I know Ben Carson has been making a fool of himself lately, but it’s easy to forget (please do) about Michael Egnor, the dogmatic neurosurgeon laboring to make intelligent design look even more foolish. Egnor is now asserting without evidence that only humans are capable of this intangible thing called “reason”. Wrong.

    Of course, if you understand the theory of evolution, you realize his claim is likely to be utter nonsense. Abstract thinking is not a black-white thing; it’s a range of capabilities that, even among people, we see a huge variation in. Any capability with huge variation is subject to selection, and so it can evolve. Since people are descended from earlier ape-like creatures, it is quite believable that non-human animals would also display the ability for abstract thought, in varying degrees. And they do! Ethologists, who actually study this kind of thing, disagree with Egnor. (Also see baboons and crows, to name just a couple more examples.)

    Hey, I know my cat is cunningly scheming all the time. She’s lying on a futon next to me right now, and she has all kinds of strategems for tricking me into serving her desires.

  • You’ve probably heard that the NY Times has been fluffing Hope Hicks, who has been subpoenaed to testify about her former employer, the Trump administration. According to Maggie Haberman, apparently the decision to comply is an “existential question” which can only be answered with some flattering portrait photography. I have a better answer to that question: ask your lawyer, and do what they say. They’ll tell you that noncompliance isn’t an option. This has been a short answer to a stupid question.
    Unfortunately, that the “newspaper of record” even considers this a worthy question tells us that the NY Times is not on the side of the people.

    The anti-democratic limits on acceptable discourse accepted and propounded by the Times must be opposed. The Times and Haberman and her editors are not worthless. Ignoring the Times is not a principled and logical and effective way to deal with their anti-democratic trolling. Instead, the Times must be countered each and every time they embrace the ideology of an accountability-free elite. We must never forget that the Times isn’t portraying the Trump administration as wise and sympathetic philosophers working to divine the best possible response to problems of Gordian convolution and unsolvability. The upper ranks of the Times (including Haberman and her editors) are portraying the Trump administration as wise and sympathetic philosophers because they, too, believe themselves better off in a world without accountability for the US elite.

    It’s easy to condemn Fox News as a propaganda organ for the Republicans. It’s distressing to see that the NY Times is, too.

  • The latest controversy that is roiling the atheist community is that a YouTuber, Rationality Rules, made a video about transgender athletes that was a seething mass of boiling bullshit — it was wrong on the facts, made up “facts”, cited Joe Rogan as an authority, and made a sweeping (and false) conclusion that women’s sports were about to be overwhelmed by a horde of Y-chromosomes taking hormone replacement therapy so that they could pwn the little ladies and win trophies. It was blatant nonsense, demolished Rationality Rules cultivated perception of being a ‘scientific’ observer, and even he was forced to admit that he got some things wrong, although he’s been slow to confess to specifics. The Atheist Community of Austin, which had recently had him on The Atheist Experience, made a statement repudiating his transphobic comments, and that’s when the shit hit the fan.
    Another deep rift has formed, between the people who can clearly see the glaring transphobia in Rationality Rules’ video, and those who have decided that this must be overlooked and forgiven because, dang, he’s such a good atheist defender of reason.
    Oh, jesus, we’ve been here before. Somehow being right about one thing, the nonexistence of gods, means you must be right about everything, especially if you hold poisonously regressive views.

    Anyway, HJ Hornbeck tries to summarize the chaos (there’s more than one video, an apology video, all kinds of vehement denials everywhere), and he’s right that there is one clear conclusion: Rationality Rules made lots of transphobic statements and assumptions. If you’re arguing against that crystal-clear fact, you ought to turn in your Official Skeptical Atheist card. If you’re arguing that such attitudes are acceptable, please stay on your side of the rift.

The imaginary free speech crisis is a ploy to silence free speech

I work on a college campus, and I can tell you that we get more diverse political views than are represented on, say, Fox News. Public display boards are plastered with that Turning Point USA bullshit. The College Republicans routinely bring in speakers with inane points of view — anti-abortion, pro-religion, anti-environmental crap that I despise. If I, a left-leaning college professor at a liberal arts college, have no power to silence right-wing stupidity, then how can you claim that we have so much censorship power? If you’re so in favor of free speech, why do you complain about students using their free speech to protest?

Well, somebody understands that there is no free speech crisis on college campuses, at least.

“Chilling” is the word used in the Washington Post headline to describe college students’ supposed hostility to free speech. A new poll appears to indicate that 20% of college students believe it is appropriate to use violence to shut down hateful or offensive speakers. Thanks to a carefully orchestrated campaign, the notion that universities are hostile to the free exchange of ideas is slipping into mainstream opinion. It is a phony crisis manufactured by the same people who fuel the engines of climate denial. Right wing activists and donors are fighting to undermine universities because their values cannot thrive there. Modern conservatism is failing on campus because it shrivels in an atmosphere of intelligent, open debate.

That’s right. I do think if a speaker comes on campus to advocate for violence against certain groups, then we shouldn’t tolerate the intolerance, and they should be told to go speak at a Klan rally instead, and that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to pelt them with milkshakes as they’re safely escorted away. That does not mean that we oppose a diversity of ideas…it means that doing harm will not be supported.

The idea that this reasonable assumption of non-destructive behavior is somehow “chilling” is a product of people like the Koch brothers or Dennis Prager or Charlie Kirk. They’re the ones who run the propaganda mills that are trying to shut down the free exchange of ideas and replace them with slavish dogmatism. They aren’t even very good at that.

More interesting than the flaws in the poll’s execution is the buried lede: the poll failed. Look behind the absurd headlines and the poll demonstrates the opposite conclusion. College students are much more open to free speech than the general public. If it’s “chilling” that 20% of college students misunderstand free speech, what word should we use to describe the quarter of the American public and almost half of Republicans who support censoring unfavorable media outlets. Also from this poll, the college students who identified as Democrats were more open to free speech than their Republican peers. And perhaps the most important lesson from these poll results: a carefully constructed poll can get a small minority of respondents to endorse almost anything.

The real problem is that a majority of college students have outgrown the reactionary Old Guard, the 1950s mentality that is crumbling away as the white majority recedes into an angry, resentful minority. Women outnumber men. The assumption of privilege is under assault.

What is really happening on college campuses? Young Americans, exposed to some of the most intellectually open environments that have ever existed in a human society, are rejecting the values of The Last Jim Crow Generation to an almost unanimous extent. This trend extends beyond politics. Younger Americans are making better, smarter, more morally admirable choices than their parents and grandparents in almost every respect. Today’s college students are less likely than their forebears to use illegal drugs, smoke cigarettes, or engage in dangerous or irresponsible sexual practices. They are less likely to get pregnant or marry early. Younger Americans are better informed, more tolerant of dissent, and less bigoted than older generations. They even have higher average IQ’s. Our political system is about to be rocked by a wider generation gap than we faced in the Sixties.

We should be proud that a younger generation is turning out better than we were, but no — instead, rich fucks just want to poison the well of new ideas. We have an opportunity here, to encourage people who could repair the damage my generation has done, don’t let the cowering guardians of the status quo burn it all down.

Remembrances

This Memorial Day, I learned that the very first Memorial Day was a remembrance by freed black slaves in Charleston, South Carolina in honor of the union dead. That seems like a significant fact we weren’t taught in school.

It bears reminding, too, that our soldiers fought a major war to end the Nazi threat. A lot of people have forgotten that swastikas were once trophies taken from a fallen enemy, not something to celebrate today.

My wife and I traveled to St Cloud, Minnesota today, where the Veterans of Foreign Wars were putting up a new monument. It was a surprise for her. My sons had gotten together and donated to have her father’s name, Robert Gjerness, put on the monument: he was a Minnesota native who had served as a Marine Raider in the Pacific War, and had fought some of the fiercest battles there, like Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal. He didn’t talk much about it, but he’d let his grandchildren play with his box of medals, and they have fond memories of their grandfather, who died a few years ago.

We remembered.

It’s the least we can do.