More clues to God’s identity!

One of those right-wing circle-jerks has been going on in Virginia, and the wingnuts are vying to see who can be holiest — it looks like a contest between Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee. It’s boring, except, I think, for the revelation about the nature of God.

Huckabee was not to be outdone in the use of hyperbole. The former Republican presidential candidate called the United States a “blessed” nation whose victory against the British in the Revolutionary War was “a miracle from God’s hand,” indeed the same type of miracle that defeated the legalization of gay marriage in California.

Since we know how both of those victories were accomplished, that tells us something about the nature of the agent behind them. Thanks to Mike Huckabee, we now know that God is a) French, and b) Mormon.

Bérubéan snark

Sometimes, it just takes a little sharp humor to clarify our current situation.

Well, to understand the Sonia Sotomayor fracas you have to realize that the timespace confundulum has actually fractured into two frozen moments, one having to do with the sudden appearance of emotional, abrasive Latinas and their strange cuisine amid the eating clubs of Princeton, and the other having to do with ungrateful women of color getting named to positions where they can dole out their reverse-racist versions of “justice.” Yes, that’s right, it’s always 1972 and it’s always 1993–and at the same time.

I didn’t get admitted to anything in 1972.  But in 1974, I was a freshman at Regis High School in New York, where I heard one of my more conservative classmates say, in the course of a discussion about affirmative action, that he had been the victim of reverse discrimination for too long.  Exasperated to the point of flummoxation, I noted in reply that (a) affirmative action showed up only yesterday, (b) you’re thirteen years old, d00d, and (c) you’re attending an elite, tuition-free Jesuit high school that does not admit women.  And the reason I remember that moment 35 years later is that it has never gone away: guys like Stuart Taylor and Fred Barnes are still thirteen years old, still the victims of reverse discrimination, and still questioning the credentials of smart women while campaigning for the protection of conservative white men under the Endangered Species Act.  Taylor graduated from Princeton in 1970; Barnes from the University of Virginia in 1965.  Neither of them had to compete with women for admission; Princeton started opening its doors to that half of the population in 1969, Virginia a year later.  That’s why guys like these worry so much about the decline of standards in college admissions since 1970, you understand.  Because things were tougher and people were smarter when white guys only had to compete with 44 percent of the population for admission to elite colleges, positions of power and influence, and so forth.

He also reminds us that Clinton caved in when faced with a similar situation during his presidency. Let’s hope Obama is made of sterner stuff.

44 more to go

One more joins the ranks of states on the side of goodness: the New Hampshire legislature has passed the last few bills needed to legalize gay marrriage in that state. Unfortunately, part of the compromise is a set of exemptions for religious organizations, who won’t need to do the right thing. Just remember, no one can point to the atheists and claim they tried to hinder civil rights here…we didn’t ask for the privilege to discriminate.

(via Digital Cuttlefish, who naturally has a poem to go with it)

Dis-appointment

In all the news about Obama’s choice of an appointment to the Supreme Court, there’s another possibility looming:

Francis Collins, the geneticist who led the Human Genome Project, is close to taking over the top spot at the National Institutes of Health, according to areport by Bloomberg News.
Collins, who was the director of the NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute from 1993 to 2008, is in the final stages of being screened by the administration of US President Barack Obama, an unnamed source told Bloomberg.

Elias Zerhouni, Collins’ would-be predecessor, voiced his approval for the pick, telling Bloomberg that Collins has “done things many scientists wish they could do once in their lifetime, and he’s done it repeatedly.”

Collins recently unveiled a new foundation, BioLogos, that promotes “the search for truth in both the natural and spiritual realms, and seeks to harmonize these different perspectives,” according to the organization’s Web site. Collins, who is an evangelical Christian, has said that his new foundation is an attempt to resolve Christian faith with scientific evidence, especially with regard to evolution. In 2006 he published a bestselling book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, that stirred some controversy in the scientific community.

I didn’t see much “controversy in the scientific community” over that book; I think everyone agreed that he had a perfect right to express his religious views, and there was near-unanimity that they were the views of a gullible fruitbat…an opinion confirmed by his wacky Biologos website. I know he had a good reputation as an administrator of the human genome project, but do we really need to go back to the Bush years of god-walloping goofballs at the head of every major government agency?

There are some objections being raised in the comments that have made me feel like I have to expand on this.

Collins is extremely well qualified for this job. If all we did was look at his CV to see if he’s competent to administer the NIH, I’d say they’d be hard pressed to find a better guy.

I don’t care if the director goes to church. If that’s what he wants to do as a hobby on sunday mornings, no problem.

However, and I think this is a great big HOWEVER, Collins also has a tremendous amount of religious baggage. This is also a political position, and it is fair to look at all the other stuff he brings into the job, and I’m afraid Collins is more than just a guy who goes to church…he’s a religious freak. I’ve read his book, and I’ve browsed his website, and he’s waving a great big hairy ideological flag in addition to his perfectly commendable credentials.

Look at it this way. If we had someone who had an administrative record as good as Collins’, but who was as overtly and proudly atheist as Richard Dawkins, everyone would be doubtful about Obama’s judgment as I am right now — they’d be rightly wondering if this hypothetical candidate would be a diplomatic dead duck…not to mention the right-wingers would be out for his head. Somehow, because Collins happens to be weirdly Christian, we’re supposed to simply overlook the fact that he struts about with his underpants on his head?

Well, Collins is not going to have my confidence, that’s for sure. His writings reveal a man with an extraordinarily poor grasp of scientific reasoning and a surprising lack of understanding of evolutionary biology (his argument that morals could not evolve, for instance, is stunning in its ignorance). I also suspect that he’s going to use this position as a laurel to peddle religious nonsense. I’m assuming he’d have the decency not to do it while he’s in office, but afterwards, it’ll be a stock part of the credentials he will trot out to validate his bogus beliefs, never mind that a large number of the scientists he will be working for think his apologetics are utterly loony.

War is no place for the deluded

A good column by James Carroll in the Boston Globe criticizes the absurd piety being peddled in the military, especially the discovery of Iraq war briefings laced with militant Christianity. He lists 7 reasons why it is a bad idea that the military has become wrapped up in religious jingo.

  • Single-minded religious zealotry bedevils critical thinking, and not just about religion. Military and political thinking suffers when the righteousness of born-again faith leads to self-righteousness. Critical thinking includes a self-criticism of which the “saved” know little.

  • Military proselytizers use Jesus to build up “unit cohesion” by eradicating doubt about the mission, the command, and the self. But doubt – the capacity for second thought – is a military leader’s best friend. Commanders, especially, need the skill of skepticism – the opposite of true belief.

  • Otherworldly religion defining the afterlife as ultimate can undervalue the present life. Religion that looks forward to apocalypse, God’s kingdom established by cosmic violence, can help ignite such violence. Armageddon, no mere metaphor now, is the nuclear arsenal.

  • Religious fundamentalism affirms ideas apart from the context that produced them, reading the Bible literally or dogma ahistorically. Such a mindset can sponsor military fundamentalism, denying the context from which threats arise – refusing to ask, for example, what prompts so many insurgents to become willing suicides? Missing this, we keep producing more.

  • A military that sees itself as divinely commissioned can all too readily act like God in battle – using mortal force from afar, without personal involvement. An Olympian aloofness makes America’s new drone weapon the perfect slayer of civilians.

  • A bifurcated religious imagination, dividing the world between good and evil, can misread the real character of an “enemy” population, many of whom want no part of war with us.

  • The Middle East is the worst place in which to set loose a military force even partly informed by Christian Zionism, seeing the state of Israel as God’s instrument for ushering in the Messianic Age – damning Muslims, while defending Jews for the sake of their eventual destruction.

I read that and agreed with it all…except for one thing. Those criticisms don’t just apply to the military, they also apply to our civilian population. Maybe #5 is a bit of a stretch — most of us don’t have military drones at our disposal — but scale it down a bit, and picture a religious fanatic with a rifle aimed at an abortion doctor. It’s the same principle.

Strip away the specific references to the US military, and that whole thing is an argument that could have come straight from the keyboard of a New Atheist criticizing American culture in general.

“Liberty” University really ought to look at the first word in their name

I suppose it’s only a surprise that it took them this long, but Liberty University has shut down the college Democrats. They were able to put up with the existence of a few very conservative Democrats for a whole 6 months before pulling the plug.

Liberty University has revoked its recognition of the campus Democratic Party club, saying “we are unable to lend support to a club whose parent organization stands against the moral principles held by” the university.

“It kind of happened out of nowhere,” said Brian Diaz, president of LU’s student Democratic Party organization, which LU formally recognized in October.

Diaz said he was notified of the school’s decision May 15 in an e-mail from Mark Hine, vice president of student affairs.

According to the e-mail, the club must stop using the university’s name, holding meetings on campus, or advertising events. Violators could incur one or more reprimands under the school’s Liberty Way conduct code, and anyone who accumulates 30 reprimands is subject to expulsion.

Hine said late Thursday that the university could not sanction an official club that supported Democratic candidates.

“We are in no way attempting to stifle free speech.”

Yeah, right.

Well, I’m at a secular university, where our traditional values are built on the Enlightenment, open-mindedness, free inquiry, reason, and secular humanism. I guess I need to go down to the administration building on Tuesday and point out that we have a few organizations — the Young Republicans, Campus Crusade for Christ, etc. — that do not support our mission, and have them shut down.

Oh, dang, I forgot! We’re also committed to free speech (FOR REALZ), so we have to allow our students to express even weird ideas that are the antithesis of rational thought. Rats. I guess I just need to encourage all of our students to speak out on their own personal views in public and private argument.

God’s own war

President George W. Bush was a god-fearing child given control of our military apparatus…or perhaps he was a child manipulated by a military that found religion a convenient hook. Frank Rich describes the internal propaganda used during the war. What I find shocking is that Bush received regular intelligence briefings with covers that invoked a combination of G.I. Joe war imagery and militaristic bible verses.

Take the one dated April 3, 2003, two weeks into the invasion, just as Shock and Awe hit its first potholes. Two days earlier, on April 1, a panicky Pentagon had begun spreading its hyped, fictional account of the rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch to distract from troubling news of setbacks. On April 2, Gen. Joseph Hoar, the commander in chief of the United States Central Command from 1991-94, had declared on the Times Op-Ed page that Rumsfeld had sent too few troops to Iraq. And so the Worldwide Intelligence Update for April 3 bullied Bush with Joshua 1:9: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” (Including, as it happened, into a quagmire.)

What’s up with that? As Draper writes, Rumsfeld is not known for ostentatious displays of piety. He was cynically playing the religious angle to seduce and manipulate a president who frequently quoted the Bible. But the secretary’s actions were not just oily; he was also taking a risk with national security. If these official daily collages of Crusade-like messaging and war imagery had been leaked, they would have reinforced the Muslim world’s apocalyptic fear that America was waging a religious war. As one alarmed Pentagon hand told Draper, the fallout “would be as bad as Abu Ghraib.”

Well, now they’ve leaked. Here’s an example.

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It’s appalling on so many levels: that Rumsfeld thought that polishing up his report with the jingoistic equivalent of a clear plastic binder would win him points; that it apparently worked; that religion was used to promote war in the White House; that it was used despite the fact that it could worsen our chances of success. And we still have Dick Cheney doing a cheerful media tour encouraging us to support torture, which really wasn’t torture, but if it was, it was good for us.

We lived under the rule of monsters for eight years. We can’t just pretend it didn’t happen, we need to fight back in the courts to condemn these people and their actions.

Gloat, everyone!

I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. James Dobson gives up.

I want to tell you up front that we’re not going to ask you to do anything, to make a phone call or to write a letter or anything.

There is nothing you can do at this time about what is taking place because there is simply no limit to what the left can do at this time. Anything they want, they get and so we can’t stop them.

We tried with [Health and Human Services Secretary] Kathleen Sebelius and sent thousands of phone calls and emails to the Senate and they didn’t pay any attention to it because they don’t have to. And so what you can do is pray, pray for this great nation… As I see it, there is no other answer. There’s no other answer, short term.

Oh, no…wait. They’re going to start praying? Don’t do that! When they’ve got the power of their almighty god behind them, they’ll be unstoppable! Please, conservapublitards, don’t do that. Don’t spend all your time on your knees, praying. That would give you such an unfair advantage! Play fair!

Matters of vast importance

The Republicans, apparently feeling that there are no other pressing matters of concern in the governance of our country, are pushing to designate 2010 as the Year of the Bible.

I may surprise you a little bit. I endorse this resolution…with a few caveats. I say the Democrats should vote this bill up as long as there is a little quid pro quo: the Republicans reciprocate by going along with the next couple of Supreme Court nominations Obama makes. Fair enough, I think.

Then, since 2010 is the Year of the Bible, we get to say that all subsequent years are Not the Year of the Bible, and be done with it.

(via Kos)