Yay! It’s the Dr Seuss Bible!
(via Secular Front)
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
The NY Times has a decent summary of the Dobrich case—the families in the Indian River school district of Delaware who are suing to end the state sponsorship of sectarian religion that is running amuck there. Most of the residents there don’t seem to get it—I wish people would stop calling this a school prayer issue, because it plays right into their hands. It isn’t and never has been about restricting people’s ability to say prayers or practice whatever consensual superstitious nonsense in which they want to indulge. It’s about preventing the power of state authorities being used to compel people to join in unwanted religious practices.
It’s probably impossible to explain that the problem is about refusing to give a particular sect a monopoly on religion in an area, or about denying secular authority to the pastor of some random church, when the citizens are as oblivious as the thick-witted bible-thumper who made the comment below:
A homemaker active in her children’s schools, Mrs. Dobrich said she had asked the board to develop policies that would leave no one feeling excluded because of faith. People booed and rattled signs that read “Jesus Saves,” she recalled. Her son had written a short statement, but he felt so intimidated that his sister read it for him. In his statement, Alex, who was 11 then, said: “I feel bad when kids in my class call me ‘Jew boy.’ I do not want to move away from the house I have lived in forever.”
Later, another speaker turned to Mrs. Dobrich and said, according to several witnesses, “If you want people to stop calling him ‘Jew boy,’ you tell him to give his heart to Jesus.”
I don’t want to ever hear anyone calling atheists “arrogant” anymore, either. We’ve got nothing on this kind of smug, pious con artist.
“Because Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior, I will speak out for him,” said the Rev. Jerry Fike of Mount Olivet Brethren Church, who gave the prayer at Samantha’s graduation. “The Bible encourages that.” Mr. Fike continued: “Ultimately, he is the one I have to please. If doing that places me at odds with the law of the land, I still have to follow him.”
Hmmm. My militant atheist philosophy encourages me to spit on the wingtips of puffed-up sanctimonious preachers, and my bladder encourages me to piss on the foundations of the cheap gathering halls they use to fleece their flocks. It’s useful to know that our whims supersede not just civility, but the laws of the land.
Isn’t that a sweet little old lady? I guess the sign offended a few people, though, and they turned her in to the police.
Insisting that the sign was simply a lark, Mrs Grove said yesterday that she had never received any complaints about it. But police ordered her to take it down and her details were taken. Once the officers left she hung the sign back up.
I like that last bit—what a simple no-nonsense response to bureaucratic BS.
She said: “it’s been there for more than 30 years and all the people who live nearby are used to it. I couldn’t believe it. I’ve never had any complaints with any religion. The sign is just a lark that’s been there for a long time.
I don’t know. I’m looking at that obviously vicious little puppy and wondering how many Jehovah’s Witnesses he had eaten that day.
At least the British seem relatively civil about the whole thing. Symbols seem to inflame a whole ‘nother level of insanity in this country.
(hat tip: Richard Dawkins. Yeah, that Richard Dawkins.)
Yikes—it’s like some kind of horror movie: Inhofe meets Robertson.
Look, Pat, I don’t have to tell you about reading the Scriptures, but one of mine that I’ve always enjoyed is Romans 1, 22 and 23. You quit worshipping God and start worshipping the creation — the creeping things, the four-legged beasts, the birds and all that. That’s their god. That’s what they worship.
I’m not a big fan of the Bible, and every time I do dig into it, I find myself disgusted—and this is no exception. I had to look up Romans.
I keep waiting for the padded ambulance to roll up and men in white coats to leap out, shoot these bozos with a trank gun, wrap them up in a straight jacket, and go howling off to the nearest sanitarium, but no…instead, they get invitations to appear on cable news and babble about the apocalypse. And it’s not just the airhead news media…
…Rosenberg is just one of several conservative media figures who have identified and expounded upon the purported signs of the Apocalypse to be found in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. During his appearance on Live From…, Rosenberg claimed that he had been invited to the White House, Capitol Hill, and the CIA to discuss the Rapture and the Middle East, and noted—several times—that the apocalyptic events described in his novels keep coming true.
What’s really frightening is that these people don’t exhibit an ounce of critical thinking, and these ridiculous attitudes are endemic in the people who run our country. I’m waiting for some smart, pragmatic, sensible guy in government or the press to stand up and truncate that famous quote: “You have done enough. Have you no sense?”
(via Atrios)
I just watched the Francis Collins/Charlie Rose interview (it starts at about 35 minutes on that clip), and although I struggled manfully to appreciate the fellow’s accomplishments and status in science, I failed. All I could see is that he was illogical, irrational, and downright goofy—all the symptoms of a severe affliction with a bad case of religion. That video ought to be a warning to scientists: even a prestigious scientist can suffer Christian mind-rot.
He only has a few radio and television programs, his own university, tens of millions of dollars to throw at his political causes, and a few million voters in his pocket, so Jerry Falwell* is just a marginal nut, right? We can just ignore him when he says things like this:
It is apparent, in light of the rebirth of the State of Israel, that the present day events in the Holy Land may very well serve as a prelude or forerunner to the future Battle of Armageddon and the glorious return of Jesus Christ.
Those rapture freaks who are cheering on the bloodshed in the Middle East certainly don’t have any real clout…at least, not as much as us influential atheists, I’m sure.
(via DefCon)
*Grade A Demented Fuckwit.
Alright, Orac, I’m trying to get some work done here this morning…so why’d you have to send me this clip of an atheist church to distract me with unseemly giggling?
So Hank Fox sent along a couple of videos: one’s funny, and the other is “funny.”
I usually like Cornelia Dean’s science reporting, but this recent collection of book reviews put me off from the opening paragraph. She begins with the tired old claim that “scientists have to be brave” to embrace religion. Malarkey. I’ve never heard a scientist bring up the subject of religion, pro or con, at a scientific conference or associated informal gathering. You can be as devout as you want to be with no risk to your professional career (you may even find yourself an icon for the compatibility of science and religion!), and as for your personal life, being religious in a country in which 90% of the residents self-identify as religious, and in which religiosity has become a defining character of our political leadership, is hard to characterize as boldly bucking a trend. The rest of the review is an exercise in credulity.
