Two more carnivals on this fine Sunday afternoon:
You know the drill.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Two more carnivals on this fine Sunday afternoon:
You know the drill.
Georgetown College in Kentucky has ended its affiliation with the Southern Baptists after the Baptists tried to dictate that a new hire be a biblical literalist. The Baptists wanted nonsense like this:
“You ought to have some professor on your faculty who believes Adam and Eve were the first humans, that they actually existed,” Dr. York said.
They also refused to allow the college to hire more than 25% non-Baptist faculty, and what may have really been the deal-breaker is that the university’s enrollment is less than half Baptist…so insisting on strict adherence to the principles of a minority denomination was probably costing them students. I suspect money is more important than doctrine.
I was surprised and impressed by this comment:
David W. Key, director of Baptist Studies at the Candler School of Theology at Emory, put it more starkly. “The real underlying issue is that fundamentalism in the Southern Baptist form is incompatible with higher education,” Professor Key said. “In fundamentalism, you have all the truths. In education, you’re searching for truths.”
He’s almost there. Now we just have to work towards the day the word “religion” is substituted for the too narrow “fundamentalism in the Southern Baptist form”.
(via Socratic Gadfly)
The Strib has an article on Camp Quest of Minnesota, the secular summer camp that is starting up this week. It’s a fairly good story, although it’s unfortunate to see it overwhelmed by the gigantic rah-rah story on crazy Pentacostalism spread over the next two pages of the paper, by the same reporter.
By the way, I’ll be volunteering at Camp Quest on Friday, to show the kids how to deal with creationists.
I imagine this might be a problem in mixed marriages, if one partner is one of those wicked militant fundie atheists I hear so much about.
By the way, that link probably isn’t safe for work or the easily offended, although the part I found most offensive was the totally fictitious building in the last panel.
So, has everyone read the latest investigation into Pat Tillman’s death already? I’m appalled at this astonishingly insensitive Christian bigot, Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, who basically slanders Tillman because he was an atheist.
“But there [have] been numerous unfortunate cases of fratricide, and the parents have basically said, ‘OK, it was an unfortunate accident.’ And they let it go. So this is I don’t know, these people have a hard time letting it go. It may be because of their religious beliefs.”
Kauzlarich, now a battalion commanding officer at Fort Riley in Kansas, further suggested the Tillman family’s unhappiness with the findings of past investigations might be because of the absence of a Christian faith in their lives.
In an interview with ESPN.com, Kauzlarich said: “When you die, I mean, there is supposedly a better life, right? Well, if you are an atheist and you don’t believe in anything, if you die, what is there to go to? Nothing. You are worm dirt. So for their son to die for nothing, and now he is no more that is pretty hard to get your head around that. So I don’t know how an atheist thinks. I can only imagine that that would be pretty tough.”
Asked by ESPN.com whether the Tillmans’ religious beliefs are a factor in the ongoing investigation, Kauzlarich said, “I think so. There is not a whole lot of trust in the system or faith in the system [by the Tillmans]. So that is my personal opinion, knowing what I know.”
Huh. So, next time I’m at a Christian funeral, it’s OK if I go up to the bereaved family and suggest that they should have an easy time letting go since they’re religious, and their faith will make them happy, and they’re so lucky since they have it easier than us atheist worm dirt, and hey, it’s a good thing their gullibility will allow them to trust the system?
I think even I can tell that that is the kind of thing only an insensitive jerk would say. It’s OK If You Are Christian, though!
And isn’t he just the perfect person to have been in charge of the investigation?
Kauzlarich, now 40, was the Ranger regiment executive officer in Afghanistan, making him ultimately responsible for the conduct of the fateful operation in which Pat Tillman died. Kauzlarich later played a role in writing the recommendation for the posthumous Silver Star. And finally, with his fingerprints already all over many of the hot-button issues, including the question of who ordered the platoon to be split as it dragged a disabled Humvee through the mountains, Kauzlarich conducted the first official Army investigation into Tillman’s death.
One useful thing about all this is that we atheists are going to be able to make the case, if a draft is ever reinstated, that we wouldn’t be able to trust our fellow soldiers to refrain from killing us, and that we therefore must have a deferment. I know I would never allow any of my kids to go off to a war where they can’t rely on the raving religious fanatics around them…and commanding them.
That irreverent rapscallion Larry Moran suggested that I read this article by Natalie Angier. She begins by telling us that scientists are always asking her to help out in the fight against those loony creationists, but then she turns around and chews them out for their hypocrisy. I say, give ’em hell, Natalie.
From the insightful Digby comes this insightly insight:
Why do the vast majority secularists vote for the Democrats? Could it possibly be for the same reason that African Americans do? Could it be that the Republican Party is so implicitly or explicitly religiously intolerant that they have no place in it?
They don’t even need to be intolerant, though…just being implicitly and explicitly religious, period, full stop, is sufficiently off-putting. The intolerance is the creamy rich arsenic-laced frosting layered thickly on top of the putrefying fruitcake of superstitious dogma—excuse me if I’d rather not have a taste. I think our interests diverge from those of the religious African Americans because, if Obama is any example, they reject the intolerance but savor the religion.
By the way, take a look at this map of the state-by-state distribution of unbelievers, also from Digby’s post. Typically, “no religion” is the third most popular choice in most states, with a few exceptions (I’m very proud of my home state of Washington.) So why do politicians so studiously avoid courting that common demographic?*
*Rhetorical question…in a winner-take-all game, third place is no place, and it’s not as if the godless form a coherent bloc anyway.
We’re getting rude, we dare to criticize the theistic evolutionists, and now Ophelia has done gone and poo-pooed the distinction between methodological and metaphysical materialism. I love it! Rise up, all ye fierce and firebreathing atheists!
Much as I’d enjoy the squeals of agony from the usual protesters, I’m going to suggest that you might be better off arguing over it at Ophelia’s. I’m doing a bit of traveling over the next two days, my access to the net might be spotty, and so I’ll probably be slow to approve any comments that our annoying spam filters might hold up.
I’m going to be giving a talk tomorrow and Tuesday in St Paul and Minneapolis—if you’re free at the noon hour, stop on by! The title of the talk is “Science and Secularism in a Demon-Haunted World,” and it’s sponsored by the Atheists for Human Rights.
On Monday at noon I’ll be at the St Paul Landmark Center, 75 West Fifth Street, in the Ramsey County Room.
On Tuesday at noon I’ll be in the Minneapolis Downtown Public Library, in the Robins Kaplan Miller & Ciresi Room.
If you aren’t in the Twin Cities area, be patient…I just agreed to do an interview with the Infidel Guy sometime in August, so you might be able to hear me over your computer then.
Thank you for the concern about my spiritual well-being, Craig Clarke! Usually I just get promises to pray for me and bible quotes and suggestions to bring a big bottle of aloe vera with me when I go to hell, but Craig gave me choices. He sent me a link to the Godchecker, an online searchable database of deities. It currently contains 2,850 gods in its listings (which are not complete—there is no Echidne, for instance), all of which have been worshipped by people at some time in history. Craig sent me a few recommendations, and I searched for a few of my own.
There is one squid god, Kanaloa. He’s described as nasty, smelly, and squidgy, which is a good start, but I can get that if I just don’t bother to clean out my refrigerator for a month, so I don’t see why I should worship him. Then there’s the tentacled octopodal war god Fe-E, but it says he has retired. Na-Kika is also an octopus god who pals around with a spider god, Nareau. I rather liked Jari, a snake goddess who knows what a man really needs, but you know, when you get right down to it, they’re all rather silly, and I don’t have much interest in believing in any of them, let alone giving them my attention for a few hours a week.
At least now I can send the annoying evangelicals off to a list of gods and ask them how many they disbelieve…and call them lousy atheists when they tell me they disbelieve nearly all of them.
