Coturnix has the latest linkages from the freethinkers.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Coturnix has the latest linkages from the freethinkers.
This is embarrassing. The Atheist Law Center, which I had never heard of before but from its website looks like it is mostly supporting the right stuff (OK, except for the weird calendar reform business), was founded by a guy named Larry Darby, who has since resigned. He is now running for attorney general of the state of Alabama, as a Democrat…with some very strange views.
Tyson said aside from his views on race [he wants to “reawaken white racial awareness”] and the Holocaust [he’s a denier], Darby also has publicly advocated legalizing drugs and shooting all illegal immigrants.
I repudiate this guy’s views. While atheism is not incompatible with kooks like Darby, his positions definitely contradict the principles of the Democratic Party, I can at least say that he’s no Democrat, and I should think the Alabama Democratic Party should refuse to endorse him, even if by some fluke he should win the primary election.
(via Atheist Revolution)
Everybody must have read Michelle Goldberg’s “Kingdom Coming: the Rise of Christian Nationalism” by now, right? This quote from George Grant, one of the big guys with televangelist D. James Kennedy, is simply chilling:
Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ — to have dominion in civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness.
But it is dominion we are after. Not just a voice.
It is dominion we are after. Not just influence.
It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time.
It is dominion we are after.
World conquest. That’s what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish. We must win the world with the power of the Gospel. And we must never settle for anything less…
Thus, Christian politics has as its primary intent the conquest of the land — of men, families, institutions, bureaucracies, courts, and governments for the Kingdom of Christ.
My mailbox today contained something very amusing, if it weren’t so evil: someone sent me a copy of this 128 page, glossy rag titled “America, Return to God”, from Great Commission Center International. It’s a wretched but expensive looking thing, full of articles from such lying luminaries as David Barton, D. James Kennedy, James Dobson, and Tim LaHaye, all advocating an American Theocracy. I learned that the passion of Dobson’s heart is to deny homosexuals the right to marry, Barton urges us all to vote Biblically, LaHaye thinks God will not bless us as long as pornography is legal.
Whoever sent it to me, thank you very much. It’s a reminder of the idiocy I will fight to my dying day. Oh, and may you stew in ineffectual ignorance until your dying day, and may you then pass on into oblivion blissfully, confident of an eternal award, unaware of the darkness before you. As you live with your eyes closed, you should end the same way.
Everyone else, follow the link above to the “ARTG Movement,” and order your own copy. It’s free! Bleed the bastards dry!
Julia Sweeney has a new play, “Letting Go of God”, and describes her path to atheism. It’s different than mine—she was drawn to religion by mystical feelings, and rejected it on intellectual grounds after inspecting it up close, while I’ve never found any appeal in the mystical or supernatural—so she’s much more sympathetic than I am.
“The world is modernizing so quickly, people want to latch on to things that seem familiar,” she mused. “Religion identifies people, roots them in a tradition bigger than themselves, reminds them to be compassionate. I get that.”
I don’t see the reminder to be compassionate in religion at all.
I suspect Coturnix knew I’d be unable to resist this test, even though once I started answering the questions I found most of them kind of dopey. Even so, I squeaked past his score.
Various science-deniers at the ID websites were unhappy with me because I said belief in ID was an indicator of incompetence, and that I wouldn’t vote to to support tenure and promotion for one of their guys. I think they ought to adopt Florentino Floro as a cause.
“They should not have dismissed me for what I believed,” Florentino Floro, a trial judge in the capital’s Malabon northern suburb, told reporters after filing his appeal.
Floro was sacked last month and fined 40,000 pesos ($780) after a three-year investigation found he was incompetent, had shown bias in a case he was trying and had criticized court procedure, a ruling showed.
The poor man! Martyred for merely believing in something!
A Philippine judge who claimed he could see into the future and admitted consulting imaginary mystic dwarfs has asked for his job back after being fired by the country’s Supreme Court.
In case you were wondering, the dwarfs were named Armand, Luis and Angel.
He’d still have his job if they’d been named Jesus or Mohammed or JHWH.
(via Exploding Aardvark)
I get lots of hate mail, but it’s actually not that often that I’m cc’ed complaints sent to my acting chancellor and the university PR person. Since he’s willing to share, so am I…so here’s Mr Daryl Schulz’s defense of free speech:
I have known a few people through the years that have gone to UM Morris and thought it to be a reputable institution affiliated with the University of Minnesota. But you can’t be serious about being proud of one of your Associate Professor’s blog winning an award when it contains such hate towards religion or faith of any type (http://www.morris.umn.edu/webbin/ummnews/view.php?newsID=319). To put it on the splash page of your university website is not helping your image to being open minded and fair to all types of students whether Christian or otherwise. His frequent mocking and ridicule of faith in anything other than science is embarrassing for him as a professor but especially so for you as a tax payer supported branch of the University of Minnesota. Does your school support and advertise blogs of Christian, Muslim, or Jewish proponents? Would your school be proud if one of your staff admitted to being hard on Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists or Atheists, despising their beliefs and making mock of their nonsensical ideas and backwards social agenda as Mr. Myers admits to below in the blog headline below regarding Christianity?
His ideas are his own whether I agree with them or not and free speech is a constitutional right. But I’m embarrassed by this endorsement by your school for several reasons and thankfully I am not an alumnus.. I will also be sure my children and others who ask will be directed to fully research your institution fully to be clear on how their beliefs are accepted and treated by representatives. I am appalled my tax dollars are being used to advertise his hatred.
Sincerely,
Daryl Schulz
He also provides a link to this fine example of my perfidy. Just a hint to those making future attempts to screw with my employer’s heads: I don’t recommend picking a criticism of Kent Hovind as an example. Anyone with half a brain, and the people working here are actually pretty smart, aren’t going to be too dazzled by someone who is unhappy that a biologist thinks a dishonest creationist huckster is an embarrassing representative of Christianity.
My university does not endorse what I say here. I don’t think Mr Shulz quite understands the concept of free speech if he thinks it means you only acknowledge the existence of one side of an argument; thinking that universities will back away from criticism of religion because some guy feels the existence of an atheist on campus makes the place unsuitable for his children is rather silly. That’s going to narrow their field of prospective educational institutions to lots of third rate bible colleges…which is, of course, Mr Schulz’s choice.
By the way, the majority of students here are Christian. I don’t think I’ve ever had a single student complain that I discriminate against them on the basis of their religion—they’re usually more interested in complaining about the brutality of my exams.
Which reminds me that I have to finish grading one of those brutal exams today…
Man, the comments on my guest editorial at the Raw Story are nuts. I don’t know if the word “secular” brought out a flock of trolls, or if that place is always infested with these uncomprehending goons. There are a couple of people who seem baffled by the fact that I wrote a positive piece on the virtues of secularism, yet my prior comment on Melinda Barton was a negative work that concentrated on criticizing her sloppy logic and sneaky redefinitions. It’s bad enough that they are surprised that one person can use two different tactics, but they’re also suggesting that the fact that I didn’t beat up Barton some more means I’m backing away from my earlier statements.
I didn’t say more about Barton because I already wrote that argument. I thought I was thorough and didn’t need to rehash it—the fact that I included a link to it should have clued in people that I wasn’t repudiating it. I don’t know why this should be so difficult to grasp. I suspect it’s that people sympathetic to Barton’s view share her bigotry, and think that atheists are all planning to line the Christians up against the wall as soon as we’ve finished subverting society, right before the looting and orgies start. Atheists must be tied to extremism, or poor Ms. Barton’s argument falls apart.
Or maybe it’s the fact that the essay was a thousand words long, and overwhelmed their capacity (people who are bewildered at the idea of simultaneously supporting X while criticizing opponents of X don’t have much capacity to spare!)…so here, let me help by digesting the essay down.
Shorter intolerant rant by PZ Myers:
I’m willing to get along with and even support the religious, as long as they don’t threaten to suborn secular institutions to privilege religious belief.
Better?
Remember Melinda Barton and that awful piece on the Raw Story? It was taken down, and now it’s back up with a few changes, I think. The editors asked me to submit a rebuttal. It’s online at the Raw Story now, along with that lovely icon to the right (“Secular Horror”?). You can read it there, or if you are so annoyed at the Raw Story that you never ever want to visit their site again, I’ve put a copy below the fold.
I’ll just add that the first comment over there makes me regret being nice. No, I do not retract or regret anything I originally said about Barton’s hacky work, and that is not why I did not expand on my point-by-point rebuttal. I thought I’d been sufficiently thorough to begin with, and wanted to get a positive view of secularism out there.
