God speaks to the Idiot-in-Chief

If you’ve got a high tolerance for nonsense, you might want to check out 50 religious insights from George W. Bush. The man is a regular mullah, full of deep insights. I rather like juxtaposing these two:

I’m also mindful that man should never try to put words in God’s mouth. I mean, we should never ascribe natural disasters or anything else to God. We are in no way, shape, or form should a human being, play God. Washington, D.C., Jan. 14, 2005

I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, ‘George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan’. And I did. And then God would tell me ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq’. And I did. Sharm el-Sheikh August 2003

There are 48 more. Also useful as an emetic.

I might believe god is actually talking to George, but he’s been looking in all the wrong places and getting all the wrong messages. Look to the skies, W, look to the skies! God has something to say to you!

i-0367f1a14ddc5fc63ae3dc4a2ec2b0ff-godsign.jpg

(Hat tip to the irregulars at After the Bar Closes, and to Denis for the appropriate photo)

Poor Neal

Neal gets no respect. He’s been trying and trying to comment over at the Panda’s Thumb, and his rants keep getting shut down. Well, I’m going to let one of his comments through right here — as far as I’m concerned, they’re a kind of twisted, insane poetry. You can almost picture his brain arcing and shorting and fizzing away, and you can virtually see the instant the circuit breaker blows.

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Pharyngula Phootball Philes

Since Katie is trying to turn this into a football blog (don’t mock it! Have you seen the kinds of traffic numbers the big sports blogs bring in?), here’s another football story with a neuro link: a player who credits his recovery from a concussion to a “miracle”. It sounds like there is a whole epidemic of foolishness in the NFL.

“People get really nervous when they hear someone proclaim their faith boldly,” says the Rev. Peter Gallagher, one of the chaplains for the Indianapolis Colts. “So the easy thing to do is make fun of them. That way you won’t have to deal with the real questions about spirituality you may have in your own life.

“I believe Jon.”

He better. By all accounts, Gallagher is a card-carrying member of the NFL’s so-called God Squad, led by its evangelical coach Tony Dungy and a starting quarterback who admitted to praying his way to last season’s Super Bowl.

“Admitted”? I think he means “claimed”.

Oh, well. These guys aren’t picked for their superlative brain power, that’s for sure. But I have to disagree with Gallagher: we make fun of them because they say stupid things that reveal they haven’t considered “spirituality” beyond a lickspittle obedience to dogma and the most superficial interpretations of causality in the world.

OK, one more football-related link: Best lampoon of Gregg Easterbrook ever.

I’m going to ruin the punchline for you

Scott has discovered an odd little book: The Faith Equation: One Mathematician’s Journey in Christianity. Yeah, another guy finds Jesus and uses math and science after the fact to claim Christianity is the one true answer. What, you may ask, is this wonderful faith equation that leads directly to one of the Abrahamic religions?

Faith = (Mind) + (Heart)+ (Will)

Hey, who knew you could make pablum out of crap? At least now nobody needs to buy the damn book.

Peter Irons is having just too darned much fun

Poor William Dembski has many thorns in his side. There’s that spunky grad student and that guy who knows more math than he does, and there’s also been a certain professor of constitutional law who has been quietly plaguing him behind the scenes. I’m on Peter Irons’ cc list for these emails, and there have been quite a few occasions when I’ve been laughing from my easy chair at the well-aimed slingstones winging their way from California to Texas.

Dembski has had enough, and has posted his own reply. Irons has been chatting with Baylor President John Lilley, urging him in particular to not bother to respond to the Expelled film crew that was going to be on campus, ‘documenting’ (as if such a manipulative and dishonest crew could put together anything credible) the way poor Billy has been oppressed. Lilley replied politely and briefly:

Peter, thanks for your email. It is greatly appreciated.
I shall not take the bait on the movie. I greatly regret
the difficulty that Dembski has created. John

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Throw away your TVs

The Great Wasteland is done. It’s hit bottom. I suspect everyone has heard about
Sherri Shepherd, a new co-host on a talk show for stupid women, who doesn’t accept the theory of evolution and, by the way, isn’t so sure about the shape of the earth, either.

Way to go. Way to reinforce the idea that women are incurious airheads. Way to inform and educate and encourage thinking — hire an idiot to help anchor your program in idiocy.

Trolling faith-heads: your efforts here are futile

Oh, joy. We’ve got a new crop of persistent Religiots pissing and moaning in the comments. They’re whining that I’m mean, that all the regular commenters are mean, that the fact that some good scientists are also Christian somehow validates Christian belief, that I can’t criticize scientists who are working at more prestigious universities, and that my tactics are bad. I don’t know why they’re here; it’s not as if we’re going to be converted by their inanities, or that they’re going to persuade us to accept any of their claims.

Let’s break it down into simple sentences and ideas.

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I get email

Oh, no! Neal’s comments haven’t been getting through, so he sent me a friendly email message to let me know.

(By the way, the filters have been acting up in a horrible way lately — about 10% of the comments have been held up for moderation when they shouldn’t, and it’s irritating the heck out of me. I go in and approve broad swathes of arrested comments whenever I can, but it means sometimes your words get held up unnecessarily long.)

Warning: you might find these comments inoffensive if you are a longshoreman or attended Catholic school. Otherwise, watch out. Some of you know Neal by reputation, so you know what to expect.

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