We need a centralized database of non-universities

I would find it very useful to have a public list of universities that say they are, but really aren’t. We could put Liberty University at the very top; these aren’t really institutions of higher learning, but institutions of indoctrination and dogma pretending to be genuine places of learning.

But here’s another: Shorter University.

In October, the college announced it would require all employees to sign a “lifestyle statement” rejecting homosexuality, adultery, premarital sex, drug use and drinking in public near the Rome, Ga., college’s campus. It also requires faculty to be active members of a local church. The statement, one of several steps the university has taken to intensify its Christian identity after the Georgia Baptist Convention began asserting more control over the campus six years ago, provoked an uproar among faculty, alumni and observers.

Any university that requires a pledge of allegiance to a particular dogma, or that monitors and restricts the private life of its faculty and staff, ought to just be denied the right to use the unqualified word “college” or “university” in its name. “Bible college” is OK; that’s an open admission of its worthlessness. Otherwise, I think that ‘university’ ought to voluntarily rename itself “Shorter Church” (wait, that might even draw in a few suckers!), or “Shorter Gulag”, or perhaps “Shorter Madhouse”.

I also like “Liberty Prison” for its ironic qualities.

(But do read the story: for all the risible failings of the administration of Shorter Clown College, it has some commendable faculty who are openly protesting the imposition of a “lifestyle statement”, and many are resigning. There are good people even at these abominations of education.)

No One Is Good but One?

Ken Ham is chortling over those silly atheists and their National Day of Reason. No One Is Good but One, he says. It’s the standard Christian anti-human self-loathing crapola that insists we need a tyrant in the sky to tell us what is good.

There is only one absolute standard by which anyone can determine what is “good,” and that is from the absolute authority who is all “good”—God! Outside of such an absolute standard, “good” is whatever you want to make it to be (if you can get away with it)—it is totally subjective. Some people think it is “good” to steal, for instance. When a culture abandons the absolute standard for what is “good” (as this culture is progressively doing in throwing out God’s Word), then we will see people doing what is right in their own eyes—as we are increasingly experiencing. The recent announcement by the president of the USA in support of “gay” marriage is just one such example—he abandoned the absolute standard for what is “good” and now is wanting to impose his subjective opinion on the nation.

Unfortunately, this God-thing doesn’t seem to be able to tell us all about this goodness: it all seems to be filtered through a cacophony of self-styled prophets and mutually contradictory holy books. It’s pointless to tell me there’s an absolute standard, but that I don’t get to see it.

Also, atheist morality is not totally subjective. We can ask ourselves what works for the majority of people: what rules and behaviors minimize conflict, maximize productivity and happiness, and produce stable, long-lasting societies that get along well with others. We do have a standard — a human standard, one that is real and measurable.

I think it is entirely rational to see that about 10% of our nation is discriminated against and treated unfairly, and to make changes in our policies that promote equality and make that 10% happier. Especially since those changes do no harm at all to the other 90%.

And then I look at the absolute morality that Ham proposes should rule our nation, and see that its solution to those 10% is to stone them to death, and I think, “I think I can objectively determine that making people happy is good, and killing them is evil, because I value humans, not voices in hateful people’s heads.” And I conclude that Ken Ham is a wicked cretin.

Also, coincidentally, I notice that NonStampCollector has a new video on a similar point.

Ken Ham says we must obey the Bible literally, in every word. In Exodus 21, the Bible clearly and unambiguously says “Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day is to be put to death.” So, I want to know: in his ideal world based entirely on Biblical morality, when his neighbor mows the lawn on Sunday afternoon, would Ken Ham kill him? Or just gather a group of his friends and kill him in a communal exercise? And would they wait until Monday to do it?

Would that be moral?

Ken Hates Fags

I’m sure you’ve all been wondering what the views of professional ignoramus Ken Ham are on gay marriage…well, at least those of you who haven’t read the Answers in Genesis articles on homosexuality before. No surprise, Ken Ham is on the side of the haters.

…when Pastor Rick Warren interviewed Obama in 2008 before the election, he said that marriage was between a man and a woman. As he declared this, he said he was a Christian and that “God’s in the mix.” Now I do not know what he meant by that statement, but I’m assuming he’s implying that God has something to say about marriage. And God does have something to say about marriage—He says marriage is between a male and a female and that homosexual behavior is an abomination, and thus “gay” marriage is as well!

Then follows prolonged slavish masturbation over various quotes from Leviticus, Romans, Corinthians, etc., the usual suspects. One mild surprise is this:

A couple of points must be made. First, the Bible explicitly calls homosexuality an abomination (Leviticus 20:13) and places it in a list of other vices (1 Corinthians 6:9–10). It is wrong for any Christian to condone homosexuality, since God’s Word clearly speaks against it. However, it is also wrong to single out homosexuality and shrug off the other sins listed in these passages.

So Ken Ham abides by all the old Jewish dietary laws? Does he kill gays? His bible is pretty clear on that; they’re supposed to be put to death, but they’re walking around, and some probably even visit his “museum”. Does he refuse to get tangled up in lawsuits with other Christians, for instance? Has he offered a sacrifice of a male without blemish from the cattle, from the sheep, or from the goats? Has he put to death anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord?

There are a lot of very specific orders in there. I think Ken Ham has been shrugging off quite a few Biblical sins. That last one, for instance—he should have had his guards gun me down the instant I walked into his little temple to lies in Kentucky.

We don’t exist?

This is a new argument to me. Representative Emanuel Cleaver (Democrat, Missouri) was discussing the possibility of atheists getting elected to office, and while saying he thinks we’d have a difficult time, he also says we don’t exist.

Actually, I don’t believe that there is such thing as an atheist because no respectable atheist would walk around with something in his pocket that said ‘In God We Trust.’

Oooh, ooh, I can do that, too!

I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a Christian, because no respectable follower of Jesus would have any money at all — he or she would have handed it all over to the poor.

Man, it’s going to be really hard to run for office in this country when we’re not allowed to have any money without being accused of hypocrisy. And couldn’t Rep. Cleaver’s argument be turned around to show that the inclusion of the religious motto is a clear violation of the separation of church and state? I presume he’s behind the campaign to have god references removed from our currency, then.

More discussion of profiling, pro and con

I have to return to Same Harris’ defense of profiling, because he’s added an addendum, and although it tells us more about why Harris is focused on this issue, it doesn’t actually address my objections, and thinking about it, it does expose some deep differences between me and Harris.

The problem is this assertion:

We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it.

Let me change that around a bit, not just to make a point for me, but also to try and move the debate away from race.

We should profile Republicans, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Republican, and we should be honest about it.

If you step back and look at the world today, the major source of death and strife and terrorism isn’t Islam, it’s America — the country with hands down the largest arsenal and the will to use it. A few cunning Islamic terrorists did manage to murder several thousand Americans in a stunning attack, it is true; but in retaliation, we killed a hundred thousand or more Iraqis (a nation not involved in that attack!) and have wrecked two countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, and threaten to wreak similar havoc on a third, Iran. We have drones flying over Afghanistan right now, ready to blow up any small group of people seen gathering in public. You cannot call those drones anything but state-sponsored terrorism.

Of all the people lined up behind the security barrier at the airport, it’s those American voters who are currently the most dangerous. The only reasonable objection to my claim that we should profile Republicans is that everyone who voted for the Democrat Obama is also culpable.

I will agree with Harris, though, that frisking little old Republican ladies at the checkpoint is ridiculous, because suicidal terrorism isn’t their game — that’s the desperate tactic of the otherwise powerless, and as he points out, it’s almost entirely perpetrated by Muslims.

Many readers found this blog post stunning for its lack of sensitivity. The article has been called “racist,” “dreadful,” “sickening,” “appalling,” “frighteningly ignorant,” etc. by (former) fans who profess to have loved everything I’ve written until this moment. I find this reaction difficult to understand. Of course, anyone who imagines that there is no link between Islam and suicidal terrorism might object to what I’ve written here, but I say far more offensive things about Islam in The End of Faith and in many of my essays and lectures.

In any case, it is simply a fact that, in the year 2012, suicidal terrorism is overwhelmingly a Muslim phenomenon. If you grant this, it follows that applying equal scrutiny to Mennonites would be a dangerous waste of time.

This is true. Republicans would never make the self-sacrifice of smuggling explosives on a plane to kill themselves and the other passengers — it’s not their thing. So if we’re focused on just stopping this one strategy of disrupting our economy and politics, I agree that after the fact we’re likely to discover that the perpetrator was a Muslim. It’s also true that some vocal Muslims are likely to express credible death threats against individuals — like Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Salman Rushdie — using Islam as a justification, and those people certainly have good cause to fear Islam.

But that does not make “Muslim” a useful criterion for preventing terror attacks. The majority of Muslims are just as harmless as the elderly woman featured in Harris’ article (probably more harmless: they aren’t voting Republican). When you single out the 30 year old traveling Pakistani engineer with a family and a career for specially invasive inspection, you are committing just as much of an outrage as when you pull out the 70 year old white grandma.

When I speak of profiling “Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim,” I am not narrowly focused on people with dark skin. In fact, I included myself in the description of the type of person I think should be profiled (twice). To say that ethnicity, gender, age, nationality, dress, traveling companions, behavior in the terminal, and other outward appearances offer no indication of a person’s beliefs or terrorist potential is either quite crazy or totally dishonest. It is the charm of political correctness that it blends these sins against reasonableness so seamlessly. We are paying a very high price for this obscurantism—and the price could grow much higher in an instant. We have limited resources, and every moment spent searching a woman like the one pictured above, or the children seen in the linked videos, is a moment in which someone or something else goes unobserved.

This logic simply doesn’t work. It’s not political correctness: it’s basic numeracy. Since terrorists are extremely rare in airports, you could also argue that the whole strategy of randomly frisking individuals is a waste of limited resources: since the probability of any of those people, either Muslim or non-Muslim, being a terrorist is so ridiculously low, each search is a waste of time that could allow the real problem people to go unobserved. The numbers just don’t work. I agree with Harris that special screening for white-haired old ladies is absurd, but it’s also absurd for brown-skinned young men with an accent.

Another reason it’s ridiculous: we keep fighting the last terrorist. They aren’t going to keep doing the same thing, over and over; 9/11 was a one-shot event, airlines have made other changes in their protocols that will prevent that. Yet TSA keeps following one step behind. Some guy smuggles explosives aboard in the soles of his shoes, so now we have to take off our shoes for inspection before boarding; it doesn’t matter that the shoe bomb didn’t work. I thoroughly sympathize with frustration at the mindless, pointless security theater we go through all the time. I don’t think it helps us at all, though, to turn it into an opportunity to selectively punish people who “look Muslim”. That’s theater that adds a fresh new layer of pointless othering and tribalism to the pointless pretense of security.

“Political correctness” is a phrase too often used to justify racism and oppression; you can’t just defuse criticisms of poor policies of discrimination by claiming political correctness. It’s really about recognizing the fact that religious affiliation is not a good indicator of a propensity for violence.

Step into any mosque, church, or synagogue, and what you’ll find is a congregation of people who are typically more concerned with getting along with their neighbors than in blowing stuff up. Sure, you’ll find a scattering of people who want do destroy Great Satan America, or shoot abortion doctors, or overthrow ZOG, but they’re a minority, and they also tend to segregate themselves off to more reactionary cells in more radical religious groups. I think it’s a huge mistake for atheists to repeat this claim that religion makes you fly planes into buildings; it’s simply not true, and the overwhelming majority of religious people who gather on holy days to pray are looking at us like we’re insane and deluded for suggesting it. That isn’t “political correctness”, that’s truth, and that’s what the people of reason should be focused on. Not damning the whole for the crimes of a few. Not equating Muslim with terrorist.

I really think the atheist movement ought to be focusing instead on one general truth: almost all of the people in that mosque, church, or synagogue believe in stupid ideas. They aren’t evil, they’re wrong, and their credulous beliefs make them more gullible and susceptible to exploitation. I’m not in the least bit interested in punishing the religious for their beliefs in any way; they’re victims of bad tradition and poor education, and if you want to end religious terrorism the best strategy isn’t to make bodies bounce in the rubble or isolate and suppress, but to educate, educate, educate. Open up economic opportunities, increase the security of people’s lives (not just privileged wealthy white people’s lives, but everyone’s), and teach people how to think and learn.

At the end of his addendum, Harris offers to open up his blog to an expert on airline security to discuss the topic. The good news is that he’s willing to learn: he’s now promising to publish something from Bruce Schneier, which I find very encouraging.

Thomas Jefferson was not an atheist. Neither is Jon Stewart.

And it makes him weak.

He recently interviewed David Barton, the professional liar and quote fabricator, and he was more interested in distancing himself from those fanatical atheists than he was in addressing the bullshit Barton was spreading. Barton claimed that there was some atheist group on the west coast that put up a billboard claiming Jefferson was an atheist; Stewart let it slide by. Actually, there was an erroneous billboard put up by Backyard Skeptics which used a false quote by Jefferson — “I do not find in Christianity one redeeming feature. It is founded on fables and mythology” — and it was atheists who went out of their way to point out the error, and the group apologized. Barton is notorious for making up quotes about the American founding fathers. Now he’s making up quotes about atheists.

I’m sure you can find a few fringe atheists who claim Jefferson is an atheist, but anyone who knows the slightest bit of American history knows he was a deist who rejected the supernatural elements of Christianity, but still held personal reverence for the philosopher Jesus. He was the kind of guy fundamentalist frauds like Barton would call not a true Christian, except when it serves their purposes to pretend we were founded as a Christian nation.

Barton also made up this anecdote I hear all the time about a public school teacher throttling a student who said a personal prayer at lunch. That is not illegal. Any teacher who did such a thing is exceeding their brief. Atheists oppose teacher-led prayer — authorities in a public, secular institution cannot use their influence to impose sectarian religion on their charges.

Stewart allowed Barton to control the whole interview; he made a few feeble thrusts, at which time Barton would immediately say “I agree!”, and then Stewart would fall over flabbily and not carry the argument home. He didn’t address anything in the book Barton was flogging at all; has he no researchers who could find specific claims made in the book, that Stewart could use to pin Barton down? Why was he allowing Barton to just dribble out random anecdotes?

It was a terrible interview, insipid and pandering, in which Stewart accepted everything Barton said as reasonable and factual, and didn’t do anything but give Barton a platform to lie. Barton is a professional revisionist, a charlatan who pretends to be a historian. Stewart was a marshmallow.

You can watch the whole disgraceful thing, if you really want to. I was disappointed and unimpressed. Stewart is an incredibly uneven interviewer; sometimes he can be sharp, but other times, I feel like his dedication to not pissing off the slack and careless American middle (by, for instance, defending anything an atheist says) makes him a pushover for the slick fundamentalist propagandists.

There are also parts 2 and 3 of the interview, which were not broadcast. Stewart gets a little better in them, but not much…and definitely not enough to salvage his reputation as a pushover interviewer. He can get scathing with people in the media who poison his profession, such as Rupert Murdoch or Tucker Carlson, but put some dishonest slug who’s poisoning the whole culture, and he rolls over and shows his belly to be tickled.

One of the stories Barton likes to trundle out is the tale of the St Louis schoolboy who was harshly punished for saying a prayer at lunch. It’s been tracked down and documented. IT’S A BIG FAT OL’ LIE.

Looking for a job, English majors?

There’s a job opening at a magazine! Look at this wonderful opportunity:

Magazine Sub-editor or Chief Sub-editor, England – WEC International

Submitted: 25/04/12 ; Closing Date: Open

WEC’s Media & Communications team needs a clever, enthusiastic and hard-working sub-editor to work across a range of projects. Given the changing landscape of publishing, you will think multi-channel: print, web and mobile and be able subedit copy to suit each media.

Duties include: Subbing copy (news, features and marketing leaflets and flyers) arriving from various WEC UK ministries at speed and to tight deadlines, but with accuracy, attention to detail, precision and to a high and consistent standard, while also maintaining the house style and an appropriate tone of voice at all times; Writing eye-catching, snappy and accurate headlines, straps and abstracts/summaries. You will also be required to write the occasional feature.

Lots of expertise required, there…also lots of responsibilities. But…

It’s a missionary organization with the goal of seeing “Christ known, loved and worshipped by the least-evangelised peoples of the world”. That cooled your interest a bit, I bet.

And then there’s this:

This position is non-salaried as all WEC personnel look to God to provide their personal needs.

ALL WEC personnel? Something tells me that there is someone at the top of the organization who is doing just fine right now.

Maybe he’s coming for some remedial education?

Joel Osteen, he of the nice tan, the big white teeth, and the megachurch of the prosperity gospel, is dropping by an elementary school in Washington DC. He and his wife will be ambling about, looking well-groomed and expensive for the cameras, and…I don’t know what. They say they’ll help out with the landscaping and read a book to the kids, but it sounds more like grandstanding to no purpose other then their own self-promotion to me. They claim they’re solely there for a purely secular promotion of education, but somehow, the school is going to be giving away books by the Osteens that yodel on about Christ.

It’s a funny business. I think it would be wonderful if more people were to participate helpfully in their schools…but the Osteens have no connection to this school, and honestly, no particular skills or knowledge that they could share with their students (weird theology and relentless glad-handing and begging for money don’t count). So why?

LIARS. The Osteens claimed they would read to the kids from Seuss’s The Lorax — of course they didn’t. Ms Osteen instead read from her own book, a Christian parable called Gifts from the Heart.

It’s like they’re not even trying to hide their deviousness and dishonesty.

Egypt shows respect for the dead

The Islamist-dominated Egyptian parliament is considering a law that allows a husband to have sex with his dead wife within the six hours following her death. Why? I don’t know. I guess if you think women are pieces of meat then it doesn’t much matter if they’re responsive or not. Although I think six hours is overly generous: rigor mortis is going to set in after 3 or 4 hours, maybe sooner in a warm climate. Maybe they should modify the law so you’re allowed to have sex with her corpse for three hours, and then you’re allowed to use her body as a surfboard for another twelve hours after that?

Oh, and they’re also considering legalizing marriage to 14-year-old girls and stripping divorce rights from women. The way they’re jumping up and down on women, I’m beginning to think they have delusions that they’re American Republicans.

(via B&W)