That’ll teach us!

We really hurt the true believers of Islam with Draw Mohammed Day. They are angry and frustrated, and they want to strike back against secularists equally well, in ways that will also infuriate us. To their credit, though, some realize that threatening to decapitate heretics isn’t exactly smart and civilized…they need something that will illustrate to us how hurtful violating their religious precepts was.

What to do, what to do…

One Muslim genius has come up with the answer: EVERYBODY RESEARCH HOLOCAUST DAY. On 30 June, he is encouraging everyone to engage in “critical study” of “the foundational myth of the secular cult”.

Much of the injustice that takes place in our world stems from ignorance. We reject being emotionally blackmailed by Hollywood tales and holocaust museums which legitimize the war crimes and crimes against humanity of the extremist Atheist regime of Tel-Aviv.

So this guy proposes to reply to drawing stick-figure Mohammeds with holocaust denial and the negation of history? Yeah, that’ll improve the reputation of Islam as the domain of rational thought. He also has his own justification, that tries to claim the moral high ground in this disagreement.

The difference is that you draw Lies about Muhammad and we draw Truth about you. That you seek to bring unrest and conflict, and we wish to uncover the reality so injustice is no more

He does make one good point, though. He asks if he’s free to question the holocaust, just as we are free to question Islam. I’d say yes, he should be, but I know that some European countries have put special restrictions on this one area of inquiry — you are not allowed to express a certain wrong opinion about the holocaust without risk of penalty, and that’s not right.

These people should be free to say awesomely stupid things so we can point and laugh and watch their whole effort collapse in stupidity.

Everyone Draw Mohammed

It’s that day when everyone should draw Mohammed. You can just do the traditional stick figure, or you can get fancy — I like this one, a kind of Mohammed transitional series in which you have to draw the line where blasphemy occurs.

I can’t draw. The only thing I could think of was to sketch out this picture of a hybrid cow-pig.

i-79148186b05bae303b43ff8ab282a2ba-moo-ham-ed.jpeg

It’s Moo-ham-ed. Get it? OK, you’re allowed to groan and close the page.

Would it add to the verisimilitude if I said he was mooing/squealing excitedly at the prospect of raping a 9 year old girl (not shown)? Sharp-eyed observers will also note that Moo-ham-ed is a hermaphrodite, since he also has udders. I just thought that would make it a little more offensive.

Your turn. You can try to do better—actually, you could close your eyes and stab a piece of paper with a pen and do better—but there’s not much point. It really doesn’t matter what you draw or how rude or explicit or stupid or accurate or respectful it is, since someone somewhere is determined to be offended by it anyway.

Also, Pakistanis won’t see it: they’re trying to block the internet, demonstrating their own stupidity. Not only is it easy to get around, but I could easily show you a plenitude of obscenity and hatred and violence that has been on the internet for years, and is far more offensive than amateurish stick figures.

Creepiest Christian comment yet

I don’t know what to say. This is a Christian’s idea of an argument against abortion — not just exaggerating abortion into murder, but also by trivializing rape.

Atheists always use rape as an argument for justifying killing because they want to justify abortion. But is rape really that bad? It’s a horrible experience but you get over it with time. If you use it to justify murder you’re never going to get over it. Imagine you have a painful divorce. Would you murder your children after because they remind you of your ex husband? Of course not. I think any woman would easily tell you that a painful divorce is worse than rape but it’s not an excuse to kill your baby, so why is rape?

Christian women can also take a lot more than atheist women. Maybe this is part of the reason that atheists get so hung up about this. Christian women can turn to Christ or worship God in their hearts and endure great suffering. I’m not belittling it but think about it, no amount of suffering from rape is as great as the suffering our Lord suffered on the cross for our sins. You are the one who has to ask more true Christian women about this. You’re out of touch and trying to make a big deal out of something just for shock value.

This is the kind of person you don’t argue with…just walk away.

Pansies everywhere

I’m glad someone occasionally looks into the other side of the net to see what they’re talking about — I can’t bear to read religious forums, myself. Here’s why: take a look at what they’re saying on BaptistBoard.

I believe women in politics have done a great disservice to the sovereignty and resolve of a our great Republic. Many issues that face our nation, from without and within, need to be decided from a place of strength instead of weakness. Women are gifted from God with a lot of skills that are good in the home, but not in the Government. They tend to base their decisions from a security standpoint and believe that they have the ability to rehabilitate and nurse others to mental and social health. Men are more pragmatic and can make the tough calls that have to be made in matters of war, also in domestic and international policy. Maybe I should have said men used to be able to make the tough calls. Women in politics have been in position so long now that men are not the men they once were. They have to take into account how their decisions and policies will be viewed by the ladies. Being weak, pathetic, and a bunch of pansies being entrusted with positions of power are all the result of this great error.

Even the loons there who disagree with this nonsense are saying it’s because God gave men and women complementary abilities!

I’m also greatly offended. One consequence of that attitude is that, in order to be True Men™, we have to be ignorant, brutal, and ready to go off to war whenever our testicles tingle…and if you aren’t, you’re a “pansy”. It’s a bias that is as demeaning to men as it is to women.

Progress in Saudi Arabia!

In 2002, 15 young girls burned to death in a school fire because firemen were not allowed by their religion to enter and rescue females who might not be covered head-to-toe in concealing clothing. In fact, religious police had actively hindered the escape of the girls, with reports that they were hitting them and pushing them back into the building, because they were trying to run out without putting their head coverings on first.

Now, in 2010, the religious ministry has given orders to the religious police to allow even male rescue workers to enter girls’ schools in an emergency.

Wow. So it only took them 8 years to figure out that maybe lives are more important than modesty.

Do Twilight, Harry Potter open door to the Devil?

Wow, I thought Cardinal George Pell was thick…but his second-in-command, Bishop Porteous, sounds like he could be even crazier. They’re hiring an exorcist for Australia, and he’s full of ominous warnings about evil things.

The appointment of a new exorcist by Sydney’s Catholic Church precedes a warning by a senior clergyman that generation Y risks a dangerous fascination with the occult fuelled by the Twilight and Harry Potter series.

Julian Porteous, the auxiliary bishop of Sydney, warns that pursuing such ”alternative” relaxation techniques as yoga, reiki massages and tai chi may encourage experimentation with ”deep and dark spiritual ideas and traditions”.

Twilight isn’t magic — it’s just badly written and mindless. Those spritiual ideas aren’t “deep and dark”, they’re just stupid. And I put exorcism in the same category, as a ridiculous, ignorant practice based on rank superstition. We gain nothing by replacing reiki massages and sparkly vampires with old geezers waving censers and chanting at demons.

And Porteous has been doing just that.

Exorcism is no fantasy according to the church, with the Sydney archdiocese last month appointing an as-yet unnamed priest, suitably ”endowed with piety, knowledge, prudence and integrity of life” to conduct exorcisms, as required by Catholic canon law.

In Rome, the Vatican is preparing its first official English translation of the rite of exorcism, which was promulgated in 1614 and reissued in 1999. Its chief exorcist, Father Gabriele Amorth, claimed this month to have carried out 70,000 exorcisms. Bishop Porteous – who has stood in as exorcist for the Sydney archdiocese over the past five years – warns that yoga, reiki massages and tai chi can lead to people being in the grip of ”demonic forces”.

These people are just nuts.

Reality rejection syndrome

This is old news. The NY Times has an article on the expanding agenda of creationists to include denial of lots of other phenomena that make them uncomfortable. We’ve known this for years! It isn’t just creationism; those beliefs have a surprisingly high correlation with denial of climate change, denial of HIV’s role in AIDS, anti-vax nonsense, rejection of the Big Bang, dualism, etc., etc., etc. At the root of these problems is discomfort with modernity and change, resentment of authority, anti-intellectualism, and of course, goddamned religion, which is little more than a rationalization for maintaining barbarous medieval values. So, yeah, face the facts: creationism isn’t just a weird reaction to bad science instruction and those annoying godless liberal college professors — it’s just one symptom of a deep-seated mental derangement.

One example from the story:

In Kentucky, a bill recently introduced in the Legislature would encourage teachers to discuss “the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories,” including “evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning.”

They often do this, taking the opportunity to try and get a whole slate of dogma incorporated into law. This one, from State Reprehensible Tim Moore of Kentucky, is just particularly stupid, but characteristic of the genre. I’m just impressed that now human cloning is a theory — I thought it was a technique.

They also mention the recent South Dakota resolution.

“Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant,” the resolution said, “but rather a highly beneficial ingredient for all plant life.”

Change the wording a little bit, and substitute “shit” for “carbon dioxide”, and it’s still just as true.

I have been repeatedly told that going to the root of the problem, the unwarranted deference given to religious views, is a tactical error if what we want is to improve the citizenry’s understanding of biology. What these kinds of absurdities reveal, though, is that creationism is just one wretched excrescence of a whole body of pathological thought…and that focusing on one symptom while avoiding the cause is pointless.

South Duh-kota, hang your head in shame

The South Dakota senate has been wrestling over an important resolution, HCR 1009. Here’s the original text. It will look rather familiar to anyone who has seen creationist bills roll through a legislature.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, by the House of Representatives of the Eighty-fifth Legislature of the State of South Dakota, the Senate concurring therein, that the South Dakota Legislature urges that instruction in the public schools relating to global warming include the following:

(1) That global warming is a scientific theory rather than a proven fact;

(2) That there are a variety of climatological, meteorological, astrological, thermological, cosmological, and ecological dynamics that can effect [sic] world weather phenomena and that the significance and interrelativity of these factors is largely speculative; and

(3) That the debate on global warming has subsumed political and philosophical viewpoints which have complicated and prejudiced the scientific investigation of global warming phenomena; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Legislature urges that all instruction on the theory of global warming be appropriate to the age and academic development of the student and to the prevailing classroom circumstances.

Notice the “just a theory” clause, and the “alternative theories” clause (which includes “astrological”! and “thermological,” whatever that is), and the “just an opinion” clause. That is one jaw-droppingly stupid resolution.

I wish it had been preserved in all its naked inanity, but somebody must have noticed how bad it was, and the resolution that passed has been amended. It’s still the same story, but the more obviously idiotic key words have been removed.

A CONCURRENT RESOLUTION, Calling for a balanced approach for instruction in the public schools relating to global climatic change.

WHEREAS, evidence relating to global climatic change is complex and subject to varying scientific interpretations; and

WHEREAS, there are a variety of climatological and meteorological dynamics that can affect world weather phenomena, and the significance and interrelativity of these factors remain unresolved; and

WHEREAS, the debate on global warming has subsumed political and philosophical viewpoints, which has complicated and prejudiced the scientific investigation of global climatic change phenomena:

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, by the House of Representatives of the Eighty-fifth Legislature of the State of South Dakota, the Senate concurring therein, that the South Dakota Legislature urges that all instruction in the public schools relating to global climatic change be presented in a balanced and objective manner and be appropriate to the age and academic development of the student and to the prevailing classroom circumstances.”

They missed the irony of passing a political resolution protesting the politicization of a scientific issue, however. It’s still just a gang of conservative politicians trying to force equal consideration for discredited alternative nonsense in the public schools.

I’m still wondering if any South Dakota teachers will be presenting the astrological evidence against climate change in their classrooms, though.

Stop patting yourselves on the back over this study

Good grief. This ridiculous study is making the rounds of the atheist community, with its claim that liberals and atheists are smarter than conservatives and religious people. Look at the numbers!

Young adults who identify themselves as “not at all religious” have an average IQ of 103 during adolescence, while those who identify themselves as “very religious” have an average IQ of 97 during adolescence.

Seriously? Show me the error bars on those measurements. Show me the reliability of IQ as a measure of actual, you know, intelligence. Show me that a 6 point IQ difference matters at all in your interactions with other people, even if it were real. And then to claim that these differences are not only heritable, but evolutionarily significant…jebus, people, you can just glance at it and see that it is complete crap.

And then look at the source: Satoshi Kanazawa, the Fenimore Cooper of Sociobiology, the professional fantasist of Psychology Today. He’s like the poster boy for the stupidity and groundlessnessof freakishly fact-free evolutionary psychology. Just ignore anything with Kanazawa’s name on it.

Representing for Christ

A lot of people don’t like Lyndon Rush, the Christian zealot who also happens to be a bobsledder in the Olympics. I think he’s wonderful. It’s so helpful to have someone like him openly demonstrating that Christians are morons.*

You know there’s no atheist in a foxhole, right? There’s no atheist at the top of a bobsled run, either.

But there are atheists in the military. I don’t know about any specific godless organizations dedicated to the plight of unbelievers in bobsleds — bobsledding is a rather trivial issue to focus on, anyway — but there probably are some. They’re just smart enough to know it’s pointless to make a sport a place to issue a philosophical manifesto.

Oh, but wait…here’s why I love Rush as a paragon of Christian idiocy. There are no atheists in bobsleds, but there are atheists right there on his team. And Rush doesn’t even notice that he contradicts himself!

I’ve had atheists on my team and they have no problem talking to God before the run. Everybody likes it. Even the atheists, for instance, they like how it sets the tone. We all come together and I pray about things that they want, too. Maybe they’re not in a period of their life where they believe in God, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t really believe in atheists.

I marvel at that. It’s a miracle that the same person who has the awesome intelligence required to plummet down an icy track could babble so…he doesn’t believe in atheists, but atheists are on his team, and there are no atheists at the top of the bobsled run, and the atheists there like to hear him chatter about god. He is so self-unaware, so oblivious, so Gomer Pyle.

Guess what, Lyndon? The atheists don’t like to listen you preach your inanity, except in the mean-spirited sense of watching yet another dumb Christian proudly demonstrate what an ass he can be. They probably get together for beer after a run and tell Lyndon Rush stories, and laugh and laugh.

*I know they aren’t all morons — they just believe in incredibly stupid ideas. But you have to appreciated what great negative PR Lyndon Rush is for Christianity.