The University of Oklahoma joins the ranks of the many universities that are offering a year of Darwin celebrations. I hope the Oklahoma community takes advantage of the opportunity — the calendar has plenty of public lectures and tours and exhibits.

It’s snowing on Mars.

A recent survey in New Zealand reveals that only 40% of the people believe in a god, and 10% do but have doubts. Only 52% believe in an immortal soul, and 80% accept evolution. I marvel at that — a country where I would not be a member of a rare minority, where I could start a conversation with a stranger and reliably encounter someone who wasn’t barking mad, where the populace doesn’t believe in angels? Next you’ll be telling me the streets are paved with gold.

It’s not perfect. There are still lots of conspiracy theorists and UFO buffs and lucky number innumerates, but man, it’s just that the background looks so much less cluttered with nonsense (they also found a positive correlation between god-belief and belief in the paranormal, unlike a recent deeply flawed survey in the US, which tried to get around this problem by redefining belief in angels and miracles as not paranormal.) You must take a look at the full summary to believe it.

And then…they have a museum where they carry out public dissections of giant squid.

I’m having a hard time imagining such a place. Paradise doesn’t really exist, you know.

The cracker incident has had yet more fallout.

I just learned that one of you generous readers did more than send a letter of support — they actually sent a nice sum of money to the university that is being transferred to the biology discipline, and which we will be using to support biology instruction. Thanks very much, whoever you are!

Larry has briefly floated the idea of organizing a trip to London, visiting Down House, the Natural History Museum, etc. There isn’t much of a response — if you’re interested, let him know.

Then you should sign up for the Steve list. They’re trying to get 900 qualified evolution supporters with names that are variants of “Steven” — I think they should aim for a nice round one thousand.

I don’t know…should I reward her with a link when I’m seething with envy as GrrlScientist is in London?

I’m going to be on Atheists Talk radio on Sunday morning to talk about the Galápagos, and as long as I’m in the big city, I was also going to join the godless gang at Q. Cumbers at 11:00am Sunday for a little brunch. If you want to join us, come on down!

Everyone must read this article about ‘Joel’s Army’ and be afraid. It’s a movement by radical Dominionists to build an informal paramilitary organization (at this time, it seems to be more attitude than organization) to prepare to fight to impose a kind of Christian fascism on the world. It may be a group small in number (but not that small, I fear), but they have a lot of fanaticism and lunacy to amplify their power.

Todd Bentley has a long night ahead of him, resurrecting the dead, healing the blind, and exploding cancerous tumors. Since April 3, the 32-year-old, heavily tattooed, body-pierced, shaved-head Canadian preacher has been leading a continuous “supernatural healing revival” in central Florida. To contain the 10,000-plus crowds flocking from around the globe, Bentley has rented baseball stadiums, arenas and airport hangars at a cost of up to $15,000 a day. Many in attendance are church pastors themselves who believe Bentley to be a prophet and don’t bat an eye when he tells them he’s seen King David and spoken with the Apostle Paul in heaven. “He was looking very Jewish,” Bentley notes.

Tattooed across his sternum are military dog tags that read “Joel’s Army.” They’re evidence of Bentley’s generalship in a rapidly growing apocalyptic movement that’s gone largely unnoticed by watchdogs of the theocratic right. According to Bentley and a handful of other “hyper-charismatic” preachers advancing the same agenda, Joel’s Army is prophesied to become an Armageddon-ready military force of young people with a divine mandate to physically impose Christian “dominion” on non-believers.

“An end-time army has one common purpose — to aggressively take ground for the kingdom of God under the authority of Jesus Christ, the Dread Champion,” Bentley declares on the website for his ministry school in British Columbia, Canada. “The trumpet is sounding, calling on-fire, revolutionary believers to enlist in Joel’s Army. … Many are now ready to be mobilized to establish and advance God’s kingdom on earth.”

These people are insane. They’re fed on a diet of lies and encouraged to believe that violence will be the answer, and reason is to be rejected.

The anti-intellectualism is overt. They’re actually proud of their contempt for learning; the article discusses the influence of a Canadian (errm, what is it with all the mild-mannered Canadians in this outfit?) Pentecostalist, William Branham.

Michael Barkun, a leading scholar of radical religion, notes that in 1958, Branham began teaching “Serpent Seed” doctrine, the belief that Satan had sex with Eve, resulting in Cain and his descendants. “Through Cain came all the smart, educated people down to the antediluvian flood — the intellectuals, bible colleges,” Branham wrote in the kind of anti-mainstream religion, anti-intellectual spirit that pervades the Joel’s Army movement to this day. “They know all their creeds but know nothing about God.”

I’m rather offended to be lumped in with bible colleges, but compared to Joel’s Army, the bible colleges actually are beacons of rationality. And if you think that’s bad, an insider, Ernie Gruen, has revealed some of their other doctrines…which sound vaguely familiar.

According to Gruen’s report, students at the school were taught that they were a “super-race” of the “elected seed” of all the best bloodlines of all generations — foreknown, predestined, and hand-selected from billions of others to be part of the “end-time Omega generation.”

Though he’d once promoted these doctrines himself, Gruen became convinced that the movement was turning into an end-times cult, marked by what he summarized as “spiritual threats, fears, and warnings of death,” “warning followers to beware of other Christians” and exhibiting “a ‘super-race’ mentality toward the training of their children.”

Let’s hope this is a fringe cult that will fade away, rather than rising to greater power. Let’s hope. But … Sarah Palin’s home church is dominionist, with connections to Joel’s Army.

Afraid yet?

I can hardly see how anyone ought to wish
Christianity to be true; for if so, the plain language of the text seems to
show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father,
Brother, and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished.
And this is a damnable doctrine.

Charles Darwin

The counter to the side is ticking off the number of people who have died since you opened this webpage. The vast majority of those people are entering Hell. Christ commanded his followers to share the Gospel with those who are perishing… who have you shared with today?

The Surretts, an insufferable family of missionaries in Peru

They both seem to be saying the same thing. The difference: Darwin deplores the idea of damnation, the Surretts have made it the reason for their existence. I know which side I favor.