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)

Why I am an atheist – Sally

I went to Catholic school for the first ten years of my life. There are certain things that are second nature to me even now. When I hear an ambulance, I sometimes have to restrain myself from beginning the sign of the cross, and I’ve been looking for suitable nonreligious profanity for years. But I was surrounded by complacent and/or lazy Catholics. They were all so entrenched in the religion that they assumed that everyone else was, too. They never bothered to put forth the effort to indoctrinate me.

[Read more…]

Doesn’t Andrew Sullivan understand what we’d say in reply?

It’s appreciated that Sullivan expresses his outrage at the stupid claims of creationists.

What do you do when people use religion to perpetrate empirical untruth? In a free country not much. But on this kind of issue, it seems to me that Hitchens was right. These people need to be mocked mercilessly for ignorance and stupidity. This isn’t faith. It’s bullshit. And yet in this advanced country, it’s everywhere – and one political party panders to it.

But didn’t he stop to think that many of us will look at him, a Catholic, and say exactly the same thing about sacred crackers, the magical power of baby dunking, the doctrines of heaven and hell (and for that matter, an afterlife), and his atrocious nightmare of a sky-daddy?

Hitchens was also right about religion. He didn’t restrict his criticisms to just the creationist subsect.

Clitoral kludges

My favorite argument against Intelligent Design is the fact that the clitoris is located nowhere near the cervix — for women, reproduction and recreation are fairly effectively uncoupled. But that doesn’t stop some people from imagining the existence of a vaginal source of sexual pleasure, the G-spot. I don’t believe it exists; I do believe that individuals can be sexually stimulated by contact in all kinds of places, from vagina to toes to neck to belly-button, that it varies from person to person, and that you don’t need to find an excuse in sloppy anatomy to justify what makes you feel good.

But I also think it’s an interesting example of chance and contingency in evolution. It would optimize the likelihood of reproduction if women could only find sexual gratification by stimulation deep in the vaginal canal — they’d be more likely to encourage sexual penetration. But the homologous tissue to the penis in women is the clitoris, which is in a fine position for creative external stimulation, but less than optimal for stimulation during intercourse. It’s location is clearly the result not of selection for the function of encouraging female orgasm during reproduction, but as a byproduct of selection for males’ interest in penetration during sex (females have sensitive clitorises because males have sensitive penises), which does enhance reproduction.

So it’s a good article highlighting a weird masculine desire for the vaginal orgasm, but it also illustrates that a fortuitous feature of female anatomy isn’t there for baby-making: it’s there for fun. O happy kludge, I’m so glad you’re there.

Are some of you haunting the Blaze polls?

I ask because they have an indignant article up about how the air force is no longer requesting that any lodging they use have bibles in the room — and the associated poll is already going the godless way! That’s just not like the Blaze.

Is the Air Force right to remove the Bible requirement?

Yes. 70.3%

Nope. 28.82%

I’m in the middle on this one. 0.87%

I’m feeling redundant. In a good way.

Adding space dinosaurs can draw attention to your sins

That ridiculous paper that postulated alien dinosaurs has another flaw, to the detriment of an otherwise well regarded researcher: Ronald Breslow has been accused of self-plagiarism. It seems to be true, too; examples show that he has been recycling substantial chunks of text in multiple papers.

I guess that’s how the big names can generate those impressive publication lists: they just recycle each paper a few dozen times.

Christian love

A Christian prayer group really doesn’t like the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.

Now for our prayer, we pray that the women who work in your MFRR and the women in your family will befall fast moving breast cancer which can not everbe cured. We pray this for Leah Bruton, and Becki Miller, Patricia Corigan, Chris Rodda, Edie Disler, Vicky Garrison, Kristin Leslie, Melinda Moeton and Joan Slish. And you evil clan too, we pray this for Bonnie Wiensten and Amanda and Amber Wienstein and the woman lawyers Cariline Mitchel and Katherin Ritchy and all women of all who work at with for Military Freedom Against Religon Foundation.

The women targeted have nothing to worry about — you can’t get much more ineffective than sitting around wishing a nonexistent ghost would afflict your enemies — but the sad thing is that the women in this prayer group really believe in the efficacy of their magic incantation, and honestly want other women to suffer horribly from a painful, disfiguring, and life-threatening disease.

You shall know them by their love. Their blind, hateful, petty love.