Episode CXXVa: Election Night!

We shall be gnashing our teeth soon enough, so I’m opening a new instance of the constant thread dedicated to all your grousing about the elections. I already did my part and voted a straight Democratic slate, growling at every Rethuglican candidate on the ballot. Too bad that I know exactly how the vote in rural Minnesota will go.

In case there is a diversity of political opinion here, I provide three videos to cover the spectrum. And because some people don’t want to talk about politics at all, here’s an apolitical thread.

Republicans!

Moderates!

Socialists!

(Notice how I’ve cunningly selected three videos that all manage to mock the wingnuts.)

(Current totals: 11,289 entries with 1,171,609 comments.)

HP Lovecraft wants you to GO VOTE!

It’s election day here in the US, but far be it for me to tell you how to vote.

I’ll let HP do it for me.

As for the Republicans — how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical ‘American heritage’…) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead.

Trust me, he knew his distorted dream-cosmoses, too.

We got a Spratlin fired

I had no idea. The poor bigot wrote that nasty anti-gay screed that I criticized, and the Examiner decided that his plagiarizing hateful ways were not exactly what they wanted to promote.

He has complained on his blog about how Christians are a persecuted minority, starring Daniel Spratlin as Christ.

You can berate and belittle any Christian or Christian belief you want but if you do it to a Muslim, Jew, homosexual, black person, etc. you are called a vast array of vitriolic names such as bigot, hater, inciter of violence, intolerant, religious nut, etc.

I learned this first hand a couple of weeks ago. I used to (note the past tense) work as an independent contractor writing on Reformed theology for Examiner.com. Why do I say “used to”? Well, my last article linked to Albert Mohler’s article regarding the suicide of a gay Rutger’s student. Apparently you just aren’t able to express your view any view that is critical of another’s view unless that view being criticized has anything to do with Christianity. This means being even the least bit critical of the sin called homosexuality will lead to a barrage of outlandish claims, threats of physical violence and a myriad of other consequences by those who claim that you are the one with the problem.

Take, for example, a man that I’d never heard of (thanks be to God) by the name of PZ Myers. He just couldn’t stand by why I actually had the audacity to speak ill of sin. He wrote this disjointed piece a couple of days after my post. (NOTE: This “man” is unable to engage in civil conversation so please be aware of vile language in his writing.) “Why is he so full of hate,” you may ask. Well, Johnny, when a person’s heart is so absolutely hardened to God, he will act like the heathen that he is. It is the way man is due to the Fall. It really shouldn’t surprise me but, then again, I always want to be surprised by sin in all its forms.

I guess I have to cut another notch in the handle of my cyberpistol.

More scenes from the minds of my students

My developmental class is still plugging away with some new entries.

Tell Tim Minchin where to get off

I know Tim Minchin wants to tour the US, maybe this summer, but his agents weren’t exactly frantically lining up the gigs for him just yet. Now you can light a fire under their butts and tell Tim Minchin where he should play. Vote for your home town! Vote for the nearest place with a giant arena!

I voted to have him come direct to Morris, Minnesota, but I’d be fine with Minneapolis.

Where are the women at? Again?

The Ms magazine blog has an awful little article on the New Atheists that completely misses the point. It’s about the sexes and atheism, of course, but it has little to say except to whine that the New Atheism is just like the old religion, and gosh, look at all those Old White Guys in the fore. Yes, we know; the visible leadership of atheism right now is largely male, but it’s not because they pushed aside the women. The New Atheism is really dominated right now by senior academic types, which means that we are the lucky survivors of the old all-pervasive sexism that we’re seeing so well-represented in the senior cohort now, but it’s shifting, have no fear — the next generation is going to be where the women in charge, as I can see by looking at the younger faces behind this movement now.

So don’t blame the Old White Guys, and don’t regard their gender and age as a debit. What we need to do is promote more equality, and make a positive case for freethought. The Ms article could have explored that by talking to some of the many people involved, and could have even talked to the many prominent female atheists out there, and said something about the direction we’re going, rather than where we come from. It chose not to do that, and instead invented a myth of sexist complacency.

Sadly, there’s little indication that atheists are receptive to the suggestion that they might benefit from diversifying in color or gender.

What a crock. We want to expand, we want to be more welcoming to a wider demographic than only Old White Guys, and I’ve seen it happening: you should have been to atheist meetings 15 years ago. It’s what gives me considerable hope for the future, that I’m seeing increasing numbers of women and minorities and especially young people participating. I still see a lot of grey beards in my audiences, but we don’t want them to go away, and we are advocating greater diversity.

But I’m an Old White Guy myself. The best way for me to make my point is to sit down and let the underrepresented speak. Jen McCreight takes that Ms article apart, and lists all those activist atheist women Ms forgot to consult. Ian Cromwell has a series of videos on race and atheism.

You know, these diverse voices are there — you just have to listen. I’m disappointed that someone at Ms magazine hasn’t learned that yet, and chooses again to perpetuate the idea that all that matters are the Old White Guys.

Don’t stop now!

We have a bit more than a week to go on our fund raising drive for DonorsChoose, which puts money directly into the hands of teachers who need it, and the pace of donations is slowing way down. Are you tapped out? Do I need to go all NPR and beg for money in every other post? I’ve been so restrained and only putting out these reminders once a week.

Look! Sandra Porter has joined the Scienceblogs team! Maybe I should be nagging the other bloggers here to get it together and join in.

Why isn’t Jonah Goldberg unemployed?

It’s a serious question. You’d think a crude thug who thinks assassination is the way to solve the world’s problems would not be gainfully employed as a columnist anywhere, but no—he’s still pumping out the stupid schlock.

I’d like to ask a simple question: Why isn’t Julian Assange dead?

So again, I ask: Why wasn’t Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?

you’d think Assange, super-whistle-blower of the international left, would be a greasy stain on the Autobahn already.

I think Assange is an asset. I wish we had serious journalists who were willing to ask serious questions and confront the public and the government with the truth — once upon a time, I had the delusion that that was what principled journalists were supposed to do. I still have the idea that knowing the truth is always a better guide to productive action than propaganda. If our military in Afghanistan is worsening the problem, if it is killing civilians and creating new terrorists faster than it is containing them, I want to know that, so I can tell my government that I want them to change policies. Building plans on false fantasies is always a bad idea.

I also think that we’ve got a lot of problems in the United States that can be easily personified and reduced to a scattering of figureheads who fuel the fires of our own destruction. Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin…even Jonah Goldberg. But I do not advocate their murder. I don’t think it would solve the problems they cause (or more accurately, represent), and trying to resolve conflicts like that with blood just leads to more and more destruction. If someone shoots Glenn Beck, then someone else will feel justified in shooting Rachel Maddow, and the insanity will proceed until someone shoots Goldberg, and they retaliate by shooting me.

Assassinations don’t change the truth. It’s not an answer.

And calls for murder by lard-ass militaristic conservatives who dream of someone else doing their dirty work for them are nothing but rabble-rousing cowardice.

So why is the Chicago Tribune publishing the violent fantasies of a jingo-chanting coward?