Texas senate Democrats say they have the votes to block Don McLeroy’s appointment to the board of education. Could this be the end of the creationist kook’s reign of ignorance? I’m not placing any bets on this one.
(via Lonesome Mongoose)
I got home late, and have just tuned in to The Link, the grossly overyhyped History Channel documentary on Darwinius masillae. I haven’t seen much of it so far, but there is good and bad. The good: lots of long closeups of the fossil itself. The bad: it’s kind of slow and talky. Fortunately, I haven’t seen any grand pronouncements that it’s going to change the universe, although the title is a bit annoying.
Those of you who have seen more of it can leave your comments and opinions here.
The boy with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and whose parents wanted to treat him with herbs, is back in Minnesota, and most importantly, in the hospital. The poor kid now has to face a painful chemotherapy regimen on top of having a lunatic for a mother — it’s good that he’ll get the treatment he needs, but I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes.
A good column by James Carroll in the Boston Globe criticizes the absurd piety being peddled in the military, especially the discovery of Iraq war briefings laced with militant Christianity. He lists 7 reasons why it is a bad idea that the military has become wrapped up in religious jingo.
Single-minded religious zealotry bedevils critical thinking, and not just about religion. Military and political thinking suffers when the righteousness of born-again faith leads to self-righteousness. Critical thinking includes a self-criticism of which the “saved” know little.
Military proselytizers use Jesus to build up “unit cohesion” by eradicating doubt about the mission, the command, and the self. But doubt – the capacity for second thought – is a military leader’s best friend. Commanders, especially, need the skill of skepticism – the opposite of true belief.
Otherworldly religion defining the afterlife as ultimate can undervalue the present life. Religion that looks forward to apocalypse, God’s kingdom established by cosmic violence, can help ignite such violence. Armageddon, no mere metaphor now, is the nuclear arsenal.
Religious fundamentalism affirms ideas apart from the context that produced them, reading the Bible literally or dogma ahistorically. Such a mindset can sponsor military fundamentalism, denying the context from which threats arise – refusing to ask, for example, what prompts so many insurgents to become willing suicides? Missing this, we keep producing more.
A military that sees itself as divinely commissioned can all too readily act like God in battle – using mortal force from afar, without personal involvement. An Olympian aloofness makes America’s new drone weapon the perfect slayer of civilians.
A bifurcated religious imagination, dividing the world between good and evil, can misread the real character of an “enemy” population, many of whom want no part of war with us.
The Middle East is the worst place in which to set loose a military force even partly informed by Christian Zionism, seeing the state of Israel as God’s instrument for ushering in the Messianic Age – damning Muslims, while defending Jews for the sake of their eventual destruction.
I read that and agreed with it all…except for one thing. Those criticisms don’t just apply to the military, they also apply to our civilian population. Maybe #5 is a bit of a stretch — most of us don’t have military drones at our disposal — but scale it down a bit, and picture a religious fanatic with a rifle aimed at an abortion doctor. It’s the same principle.
Strip away the specific references to the US military, and that whole thing is an argument that could have come straight from the keyboard of a New Atheist criticizing American culture in general.
The Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, has written what Catholics should have said from the very beginning of this Irish scandal. It really didn’t take much, just the recognition of failure.
The church has failed people. The church has failed children. There is no denying that. This can only be regretted and it must be regretted. Yet “sorry” can be an easy word to say. When it has to be said so often, then “sorry” is no longer enough.
He goes on to say that the church needs to get out of its state of denial, that they have to admit that they’ve done wrong, and that they have to make restitution. It’s a 180° reversal from what Bill Donohue was doing: blame the victims, blame the investigators, try to downplay the results of the investigation.
What Martin is saying is what I would have expected to hear from an organization with good intentions; Donohue was confirming what I expected to hear from an inherently unscrupulous institution. It will be interesting to see which approach ultimately wins out.
Unfortunately, Martin still seems to think his religion is a force dedicated to doing good for humanity. It’s sweet that he still thinks so, but then, he’s an archbishop, and well-schooled in the art of self-delusion.
This is just wrong, and it’s going to mislead lots of messiahs. Nowadays, if you want to sell your body, the old robes and sandals gimmick won’t do the trick — Jesus really needs to be dressed in a tube top and hot pants.
It’s good to be told that we strike terror into the hearts of parody web sites everywhere. Let’s go stomp on their bandwidth some more.
It’s called the Reincarnation Bank. You put a bunch of money in now, and then when you die and are reincarnated, your new incarnation comes to bank and gets the money back so you can start your new life with the advantage of a wad of moolah. I presume you must have to do something like memorize a secret account number before you die, and remember it again once you’re reborn.
Their web page has a link to make deposits, but strangely enough, there isn’t a link to make withdrawals. I have to marvel at the con — only very, very stupid people are going to fall for it.
That said, though, I’m planning to reincarnate as a squid, so I’m wondering…can I deposit a couple of buckets of fish heads and guts, and how am I going to get that back in my nonverbal, illiterate and innumerate form?
(via Shel)
One of those agony aunts, Dear Margo, got an amusing request for help.
Dear Margo: Our daughter started college a year ago, and we’ve noticed during her visits home that she’s not the sweet, innocent girl we sent away for higher learning. We raised her with strong Christian beliefs, but lately she’s saying that she’s joined an atheist club on campus and is questioning everything we taught her. Now my husband refuses to let her in the house and is threatening to turn her in to the FBI. I’ve tried to cure our daughter and reconcile with her, but nothing seems to work. I’ve prayed over her at night while she sleeps, enlisted friends in a phone prayer tree and even spoken to my priest about the possibility of an exorcism. I’m at my wits’ end. How can I recover my daughter and keep her from hell? — God-fearing
There’s a regular stampede of young people doing exactly what “God-fearing” describes — isn’t it wonderful? This is exactly what happens when you send your kids off to college: if it works, they start thinking for themselves, develop surprising new opinions, and aren’t afraid to share them with other people. Hooray for college students, some of my favorite people!
As for these poor parents, they shipped their daughter off to college with the wrong idea. They thought college would just confirm them in their same old traditional beliefs. We really ought to send little information packets to the parents of our students, carefully explaining that there will be little shocks like this, because their kids will come back as smart, independent human beings.
Margo’s answer isn’t bad — she tells them that it is normal for people to think for themselves — even if she does bend over backwards to give some unwarranted sympathy to freaky religious beliefs.
And that fanatical devotion to peculiar Christian dogma? Well…
