Islam hates women

A young man is languishing in an Islamic prison right now, for a terrible crime. Look at this travesty of justice, this product of primitive morality.

Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, the student journalist sentenced to death for blasphemy in Afghanistan, has been told he will spend the next 20 years in jail after the country’s highest court ruled against him – without even hearing his defence.

…

It later emerged he was convicted by three mullahs, in secret, without access to a lawyer. The sentence was commuted to 20 years on appeal. At that appeal, in October, the key prosecution witness withdrew his testimony, claiming he had been forced to lie on pain of death. The prosecution then appealed to the Supreme Court to reinstate the death sentence. The defence appealed to quash his conviction altogether.

Meanwhile, the student has been languishing in a Kabul jail, fearing for his life. Islamic fundamentalists have been baying for his blood while moderate groups have led marches countrywide demanding his release.

What was his crime? This is as bad as the criminality of the kangaroo court that convicted him.

Mr Kambaksh was found guilty of blasphemy and sentenced to death last year for circulating an essay on women’s rights which questioned verses in the Koran.

Don’t question. Don’t support women. We’ll kill you if you do either. Is that the message?

Doesn’t it just make you want to sign up for his course?

Todd Wood teaches a creationism course at a bible college, and he has a creationism blog. He has one of the most promising introductions to his way of thinking ever.

Anyone who knows me at all knows that I break down creationist biology into four main components: design, natural evil, systematics, speciation, and biogeography.

That sentence alone is just a marvel.

Read the whole thing, though, and you’ll laugh and laugh. He tries to justify all those “well-designed” predators like venomous snakes, and all he’s got is the usual creationist answer to all those nasty critters. The Fall. The Curse. God had to do an amazing redesign act after Eve bit that apple.

I may have to check into that blog now and then for the comic relief.

The Open University Annual Lecture

The Open University is having an open lecture on 17 March, and you’re all invited! The topic sounds historically, philosophically, and scientifically interesting:

Richard Dawkins suggests that there are four “bridges to evolutionary understanding” and illustrates this with four claimants to the discovery of natural selection: Edward Blyth, Patrick Matthew, Alfred Wallace and Charles Darwin.

The fifth bridge of evolutionary understanding is identified as modern genetics – which he terms digital Darwinism.

It’s all going to be streamed live on the web, if you are awake at 7:30 pm Natural History Museum time, which I won’t, or you can grab it from a webcast after the event.

Evolving our way to energy efficiency

This is a cool talk: Bill Gross talks about his efforts to tap into solar power. It’s a little bit over-optimistic — how much of the desert Southwest would we have to pave over to collect enough energy for the country? — but the really fun part is where he talks about using unguided evolutionary processes to design solar collectors and heat engines. People who claim that chance and selection can’t produce anything new have never tinkered with genetic algorithms.

Another option for Obama to do good

As part of his deplorable legacy, one of the last things George W. Bush rushed through in his last days of power was a set of changes in environmental policy that basically gutted protections for endangered organisms. Our new president has been given the power to undo those changes in a recent spending bill.

Obama may now, with the stroke of a pen, rescind the Bush Administration’s last-minute rules that:

  • forcibly removed global warming from the list of extinction threats to the polar bear (despite scientific opinion that global warming is the bear’s chief extinction threat)

  • allowed oil and gas drilling in polar bear habitats

  • eliminated the need to consult with wildlife and marine scientists when allowing mining, building, logging and other destructive projects that might increase extinction threats to endangered species.

Make it so, President Obama.

That was predictable

The case of the Brazilian child who was raped, impregnated, and then had an abortion has taken a predictable turn. Sensible, rational people saw this as a tragedy, but one with a simple partial solution: the abortion was necessary to save the life of a young girl who could not possibly bear the burden of an unwanted pregnancy. The Brazilian Catholic church saw it differently and excommunicated everyone associated with the decision. Then the president of Brazil took a public stand against the church’s unjust decision. Now at last, we hear from the top of the Catholic hierarchy…and the Vatican sides with fetuses over children. No surprise there at all.

Somehow, a church that preaches about a god of love has turned into a tableaux of empty gilt robes, devoid of human compassion, dedicated only to the perpetuation of a dead dogma. The utilitarian argument that religion at least provides comfort to people in need ought to be extinct now.

Todd Thomsen would like to hear opposing views

Thomsen is the Republican representative in Oklahoma who proposed several resolutions that would censure the OU zoology department and Richard Dawkins for not being nice to creationism. You really must see his justification for condemning views he finds religiously disagreeable.

I am trying to promote free thinking. I strongly oppose the Department of Zoology for their unwillingness to lead our state in this discussion and not have opposing views in this matter.

I do not believe Todd Thomsen even knows what free thinking is. The zoology department is not leading the state in the discussion of creationism because the members of the zoology department, as is true for biologists everywhere, have examined the claims of creationists and discovered that even under the most superficial scrutiny, they are transparently nothing but collections of incoherent, fragmentary superstitions clumsily tied together with a glue of lies, spit, and bile. As I’ve said before, you could ask biologists to speak out more about creation “theory”, but the results would not bring much joy to your local churches.

But do go read that article in the OU Daily, and in particular note the laudable comment from Michael J. Davis. Davis obligingly includes Todd Thomsen’s email, and I think that since Representative Thomsen places such importance on the communication of diverse views, everyone ought to take a moment and let him know exactly what his standing in the wider universe might be.

And remember, next election cycle, Mr Thomsen deserves to be unemployed.

An Icelandic equivalent

There’s a common joke that claiming to have knowledge of the existence of god is like claiming that you know you’ve got fairies living in your garden — both are equally ridiculous, and both require that the definition of the subject and of evidence for the subject be equally nebulous. The only difference is that billions are willing to accept the former, but no one is crazy enough to accept the latter…you’d think. Not so, though: there is actually something called the Icelandic Elf School where you can learn all about the classification and cultivation of various sorts of fairy-like entities.

Also known as Álfaskólinn in Icelandic, The Icelandic Elf School teaches students and visitors about the five different kinds of elves or hidden people in myth that are believed to inhabit the country of Iceland. The school is located in Reykjavík, the country’s largest city.

The school is headed by Magnús Skarphéðinsson, brother of the leader of one of Iceland’s largest political parties. Magnús has a full curriculum, and certificate programs for visitors that can be earned in as little as half a day. However, the school also publishes texts on hidden people, partly for its own use in the classroom. There is also ongoing research on the elves and hidden people of Iceland.

I’m thinking that this organization sounds a lot like the American Discovery Institute, or just about any bible college you can name.

(The Wikipedia entry cites a dearth of sources for the school — here’s another.)