This sounds like one of those “militant atheists” I’ve been hearing so much about

On 13 November, at 7pm, Sunsara Taylor will be speaking at Blegen Hall 10 at the UMTC campus. This is part of a national college speaking tour that draws from and promotes Bob Avakian’s new book, “AWAY WITH ALL GODS! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World”, and here’s what she’ll be talking about:

Freethinking activist Sunsara Taylor will explore the questions:

  • Is believing in gods actually harmful?
  • How has Christianity for centuries served as an ideology of conquest and subjugation?
  • Why is the “Bible Belt” in the U.S. also the “lynching belt”?
  • In the intensifying conflict between U.S. imperialism and Islamic fundamentalism, is the only choice to take one side or the other?
  • Why is patriarchy and the oppression of women foundational to so many religions?
  • Can people be good without god?

Unfortunately, I’ll be in Nebraska, but you should go — it’ll be firebreathing fun!

The glass is half empty

The world is a somewhat more hopeful place today than it was yesterday, but let’s get real.

Obama is a conservative/centrist Democrat who will at best implement a small shift in American policies — he hasn’t promised any strong change in Iraq, and his health care plans are an incremental improvement over the existing situation. And the opposition is shrieking “socialist!” at every suggestion, so don’t expect an easy road to accomplishing even the centrist plans of President Obama…especially since he’s inheriting the wreckage of 8 years of Bush misrule.

He still has to work with a self-interested, triangulating congress made up of many of the same Democrats and Republicans who have collaborated with Bush in screwing over America for the last eight years.

We’re still afflicted with the curse of religiosity as a political prerequisite, and Obama has strengthened it. That is a poison that will harm us over the long term; we may have made the more rational choice in this one election, but reinforcing the potency of irrationality will come back to bite us over and over again.

The media isn’t helping. The news this morning was all a-babble over a “post-racial America”. Nonsense. A significant minority still hates people over the color of their skin, and you know the skinheads are cleaning their rifles right now. This self-congratulatory nonsense distracts us from the real problems that still exist.

We still have the rot of ignorance and hatred in the American electorate. Proposition 8 won. Saxby Chambliss won. Michele Bachmann won. Norm Coleman might yet win.

I’m not dancing in the street yet. I’m anticipating many years of struggle ahead.

Election Night Open Thread!

Whew. I just got off my long shift as an election judge — I was filling in for Horton Township, a small, very rural precinct south of Morris, with a registered voting population of 114 people. The good news: 110 votes! The bad news: these guys broke 103:7 for McCain. Ewww. Now that I’m home, though, I see the news is saying Minnesota’s electoral votes are going for Obama.

So what else is new? What excitement/dismay/horror are you experiencing as you watch the returns?

I am vastly relieved to see that Obama has won a landslide victory, but I’m not going to say that I’m overjoyed. He’s got a lot of work ahead of him, and I’m definitely not an uncritical supporter.

We’re still waiting on the Franken/Coleman senate race here — it’s horribly close.

Proposition 8 in California may pass. That is bad news to balance the good in the presidential race.

Crash the polls!

Once you’ve voted in the poll that matters, you can go play on this Online Presidential Poll. I’m pretty sure the results won’t be binding, so you can vote for me or Immanuel Kant (wait, what? He left off Nietzsche?)

John McCain 4% 8
Barack Obama 17% 35
Rev. Jeremiah Wright 2% 4
William Ayers 1% 2
Sarah Palin 0% 0
A Moose 4% 8
PZ Myers, aka, “Pharyngula” 2% 5
Glenn Reynolds, aka, “InstaIgnorance” 0% 0
Immanuel Kant 12% 26
Any member of the PGR Advisory Board 0% 1
Any member of the Texas Taliban 0% 1
Jason Stanley 4% 9
Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate 9% 19
Gary Becker, Nobel Laureate 3% 6
Saul Kripke, Schock Prize Winner 5% 11
The Anonymous Proprietor of the
Now Defunct “Dadahead” Blog		 0% 1
Stephen Colbert 10% 21
Ali G. 4% 9
A Philosopher Named Cohen
(G.A., Joshua, or Stewart)		 11% 22
Any Four-Dimensionalist 10% 21

I am troubled that I am being trounced by a moose, but at least I’m beating Palin.

Californians: vote no on hate

Are you guys up and voting yet? Remember to vote down the horrible little pro-bigotry ballot measure, proposition 8. If you don’t believe me, read Charlie Stross’s explanation. And if that’s still not good enough for you, look who is bankrolling 8: the Knights of Columbus, Howard Ahmanson, Jr. (he’s got some money left after keeping the Discovery Institute afloat, apparently), and John Templeton (not the Templeton Foundation, mind you…just the chairman and president contributing as a private individual). Isn’t that enough to tell you it must be wrong?

Your civic duty

i-cbaba64e210d57d1370bcf7bf2a0d6d1-voted.gif

You know what to do. Get out there and vote.

I’m going to be squeezing in a long day working as an election judge at my local polling place (and I’m hoping that I will be very, very busy with a large turnout), in addition to taking care of teaching. If it’s a little quiet around here, don’t worry — it’s just that today is the culmination of a lot of anxious agonizing.

At the very least, I’ll be back online after the polls close. Until then, tell us about your voting experiences — may they all be routine and boring.

Aww, his feelings are hurt

Poor little Ken Ham gets no respect. He sets up this fancy museum, he keeps pushing his silly ideas, and what happens? Smart people like Daniel Phelps, president of the Kentucky Paleontological Society, calls him a moron. Deservedly.

I don’t need to say much, though. The scathing excoriation of Ham has already been done:

You said that unicorns are real. You claim that the Beowulf story is evidence of human cohabitation with dinosaurs. You say that sometimes religious genocide is OK. You think that the government is training people to talk to aliens. You believe that evolution is a random process, a process of blind chance, which is just factually wrong. You target children because they can’t defend themselves and trust you (talk about a cowardly act). You believe if a 2-year old understands it, it must be cutting edge science. You believe that observation and measurement cannot trump “common sense.” You believe you do the type of science that you need faith to understand instead of, you know, understanding to understand. You believe…whatever the fuck this is. You employ the nanny-nanny boo-boo defense. Your ilk do not even try to publish outside of their little circle, and you set up a bogus journal to pretend that you were scholars, THEREBY AVOIDING THE DEBATE YOU CLAIM TO CRAVE. You stare at evolution, describe evolution, and then say, “It’s not evolution.”

And yet you wonder why someone with an education and responsibilities and a reputation would not talk to you? Despite this record of shame (I could have gone on and on just looking at my website alone), you have the balls to claim that you won something by [being] so catastrophically ignorant as to be not worth speaking to?

KEN, WE ARE TIRED OF TRYING TO TALK TO YOU. WE HAVE MOVED ON TO RIDICULE. THIS IS WHAT YOU DESERVE, YOU PIG-IGNORANT SLAVE.

I think Ham needs to put up another self-pitying post for each of the insults in there.

If only inhabitants of fantasy worlds could vote here…

It’s a landslide victory! Obama gets 62% of the vote in World of Warcraft!

I guess it isn’t that surprising that a poll of game players might get results that reflect the real world vote, but the strange thing is that there were some game-associated differences. People playing the Horde side (undead, orcs, that sort of thing) were mostly for Obama, while those on the Alliance side (humans, elves, dwarves) gave more mixed results, with dwarves being the only group that favored McCain. There’s a joke lurking in there, I’m sure…I just can’t think what it would be.

All we have to do now is make sure short people aren’t allowed to vote in the presidential election.

YEC comedy show coming to the Big City

One of my students picked up this flyer in Minneapolis this weekend. It looks like the creationists are visiting the University of Minnesota this Wednesday and Friday!

i-dc53d6e34c431eb6cd0f3909d903541a-nutting.jpg

They do love to book that auditorium in the Physics building — don’t be fooled, though. None of the science departments on campus endorse this nonsense, and I know from talking to some of them that the faculty cringe at this use of their facilities…and you know the creationists do this for the faux-sciencey illusion that they’re actually presenting their work in the heart of academia.

This talk is being presented by Dave Nutting of the Alpha Omega Institute, which, despite the grandiose name, is two wackaloons operating out of a small rental office next to a storage unit and behind the pet clinic in a Grand Junction, Colorado. They’re doing a tour through central Minnesota, and are being promoted by our local collection of kooks, the Twin Cities Creation Science Association. I have no idea why it says Coca Cola at the bottom of the flyer; I hope they aren’t sponsoring this silliness.

Unfortunately, I’m going to be in Washington D.C. this weekend, so I have to miss the circus. If you are in the neighborhood, please do show up, laugh, and report back.