Sermon and Sermonette

We’re going to have to start calling ourselves the Three Wise Atheists of of Scienceblogs: as Revere reveals in his Sunday Sermonette, he, Greg, and I don’t seem to have much difficulty with this Christmas stuff, and contrary to the Fox propaganda channel, most atheists and cheerful holidays with our families and friends, just like Christians, only without the boring superstitious part. I really don’t understand how people can so consistently fail to get it — our atheist Christmas is so much better than anyone else’s, because we get the presents and feasts and fun without the tedious ritual obligations. We’ve got to start marketing ourselves that way.

Meanwhile, I’ve always said that if you scratch one of those appeasing wooly-headed agnostics, you’ll find a raving fundie underneath (well, at least I said it just now). Wilkins exposes his militant fundamentalist side with his announcement that he’s an Eighth Day Inventist, and uses his militant, angry agnosticism to fuel a vicious tirade against some poor brain-damaged lunatic named Grant Swank. He seems to be a kind of Christmas pinata, because Wilkins seems to enjoy wacking him. Tsk, tsk — those mean-spirited agnostic Eighth Day Inventists. It makes me glad to be a warm-hearted atheist, it does.

Junior Birdmen of the Discovery Institute

And when you hear the grand announcement
That their wings are made of tin.
Then you will know the Junior Birdmen
Have sent their box tops in.

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Human beings cannot fly.

It’s simply impossible, and we’ve known it for centuries; there is, however, a conspiracy of committed, dogmatic aerodynamicists who have a vested interest in preserving the myth of Wilbur and Orville Wright, and despite the obvious impossibility of flight which is readily apparent to anyone with common sense, they persist in promoting their “theory.”

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There are honest engineers who can lay out in detail for you the impossibility of flight. The dogmatic Wrightists simply ignore weight-to-lift ratios, surface area, power output, and Reynolds numbers. Reynolds numbers prove that humans can’t fly, but you will never, ever see that in any aerospace engineering textbook. There is a world-wide cover-up: they don’t want to risk their cushy grants and their payola from the aerospace industry.

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They hide the truth. That strange “flying machine” to the right? It never got off the ground! It fell apart on the first attempt to fly! Yet you still find it portrayed in the textbooks, intact and looking like it’s about to leap into the air. This is a long-running and disgraceful fraud. And if you look at the history of the Wright brothers, you’ll see that they relied on the prior work of people like Lilienthal and Maxim and Boeing and Curtis, all frauds and charlatans. How can you trust a theory built on failure and fakes?

You want to show me what?

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That proves my case.

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Look at this birdman. We can all agree that that guy never flew — it would be a joke to think otherwise. Yet you expect me to believe that you can add many tons of weight, millions of complicated parts, and make it all out of metal, and now it can fly? You’ve amplified all the problems in the original design a million-fold, and now you try to tell me it works? You silly Wrightists.

No, I haven’t gone insane. I made the absurd argument above just to give you a sense of what I feel when I read the latest from the Discovery Institute. They have this ridiculous site, Judging PBS, that purports to be a rebuttal to the PBS documentary on the Dover trial. It’s actually just another rehash of the dishonesty found in Wells’ Icons of Evolution — a series of misrepresentations of the state of biological thought. I keep hammering on the lies in that dismal book, but the DI keeps using it. In this case, it’s particularly egregious; the PBS documentary didn’t say anything about the specific issues they’re trying to rebut. It’s as if they’ve got nothing else but the same old recycled garbage.

[Read more…]

We have a problem

The archbishop of Wales thinks one of the greatest problems facing the world is “atheist fundamentalism”. The only problems he seems to be able to ascribe to it, though, are a dearth of school nativity plays and stewardesses failing to drape themselves with religious paraphernalia, neither of which seem to be exactly pressing crises, especially since it is quite clear that there is no worldwide shortage of public piety. If all outspoken atheism has done is offend a few sanctimonious old bishops, it sounds to me like a virtue that we ought to encourage.

I’d say that this is a much more serious problem:

There are demented fuckwits running for the office of president in the most militarily powerful nation in the world. They think they can have conversations with an all-powerful cosmic being who instructs them in the right things to do, and that they have the approval of that being, no matter what they do: they can initiate an unjust and futile war that kills and maims our soldiers and slaughters the civilians of another country; they can endorse torture; they can deprive people of their civil rights; they can treat loving couples as pariahs if they don’t meet their abstract notions of who is allowed to fall in love; they can poison the planet; they can oppress the poor; they can enrich their corrupt cronies; they can pretty much run roughshod over any notion of justice, liberty, and equality. And what does their imaginary god do? He gives them a phantasmal thumbs-up and an ethereal “Good job!” and assures them that he is on their side. That’s all he can do, since all he is is a projection of a mob of venal bluenoses’ sense of entitlement.

And of course, archbishops and other such foolish figureheads will support their delusions, pointing their bony claws at a woman who isn’t wearing a crucifix around her neck as the great problem of the world. Wouldn’t it be better to point to men with armies who get marching orders from hate-filled apocalyptic holy books as a slightly more plangent concern?

Spend Easter in Minneapolis!

Everyone ought to mark their calendars: on the weekend of 21-23 March, the 34th Annual National Conference of American Atheists will be held in lovely Minneapolis, Minnesota — my backyard. Well, my distant backyard. I’ll be going, of course. If you read the Minnesota Atheists newsletter, you also know who a few of the speakers will be.

  • Ellen Johnson, president of American Atheists, will be everywhere.

  • Lois Utley will be speaking on the consolidation of public and religious hospitals.

  • Robert Lanham will be talking about the dangers of the religious right.

  • Some guy named Richard Dawkins will be there. I wonder what he might talk about…

  • There will be others, the schedule of speakers is still being worked out.

Come on out — it’s on Easter weekend, so it’s not as if you’ll have anything else to do.

Roland S. Martin doesn’t understand the true meaning of Squidmas

Sunset approaches, so I have to go outside and do the evening chant to the Old Dark Ones and I just don’t have time to deal with this colossal wanker, Roland S. Martin. He’s a commentator on CNN (why, oh why, can’t we have better media?) It’s a crazy whine that demands a return to “traditional values”, whatever those are, and complaining a backlash against Christianity. I like that dimbulbs like Martin are feeling pressured — it’s about time stupid ideas were feeling the heat.

Anyway, the sacred rites of the Festival of Snata Kluahz summon me, so I’ll leave Greg Laden the joy of the ritual evisceration.