Some conservative named Patrick Hynes is unhappy that the Republican candidates were asked their opinion of evolution. His argument is two-pronged: it is reasonable to disagree with scientific opinions on the matter, and it is unreasonable to ask the politicians of his party what their opinion of a scientific issue might be.
Brent got asked a question by Vox Day: to list Christianity’s 10 greatest sins against science. He expands a little bit:
I’m reading all of these New Atheist books, I keep reading these condemnations of Christians being anti-science, but no one ever bothers to explain exactly what they mean by that. I mean, what the Hell does Galileo’s trial have to do with Christian attitudes today, except as some sort of analogy for… something current? But what?
I mean, if the worst thing people have done is put someone on trial 500 years ago, is it really such a huge deal? Now, I’m assuming that there are other things, such as opposing Federal stem cell funding and pushing for ID in the public schools, but there has got to be more. So, in what other specific ways are Christians endangering science? Is Galileo still a top ten grievance? What else is there?
Bleh. Day is looking for some specific list of incidents, like Galileo’s persecution by the church, or perhaps George Deutch’s arrogant attempts to hide scientific conclusions at NASA. That’s typically superficial of him; that’s not the objection at all. The problem is that religion instills odious patterns of thinking in large numbers of people, ideas about how the world works that actually get in the way of improving our culture. The problem isn’t Galileo specifically, but that religion provides institutions and a rationale for Galileo-like situations, and inculcates support for such decisions in the populace.
Here’s my quick list of objections to religion. Please note that I understand there will be individual variation, both between people in a sect and between sects themselves (Calvinists and Unitarians will have different views of destiny, for instance, and Buddhists seem less prone to the tyranny of authoritarianism). Also, the general public will embrace these sins a little less fervently than creationists and fundamentalists, but they’re all there to some extent—while sometimes I’ll mention creationists as extreme examples, that does not mean I am implying that all religious people are creationists.
Oh, and forget 10; this dial goes up to twelve.
I’m a traitor. Remember how I was going to lead the Science Caucus at YearlyKos? I was really looking forward to that and we had some great ideas for a productive session. I hope who ever takes over for me can use some of that.
That’s right — I’m not going to be able to make it to YearlyKos this time around. I’m bad. I’m selfish.
What came up is an invitation to something called a Science Foo camp, sponsored by Google, O’Reilly, and Nature … and it sounds titillating enough that I just can’t turn it down. So I’m abandoning the Kossacks this time around, but I’m sure there’s enough science talent going there that I’ll be easily replaced.
Come on, it sounds like Foo camp will be nerdvana. How could I possibly miss it?
Here’s something you don’t see everyday: a bear kills a moose in someone’s driveway, and then rips its heart out and eats it. Even better, Skemono has links to the video. It makes me glad I don’t live in Alaska.
People should ask Skatje about the time she met a moose on a camping trip. She did not show up at our tent gnawing on a bloody heart, I guarantee you — but I haven’t seen her move that fast since.
While I might wish that this satire were true, it has a few problems.
SEATTLE–Members of The Discovery Institute, a Seattle based think tank, publicly rescinded their demands that intelligent design be taught in public schools after watching an Ultimate Fighting “best knockouts” compilation video Monday night. The video, which depicted wild men viciously attacking one another before a crowd of bloodthirsty spectators, provided “the smoking gun ” that man is descended from apes.
“It is with great regret that we abandon our quest to have the theory of intelligent design taught in public schools,” said Bruce Chapman, president of the Discovery Institute. “We are now convinced that Charles Darwin was right and we are just a bunch of hairless apes. We came to this conclusion after watching some Ultimate Fighting. Those men are subhuman brutes. The violence was unremitting. What’s worse, we thought it was extremely entertaining, which doesn’t bode well for us, either.”
Verisimilitude is lost because:
There’s no way the members of the Discovery Institute would be sufficiently self-aware or cognizant of the evidence that they would back off. If one of those fighters had smacked them hard in the nose, they wouldn’t have noticed.
Brutish thugs pounding on one another for an audience is more a human trait than an ape trait, I’m afraid. It sets us apart, which nominally fits with DI biases — the DI might just concede that it tells them the designer is a vicious bastard, but that’s about it.
Most of those DI guys are Christians. They’re familiar with the Old Testament. Evidence that the Designer is a vicious bastard would just confirm his identity with the Christian god.
Personally, the few times I’ve seen a couple of minutes of American Idol, I’ve almost been convinced that there is a Satan.
A reader sent along an
an article from the Lancaster Sunday News, announcing a lecture on 17 May by John Morris, an infamously silly Young Earth Creationist. It’s a little peculiar; it’s written by Helen Colwell Adams, bylined as a staff writer for the paper, but it is completely credulous — she seems to have interviewed Morris and blindly written down everything he claimed, without so much as cocking an eyebrow and wondering if there were anything to these absurd claims. It’s a wonderful example of very bad journalism.
Morris also panders to his audience with talk about how the Pennsylvania coal fields were all laid down in one great flood. I don’t know what it is, but some people from that part of the state have the wackiest ideas about coal—witness Ed Conrad.
I’ve been trying to see the Dawkins interview on CBC for the last few days, but it’s always in that horrible wmv format, which only seems to work about half the time on my laptop. Cosmic Afterthoughts has the youtube version — it’s pretty good. It’s a pleasant, relaxed conversation where each side has the opportunity to talk, and the interviewer isn’t too intrusive.
No, date rape isn’t funny, but neither is the drug war. Here’s an odd little story about a fellow busted for possession of a the date rape drug, GHB. It was in a bottle of soap. The police tested the soap with a portable kit, and it tested positive for GHB — as the video shows, a whole class of soaps test positive for GHB with this particular kit.
Amusingly, the company that made the soap turned it into a commercial for their brand. The drug kit isn’t a test for GHB, it’s a test for good soap!
You can’t trust that tyrant Terwilliger. He’s an awful, awful man, and once he made school principal, he used his vast autocratic powers to make every Christian suffer. He threw them to the lions. He crucified them upside down. He beheaded them and shot them with arrows. He tied them to stakes and set them afire. He lashed them and flayed them. He burned their bibles and slapped them when they dared to pray in the lunchroom. He made them stop wearing offensive t-shirts that said other members of the student body were going to hell.
Oh, wait. He didn’t do any of those things, except the last one. What kind of pathetic despot is he if he doesn’t even try to oppress people? And what kind of crybaby Christians are these picketers? Their only hardship is that they aren’t allowed to pretend to be the Reverend Phelps in the school.
