What fresh horror is this?

Literacity has the beginnings of a discussion of the horror genre, one of my favorite subjects (although I’m a bit picky—I’m a classic horror fan, and consider most of the recent offerings, both on screen and on the page, to be atrocity exhibitions rather than true horror), and one thing mentioned there is a taxonomy of horror stories. He argues that all are rooted in the idea of loss of control, and subdivides that into loss of control of self, the environment, and place in society…which was actually rather handy, because of the next item I discovered.

Gothic Lolitas. That’s right, twee and scary. This is one fashion movement that hasn’t hit Morris, fortunately, but then, I think Morris is still trying to lumber out of the 1970s.

Anyway, naming the horror is the first step to facing it, and thanks to my earlier discovery I was quickly able to categorize it as clearly an example of “loss of control of place in society”, subcategory “visions that no one will believe”.

Embassy embarrassment

So, I’m reading about this elaborate, extravagant erection to GW Bush’s ego being built in Iraq—

The compound, by the side of the Tigris, would be a statement of President Bush’s intent to expand democracy through the Middle East. Yesterday, however, the entire project was under fresh scrutiny as new details emerged of its cost and scale.

Rising from the dust of the city’s Green Zone it is destined, at $592m (£300m), to become the biggest and most expensive US embassy on earth when it opens in September.

i-fe397e4a62c8121cd2c6b2532b7ccf10-evacuation.jpg

—sure, it’s got a movie theater, a swimming pool, a mansion, and all kinds of bomb-proof walls, but none of the important construction details are given. Is there a helipad on every roof? Are the stairs to the roof wide, sturdy, and sheltered from sniper fire? Are there provisions for rapid transport of essential documents to the roof? How about self-destruct mechanisms to clean up any confidential materials that have to be left behind?

I hope there are also some very strict standards on what kind of art is on display in the embassy. It’s so embarrassing when new tenants come along and laugh at your “psychotic porn”.

Egnor’s machine is uninhabited by any ghost

Egnor, the smug creationist neurosurgeon, is babbling again, but this time, it’s on a subject that he might be expected to have some credibility: the brain (he has one, and operates on them) and the mind (this might be a problem for him). It’s an interesting example of the religious pathology that’s going to be afflicting us for probably the next century — you see, creationism is only one symptom. We’re seeing an ongoing acceleration in scientific understanding that challenge the traditional truisms of the right wing religious culture warriors, and represent three fronts in our future battles.

[Read more…]

More reactions to recent creationism

i-f993379730d00f3c9c0e7a31a38036bc-so_simple.gif

Michael Lemonick has an excellent reply to Sam Brownback’s recent attempt to weasel away from creationism.

What he ended up doing was demonstrating that he doesn’t really know much about science. If, writes the senator, “evolution means assenting to an exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world that holds no place for a guiding intelligence then I reject it.”

How curious. Does this mean that the senator also rejects the laws of gravity? Last I heard, they reflected that same view of the world. No scientist I’ve ever run into, nor even any senator, thinks that things fall to earth or planets orbit stars because God is there shoving on them. Yet many scientists do believe in God; they just don’t think he has to meddle with the physical universe to make things turn out right.

Which makes gods rather superfluous, yet they believe anyway…but correct, unless Brownback invokes a mysterious supernatural force intervening in every single physical process going on around him, that’s a silly statement that doesn’t reflect any rational interpretation of the world. Although I do wonder sometimes if the religious crazies aren’t living in an imaginary environment saturated with pixies and angels and devils and demons, all tugging away at every molecule around them — as if Brownian motion were named after Brownies.

Ken Ham is being sued…by his fellow creationists

What a delightful and well deserved development! The Australian sister organization to Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis is hammering him with a nasty lawsuit.

The Brisbane-based Creation Ministries International has filed a lawsuit in Queensland’s Supreme Court against Mr Ham and his Kentucky-based Answers in Genesis ministry seeking damages and accusing him of deceptive conduct in his dealings with the Australian organisation.

The suit focuses on a dispute over the Australian organisation’s production of a creationist magazine, sold in the US to more than 35,000 subscribers, and has led to revelations about the three-year battle between the two ministries.

A 40-page report, written by Mr Briese and obtained by The Australian, reveals a bitter power struggle across the Pacific that began with a challenge to the power Mr Ham allegedly wielded over the ministries.

I honestly don’t care who wins. The ideal conclusion will be that of the Kilkenny cats: mutual self-destruction.

They were only athier, we’re the athiest!

Historical perspective certainly does change one’s views of our current little struggle with theism. Kieran Healy identifies the original atheists—those horrible people who were defying cultural mores and denying the traditional deities.

It was those uppity Christians.

Matters were very different with the Christians, who had ex hypothesi abandoned their ancestral religions … The Christians asserted openly either that the pagan gods did not exist at all or that they were malevolent demons. Not only did they themselves refuse to take part in pagan religious rites: they would not even recognize that others ought to do so. As a result … the mass of pagans were naturally apprehensive that the gods would vent their wrath at this dishonour not upon the Christians alone but on the whole community; and when disasters did occur they were only too likely to fasten the blame on to the Christians.

So, if they had a poll around 250AD, the most untrustworthy group in the Empire would have been those Christians? At least this is a historical example that shows the atheists can take over! Let’s just be sure we don’t make the mistake the Christians did.

Part of Ste. Croix’s larger argument is that pretty soon the boot was on the other foot, the persecuted became enthusiastic persecutors.