Fraggin’ … frickin’ … frackin’ … oh, that f-word again

I’ve tried a different tack now — I’ve left several comments on Matt Nisbet’s very own blog, in the fading hope that he’ll actually pay attention to what I’m saying, rather than what he imagines I’m saying, or what other people tell him that they imagine I’m saying. Comments there are held up for moderation, so in case you really want fast feedback, I’ve tossed my comments below the fold here where you can savage them instantly … or you can head on over to Framing Science and state your piece there.

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What the F…?

Let’s support the troops! I always thought those stupid yellow ribbon magnets that people stuck on their cars were insulting in their triviality, but I did not know how low we could sink in the insipidity of token nods to those who are making sacrifices in the services. Mike Dunford received some helpful email from the military:

Effective immediately, the word “Families” will be capitalized in all Army correspondence. Please ensure wide dissemination of this change. Thanks for your continued efforts to do all you can to provide steadfast support to our Army Families.

There’s an “F” word on the tip of my tongue that would be appropriate here…

The death of Darwin

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Today is the anniversary of Darwin’s death in 1882, and I am prompted to post this in response to a peculiar question. “Just read Carl Zimmers Evolution, a triumph of an idea. In it he states that Darwin, on his death bed cried out to god? How could this be if he had denounced religion and god?”

It’s quite true that Zimmer does briefly mention the death of Darwin:

…Emma caught him in her arms when he collapsed at Down House. For the next six weeks she cared for him as he cried out to God and coughed up blood and slipped into unconsciousness. On April 19, 1882, he was dead.

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The latest contemptible ghoul

It’s Rush Limbaugh. What took him so long?

It’s all secularism’s fault, and what he wants is more god, more prayer, and more religion at the university. He doesn’t comment on the fact that the killer wanted to “die like Jesus Christ”.

(Who knew Jesus murdered 32 innocents on the way to the cross, and nailed himself up there?)

Maybe we are guilty of neglecting our obligations

Could D’Souza be right? Does our lack of religious beliefs really impair our ability to offer help to people?

I suppose that if we actually cared, we could have
sent teams to Virginia to do useful things like
stroke sad people’s thetans and
point to chairs and trees for them (a technique that will also sober up drunks in minutes, which sounds very handy). Even if the VT students aren’t in shock or drunk, I’m sure they’ll appreciate the important study tips. Did you know that the most important thing you can do is look up words in a dictionary — the bigger the dictionary the better — and that students get stupider because they don’t know words like “chimney” and “a” and “the”?

Man, I wish I weren’t an atheist so that I could also make up stuff to help people.

Maybe I also need to wish for profound brain damage so that I wouldn’t think those “assists” were such a reeking pile of putrid inanity.

Dinesh D’Souza is a contemptible ghoul

Dinesh D’Souza has a truly awful opinion piece up in which he basically accuses atheists of being hateful robots. Why? Because Richard Dawkins wasn’t invited to any of the memorials at Virginia Tech, and because he couldn’t spot any atheists in the crowds (I’m wondering what he thinks we look like, that he can say there weren’t any there.)

Is this really one of the prominent thinkers of the American Right?

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Once more unto the frame

You’re bored with it? I’m bored with it. All bored now. But since the discussion is still going on everywhere, and I’m frothing rabid (as everyone knows) and always ready to snarl and bite even when (especially when?) I’m beset with ennui, I’ll call your attention to Greg Laden again. He’s pointing out that Nesbit/Mooney have poorly framed — I swear, I never want to use that word ever again — their argument for the evolution-creation conflict, which might explain why they are being so poorly received by some of us who are focused on that ugly mess. That, and the fact that parts of their report read like a pious Discovery Institute press release, which sets our jangled immune systems on fire like a bee sting triggering anaphylactic shock, and no one’s slinging any epinephrine our way.

It looks like they talking about approaches more like we find in Kennith Miller’s “Finding Darwin’s God: A scientist’s search for common ground between god and evolution.” This needs to be clarified, and if this is in fact what they are talking about, then there is something very important that they don’t get, and they need to be flogged, then ignored. If, on the other hand, they are just kind of talking vaguely about this issue and are not explicitly arguing for a god/science chimeric view, then they should be very eager to be educated on this and then to move on with framing but using a very different approach.

We can’t use an approach that brings god into the evolution picture. This is not because of atheism (though that position would make this same argument). It is because it is a) bad science; b) a wedge for bringing various forms of creationism into the classroom and c) illegal.

OK, Greg has put up some very specific issues and questions that fans of the f-word should deal with it. Please do.

Now, since I’ve bored myself again, but since I did mention “rabid” and “flogging”, I’ll recommend that everyone read this article. It’s much more entertaining, even if the thought of 103 literally rabid Christian fanatics gives me the heebie-jeebies. It’s alright if you’d rather talk about that than the f-word, too.

Crud. Laden has added a link to an interview with Nisbet. How would you f-word the idea that the earth goes around the sun for Copernicus? He gives an answer I guess I should have expected.

Hey, I’m like a biblical patriarch!

You recall that nice scarlet letter “A” for atheism t-shirt? I like it so much that I’ve decided to get it tattooed on my forehead. And this is so important to me that I’m also dragging my kids into the tattoo parlor to have it done to them. After all, my beliefs are important and this minor procedure will make my children more attractive, so they shouldn’t object — it’ll also make it easier to find partners with a similar cultural background. This is a win all around; I really don’t understand why Skatje is hiring a lawyer to oppose me.

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