Put down those non sequiturs and stereotypes, Captain Fishsticks, and no one will get hurt

Captain Fishsticks is one of our local conservative nutjobs who haunts the pages of the St Paul Pioneer Press—he’s a free market freak who wants to privatize everything, especially the schools, and yet everything he writes reveals a painful ignorance of anything academic. This week he’s written a response to an article that left him distraught: Peter Pitman advocated more and better science education for Minnesotans, especially on the subject of climate change. Fishsticks, to whom all education is a zero-sum game because every time he has to learn another phone number a whole ‘nother column of the times table drops out of his brain, objects to this threat. He starts off by agreeing with Pitman’s argument, but does so by tying it to some of his lunatic obsessions—he’s a pro-smoking anti-vaccination guy.

I’ve made much the same argument relative to policymakers who unscientifically exaggerate the dangers of secondhand smoke and bureaucrats who ignore scientific evidence about the dangers of universal vaccination.

This approval will not last. The rest of his column is a weird paean to excusing ignorance of science. You see, if people learn more math and physics, they’ll get the idea that we live in a “clockwork universe”, and then they won’t like music or poetry anymore. Seriously.

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Another godless writer we shouldn’t forget

Before there was The God Delusion and Letter to a Christian Nation, there was another excellent book on atheism: Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) by Susan Jacoby. I can’t recommend that book highly enough: it takes a purely historical perspective on American religiosity, and shows that it is a fairly recent aberration. I consider it superior to the more recent works by Dawkins and Harris; I wonder why it is so rarely acknowledged in the current interest in freethought?

Anyway, she has a recent short column well worth reading:

However, both atheism and secularism are still largely excluded from public dialogue about the proper role of religion in American politics–an omission that I consider much more important than pointless debates between believers and nonbelievers about the existence of God.

I have written NBC’s Tim Russert several times about the lack of secular representation on his many Meet the Presspanels concerning the relationship between religion and politics. Mr. Russert has never responded to my letters. This subject was discussed once again on the show on Christmas Eve and, once again, there was no secular voice to be heard.

When the influence of religion on politics is analyzed in the press, the dialogue usually ranges from religious conservatism to religious liberalism. No secularists or atheists need apply.

Much of what has gone disastrously wrong in American policy, especially foreign policy, in recent years can be attributed to a reliance on blind faith rather than evidence. When The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward asked President Bush whether he had consulted his father before going to war in Iraq, Bush famously replied that he had consulted a “Higher Father.”

Isn’t it fascinating that the voice of God always sounds suspiciously like one’s own voice? When politicians start citing God as the authority for whatever they want to do, they are usually promoting some policy that defies human reason.

Unfortunately, it’s in a section of the Washington Post called “On Faith” (I think it’s another example of Jacoby’s point that there don’t seem to be any papers that bother with a section called “On Reason”), and there are lots of comments, many from certifiable True Believers who are clearly driven even more deeply insane by the article.

$30 is too much for the cheap laughs this would give me

Wheee! Look at this slick new game. Doesn’t it look fun to play?

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It’s even educational!

“Intelligent Design vs Evolution” is unique in that the playing pieces are small rubber brains and each team plays for “brain” cards. Each player uses his or her brains to get more brains, and the team with the most brains wins. It has been designed to make people think … and that’s exactly what it does.

Errm, until you look more closely at who puts it out: Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron. You know, the insane guys with the banana. And then you read the testimonial:

“Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron are doing much more than revealing the bankruptcy of molecules-to-man evolution. They have a greater purpose: proclaiming biblical authority and reaching the lost with the precious gospel message. Enjoy this wonderful family game as you also become better equipped to defend our precious Christian faith.” — Ken Ham, President, Answers in Genesis.

I don’t think this is one of those games designed to reward you for getting the right answer—it’s one you should be proud to lose.

(via Friendly Atheist)

My wife will be so surprised

Hank Fox, who assures me that he is ALL MAN (just look at that beard), told me to take this test…and I seem to have a woman’s brain.

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It’s my result from my BBC sex test. I think I confused them, though: I did well on all the spatial reasoning tests and kind of bombed on the empathy stuff (male!), but I also kicked ass on the “spot the difference” test and the ability to recognize emotions from just eyes (female and off the scale!). Being able to spit out 16 and 17 synonyms for a word also makes me more ladylike, I guess.

(When you look at the actual raw scores and the averages, though, my main impression is that men and women aren’t that much different from one another, given the likely amount of variation.)

So…where can I get a copy of “Revolve”?

Jason brings to my attention an eye-opening article on the bible-publishing business:

The popularization of the Bible entered a new phase in 2003, when Thomas Nelson created the BibleZine. Wayne Hastings described a meeting in which a young editor, who had conducted numerous focus groups and online surveys, presented the idea. “She brought in a variety of teen-girl magazines and threw them out on the table,” he recalled. “And then she threw a black bonded-leather Bible on the table and said, ‘Which would you rather read if you were sixteen years old?’ ” The result was “Revolve,” a New Testament that looked indistinguishable from a glossy girls’ magazine. The 2007 edition features cover lines like “Guys Speak Their Minds” and “Do U Rush to Crush?” Inside, the Gospels are surrounded by quizzes, photos of beaming teen-agers, and sidebars offering Bible-themed beauty secrets:

Have you ever had a white stain appear underneath the arms of your favorite dark blouse? Don’t freak out. You can quickly give deodorant spots the boot. Just grab a spare toothbrush, dampen with a little water and liquid soap, and gently scrub until the stain fades away. As you wash away the stain, praise God for cleansing us from all the wrong things we have done. (1 John 1:9)

“Revolve” was immediately popular with teen-agers. “They weren’t embarrassed anymore,” Hastings said. “They could carry it around school, and nobody was going to ask them what in the world it is.” Nelson quickly followed up with other titles, including “Refuel,” for boys; “Blossom,” for tweens; “Real,” for the “vibrant urban crowd” (it comes bundled with a CD of Christian rap); and “Divine Health,” which has notes by the author of the best-selling diet book “What Would Jesus Eat?” To date, Nelson has sold well over a million BibleZines.

Of course, my first concern is: are these books theologically sound? Do they treat the philosophy of religion with the seriousness that is its due? My next thought was to wonder how to counter this kind of glib cultural programming, and I suspect the only appropriate response would be a lengthy, in-depth, scholarly dissection of Anselm’s work, or perhaps an exegesis on the ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas. That’ll wake people up to the silliness being peddled to their children.

All the criticisms of Dawkins and Harris need to be inverted—it’s not that they are insufficiently schooled in theology, it’s that they’re just too freakin’ high-minded and serious, and they’re addressing on an intellectual level a bunch of ideas that are transmitted in the same way that fashion labels get traction.