Does this actually work?

This spam mail came into my mailbox, and I made the mistake of opening it. I know the spammers throw in random blocks of text and mangle the porn keywords to throw off our filters, but this juxtaposition was just plain weird.

Fundamentalists believe Jesus was God becoming man. I believe that Jesus was man becoming God.

URL deleted
Rvedhead Gxirl Sfucking Her Fhirst GIGTANTCOCK

The Holy Spirit can’t save saints or seats. If we don’t know any non-Christians, how can we introduce them to the Savior?Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Idleness is the stupidity of the body, and stupidity is the idleness of the mind.Jump into the middle of things, get your hands dirty, fall flat on your face, and then reach for the stars.

I suspect this would have been more effective at getting people to look at their site if they left out the garbled English line after the url. Although, I don’t know since I didn’t follow the link—maybe there’s an evangelical Christian site there.

(I sincerely hate and despise spammers. Currently, I’m getting about 2:1 junk:real mail ratios delivered to my laptop, and that’s after spam assassin torches much of it at one of the intermediary sites I run mail through.)

Our War on Christmas

We atheists have been caught in our ongoing devious strategem for destroying Christmas. The NY Times first expresses some surprise that fervent atheists celebrate Christmas, but then the writer begins to catch on.

“Presumably your reason for asking me is that “The God Delusion” is an atheistic book, and you still think of Christmas as a religious festival,” Mr. Dawkins wrote, in a reply printed here in its entirety. “But of course it has long since ceased to be a religious festival. I participate for family reasons, with a reluctance that owes more to aesthetics than atheistics. I detest Jingle Bells, White Christmas, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and the obscene spending bonanza that nowadays seems to occupy not just December, but November and much of October, too.”

He added: “So divorced has Christmas become from religion that I find no necessity to bother with euphemisms such as happy holiday season. In the same way as many of my friends call themselves Jewish atheists, I acknowledge that I come from Christian cultural roots. I am a post-Christian atheist. So, understanding full well that the phrase retains zero religious significance, I unhesitatingly wish everyone a Merry Christmas.”

Why, yes. My personal war on Christmas is fought in a way the Bill O’Reillys of the world don’t even recognize: I blithely wish people a Merry Christmas without so much as a germ of religious reverence anywhere in my body. I take this holiday and turn it into a purely secular event, with family and friends and food and presents. I celebrate the season without thought of Jesus or any of the other myths so precious to the pious idiots who get upset when a Walmart gives them a cheery “Happy Holidays!”.

For now, they have to pretend that this myth of the dour atheist, the sour old Scrooge sitting home alone because he refuses to bend his knee to Jesus, is actually true. Someday, though, they might just notice that there are an awful lot of secular folk having a good time in late December and early January. Maybe we need to get a children’s book or a Christmas television special made…

And the Priest, with his priest-feet ice-cold in the snow,
Stood puzzling and puzzling: “How could it be so?
It came without Jesus! It came without gods!
“It came without reverends, ministers or frauds!”
And he puzzled three hours, `till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Priest thought of something he hadn’t before!
“Maybe Christmas,” he thought, “doesn’t come from a church.
“Maybe Christmas…perhaps…needs a bit more research!
And what happened then…?
Well…in Doubt-ville they say
That the Priest’s small brain
Grew three sizes that day!
And the minute his brain didn’t feel quite so tight,
He whizzed with his load through the bright morning light
And he brought back the books! And the logic and reason!
And he…
…HE HIMSELF…!
The Priest skipped church for the season!

(crossposted to The American Street)

The UMM Dancing Elves!

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Blame Nic for this…but did you know you can put your face on a dancing elf and make a spectacle of yourself? If you have the guts, click here for the show.

Or if you’d rather, watch Nic dance. All the faculty out here at the University of Minnesota Morris are elfin, as you can see.

Now we just need to get all the scienceblogs people to join in, and we can have an all-dancing scienceblogs review!

This could get disturbing. Here are the latest scienceblogs elves:

Ardea Skybreak teaches the controversy

Most books that teach the basics of evolutionary biology are fairly genteel in their treatment of creationism—they don’t endorse it, of course, but they either ignore it, or more frequently now, they segregate off a chapter to deal with the major claims. There are also whole books dedicated to combating creationist myths, of course, but they’re not usually the kind of book you pick up to get a tutorial in basic biology. In my hands I have an example of a book that does both, using the errors of creationism heavily to help explain and contrast the principles of evolutionary biology—it’s fascinating. This is what we should do if we were to “teach the controversy” in the classroom; it’s not what the other side wants, because teaching it honestly would mean the creationists would be the comic relief and endless whipping boy of the course, as they should be.

The book is The Science of Evolution and the Myth of Creationism(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) by Ardea Skybreak. It’s very good, but right up front I’ll mention its flaw, and one reason few scientists write books from this perspective: the frequent comparisons with creationism mean we’re also hoping the book will someday be hopelessly obsolete, if ever we can get those myths treated like the jokes they are. Scientists who are not engaged in the culture war are going to regard the book rather quizzically, since it does raise up nonsensical issues frequently; it really requires a peculiarly modern American context to make it all work. It’s one of those books that, the more it is read, the less relevant its approach would become.

But it does work in that context. Skybreak covers all the key concepts, but does so in a passionate, refreshingly aggressive way. She doesn’t hesitate to call a stupid idea stupid, and back up the charge with the evidence. If your interest in evolution isn’t simply academic, this is an excellent book to simultaneously inform and instruct, and supply the reasoning to deal with creationist foolishness. It’s also refreshing to see a book that isn’t timid about pointing out that fundamentalist religion is the source of the problem, and that isn’t afraid of offending creationists. It makes for an invigorating read, and I recommend it highly.

It’s not too late to order it for Christmas! It’s perfect for that person who wants to learn some solid biology, but also wants to be an activist for good science.

I do feel obligated to mention one thing that didn’t disturb me at all, but some readers might be concerned about. The book began as a series of articles in The Revolutionary Worker. There are a few hints of sympathy for socialist ideals in a few of the sidebars and endnotes, a sympathy I share (perhaps with significant reservations not held by the author), but otherwise, this is not an ideological work. Read it for the good science and the healthy slams against creationism without reservations about the source.