DaveScot, defender of terrorism…as long as you do it one innocent at a time

DaveScot, the lunatic who rants at Dembski’s blog, has just posted an appalling complaint. He’s been falsely sliming Kevin Padian as a racist, and now he’s attacking Padian for saying that the religious fanatics who kill abortion doctors are contemptible. You read that right: you are not allowed to regard anti-abortion extremists who murder in their cause as bad people, or DaveScot will whine about how you are a bigot who hates Christians.

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Not my kind of atheist, nor any kind of liberal

This is embarrassing. The Atheist Law Center, which I had never heard of before but from its website looks like it is mostly supporting the right stuff (OK, except for the weird calendar reform business), was founded by a guy named Larry Darby, who has since resigned. He is now running for attorney general of the state of Alabama, as a Democrat…with some very strange views.

Tyson said aside from his views on race [he wants to “reawaken white racial awareness”] and the Holocaust [he’s a denier], Darby also has publicly advocated legalizing drugs and shooting all illegal immigrants.

I repudiate this guy’s views. While atheism is not incompatible with kooks like Darby, his positions definitely contradict the principles of the Democratic Party, I can at least say that he’s no Democrat, and I should think the Alabama Democratic Party should refuse to endorse him, even if by some fluke he should win the primary election.

(via Atheist Revolution)

Vanity google games

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I didn’t think of this one, Dustin did—but take a look at this comparison of search volume for “pharyngula” vs. “discovery institute”. There’s perspective for you: one wild-eyed guy with a blog is gaining on a whole gang of creationists with millions of dollars in funding and a machine to churn out press releases.

There’s an idea…to catch up more, maybe I need to call myself the Pharyngula Institute and start faxing press releases to the newspapers.

Google games

Check out this amusing discovery on Stochastic—there’s this new tool on Google, Google Trends, that lets you compare the frequency of various searches. A silly creationist got all thrilled because searches for “Intelligent Design” beat searches for “Darwinism”.

You know where this is going. “Darwinism” is a term used by creationists, not scientists or anyone who knows more than diddly-squat about biology. Run a search for evolution, biology, and science vs. creationism and intelligent design, and the insignificance of the creationists becomes obvious. Once again, the designists are caught fudging the data, and once again, we can see the triviality of their games.

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Note that “creationism” and “intelligent design” barely rise above the baseline.

As you might guess, though, throw sex into the mix, and the evolution-creation debate shrinks away. A little perspective is always useful!

Scary evil Christians

Everybody must have read Michelle Goldberg’s “Kingdom Coming: the Rise of Christian Nationalism” by now, right? This quote from George Grant, one of the big guys with televangelist D. James Kennedy, is simply chilling:

Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ — to have dominion in civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness.
But it is dominion we are after. Not just a voice.
It is dominion we are after. Not just influence.
It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time.
It is dominion we are after.
World conquest. That’s what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish. We must win the world with the power of the Gospel. And we must never settle for anything less…
Thus, Christian politics has as its primary intent the conquest of the land — of men, families, institutions, bureaucracies, courts, and governments for the Kingdom of Christ.

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Finals are over!

For my students, at least—now I just have to buckle down and do a lot of grading over the next few days.

I made my poor Human Physiology1 students suffer through a long comprehensive exam. For a lark, my son Connlann2 took the final, and I have to publicly shame him. I don’t normally publicize exam scores, but he got a mere 12.5%3 right! And he answered most of the questions that demanded a short answer with limericks. This is disgraceful; what do they teach students in those Wisconsin schools?4

1This is an upper level biology elective, packed full of pre-meds.

2Who is a freshman English/theater major at UW Madison.

3He did take some freshman biology course out there.

4I shall have to yank him out of that terrible place, and either enroll him in our superior local university or put him to work digging ditches.