Religion & Law

Carnival Of the Elitist Bastards IX

Posted on February 01, 2009
The Carnival Of the Elitist Bastards IX has launched all boats at Ecstathy.Choosing from one of the entries, this point on probabilities and predictions should be a lesson for every kindergarten student:As the old saying goes; "The battle does not always go the strong, nor the race to the swift, but that's the way to bet...

Advertising War

Posted on February 01, 2009
There are reactions, and then there are reactions.The love affair of atheists for buses is moving to Canada:The Canadian Atheist Bus Campaign is a collaboration between Chris Hammond, a first-year political science student at York University and the Free thought Association of Canada (FAC)...

Propaganda Lite

Posted on January 31, 2009
Well, January 30th has come and gone and the deadline for video entries in the Discoveryless Institute's Academic Freedom on Evolution Student Video and Essay Contest has not (yet) been extended again. As of the moment, only three videos are up at the contest's YouTube site, though it seems there is a delay between their posting and appearance, so I'll wait a day or two before trying to finish reviewing them all...

Popularity Poll

Posted on January 31, 2009
Now here's an interesting poll conducted in Britain:More than half of the public believe that the theory of evolution cannot explain the full complexity of life on Earth, and a "designer" must have lent a hand, the findings suggest.And one in three believe that God created the world within the past 10,000 years...

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Sacred Cows

Posted on January 30, 2009
Okay, this is just silly but, on a day when I'm a bit under the weather, presenting it for your delectation is one way to fill up the blog:And I would like to suggest that vegetarians who refuse to eat meat for moral reasons - apparently the most common reason - speak to us in an interesting way about the controversy between evolution and intelligent design...

Philosophizing Science

Posted on January 29, 2009
Edge has a series of responses to the The New Republic article by Jerry Coyne that asks: "whether there is a philosophical incompatibility between religion and science." Here are samplings of a few of the responses:Daniel Everett:Religion is philosophically incompatible with science...

Sowing the Seeds of Faith

Posted on January 29, 2009
Dr. Michael Egnor, apparently still being stung regularly by Dr. Steven Novella's refutations of his babblings is back turning over all the same old ground with his usual plow: bald assertions, the misrepresentation of the process of science, projection of his own faults onto Dr...

Filming Propaganda

Posted on January 28, 2009
Oh, hey! It looks like the Discovery Institute will have to pay out its fabulous prize of a $500 grand-prize and at least one $250 runner-up prize in its Academic Freedom Day Video and Essay Contest. With just 3 days to go they now have two whole video entries...

Praise Hymn

Posted on January 28, 2009
Okay, I'm ambivalent about this one.That's the new billboard the Freedom From Religion Foundation is planning to erect in Madison, Wisconsin, Dayton, Tennessee, and Dover, Pennsylvania. Of course, they have every right to put up billboards and Darwin's image is certainly in the public domain...

Awe Moments, Ewww Moments

Posted on January 27, 2009
PZ Mxyzptlk is taking comfort, or comradeship, or sly schadenfreude, or something, in the fact that the great documentarian, Sir David Attenborough, also gets hate mail from believers:"They tell me to burn in hell and good riddance," Sir David said during an interview with the Radio Times about his latest documentary on Charles Darwin and natural selection...

Courting Danger

Posted on January 26, 2009
Another scientist has entered the fraught waters of the relationship between science and religion: Adam Frank, professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester. His new book, The Constant Fire: Beyond the Science vs. Religion Debate has a companion blog and he will be joining Discover magazine's Reality Base blog to post an ongoing discussion of science and religion...

IDing Illiteracy

Posted on January 26, 2009
From a New York Times editorial on the Texas State Board of Education's actions last week:We were heartened when the board beat back, by a very narrow margin, efforts to reintroduce the language on "weaknesses." But the conservative bloc immediately recouped by pushing through amendments that require students to assess the arguments "for and against" common ancestry, a core element of evolution theory, and its "sufficiency or insufficiency" to explain the fossil record...

Still Wrong

Posted on January 26, 2009
Oh, look! New Scientist is reporting on the last minute insertion of creationist nonsense into the Texas science standards:The previous text invited students to: "evaluate a variety of fossil types, transitional fossils, fossil lineages, and significant fossil deposits with regard to their appearance, completeness and rate and diversity of evolution"...

Philosophical Fail

Posted on January 25, 2009
Having just discussed "scientism," it is only right and just to discuss what doesn't fall under that category. Here is yet another example of the kind of disingenuous pabulum that will be foisted on unsuspecting schoolchildren if the Discovery Institute's "strengths and weaknesses" ploy get widely disseminated in public education...

Philosophizing About Science

Posted on January 25, 2009
I had planned to review and critique Jerry Coyne's book review qua philosophical treatise qua theological discourse after a careful reading and full consideration. Unfortunately, I have been a victim of life's circumstances to a greater degree than usual of late and I won't be able to give it the attention it deserves presently...

Schooling Labor

Posted on January 24, 2009
A thought:The status of schoolteaching as an occupation is lower in this country than elsewhere, and it is far lower than that of the professions in the United States. Characteristically, as Myron Lieberman remarks, teachers are recruited "from the top of the lower half of the population...

The Politics of Stupid

Posted on January 23, 2009
Here's a funny quote about the Texas science standards fight:It's outrageous that our highest elected education officials voted to silence teachers and students in science class," said Jonathan Saenz, a lobbyist for the Free Market Foundation [the Texas affiliate of James Dobson's Focus on the Family]...

Fallout

Posted on January 23, 2009
Here are some more interesting reactions to events in the Texas State Board of Education:From the Fox News outlet in Lubbock, Texas: "The Texas Board of Education took one step back and two steps forward today," said Dr. John West of the Discovery Institute...

One Step Forward ... One Back

Posted on January 22, 2009
In the preliminary vote of the Texas State Board of Education held today, creationists on the board failed to reinsert the "strengths and weaknesses" language into the science standards.However, some very damaging changes were made to the Biology and Earth and Space Science standards...

You're Doing Fine

Posted on January 21, 2009
Here is a strange little fact about Oklahoma University:Kerry Magruder, the curator of the History of Science Collections, said the university is one of the few in the world with a complete collection of Darwin's works in first edition.Some, including a first edition of Darwin's report on the HMS Beagle's expedition, during which he saw the wonders of flora and fauna on the Galapagos Islands, are priceless...

Dueling Bozos

Posted on January 21, 2009
PZ Megahertz has the funny lowdown on Ray ("the banana is an atheist's worse nightmare") Comfort's latest evidence that you really do have to be an ignoramus to buy into the more egregious forms of creationism. (Whether Ray himself is himself a drooling idiot, or merely tailoring his message to the ignoramuses he is trying to exploit, is an open question)...

Today's the Day

Posted on January 20, 2009
... our long national nightmare is over.But maybe not. Because we still have people like this in our country:I want Obama to fail because his agenda is 100 percent at odds with God's. Pretending it is not simply makes a mockery of God's straightforward Commandments...

An Ancient Tradition

Posted on January 19, 2009
The Beulah (North Dakota) School Board voted 4-3 to ban the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil from the local high school library.The vote came as a result of a complaint by Keith Bohn, a Beulah vocational agriculture teacher (okay, there are a lot of jokes there but I'm piously passing them up), and Kathy Bohn, a school janitor, because: ...

Don't Know Much Biology

Posted on January 19, 2009
It ain't just biology that the creationist members of the Texas State Board of Education are out to gut. It's Earth and Space Sciences too. Steven Schafersman, a member of the standards-writing panel, has a long report on the efforts of the young-Earth creationists, Roger Sigler and Tom Henderson, put on the panel to water down the standards as to such YEC-killing science as radiometric dating of rocks from the Earth, the Moon and meteorites; red shift and cosmic microwave background radiation evidence for the Big Bang and, generally, to make the standards less "dogmatic," wherever they refuse to pander to such scientific nonsense as a young Earth, by removing all science standards altogether...

Starting To Come True

Posted on January 19, 2009
Today can come on no more fitting day than the day before tomorrow.And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...

Racing For the Bottom

Posted on January 18, 2009
It's definitely pile on Louisiana time.There was the article "The Latest Face of Creationism in the Classroom" in Scientific American by Glenn Branch and Eugenie C. Scott a while back that highlighted the creationist intent of Louisiana's misnamed Science Education Act...

Object Lesson

Posted on January 18, 2009
The State of Louisiana doesn't have the best record on maintaining the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. The ACLU sued the state over:... the constitutionality of a general appropriations measure, House Bill 1, which was signed into law in July 2007 by former Governor Kathleen Blanco...

Darwin News

Posted on January 18, 2009
Science News has a special web edition that includes expanded versions of articles from the magazine's print edition plus two additional features, all commemorating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. Here are the links:Darwin's Evolution, by Tom SiegfriedEvolution's Evolution, by Rachel EhrenbergMolecular Evolution, by Tina Hesman SaeyStep-by-step Evolution, by Sid PerkinsComputing Evolution, by Patrick BarryA Most Private Evolution, by Susan MiliusThere is also an "interview" with Darwin...

Academic Freedom Day Watch

Posted on January 17, 2009
Down to the wire!Less than a week to go until the entry period for the Discovery Institute's Academic Freedom Day Video and Essay Contest closes and there are still no videos posted at the contest's YouTube site.But wait a minute! The contest, originally scheduled to close on January 23, 2009 (no doubt to allow the judges time to sort through the massive number of entries) has now been extended to January 30, 2009!Now all you budding design theorists get cracking!The early bird gets the fabulous prize:One grand-prize winner will be announced and have his or her entry officially unveiled at academicfreedomday...

Money Changing Hands

Posted on January 17, 2009
Where can you find books about "Christian sex" (doing it on your knees?), "Samson muscle suits," or the ever-popular "camouflage Bibles"?That would be the Mardel Christian and Education store, owned by a division of the Southern Baptist Convention, in Lubbock, Texas...

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