Religion & Law

Turning Over Rocks

Posted on March 26, 2008
Uh, oh ... if this story is accurate some science educators need to be educated on the dishonesty of the IDeologists. The Miami Herald has published an article entitled "Evolution criticism bill weakened" that missed the point:To quell critics who thought that she was trying to sneak religion in the classroom, Sen...

The Bill Is Coming Due

Posted on March 26, 2008
Whatever the quality of Florida's state legislators, The Professional Staff of the Education Pre-K - 12 Committee is certainly on the ball. Here are some of the more relevant parts of the Staff's "Bill Analysis and Fiscal Impact Statement" for the oxymoronic "Academic Freedom Act" presently pending in the State Senate...

Illuminating the Inexplicable

Posted on March 26, 2008
A thought:How do we get out of an impasse in which both sides seem not to realize that, in the end, their viewpoints are founded on impressions of reality and metaphysical convictions that cannot be proven to their opponents? Speaking of a personal creator whose existence is inexplicable is no more and no less obvious and self-explanatory than a multiverse that just happens to exist and, thanks to its inexplicably being infinite, inevitably produces a universe that can support life, in which we happen to be...

No, No, Wait ...

Posted on March 25, 2008
Maybe this one ...We can call it Exposed!.

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Academia Awards

Posted on March 25, 2008
And the award for the best use of Photo Shop goes to ...The Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages!.

Learning Spin!

Posted on March 25, 2008
Premise Media?s chief top has issued a press release with yet another version of his Good Friday self-crucifixion. PZ Myrrrzz beat me to it and stomped all over Mark Mathis' untruths and kicked dirt on the broken pieces.There is little for me to do but point you toward the wreckage of another pack of lies...

Singing Praises

Posted on March 25, 2008
In the little corner of the blogosphere I haunt it is easy enough to find recitals of the bad things done by religions and their adherents. That's why it is only fair to take note of some of the good things we run across, like this: "Canadian church magazine is first to sponsor Darwin exhibit...

Stealing Plays

Posted on March 24, 2008
I was reading Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science, which reminded me that the Intelligent Design Creationism didn't just borrow their arguments against evolution from "creation scientists." Shortly after the Supreme Court's decision in Edwards v...

Falling in the Wells

Posted on March 23, 2008
Jonathan Wells has responded to Larry Moran's challenge and, predictably, flunked.As you may remember, this involved a round robin contest between Wells, Larry, PZ Myers and Dr. Michael Egnor. Wells had claimed, as Dr. Egnor put it, "that research on antibiotic resistance wasn't guided by Darwinian evolutionary theory...

Explaining Belief

Posted on March 23, 2008
A thought:Science taught me now to look for natural explanations for natural phenomena, and to eschew supernatural explanations. The study of comparative world religions and mythologies from around the world showed me that other people believed just as passionately as I did that they were right and everyone else was wrong about religious beliefs that are mutually exclusive, which means that they can't all be right and that perhaps I (e...

Thou Shalt ...

Posted on March 23, 2008
This is something I've posed before but it is so appropriate for this Blog Against Theocracy weekend that it's worth posting again. It is the 10 Commandments of the Establishment Clause taken, with only slight modification, from Justice Hugo Black's decision in Everson v...

Slinging

Posted on March 23, 2008
As PZ Myers informs us, Richard Dawkins has written a review of Expelled. This part is fascinating:Stein asked [philosopher Michael] Ruse how life originated. Ruse's immediate impulse (as mine would have been) was to launch into an honest effort to explain a difficult scientific idea...

Adrift

Posted on March 22, 2008
A thought:There is a sense of insecurity abroad in the world paralleling if not exceeding that which drove the first wave of American fundamentalism in the early twentieth century. People feel their whole world is crumbling around them, despite or even because of the rapid pace of technological progress...

Gray Lady Down

Posted on March 21, 2008
PZ Myearshertz has made the New York Times. But the paper has a funny spelling of his name ...Even funnier is the utterly lame excuses of the producers of the of the utterly lame Expelled for the utterly lame denial of admission of PZ to the screening:Mark Mathis, a producer of the film who attended the screening, said that "of course" he had recognized Dr...

Render Unto Caesar ...

Posted on March 21, 2008
Who better to hear from this Blog Against Theocracy weekend than James Madison? Thomas Jefferson had drafted The Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom in 1779, though it was not enacted then. In 1785, Patrick Henry lead an effort in the General Assembly of Virginia to pass a bill that would have assessed all the citizens of Virginia to support religious teachers from a limited number of Christian sects...

Political Protection

Posted on March 20, 2008
Michael Mayo of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel neatly skewers the pretensions of the backers of the "academic freedom" bill. Mayo notes the claim of Rep. Alan Hays, R-Umatilla, who filed the House version of the bill, that:This protects the freedom of speech for teachers in the classroom...

Excretion

Posted on March 20, 2008
There is nothing else to say except ...Congratulations, PZ!It seems that PZ Myers has overtaken all others in the Antichrist poll among the Righteous Right!PZ attempted to attend a screening of the fantasy flick, Expelled, but was Excluded, Expunged, Excised, Excommunicated, Excused, Exorcised, and Expletive Deleted instead...

First Freedom Road Show

Posted on March 20, 2008
First Freedom First, a joint project of Americans United for Separation of Church and State and The Interfaith Alliance Foundation, will be airing a simulcast, entitled "Everything You Always Wanted to Know about the Separation of Church and State ? but Were Afraid to Ask!," in 25 theaters across the country...

Split Personality

Posted on March 19, 2008
The Florida Baptist Witness displays two faces to the world:Concerning the "academic freedom" bill, notably sponsored by legislators who are identified as members of Baptist churches:Retired Polk County science teacher Robin Brown who taught science for 31 years, including 15 years of teaching Darwinian evolution, said without the academic freedom bill she is "very concerned about the chilling effect that Florida's new science standards might have upon teacher academic freedom...

He Went and Did It Again!

Posted on March 19, 2008
You may remember that Casey Luskin, Gofer General of the Discovery Institute, let it out of the bag that the "academic freedom" bill it has been pushing, most recently in Florida, is intended to permit the teaching of Intelligent Design Creationism by individual public school teachers...

Observing Texas

Posted on March 19, 2008
The Dallas Observer has a mostly good article, "Battle Against Teaching Evolution in Texas Begins," on the coming school board wars over the revision of the state's science standards. Although there a couple of jarringly wrong items in the article, it is mostly a sober consideration of the history of how the state board wound up where it is and the issues at stake...

Why, How Nice of You!

Posted on March 19, 2008
Florida Today published a thoroughly sensible editorial decrying the state legislature's intent to waste time on the "academic freedom" bill (and other nonsense) when it faces the need to make as much as $3.7 billion in cuts in the state's $70 billion budget for the coming year...

Farewell, Carbon-Based Biped!

Posted on March 18, 2008
Arthur C. Clarke, 1917-2007

Was That Limburger, Sir?

Posted on March 18, 2008
A [cough] thought:Darwinism, of course, does not permit for the existence of a supreme being, a higher power, or a God. [Ben Stein's] interviews with some of the professors who espouse Darwinism are literally shocking. The condescension and the arrogance these people have, they will readily admit that Darwinism and evolution do not explain how life began...

Egnoring Larry On

Posted on March 17, 2008
This will doubtless be fun.Dr. Michael Egnor, the highly skilled meat cutter who has little or no understanding of science, has decided to take on Larry Moran. The subject matter: Larry's dismissal of Jonathan Well's insistence, as Dr. Egnor puts it, "that research on antibiotic resistance wasn't guided by Darwinian evolutionary theory...

... or just get a good bottle of scotch

Posted on March 17, 2008
Andrew Clark and Orsolya Lelkes have presented a paper before the Royal Economic Society that purportedly shows that people with religious beliefs are likely to be happier than atheists or agnostics.Research suggests religion can act as an "insurance policy" against the adversities of life...

Natural Morality

Posted on March 16, 2008
As an Apathetic Agnostic ("We Don't Know and We Don't Care"), I find myself often in the uncomfortable position of being disliked by both sides in the theist/atheist divide.Not that it stops me much.Just to show that I have never gotten over the adolescent urge to poke a hornet's nest with a stick just to see what will happen, I have to say that I find PZ Myers reaction to John Gray's article in The Guardian, "The atheist delusion," somewhat puzzling...

Seven Strikes and You're ...

Posted on March 15, 2008
I thought I'd warm up for the Blog Against Theocracy weekend which, coincidentally I'm sure, happens to be Easter weekend this year. If you want to participate in Blog Against Theocracy, you can find the details here (along with the cool logo) and the form for submitting your entries here...

Dissemblers Institute

Posted on March 14, 2008
Hey! Guess what! The Discovery Institute has noticed that Casey Luskin let the cat out of the bag about the "academic freedom" bill, pushed by some Florida legislators, being intended to allow Intelligent Design Creationism to be injected into public school science classes!John West is over at the DI's Media Complaints Department claiming that Luskin's words were misrepresented...

Uh ...

Posted on March 14, 2008
I don't know what to say ... but, fortunately, that won't last.Just when you think Casey Luskin can't possibly get more inane or more transparently dishonest or more stunningly stupid or some mind-boggling combination thereof, he manages to top himself ...

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