Religion & Law

Quotable Quote Quoters

Posted on July 21, 2010
Michael Barton, at The Dispersal of Darwin, has a good idea:I really think we should have a book with Darwin quotes much like The New Quotable Einstein.Michael is collecting quotes and, whether or not it ever results in a book, it's a good idea to go over there and leave your own favorites...

Pseudo Peer Review

Posted on July 19, 2010
Well, well! Wadda ya know! The Discovery Institute's Ministry of Misinformation is peddling another "peer-reviewed" article that "expressly endorses intelligent design (ID) via an exploration of a key question in ID thinking." This time the article, "Information and Entropy -- Top-Down or Bottom-Up Development in Living Systems?," appears in that prestigious scientific publication: the International Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics, which describes itself as:...

Pawns of War

Posted on July 19, 2010
Dan Gilbert at Rationality Now has a thorough deconstruction of one of Answers in Genesis's videos: "Four Power Questions to Ask an Evolutionist." It's well worth the read.But one point struck me as needing a bit of addendum:In his argument that the creation days were six literal days, he uses a weak example of the Ten Commandments being simple to understand in plain language ("Thou shalt not steal? Thou shalt not murder") meaning that the rest of the bible is simple to understand in plain language, too...

Which End Is Up?

Posted on July 18, 2010
I'm glad they cleared that up:The question has cast a spotlight on a group of scientists more used to leading quiet lives of research, often peering through fistulas positioned on the sides of cows to give direct access to their guts. The scientists, rumen microbiologists ? "We're quite a few; you'd be amazed," Mr...

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Making Homer Look Smart

Posted on July 16, 2010
We need a new category. In this era of the Teabaggers, Ed Brayton's "Dumbass Quote of the Day," even when expanded to "of the year" or "all time" just no longer cuts it:After the NAACP criticized the Tea Party for tolerating racism, Tea Party spokesman Mark Williams said, "I am disinclined to take lectures on racial sensitivity from a group that insists on calling black people 'Colored...

Vanity of Vanities

Posted on July 16, 2010
James Wolcott of Vanity Fair has a delicious demolition of the Miss Congeniality in the Conservative Wet-Dreams Pageant, Laura Ingraham, and her recent exercise -- in book form, no less -- of puerile "satire" about the Obamas.This part is cute ... in about the same way as a three year old trying to say "nuclear physics" is cute:I think we live in the greatest country on the face of the earth...

God's Governance

Posted on July 16, 2010
In answer to the many prayers offered up all around the Gulf of Mexico, along with petitions from various state and local governments, the Almighty finally gave His permission for BP to stop the flow of oil from it's destroyed Deep Horizon well.A spokesangel for the Heavenly Administration, when asked why it took so long to get the permit issued, seemed annoyed: "We get dozens of billions of prayers a day and each have to be evaluated for their content, urgency and worthiness for consideration...

Out and About the Intertubz

Posted on July 14, 2010
Loony Lord Monckton's attempt to shut down academic criticism of his climate change denialism is the subject of Ken Perrott at Open Parachute.Phil Plait's "Don't be a dick" speech and various lines of evidence for and against Phil's premise are discussed by Josh Rosenau at Thoughts from Kansas...

Tennessee Two-Step

Posted on July 13, 2010
They had a weird sort of debate for candidates for governor of Tennessee recently, where the three Republicans and one Democrat participated. (Does Tennesse have one of those nonpartisan primaries?)Anyway, the question of teaching the science of evolution as opposed to Intelligent Design Creationism (as you'll see, every candidate fully understood that ID is creationism) came up...

Pipsqueek Paddling

Posted on July 12, 2010
As I'm a little under the weather tonight, here's Nick Matzke at The Panda's Thumb practicing the above on Casey Luskin by demonstrating, in what would be excruciating detail for anyone with an ounce of shame -- a condition Luskin does not suffer from -- the difference between rhetorical flourishes meant to obscure the truth and actual evidence and reasoned argument meant to illuminate the truth...

Advice

Posted on June 01, 2010
There is one thing about my wife's recent illness and death that I want to discuss publicly, perhaps appropriately on Memorial Day.That is the disposition of her body. Having a year to consider it, I think we came up with the best possible solution.Neither of us had ever liked the ghoulish practice of wakes, especially since modern medicine makes it all but inconceivable that anyone will be pronounced dead in error, notwithstanding fantastic tales to the contrary, and never after embalming in any case...

When "Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink" Fails

Posted on May 31, 2010
Dr. Georgia Purdom of Answers in Genesis comes this close, but can't quite see the creator for the trees. In an article, "Is the intelligent design movement Christian?," she manages to see the energetic handwaving from the IDers but fails to get the message...

Living Well

Posted on May 30, 2010
.living iscollective artthe orchid singsthe kama sutrato the beethe lion tendsthe zebraand protistsharvest allto feed itlife must shoulderlife asidefor room to growand chance to changedying is a duty.

Equivalence

Posted on May 29, 2010
Okay, I promise I won't bring up "cuddling" ever again:Now let us admit that in one respect, he's right. Science isn't everything. We don't use science to appreciate a piece of art (although, fundamentally, it is a material object and our brains are similarly natural); we don't break out beakers and bunsen burners to determine if we've fallen in love; calculators have limited utility in writing poetry...

Accommodating Incompatiblism

Posted on May 28, 2010
Dr. Steve Novella has a discouraging post about science denialism at Neurologica. Perhaps of particular interest to those who have followed the accommodationist / incompatiblist debate is this*:The second study is, in some ways, even more disturbing than the first, because it strikes right at the heart of skeptical activism...

On Recognizing the Enemy of My Enemy

Posted on May 28, 2010
A thought:Secularism is not so much an attack upon the religious believers and institutions of modern society, as it is a defence of religious freedoms. ... [S]ecularism [is] a way to ensure that no religion is able to take over the social policy in a way that is detrimental to other religions...

The Ultimate Pareidolia

Posted on May 27, 2010
From The Athens (Georgia) Banner-Herald comes this about Charles Gordon, a Texas neurosurgeon who had a "crisis of faith" because of the death of a friend at a young age from cancer:God is manifest in all creation, so says Romans 1:20 in the Bible. Gordon found God in the similarities and beauty that is all around the world...

Fairy Education

Posted on May 26, 2010
The estimable Lauri Lebo has again documented the utter intellectual vacuity of the Righteous Right cultural warriors ... in this case, the premier example of between-the-ears emptiness, Don McLeroy of the Texas State Board of Diseducation.It seems that McLeroy wanted Texas history classes to quote Jean Pierre Godet to the effect that "I love America for giving so many of us the right to dream a new dream" as a counterbalance to "the immigrant experience presented by muckrakers and reform leaders such as Upton Sinclair, Susan B...

Philosophical Poker

Posted on May 25, 2010
Jerry Coyne and Karl Giberson are having at each other, which all but guarantees that there will be a lot of talking past each other.Coyne opens with this interpretation of Giberson:Science and faith are compatible because there are lots of religious scientists...

School Board Follies

Posted on May 24, 2010
Toni Morrison, a Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning American author, editor, and professor, wrote a book, Song of Solomon, that won the National Books Critics Award and was specifically cited by the Swedish Academy in awarding Morrison the 1993 Nobel Prize in literature...

Telephilosopher

Posted on May 23, 2010
One of the more disconcerting penchants of some "New Atheists" is their willingness to throw over the scientific method when it is convenient to their arguments. We've already seen the fairly harmless example of PZ Myearshertz claiming that cuddling is science when he wants to avoid admitting that he does not apply the scientific method to everything in his life...

The New Battle of Glorietta Pass

Posted on May 22, 2010
I hate to break it to you Coloradans but you've got another battle with Texas coming up. Barry Arrington, ex-Texan and webmaster at Uncommon Descent, is running for the Colorado state Board of Education.Arrington holds a business degree from the University of Texas-Arlington and a law degree from the University of Texas law school, has been a CPA and an attorney, with his practice focused on business, non-profit law, contract law, school law, real estate and constitutional law...

Housekeeping

Posted on May 21, 2010
.The sun in inexorable illusionclimbs down Earth's edge to diewhile night weaves ebon cobwebsacross the eastern skyAfter clockwork slumberthe light returns to reachlike an old woman's broominto remotest cornerswith just the faintest sigh.

Dr. Freud, Please Call Your Office!

Posted on May 20, 2010
Josh Rosenau points to a post at the Ministry of Misinformation by Jay Richards that, once again, belies the claim that ID has nothing to do with religion. Of course, Richards is still waiving around the fig leaf that ID doesn't claim that the "Designer" is God but there is an interesting amount of slip peeping out of Richard's skirts: ID proponents have explained over and over and over again that ID per se isn't committed to a specific mode of divine causality...

Here's Looking At You

Posted on May 19, 2010
Rod Dreher, who may have finally dropped the "Crunchy Con" nom de plume, second in ridiculousness only to Theodore Beale's, has praise for religiously conservative Rep. Mark Souder, who is resigning from Congress because he got caught with his penis in places not associated with his wife...

Would You Like Cheese With Your Whine?

Posted on May 19, 2010
Michael Behe is in the Oregon Salem-News whining at how the mean ol' "Darwinists" abuse the poor Intelligent Design Creationists. Of course, Behe then promptly repeats the Discoveryoid defamatory claim that Judge Jones "plagiarized" his decision from the plaintiffs' "proposed findings of fact":I don't think the judge understood any of the academic arguments that were presented in his courtroom, whether science, philosophy or theology, or whether presented by the plaintiffs or defendants...

Navel Gazing

Posted on May 17, 2010
Whew, talk about self-deception.Lane Palmer is playing the "What if Jesus Had Never Been Born?" game over at The Christian Post.If Jesus had never been born, education and science would look very different and much more primitive, and most likely the United States of America would have just been an unrealized historical dream...

Media Bias

Posted on May 16, 2010
S.E. Cupp apparently humped her ridiculous book on Bill Maher's Real Time show and the NewsBusters blog of the Media Research Center, a right-wing spin organization, unwittingly reveals the emptiness of the claim that the "liberal media" is biased against religion (by which Cupp and the Media Research Center mean conservative Christianity)...

Marksman

Posted on April 27, 2010
Casey Luskin is at it again, exhibiting all his logical abilities and legal acumen for the world to see ... or rather, not to see, since they are nonexistent. Once again the subject is David Coppedge?s suit against the Jet Propulsion Lab.Although acknowledging that religious proselytizing of fellow workers by employees can be restricted by employers, Luskin goes on to say: ?part of taxpayer funded JPL?s mission with NASA is to investigate origins making ID (as Mr...

Of Morals, Values and Neither

Posted on April 26, 2010
Hoo Boy!Michael R. Felletter is "a senior majoring in visual journalism" at Penn State University and Multimedia Editor of the student newspaper, The Daily Collegian. In an article entitled "Senior wonders why many look down on Christians," he denies that he, himself, is one but laments a "crazy column about Christianity" without, unfortunately, linking to it...

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