Religion & Law

The Cruelest Cut

Posted on June 15, 2009
The Discovery Institute is bucking for another entry in Glenn Morton's list: "The Imminent Demise of Evolution: The Longest Running Falsehood in Creationism," right along with its director, Stephen Meyer, in his about-to-be-released book, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design...

Not Helping

Posted on June 14, 2009
From the American Family News Network's site, OneNewsNow:Finn Laursen is executive director of Christian Educators Association International, of which [John] Freshwater is a member."I am pleased to see a public school teacher like John Freshwater willing to go outside his comfort zone and fight for the religious freedoms our forefathers guaranteed is through the U...

Rally 'Round the Flag!

Posted on June 14, 2009
.Demonic forces intent on destroying the American way of life are attacking!We are being invaded! ... overrun! ... assaulted on our own shores! ... by a foreign power trying to force its alien values upon us!Worse, they are being led by a shadowy figure who sends his minions orders over the internet our own former vice president invented...

Hopes and Desires

Posted on June 13, 2009
.A thought:Whether God exists is a metaphysical question. But there is also a neglected evaluative question about God's existence: Should we want God to exist? Very many, including many atheists and agnostics, appear to think we should. ... Some remarks by Thomas Nagel suggest an opposing view: that we should want God not to exist...

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Exegesis Excavations

Posted on June 13, 2009
David Klinghoffer is playing the 'Darwinism causes people to do bad things, so don't believe modern evolutionary science' card again.It started this time with his post "James von Brunn, Evolutionist" at his blog, Kingdom of Priests at BeliefNet. Von Brunn is the lunatic white supremacist who shot up the Holocaust Museum, killing a guard...

Caught In the Middle

Posted on June 12, 2009
Two highly polarized camps agree on one thing: anyone who is trying to steer anything like a middle course and pragmatically achieve the socially possible, while attempting to move the debate in a progressive direction, is to be scorned.No, I'm not talking about the reaction of both IDers and "incompatiblists" towards theistic evolutionists...

Plumbing the Depths

Posted on June 12, 2009
Alan Keyes' Renew America site is a low-rent version of WingNutDaily entered in the ongoing limbo contest of "how low can you go" among the Rabid Right "media." One of Renew America's regular contributors is Rev. Michael Bresciani, self-described as a Christian author and a columnist for several online sites and magazines whose articles "are now read in every country in the world...

Tilting At Evolution

Posted on June 10, 2009
Creation Ministries International, the young-Earth creationist organization that broke away from Answers in Genesis while accusing Ken Ham of various financial irregularities, has come out with its "documentary" about Darwin's voyage on the Beagle. According to this article/press release:CMI is a non-profit organization comprised of people who are both Christians and scientists committed to explaining that Christian belief is not divorced from scientific discovery...

Kidding Who?

Posted on June 10, 2009
In the Food for the Soul blog at The Christian Post, described as "A blog about books, news and other forms of Christian media matter important to the faith community," one Randal Rauser, associate professor of historical theology at Taylor Seminary, complains about "How intelligent design is misrepresented by its friends...

Full Court Press

Posted on June 10, 2009
John Freshwater, in a move that will surprise no one, has sued the Mount Vernon City School District for various violations of his constitutional rights, including freedom of speech.A quick skim of the complaint shows that he is alleging pretty much the same claims he's made during the course of the administrative hearings as documented by Richard B...

Idiotocracy

Posted on June 09, 2009
You've probably already heard of Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free by Charles P. Pierce. Who could help but like a book that includes the greatest quote to come out of the anti-evolution coterie, as noted by Stephen Amidon in this review: The pastor from Pennsylvania put it best...

Targeting Religion

Posted on June 08, 2009
John Wilkins is an unreconstituted antipodian, a philosopher and an author of books with pretty covers (buy one! ... they're not all that expensive, will look good on your coffee table and cannot help but amaze your less discerning friends with your erudition)...

Steaming Irony in Piles

Posted on June 07, 2009
Whew!Orac must have had his irony meter heavily shielded.The folks at woo ubermeister Age of Autism have awarded it's Commenter of the Week T-Shirt to one Jack Russell for this:This whole "science has spoken" business is absurd and misses the point of what "science" is supposed to be...

I'd Hammer In the Morning ...

Posted on June 06, 2009
Abbie at ERV has a nice demonstration of why ID can never be science because, assuming as it does (no matter how much it denies it) that the "Designer" is omnipotent, ID can accommodate any result. In a post deliciously entitled "Having your Ford Pinto and Crashing it Too," she notes a new press release from the Biologic ("Press Releases Are Our Most Important Product") Institute: The latest entry, written by 'staff' (aka Casey Luskin, Prince of Tits?), highlights how perfect biology is: For decades enzymologists have recognized that certain enzymes are catalytically perfect--meaning that they process reactant molecules as rapidly as these molecules can reach them by diffusion...

Northern Lights

Posted on June 05, 2009
"Atheism: a threat to civilization."Now, what might you think an article with such a title could be?That's right! It's an extended complaint about how "the militant atheism of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and others who want to slam religion ...

Faith In Public Relations

Posted on June 05, 2009
David Klinghoffer agrees with Jerry Coyne.It's become clear recently, with the launch of the DI's faith + evolution site and the glee with which the attacks on "accommodationism" are greeted in the ID camp, that the anti-science crowd fears the theistic evolutionists far more that they do atheists...

Ancient Lies

Posted on June 03, 2009
John Lynch has justly received notice of his post The Roots of ID from John Wilkins, PZ Myers and Richard B. Hoppe at The Panda's Thumb.The Discovery Institute has offered a history of the design argument as evidence that Intelligent Design Creationism wasn't just fashioned as a Constitution-evading ploy after the Edwards v...

Dead Ideas

Posted on June 02, 2009
The next battleground in the culture wars involves the leftover embryos from fertility treatments ... not so much about the ones that get used in stem cell research but the ones that don't:The woman, a hairdresser who was married to a mechanic, had had one child and then triplets -- all born after successful in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments...

Removing Nuts

Posted on June 01, 2009
I've blogged before about the American River College Student Counsel, which gained some notoriety last year by supporting Proposition 8, California's anti-gay-marriage Constitutional Amendment.I noted and encouraged the attempt to oust the old counsel and here, somewhat belatedly is news of the results...

Design By Plantinga

Posted on June 01, 2009
TomS, in a comment, has made an important point about Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism:I would suggest that Intelligent Design, as it refuses to make any statement about the intelligent designer(s), would have the same problem that evolution supposedly has...

The Ballad of Non-Reading Gaol

Posted on June 01, 2009
Only WingNutDaily would think to publish a long, somewhat favorable story on Kent Hovind and his legal troubles. I have some little interest in Hovind, I must admit, so I was prompted to wade through the effluvia.The article amusingly wavers between all but declaring Hovind a tax protester evading the law and portraying him as an innocent waif and dupe...

Carnival of Elitist Bastards 1101

Posted on May 31, 2009
Lucky Carnival of Elitist Bastards 13 is walking under a ladder at En Tequila Es Verdad. To demonstrate the true value and importance of science and the critical thinking skills that Elitist Bastardry celebrates, there is this recipe for life on a research vessel:The tools you need are simple: an electric drip coffee maker with hot plate, a coffee filter, 2 1-liter sample jars, 2 handkerchiefs, 2 rubber bands, and a source of clean (preferably R/O) water...

Death By Fanaticism

Posted on May 31, 2009
. Dr. George TillerAugust 8, 1941 ? May 31, 2009Victim of religious terrorists..

Evolution, Naturalism and Theism

Posted on May 31, 2009
For those interested in Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism, the Wikipedia article I referenced before mentioned that Branden Fitelson and Elliott Sober had criticized Plantinga's Bayesian argument. I've found the article online at Professor Sober's website...

Of Philosophers And Scientists

Posted on May 30, 2009
PZ Mxyzptlk has a post on Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism, as summarized in an article at Christianity Today.I think PZ underestimates the philosophical sophistication of the argument (which, of course, does not mean it is either correct or true)...

Unuseful IDiots

Posted on May 29, 2009
Here is another admission by the Discovery Institute that it perceives theistic evolution as a real threat to its version of creationism within its target audience. David Klinghoffer writes:This [TE] is just what the Darwin Lobby needs, people of faith complacently casting their vote for a cultural force that undermines faith...

Good News ... Sort of

Posted on May 28, 2009
From the Texas Freedom Network:The Texas Senate today failed to confirm Don McLeroy as chairman of the State Board of Education. The 19-11 vote fell short of the two-thirds majority needed for confirmation. Texas Freedom Network President Kathy Miller is releasing the following statement:"Watching the state board the last two years has been like watching one train wreck after another...

Non-Vintage Whine

Posted on May 28, 2009
Donald James Parker is back and his whine is not aging well. It seems that, when confronted with the contradictions in his position that Intelligent Design Creationism is science suitable for teaching in public schools, he retreats into ever tightening circles of self-contradiction...

Fire and Maneuver

Posted on May 27, 2009
One of the main arguments of the "incompatiblists" is that "accommodationism" hasn't worked. They point to polls on acceptance of evolution in America that have stayed pretty constant over the last 50 years or so. Rarely, if ever, do they mention the great increase in membership of conservative Christian churches at the expense of the more liberal, evolution friendlier, "mainline" Protestant denominations, over the same time...

A Leg Up

Posted on May 26, 2009
Here's an interesting claim:Dr Justin Barrett, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford's Centre for Anthropology and Mind, claims that young people have a predisposition to believe in a supreme being because they assume that everything in the world was created with a purpose...

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