Religion & Law

IDing Anatidae

Posted on April 25, 2010
Ah, I see that quote mining and arguments from misplaced authority are as alive and unwell among Intelligent Design advocates as they are among more traditional creationists. I wonder why that is? The technique is identical, as this letter by Richard Kirby to the editors of The Newnan (Georgia) Times-Herald shows...

Santayana Lives

Posted on April 25, 2010
A thought:When considering the political scene of the moment, it is difficult not to see how historical allegory plays an important role in the public spectacle known as the Tea Party movement. From the name itself, an acronym (Taxed Enough Already) that fuses current concerns to a patriotic historical moment, to the oral and written references by some of its members to Stalin and Hitler, the Tea Party appears to be steeped (sorry) in history...

Bridge to Nowhere

Posted on April 23, 2010
Woo hoo!It seems that David Coppedge, the computer geek who is suing the JPL is not only an ID advocate but a young-Earth creationist as well. The Sensuous Curmudgeon found an article from the doyen of YEC lunacy, the Institute for Creation Research, defending Coppedge, who is, the ICR notes, a contributor to its Acts & Facts magazine...

Invidious Comparison

Posted on April 22, 2010
Via Dave The Happy Singer, some more excuses from the Catholic hierarchy for the priestly child abuse in their ranks:SatanWhat abuse scandal? Oh, look, the Beatles!And, naturally, my favorite:Lawyers!It?s a fine kettle of fish when lawyers come off as heroes compared to archbishops...

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Be Careful of What You Wish For!

Posted on April 22, 2010
As I noted before, the Undiscovery Institute is trying to make hay out of the case of David Coppedge against the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for his allegedly being demoted for promoting his religion by talking about Intelligent Design with his coworkers and giving them ID videos...

Bada Boom!

Posted on April 21, 2010
How out of it am I?I never heard of S.E. Cupp before today.She is apparently aspiring to take Ann Coulter?s spot in the wet dreams of the looney right and, while she is certainly prettier than Coulter, she shows no sign of being any brighter or more honest...

Running Out of Fingers

Posted on April 20, 2010
Via John Wilkins (via Jason Brown, via Dave The Happy Singer and who knows who else) there is a list of the "someone else to blame" for priestly child abuse so far accumulated by the present band of merry moralists in charge of the Catholic Church:GaysThe JewsPornography, Television, The InternetPope John Paul IIThe victims And from the comments at John's place: Liberal, secular society And in a not-totally-fair-to-tar-the-church-leaders-with-loons, we can include the craziness of William Donahue of The Catholic League: Media sensationalismThe fight against wasteful bureaucracyThe victims' families; Local Authorities; Liberal Bishops Can anybody buy these guys a mirror?.

Spacy Religion

Posted on April 20, 2010
Heh!Ed Brayton points out the hypocrisy of Intelligent Design advocates when they "claim that ID is not religious, but if anyone is not allowed to advocate for it then they are being discriminated on the basis of religion."The latest is the case of David Coppedge, an IT employee who has worked on Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Cassini mission since 1997, who was allegedly demoted for promoting his religion by talking about intelligent design with his coworkers and giving them ID videos...

Hurricanes

Posted on March 09, 2010
Uh, oh. PZ noticed my argument with Larry.Perhaps unsurprisingly, he assumed I was making an argument that "science can't explain love," which is far from the truth. The point was and is that individual scientists don't, in fact, scientifically investigate whether or not they love their family...

Philosophers Doing (Bad) Science

Posted on March 08, 2010
A thought:What does one say about these critics? One could certainly pick apart individual things, for instance Fodor's claims about selective breeding versus natural selection. The very last thing that Darwin and his followers are trying to do is put mind into nature...

Stupid Personified

Posted on March 07, 2010
The "Creationism Examiner," Terry Hurlbut, expresses all the illogic necessary to explain the "teach the controversy" trope:The New York Times created a minor stir two days ago by suggesting that creationists are somehow attempting to co-opt opposition to climate-change alarmism in order to win legal and political points and advance the creationist agenda...

Philosophy and Science

Posted on March 07, 2010
[Sigh]John Wilkins, the antipodean philosopher, has a good post on the accommodationism-incompatiblism "debate." He riffs off a post by Josh Rosenau.John is, I think, correct but that isn't going to end anything.Larry Moran makes the case (whether he knows it or not) for science as scientism...

After All, It's Just Shop

Posted on March 05, 2010
A teacher in Iowa is in big trouble and doesn't know why ... and that's the trouble!Dale Halferty, who has taught industrial arts at Guthrie Center High School for three years, was given a five-day unpaid suspension because he would not allow a student to build a Wiccan altar as his shop project...

Reality Bites

Posted on March 04, 2010
... the Cheatham County Tennessee Board of Education on the butt and they responded by voting to settle a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union last fall. The ACLU had alleged a pattern of unconstitutional promotion of religion, as embodied in allegations such as these:~ A band instructor who, while leading the marching band in practice for an upcoming football halftime performance, stopped and called on a particular student to pray...

And the Nominees Are ...

Posted on March 03, 2010
The National Center for Science Education has announced the UpChucky Awards. This will, no doubt, bring much kvetching from the Discoveryless Institute about how "disrespectful" "Darwinists" are to "design theorists" and those who promote their work but, as you'll soon see, the only ones who should be ashamed about these awards are those nominated for them ...

Mixed Results In Texas

Posted on March 03, 2010
According to this tally of the voting results, there's good news and bad news and so-so news from Texas:The "biggie" is that Don McLeroy has apparently lost the Republican primary for his seat.Yeah!The really bad news is that Ken Mercer has overwhelmingly crushed Tim Tuggey by vote totals that indicate that the Democratic candidate in the district, Dr...

Walkabout

Posted on March 02, 2010
Aussies are getting the point.The South Australian Non-Government Schools Registration Board has issued policies that reject "a science curriculum in a non-government school which is based on, espouses or reflects the literal interpretation of a religious text in its treatment of either creationism or intelligent design''...

Ignorance On the Move

Posted on March 02, 2010
PZ Megahertz has the story of The Traveling Creation Museum with an addendum about a Canadian version. But almost 2 years ago I found a story about a vagabond carny side show called "Gospel Fossils Portable Dinosaur Museum" and "portable StarLab" (planetarium)...

Why the Banner is Star-Spangled

Posted on February 28, 2010
. The incident began on a Wednesday in late January, when the girl did not stand for the pledge. Her teacher yelled at her, demanded that she stand and then sent her to the office for her defiance, Quereshi said. The school system confirmed the sequence of events...

Oh, Canada!

Posted on February 28, 2010
.Congratulations!And congratulations to the American team that made it such a thrilling tournament!Good sports all around!.

Fun and Games Among the Faithful

Posted on February 28, 2010
The Florida Times-Union has an article, "Understanding why the Christianity-science divide is important: Is it merely academic, or is the schism a real issue for all of us?," that shows that most Christians are not yet successfully dealing with the issue...

Cool!

Posted on February 05, 2010
Scientists have been able to deduce the colors sported by a crow-sized, non-flying dinosaur, Anchiornis huxleyi. The story of how they did it is really amazing and you should go and read the article. But I was, given my own interests, interested in this:So why would an earthbound dinosaur need feathers, particularly multi-colored ones? A likely reason, the team concludes, is to attract mates...

Telling When Asked

Posted on February 03, 2010
Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff on the prospect of ending the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy:Speaking for myself, and myself only, it is my personal belief that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do...

Georgia On My Mind ... and Out of Its

Posted on February 02, 2010
The state legislature in Georgia is considering what to do about child prostitution:The bill introduced by Sen. Renee Unterman (R-Buford), would steer girls under the age of 16 into diversionary programs instead of arresting them as prostitutes."This bill makes sure people are aware that young girls are victims," Unterman said...

Natural Methods

Posted on February 01, 2010
Larry Moran has a post up about Methodological Naturalism (MN) and a talk given at the Darwin Conference in Toronto last November by Maarten Boudry, a graduate student in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Ghent. Larry gives the abstract for the talk, in which Boudry gives a fair enough summary of MN:Creationists and intelligent design proponents have previously claimed that the commitment of evolutionists to naturalism and materialism constitutes a philosophical prejudice on their side, because it rules out any kind of supernatural causes by fiat...

Caving In

Posted on February 01, 2010
Heh:In "The Republic," Plato imagined a world filled with people living in a dark cave. Their eyes were capable of seeing only silhouettes and were permanently fixed to a cave wall. They could not see the events and objects that created the shadows. When one of the cave dwellers emerges to take a look at the real world, his senses are overwhelmed...

Alternatives to Thinking

Posted on January 31, 2010
A thought:One frequent delusion of ID proponents asserts, implicitly or explicitly, that if evolution fails to explain some biological phenomenon, intelligent design must be the correct explanation. This is a misunderstanding of the scientific process...

Religious Science

Posted on January 31, 2010
Casey Luskin is at it again.He is putting up bits and pieces of his law review article in the Hamline University Law Review, about "teaching biological origins," at the Discoveryless Institute's Ministry of Misinformation. Timothy Sandefur has already commented on one such snippet...

Butting Heads

Posted on January 29, 2010
It's funny, but in America it is always the "right" that is accused of censorship. Whenever implications of burning books or attempts at squelching free speech are made, it is always the "conservatives" that get the blame. ...The left are the most intolerant, mean-spirited, unfair vermin that one could ever associate with...

37 Minutes to Justice

Posted on January 29, 2010
. A Kansas jury deliberated just 37 minutes before convicting an anti-abortion activist of first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of an abortion provider.The jury found Scott Roeder, 51, guilty of gunning down Dr. George Tiller, who operated a clinic in Wichita where late-term abortions were performed...

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