Religion & Law

Following Through

Posted on May 03, 2009
A thought:Some romantics certainly went too far. This can be illustrated by the extraordinary example of Max Stirner, which may perhaps show what it is, in the end, that is valuable in romanticism, even for us today. Stirner was a Hegelian German schoolmaster who argued, quite correctly, as follows...

Tone Deaf

Posted on May 03, 2009
Jerry Coyne, at his blog, Why Evolution Is True, may be displaying at least part of real problem some people have with the statements by a number of scientific organizations concerning the compatibility of science and religion. Coyne points to PZ Myers's post on the recent decision in the case brought by Chad Farnan against James Corbett and the Capistrano Valley High School to the effect:"Corbett states an unequivocal belief that Creationism is 'superstitious nonsense,'" U...

Being Neighborly

Posted on May 03, 2009
I was going to lay off of Larry Moran this time and not dredge up the proposed change to human rights legislation in the Canadian province of Alberta that would require parents to be notified when classes "include subject matter that deals explicitly with religion, sexuality or sexual orientation," and give them the right to ask that their child sit out that part of the class...

Accommodating the Law

Posted on May 02, 2009
The latest ruling on the religion-science front is by a Federal judge in California holding that a public school teacher who called creationism "religious, superstitious nonsense," violated a creationist student's First Amendment rights.The student, known only as "C...

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What Was That About Reaping ...

Posted on May 01, 2009
According to Chairman Mike Jackson of the Nominations Committee of the Texas State Senate, the confirmation of State Board of Education Chairman Don McLeroy is dead in the water.McLeroy's nomination will be left pending in committee because there is enough opposition on the floor of the Senate to block his confirmation, which requires approval of two-thirds of the senators...

Gandalf Shrugged

Posted on April 30, 2009
Okay, I've never gotten into Ayn Rand and only know her work secondhand. But this is good snark (via Brian Leiter):There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world...

Accommodating Education

Posted on April 29, 2009
Arri Eisen, director of the program in science and society and a senior lecturer in biology at Emory University's Institute for Liberal Arts, and David Westmoreland, a member of the Board of Directors of the Catamount Center for Geography of the Southern Rockies, have a commentary in The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled "Teaching Science, With Faith in Mind" that bears on the whole "accommodationist" flap...

Counting Religiously

Posted on April 29, 2009
Here are some interesting numbers from Dr. Elaine Howard Ecklund, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Associate Director for the Center on Race, Religion and Urban Life at Rice University. Professor Ecklund previously conducted the "Religion Among Academic Scientists" (RAAS) study in 2005-2007 that found that it wasn't true that scientists lose their religion upon professional training, due either to an inherent conflict between science and faith or to institutional pressure to conform...

Science Or Philosophy

Posted on April 28, 2009
And so it continues ...Richard B. Hoppe has restated his position on "accommodationism" with, as he says, "(a little) less snark, fewer red herrings, and the admission of a change of mind in one respect." PZ and Jerry Coyne have responded graciously to Richard's restatement...

The Eldest

Posted on April 28, 2009
... so far, at least.From NASA:NASA's Swift satellite and an international team of astronomers have found a gamma-ray burst from a star that died when the universe was only 630 million years old, or less than five percent of its present age. The event, dubbed GRB 090423, is the most distant cosmic explosion ever seen...

Inside the Third Clownatorium

Posted on April 27, 2009
Dana Hunter points out this report in The New York Times:The program began with Central Intelligence Agency leaders in the grip of an alluring idea: They could get tough in terrorist interrogations without risking legal trouble by adopting a set of methods used on Americans during military training...

Long Horns

Posted on April 26, 2009
Jeremy Mohn at stand up for REAL science has a link to audio of the confirmation hearings for Don McLeroy, the creationist chair of the Texas State Board of Education, for another term. The Texas Freedom Network live-blogged the event and there sounds to be some interesting moments...

Blinded By the Light

Posted on April 25, 2009
The Carnival of Elitist Bastards Partie Douze is up at Slobber And Spittle.For a real stunner,1 there is this:Science education was - how to put this gently - pretty weak at our kids' school. There was the teacher who informed the class that the reason it was warmer in Summer is that the Earth is closer to the sun...

We the People

Posted on April 25, 2009
Jeremy Mohn at the excellent stand up for REAL science has a response to Jerry Coyne's latest post against "accomodationism" that I largely agree with. I see no reason that the NAS, NCSE and other science organizations shouldn't counter the propaganda, largely from the Religious Right but also from some atheists, that science and religious belief are necessarily incompatible...

Governor's As High As An Elephant's Eye

Posted on April 24, 2009
Oklahoma is lucky to have Brad Henry.The state's governor has been willing to stand up against the wing-nut extremist religious right in the past, despite it's considerable political power in the state. He's done it again and, what is better, has made his action stick...

God, Inc.

Posted on April 24, 2009
I previously mentioned John Micklethwait's and Adrian Wooldridge's new book, God Is Back, and quoted from an article of theirs in The Wall Street Journal. Hanna Rosin has now reviewed it in The New York Times. Some parts of it cannot be a comfort to secularists, much less atheists: [T]he book's strength is in dissecting exactly how God managed to morph and evolve and become indispensable to the world at a time when he should have faded away...

I Knew Him When

Posted on April 23, 2009
John Wilkins' book draws closer and gets some pretty impressive blurbs:"Few topics have engaged biologists and philosophers more than the concept of species, and arguably no idea is more important for evolutionary science. John S. Wilkins' book combines meticulous historical and philosophical analysis and thus provides new insights on the development of this most enduring of subjects...

Endangered Specious

Posted on April 22, 2009
PZ Myearshertz found a good lawyer (with more stamina than I) who waded deeper into the ICR complaint.Andrew at Evaluating Christianity is the stalwart soul and between him and a commenter there, Kurt Denke (particularly here and here), they've pretty well demolished the legal basis of this soon-to-be-short-lived suit...

Crash Landing

Posted on April 22, 2009
Here's another little drive-by snarking at David Klinghoffer. I know ... but it's so easy and things are such in my life right now that I don't have the time or the energy to expend on anything more challenging at the moment.Klinghoffer is out to defend his latest attempt to blame every bad thing that's happened in the last 150 years on Darwin...

College Test

Posted on April 21, 2009
The American River College Student Counsel gained some notoriety by supporting Proposition 8, California's anti-gay-marriage Constitutional Amendment, last year. Some of the more reality-based students are now seeking to oust the old counsel. Based on these statements by one of the incumbents, it is none too soon:Christian students feel like they can't speak their mind in class, said Viktor Choban, a student council member who is running for re-election as part of [incumbent president George "Yuriy"] Popko's slate...

Horse Race

Posted on April 21, 2009
This baby is going to provide hours of fun!That would be the Institute for Creation Research's lawsuit ... that can only be described as possessing all the cogency and forceful logic of the ICR's science.If you want a serious treatment of the suit, you might want to go to Tony Whitson's curricublog for some links, not least of them Steven Schafersman's, where you can read the decision in all its overblown rhetorical glory...

Meltdown

Posted on April 20, 2009
Crap!My irony meter melted ...... went straight through the floor boards... the concrete floor of the basement... and, based on a blast of steam that just went through my living room, is now China-syndroming its way through the water table beneath my house...

Moral Primacy

Posted on April 19, 2009
A thought:To explain human behavior as a "mere" product of evolution, however, is often seen as insulting and a threat to morality, as if such a view would absolve us from the obligation to lead virtuous lives. The geneticist Francis Collins sees the "moral law" as proof that God exists...

Designing Theology

Posted on April 18, 2009
It's never a surprise when any of the Discovery (sic) Institute drones admit that "The Designer" they are going on about is really God, though it's important to document the dishonesty. David Klinghoffer is the latest, though he does still waive a fig leaf in front of God's constitutional "naughty bits...

Heading to China

Posted on April 17, 2009
Dr. Egnor continues to display his ignorance, not only of evolutionary biology, but of the law as well. He's still trying to dig himself out of the hole he excavated in his attempts to counter Timothy Sandefur's demolition of his position and, naturally, is succeeding in only making it deeper...

Bull

Posted on April 17, 2009
Jen Pollard, a student at the University of Washington (in biology, no less), doesn't like the recent decision of the Iowa Supreme Court invalidating the state's marriage law, to the extent that it did not permit marriages between gays and lesbians, and complains about an earlier column in the student newspaper on the subject...

Pusher

Posted on April 16, 2009
There is a review by Bryan Appleyard in New Statesman of Lewis Wolpert's new book, How We Live and Why We Die: the Secret Lives of Cells that prompted some early morning musings.Appleyard is already on PZ Myers' list of hack journalists who produce "smug blatherings of a truly stupid person...

Gaps In His Arguments

Posted on April 15, 2009
Dr. Michael Egnor must imagine himself a Renaissance man.The evidence is clear that he feels himself qualified to lugubriously lecture experts in fields, such as evolutionary biology and the law, that he, himself, has no detectable expertise in.One of these days it may occur to Dr...

East Side, West Side

Posted on April 15, 2009
Oh, just a word more on Dr. Michael Egnor's most recent outbreak of foot-in-mouthitis. In his "reply" to Timothy Sandefur a few days ago, Dr. Egnor insisted:The term creationist in this debate refers to young earth creationism. I?m not a young earth creationist...

Uh, Where? ...

Posted on April 14, 2009
Hey, remember this outfit?The pro-evolution Clergy Letter Project currently has a list of nearly 12,000 ministers who affirm that evolution is true and that the Genesis record is a teaching myth like Aesop's Fables. Since 2006, they have successfully promoted the celebration of an Evolution Sunday in churches throughout the world...

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