Religion & Law

Scribbling Well

Posted on January 16, 2009
A nice editorial in the Financial Times:... Many scientists and liberal politicians regard the rising creationist tide as a side-show that they can safely ignore. They are wrong, for several reasons. Wide areas of research, from biology to cosmology, would suffer directly if it became politically difficult for governments to fund fields that depend on such a basic a part of science as evolution...

Ragtime Cowboy Poe

Posted on January 16, 2009
Okay, I call Poe's Law on this one: I don't believe in atheists. There is no credible scientific evidence that any atheist actually exist. I know there are people out there who claim that they do not believe in God, but the evidence says differently. They are really anti-God...

Before Breakfast

Posted on January 15, 2009
Anika Smith is bucking for the job of White Queen at the Discovery Institute (against very stiff competition, as you might imagine) with her latest posting about the guidelines adopted by the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education concerning what "supplementary materials" can be used in teaching "controversial" scientific theories such as evolution...

American Ideals

Posted on January 14, 2009
A thought:[T]he primary intellectual value [nineteenth-century American schoolbooks] embodied was utility. As an early reader said: 'We are all scholars of useful knowledge." Jedidiah Morse's famous geography boasted: "While many other nations are wasting the brilliant efforts of genius in monuments of ingenious folly, to perpetuate their pride, the Americans, according to the true spirit of republicanism, are employed almost entirely in works of public and private utility...

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Court Capers

Posted on January 13, 2009
Law-Suit Larry Caldwell, as Timothy Sandefur deliciously calls him in Sandefur's article at The Panda's Thumb, is attempting, with the Pacific Justice Institute, to take the case of Larry's wife against the U.C. Berkeley Understanding Evolution website to the Supreme Court...

Taking One for the Team

Posted on January 12, 2009
Well, as I noted last week, the professional educators in Louisiana had been so far refusing to play along with the nudge, nudge, wink, wink, know what I mean that the backers of that state's version of the "academic freedom" boondoggle for constitutional lawyers had been expecting of all concerned...

Evolutionary Art

Posted on January 11, 2009
Jonah Lehrer, in the Washington Post, reviews a book on art and evolution, The Art Instinct, by Denis Dutton, a New Zealand philosopher. Dutton wants to add art to the list of cultural universals that have been identified, including language, religion and certain traits of social structure, such as the reliance on leaders...

Newcomer

Posted on January 11, 2009
Science magazine has a new blog called Origins:2009 is the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and 150 years after he published On the Origin of Species. As part of its celebration of these two anniversaries, Science will be blogging, with Darwin as our inspiration...

Across the USA

Posted on January 11, 2009
A number of bloggers have been posting this map which, in my case, indicates I've visited 31 states (62%). Can you figure out the cause of the pattern? I'd estimate the odds of doing so as approximately 10 out of 80-95.Create your own visited map of The United States or try another Douwe Osinga project.

Accidental Honesty

Posted on January 10, 2009
The Richmond, Indiana Palladium-Item has an Op-Ed piece by Kenneth Riden, described elsewhere as a "local coordinator for a national effort seeking legislation to require teachers" to "teach the controversy." It is instructive as to how the "academic freedom" advocates, lead by the Discovery Institute, really see the movement:[T]eachers today should have not only the freedom to teach evolution, but also to teach all relative (sic and a neat description of ID) scientific theories that contradict evolution...

The Attack of the 50 Foot ...

Posted on January 09, 2009
.There's a big film festival going on in Texas right now. What? You've never heard of it? How could you have missed the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival?Fortunately, the reports of James Alanis in the Dallas Morning News will keep you apprised of events...

Excitement Machine

Posted on January 09, 2009
Hey folks!There's only two weeks to go until the end of the entry period for the Discovery Institute's Academic Freedom Day Video and Essay Contest with the fabulous grand-prize of $500, prizes of $250 each for the essay runner-up and video runner-up and up to 10 awards of a choice of a free book or DVD for finalists...

Flunking At Being American

Posted on January 08, 2009
For the Americans out there ... the Intercollegiate Studies Institute has a Civics Literacy Test to see how well you know America's founding principles, political history, international relations, and market economy. As with most such tests, the results are depressing:~ Less than half can name all three branches of the government...

Matthew 7:15

Posted on January 08, 2009
Now here's a surprise! It seems that the Louisiana Family Forum, a state affiliate of James Dobson's Focus on the Family and a major force behind the passage of Louisiana's version of the "academic freedom" bill, is unhappy with how professional educators are interpreting the law, the language of which you can find here...

The Hurry With the Fringe on Tap

Posted on January 07, 2009
As reported by the National Center for Science Education, Oklahomans are the first out of the starters gate in the sweepstakes to see which state legislature can make fools out of themselves by passing anti-evolution bills in this anniversary year for Darwin...

Revelations

Posted on January 06, 2009
PZ Myearshertz may get interesting email, but William Nedblake at Skiing Mount Improbable got some interesting snail mail. Specifically, it is a fundraising letter dated 11 December 2008 from the Discovery Institute attempting to capitalize on the tragic death, probably by suicide, of Jesse Kilgore...

Roosts

Posted on January 05, 2009
Here is something of a rarity: a transcript of an interview that does not include the questions. The subject is Edward O. Wilson and here are some of his answers (guess the questions yourself):If someone could actually prove scientifically that there is such a thing as a supernatural force, it would be one of the greatest discoveries in the history of science...

Failings

Posted on January 04, 2009
A thought:When the United States began its national existence, the relationship between intellect and power was not a problem. The leaders were the intellectuals. Advanced though the nation was in the development of democracy, the control of its affairs still rested largely in a patrician elite; and within this elite men of intellect moved freely and spoke with enviable authority...

Another Effect of Religion

Posted on January 03, 2009
As is often the case, here is another thing that becomes obvious ... once you think of it:In recent years doctors and researchers have confronted an alarming consensus that billions of people, starting in infancy, are lacking Vitamin D and thus at risk for a host of health problems, including a shorter lifespan plagued with aches and pains...

New Year, Old Crap

Posted on January 02, 2009
One Bruce Walker, a vanity press "author" (if this is any guide, deservedly so), is ushering in the infant year with another attempt to connect, by the feeblest of threads, eugenics and the Holocaust to ... you guessed it! ... "Darwinism." Apparently, someone forgot to diaper the baby...

Casey Rides Into Battle

Posted on January 02, 2009
Unfortunately for Luskin, it's against Ken Miller sitting astride a war horse of logic, facts and the words of Michael Behe, whose demolition at the Kitzmiller trial Luskin is trying desperately, and unsuccessfully, to paper over.Writing at Carl Zimmer's blog, The Loom, Miller parries with ease Luskin's feeble feints and leaves Behe's claim that the blood clotting cascade, or any part thereof, is irreducibly complex ...

Canny Canidae

Posted on January 01, 2009
Here's some prognostication:But as we focus on 2009 we will see our government adopt policies that worked before, this year will not seem particularly innovative but it will have a dominating urgency about it; issues must be undertaken and problems solved...

Auguration

Posted on December 30, 2008
A thought:Intellectualism should not mean that one must possesses a graduate degree in order to embrace it. It means we cannot allow oversimplification to trump responses to complex issues that require more than a sound bite.It also means that our civic duty did not end on November 4, 2008...

How ID Can Enhance Your Reputation

Posted on December 29, 2008
From Felix Salmon at Condé Nast's Portfolio.com, about a claim by Ben Stein that he turned down an offer by "a little delegation from a major investment bank" to invest his money with Bernie Madoff:For one thing, "major investment banks" are conspicuous by their absence when it comes to the roster of Madoff's victims...

The Coming Darwin Year

Posted on December 29, 2008
In all the hoopla to be expected in the next year over Darwin, it may become a cottage industry to spot and correct the errors in popular accounts of his life and work (not to mention the deliberate distortions of creationists). Just to warm up a bit, here is an account in The Independent by Archie Bland entitled "The Big Question: How important was Charles Darwin, and what is his legacy today?":It's a mark of how extraordinary a step Darwin took on humanity's behalf that a principle that seems so straightforward and uncontroversial today ? that random mutations would make some species better suited to their environments than others, and that those species would be more likely to breed ? could have caused such extraordinary upheaval as recently as 1859...

Hush, Hush, Sweet Scientist

Posted on December 28, 2008
The traveling exhibit that started at the American Museum of Natural History and moved to the Museum of Science, Boston, the Field Museum, Chicago and the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, has now reached its natural home at the Natural History Museum, London...

Going Where No Elitist Bastard Has Gone Before

Posted on December 28, 2008
. The Carnival of Elitist Bastards, Version 8.0, is up and soaring at Submitted to a Candid World. Here's one of my (many) favorites bits:Just when I thought the la guerre de Noel n'aura pas lieu, in walked Bill. Sometimes I can't decide what the best thing about O'Reilly is---his pugnacity or his stupidity...

Memories

Posted on December 28, 2008
Greg Laden, in his end of the year reveries, is reviving Crackergate. Okay, I thought PZ was wrong in obtaining and disposing of the Communion host the way he did but what really interests me is this from Greg, who reveals that he is an erstwhile altar boy:PZ intones "It's a cracker!" But you know, it's not a cracker...

History in the News

Posted on December 27, 2008
Michael Barton of The Dispersal of Darwin got a nice write-up in The Billings Gazette for the work he did at Yellowstone National Park's Heritage and Research Center a while back when he was working as an intern there. Barton found that use of religious language in descriptions of the park was common during the Romantic movement, a reaction to the 18th century's Enlightenment that stressed science and objectivity...

A Tory Take On Christmas

Posted on December 27, 2008
British MP John Redwood:It is typical of evil governments down the years that they think nothing of the convenience of their citizens. I am sure the last thing Joseph wanted with a pregnant Mary, and all the extra bills fatherhood would bring, was to down his carpenter's tools and travel to Bethlehem just to register and pay a tax...

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