Religion & Law

ID Ain't Got No Religion

Posted on January 29, 2010
John Lynch at a simple prop has another amusing example of the two faces of ID:Expelled is now available in the UK., so sayeth the Discovery Institute. And the link on ENV goes to ?. a site called Christianvideos.co.uk. But ID has nothing to do with religion...

Everything Is Simple for the Simple-Minded

Posted on January 03, 2010
Stupidity, like life, goes on.The former goes nowhere in greater strength than in the virtual pages of WingNutDaily. And few, if any, in that august haven of idiocy can match the looney-tunes rantings of Ellis Washington, who considers both Ann Coulter and Michael Savage "intellectuals...

Requiem

Posted on January 01, 2010
Thirty-one years, ten and a half months.More than half a lifetime.You cannot share that much with anyonewithout regrets... things left unsaid, left undone ...... better having not been done.But now the air is thin.The sun is wan.The chill cuts closer to the bone...

Requiescat In Pace

Posted on December 31, 2009
Shirley Catherine PieretBeloved wife of John Pieret, daughter of Edna Lindsey, after a long illness.

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

Irony Whiplash

Posted on December 30, 2009
The PR gold mine the DI struck when the California Science Center cancelled the DI's disingenuous little fauxumentary, Darwin's Dilemma, is continuing to be exploited. But this from John West is just jaw-droppingly clueless: The debate over whether nature is the product of intelligence or a blind process is one of the great debates of Western Civilization, and significant numbers of philosophers, scientists, and other scholars have espoused some form of intelligent design over the past century, including the co-discoverer of the theory of evolution by natural selection, Alfred Wallace! Comparing support for intelligent design to Holocaust denial is a shameful effort to suppress open debate by smear tactics...

Non Sequitur Parade

Posted on December 29, 2009
Trouble, oh we got trouble,Right here in Mason County!With a capital "T"That rhymes with "P"And that stands for ...you just never mind what it stands for!The good folks of Mason County, West Virginia have discovered a s-e-x club in their very midst!Of course, it took 'em several months to find out about it but that's no reason for them not to be shocked ...

Blazing Irony

Posted on December 28, 2009
Ow!Deepak Chopra accusing Michael Shermer of "bad science"!That could cause third degree irony burns.[W]e have reached the state where Shermer's tired, out-of-date, utterly mediocre science is far in arrears of the best, most open scientific thinkers -- actually, we reached that point sixty years ago when eminent physicists like Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrodinger applied quantum theory to deep spiritual questions...

Nagel Redux

Posted on December 28, 2009
I recently gave another example of the Discovery Institute using Thomas Nagel's recommendation of Stephen Meyer's book, Signature in the Cell in the Times Literary Supplement for publicity purposes. In particular, Robert Crowther cited to an article at Lew Rockwell's libertarian site by David Gordon...

Ideal Christian Moviegoing

Posted on December 27, 2009
The Sensuous Curmudgeon has already justly rained scorn on this "review" of Creation, the British film about Charles Darwin now just coming to American shores, that appeared at the supposedly secular Detroit News website.The "review" is actually a commentary that appears on the Editorial page...

But ID Has Nothing to Do With Religion

Posted on December 26, 2009
... as The Undiscovery Institute keeps telling us ... sometimes.But, according to the "Events" column of The Oklahoman's website, NewsOK ... among all the announcements for religious physical fitness bootcamps, church quilting bees and the like ... not all DI drones may agree:Book --> "The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in an Evil World," by William A...

Happy Holidays!

Posted on December 25, 2009
Particularly you, Bill O'Reilly!But I'm not conducting a war on anything, so let me also give the true name of the of the holiday:Merry Conspicuous Consumption Day!Here's hoping that that we all kept the spirit of the season and helped the economy by going deeper into debt!The eternal verities are the best...

Blame Gamemanship

Posted on December 24, 2009
David Klinghoffer has added to his rogue's gallery of "Darwinists."In addition to Hitler, Stalin, Charles Manson, James Von Brunn (the lunatic white supremacist who shot up the Holocaust Museum), the Columbine shooters and, of all people, H.P. Lovecraft, Klinghoffer is now blaming Darwin for Josef Mengele...

Uh, No!

Posted on December 24, 2009
This is not, apparently, a creationist rant but it does illustrate one of the common errors about evolution. Bob Schmidt, writing in The Sacramento News & Review, in an Op-Ed entitled "Optimism lesson," states: The world today kind of weakens the argument for evolution, doesn't it? Certainly the world today proves that "survival of the fittest" doesn't mean "survival of the best...

The Ultimate Poe?

Posted on December 24, 2009
There was a caller to C-Span, during a spot with Senator John Barrasso (R-WY), that expressed fear that those who heeded the call by Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), widely interpreted to be referring to the ailing Senator Robert Byrd, that:"What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can't make the vote tonight," he said...

Bleedin' Obvious

Posted on December 22, 2009
What next?:[A]ccording to a new academic paper ... [a]ngels can't fly.A leading biologist has compared the physiology of flighted species with the representations of spiritual and mythical creatures in art ? and found the angels and fairies that sit atop of Christmas trees did not get there under their own steam...

Getting It From All Sides

Posted on December 21, 2009
The children of Seattle are not only in the backyard of the Discoveryless Institute, which seeks to keep them ignorant of science, but now they are being targeted by a group that attempts to convert very young children to their brand of Christianity:Child Evangelism Fellowship plans to focus its Good News Clubs in King County, starting with Loyal Heights and Whittier elementary schools in Seattle, the Seattle Times reported...

Posing for Ads

Posted on December 20, 2009
Once again, the Undiscovery Institute is trumpeting Thomas Nagel's irresponsible recommendation of Stephen Meyer's same-ol', same ol' book, Signature in the Cell, in the popular press, which guarantees the opposite of considered academic discussion of Nagel's objections to reductionism...

Unconscious Truth

Posted on December 19, 2009
This is amusing. The Sensuous Curmudgeon has already noticed it but, I think, missed the irony of one part.It is a "sermon" by one Jon Skillman, a deacon at Grace Baptist Church of Oroville, California, whose main point is the incredibly ignorant claim that there are no transitional fossils...

Accounting for Journalism

Posted on December 18, 2009
Let's compare a couple of pieces ... one from The Wall Street Journal's "Opinion Journal" webpage and one from National Public Radio's blog, 13.7: Cosmos and Culture.First the WSJ piece, by James Taranto, who was a journalism major who never graduated, and who is complaining about "accountability journalism":[T]he reason "science" no longer "wins" is that what often poses as science today is different from the real thing...

Look out Ohio!

Posted on December 18, 2009
There is a crazy person coming to a polling booth near you!That would be Paul Schiffer, running for the 16th Congressional seat, who calls himself the "Tea Party candidate." He has now announced, almost a year before the general election, that he "has already written legislation to repeal last Monday's decision by the U...

Right Ways and Wrong Ways

Posted on December 17, 2009
As Glenn Branch kindly pointed out in a comment a few days ago but that I'm only getting around to now, Brian Leiter has expanded on his criticism of Thomas Nagel's decision to lend his prestige to the public relations hacks at the Discoveryless Institute:I can sum up my actual position in two propositions: (1) It was extremely irresponsible--a product of some mix of ignorance, arrogance, and laziness--to endorse and thus give crediblity to an incompetent and misleading book, something no one informed about the issues would have done (that was the point of most of the links in my original posting)...

Bombing Britain

Posted on December 15, 2009
In a typical example of creationist inflationary theory, Anika Smith, the tankwoman in pink of the Discovery Institute, is over at its Ministry of Misinformation touting a Customer Review (of all things) of Stephen Meyer's Signature in the Cell that has appeared on Amazon's United Kingdom site (while also highlighting Thomas Nagel's ill-advised and ill-founded recommendation of Meyer's screed as a Book of the Year in the Times Literary Supplement, of course)...

Stupid Is as Stupid Does

Posted on December 14, 2009
This is horrifying:Five people who stared at the sun in the hope they might be witnessing religious apparitions are being treated for serious eye damage, a top eye surgeon has revealed. ...Dr Eamonn O'Donoghue, of University College Hospital in Galway ...

Hot Air

Posted on December 14, 2009
Ya have to wonder how the computers keep working a Faux News, what with all the spittle flecks generated by Glenn Beck.Still, they've managed to post the transcript of one of Beck's insane rants on climate change. Amazingly, he discounts the summit in Copenhagen because, among over a hundred heads of state attending, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will be there, supposedly with an agenda to "just hurt the West with some ridiculous climate agreement...

Blowin' Smoke

Posted on December 12, 2009
A thought:As Alan I. Leshner, who heads the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, wrote this week: "It is wrong to suggest that apparently stolen e-mails . . . somehow refute a century of evidence based on thousands of studies. . . . Doubters insist that the Earth is not warming...

Giving Ammunition to Ignoramuses

Posted on December 11, 2009
Brian Leiter tries to separate Thomas Nagel's lips from Stephen Meyer's and the whole of the Undiscovery Institute's collective behind.For once we get outside our comfy Washington Square apartment, and look at the real world, here's what is going on: the Discovery [sic] Institute and its conmen, with hefty financial support from religious extremists, travel the country badgering school boards made up of laypeople to tinker with public school biology curricula...

Crashing Philosophy

Posted on December 11, 2009
Jerry Coyne is doing philosophy again.Never a pretty sight.The fact that he is engaged in dueling metaphysics with the even more clue-challenged David Klinghoffer just adds to the sick fascination usually associated with rubbernecking terrible traffic accidents...

Pokemon Will Eat Your Soul

Posted on December 11, 2009
.In the terminally ridiculous fears of Fundamentalists category:A little investigative work reveals that that grating voice, dead-rat toupee and podium in the shape of a cross belongs to Phil Arms of Life Reach Ministries of (where else?) Texas. It is also home of perhaps the worst Photo Shopped portrait on the planet...

Surprise, Surprise!

Posted on December 10, 2009
Ex-senator (a totally deserved title) Rick Santorum doesn't like science.He recently:... told students at Spartanburg Christian Academy on Wednesday to heed what they learned in school because soon they would be on the "front lines" of an ideological battle...

Good News, Bad News

Posted on December 09, 2009
Cynthia Dunbar, one of the more foaming-at-the-mouth right-wingers on the Texas State Board of Elections (the one who, before the 2008 elections, accused Barack Obama of planning to get the people he "sympathizes" with to pull a terrorist attack on the US as an excuse to declare martial law and become dictator ...

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.