http://www.thecypresstimes.com/article/Columnists/Columns/THE_CASE_FOR_TEACHING_INTELLIGENT_DESIGN_IN_PUBLIC_SCHOOLS_Part_One/28827
“The purpose of this article is to present scientific evidence that the case for Intelligent Design is at least as plausible as the case for Evolution. Consequently, we will suggest that Intelligent Design and Evolution should be given equal consideration by educators and students in their search for the origin of life in the universe.”
Alright, well this should be fun. I wonder if any new exciting arguments for Intelligent Design will be presented or whether it will just be a rehash of points refuted a thousand times? Unfortunately, no, we will not receive any new arguments. (Note: I typed with before coming to the first argument which nearly caused me to bang my head off my desk).
“The most comfortable position for one who does not believe in God is the idea that the universe is eternal, with no beginning or ending, thus avoiding the need for any “First Cause” such as God. Current scientific facts, however, do not support the idea of an eternal universe because such a concept violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that as energy is employed to perform work, it is transferred from usable to unusable form. In other words, the universe is “running down” because energy is becoming less available for use.”
First off, I do not know of any atheist who makes the claim that the universe is eternal. Everything I have read suggests that the universe will eventually come to an end. Burleigh is creating an argument that doesn’t exist. In fact, the only claims to the argument about the universe being eternal appear to come from pro-Intelligent Design websites. The words of Stephen Hawking should do nicely here:
“He described -- through his electronic speech synthesizer -- how the general theory of relativity and the discovery of the expansion of the universe provoked conceptual changes, which meant that the idea of an ever-existing, ever-lasting universe was no longer tenable.” (http://english.cri.cn/2946/2006/06/19/421@104361.htm)
Damn those astrophysicists, they clearly know nothing of the claims Intelligent-Design proponents are making of those who do not believe in God!
To be fair, Burleigh does say, “There is now no serious scientist making the case that the universe is eternal. It most definitely had a beginning.” Again, I know of no atheist who would disagree with that statement. This argument proves nothing.
The next argument discusses the problem with the First Law of Thermodynamics. I don’t know enough regarding the origins of the universe to discuss this issue. I’m willing to admit that, I don’t know. Something Burleigh is probably incapable of doing. Anyway, he concludes with, “Scientists and philosophers alike agree that the universe must have had a cause.” It becomes apparent that at this point that Burleigh is building up to the cosmological or “first cause argument”.
“Since it is apparent that the universe is not eternal, and since it is also apparent that the universe could not have created itself, the only alternative is that the universe was created by something, or someone, that (a) existed before it; (b) is superior to it; and (c) is of a different nature. In other words, some eternal, infinite, uncaused First Cause that is superior to the universe must be responsible for its creation. In connection with this, another important fact should be considered. If there ever had been a time when nothing existed, then nothing would exist now. It is a self-evident truth that nothing produces nothing but nothingness. Thus, since something exists now, it must follow logically that something has existed forever. R.C. Sproul observes, “Indeed, reason demands that something must be self-existent…there must be a self existent being of some sort, somewhere, or nothing would or could exist.”
No reason demands that we do not attribute super-natural causes to natural events. Scientists may say the universe has a cause but, they may also say we aren’t certain that it has to be god.
“Paul Abersold, specialist in nuclear physics, an authority on neutron radiation and isotopes, wrote: “Although science can develop very plausible theories of a cataclysmic birth of the universe resulting in galaxies, stars, worlds, and atoms, it cannot explain where all this matter and energy came from and why the universe is so constituted and ordered. Straight thinking and clear reasoning demand the concept of God.”
Reasoning would demand that we admit that we do not possess full certainty on the origins of the universe and should be willing to continue to seek answers. We may never come to those answers and that’s fine, it doesn’t invalidate the science and it doesn’t prove or disprove god.
He then quotes scientists who discuss how the life originating randomly couldn’t have arisen by chance. They do not like the odds of it happening. Ignoring the differences between improbable and impossible.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Paranoid Christians
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/cristinaodone/100031846/in-face-of-persecution-from-the-chattering-classes-christians-need-to-be-as-strident-as-muslims/
Christians really need to stop playing the role of the victim in society. It will lead to insane statements such as the following:
“Afraid to be a Christian? Who can blame you? The authorities, the media and the chattering classes are forever trying to run you down. We don’t have to brave the Colosseum, with its rapacious lions; we don’t have to wear an identifying badge; or meet in secret – yet.”
The response: “holy fuck are you serious?!” feels rather appropriate. Evoking the thought of the Holocaust and Jewish persecution is downright horrific. This is from the first paragraph of the article. I think we’ve set a new record from time of opening of argument to Nazi comparison.
“Perhaps there is a solution. We should be more like Muslims, who are self confident, strident and constantly haranguing authorities if they suspect an anti-Muslim bias. No one dares mess with them.”
In other words: Christians should react violently to any criticisms of their faith. In case there’s any doubt, I’m not someone who attacks Christians while avoiding Muslims. Those who threaten to behead someone over a cartoon are psychopath killers with ugly delusions (thank you Hitchens).
I’ve asked this before, if Christians find life so difficult and claim that Muslims have it easy. Why not convert? It’s easy and I’m *sure* you’ll never be the victim of persecution again. I mean Christians have it so tough nowadays, it’s horrible. By all means go out and strap a bomb to your vest and kill some innocents. That should stop people from criticizing Christianity.
Seriously though, the article reads as, “I’m a Christian and I can’t stand the fact that there are people who are critical of my faith that I chose, waaaah!”
Christians really need to stop playing the role of the victim in society. It will lead to insane statements such as the following:
“Afraid to be a Christian? Who can blame you? The authorities, the media and the chattering classes are forever trying to run you down. We don’t have to brave the Colosseum, with its rapacious lions; we don’t have to wear an identifying badge; or meet in secret – yet.”
The response: “holy fuck are you serious?!” feels rather appropriate. Evoking the thought of the Holocaust and Jewish persecution is downright horrific. This is from the first paragraph of the article. I think we’ve set a new record from time of opening of argument to Nazi comparison.
“Perhaps there is a solution. We should be more like Muslims, who are self confident, strident and constantly haranguing authorities if they suspect an anti-Muslim bias. No one dares mess with them.”
In other words: Christians should react violently to any criticisms of their faith. In case there’s any doubt, I’m not someone who attacks Christians while avoiding Muslims. Those who threaten to behead someone over a cartoon are psychopath killers with ugly delusions (thank you Hitchens).
I’ve asked this before, if Christians find life so difficult and claim that Muslims have it easy. Why not convert? It’s easy and I’m *sure* you’ll never be the victim of persecution again. I mean Christians have it so tough nowadays, it’s horrible. By all means go out and strap a bomb to your vest and kill some innocents. That should stop people from criticizing Christianity.
Seriously though, the article reads as, “I’m a Christian and I can’t stand the fact that there are people who are critical of my faith that I chose, waaaah!”
First Cause
http://thegovmonitor.com/world_news/united_states/america-religion-and-the-new-atheist-writers-26911.html
Claim: The cosmological argument doesn’t actually talk about a “first cause.”
“Very good questions, it might seem—except that (as everyone who knows something about the philosophy of religion is aware) that is not what the Cosmological Argument for the existence of God says. In fact, not one of the best-known defenders of the Cosmological Argument in the history of philosophy ever gave this stupid “everything has a cause” argument—not Plato, not Aristotle, not al-Ghazali, not Maimonides, not Thomas Aquinas, not John Duns Scotus, not G.W. Leibniz, not Samuel Clarke, not Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, not Mortimer Adler, not William Lane Craig, not Richard Swinburne.”
After looking into the cosmological argument I’d dare to say that it depends on who you ask the question to. I suspect that most people will associate it with the “everything has a cause argument.”
I will accept that the argument did not originate as the first cause argument, though that is what it has become.
“In the scholastic era, Aquinas formulated the "argument from contingency", following Aristotle in claiming that there must be something to explain why the Universe exists. Since the Universe could, under different circumstances, conceivably not exist (contingency), its existence must have a cause – not merely another contingent thing, but something that exists by necessity (something that must exist in order for anything else to exist).[6] In other words, even if the Universe has always existed, it still owes its existence to an Uncaused Cause,[7] although Aquinas used the words "...and this we understand to be God."[8]
Aquinas's argument from contingency is distinct from a first cause argument, since it assumes the possibility of a Universe that has no beginning in time. It is, rather, a form of argument from universal causation. Aquinas observed that, in nature, there were things with contingent existences. Since it is possible for such things not to exist, there must be some time at which these things did not in fact exist. Thus, according to Aquinas, there must have been a time when nothing existed. If this is so, there would exist nothing that could bring anything into existence. Contingent beings, therefore, are insufficient to account for the existence of contingent beings: there must exist a necessary being whose non-existence is an impossibility, and from which the existence of all contingent beings is derived.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument#The_argument_from_contingency)
However, today we do have proponents of the argument who word it as the “first cause” argument:
“According to the argument, the existence of the Universe requires an explanation, and the creation of the Universe by a First Cause, generally assumed to be God, is that explanation.
In light of the Big Bang theory, a stylized version of argument has emerged (sometimes called the Kalam cosmological argument, the following form of which was set forth by William Lane Craig[5]):
Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
The Universe began to exist.
Therefore, the Universe had a cause.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument#The_argument)
William Lane Craig, isn’t he one of the names Keser lists as not speaking of the “everything has a cause” argument? Keser can dance around this all he wants but it is clear. Today the cosmological argument does stand for “first cause.”
Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt for a moment. Assuming the cosmological argument is valid, how then does this make the case for a god of let’s say, the Roman Catholic faith? It doesn’t. Congratulations, you’ve proven God. You have not however, proven why this God gives a damn about what I do with my life.
Keser actually addresses this argument:
“Richard Dawkins is equally adept at refuting straw men. In his bestselling The God Delusion, he takes Aquinas to task for resting his case for God’s existence on the assumption that “There must have been a time when no physical things existed”—even though Aquinas rather famously avoids making that assumption in arguing for God. (Aquinas’s view was instead that God must be keeping the world in existence here and now and at any moment at which the world exists, and that this would remain true even if it turned out that the world had no beginning.) Dawkins assures us that Aquinas gives “absolutely no reason” to think that a First Cause of the universe would have to be all-powerful, all-good, all-knowing, etc.; in reality, Aquinas devoted hundreds of pages, across many works, to showing just this.
The “he wrote a lot on the subject” argument is a logical fallacy. I could devote hundreds of pages showing how homeopathy works. Scientists would still rightfully call me a quack.
Keser doesn’t like the refutation of the cosmological argument from the perspective of the “first cause”. He prefers to take the views of people such as Aquinas. As noted above, Aquinas gave the contingency argument, which despite Keser’s claims that it is different from the “first cause” argument, shares similar problems. “The idea that everything that exists has an explanation for its existence is completely unfounded. Even if it was founded, this would not imply that everything (existence) has an explanation for its existence, which seems to be a logical impossibility” (http://atheism.wikia.com/wiki/Argument_from_Contingency)
Proponents of the cosmological argument are pretending to know more than they, or anyone else for that matter is capable of knowing.
From there Keser goes on to criticize the “new atheists”. Really what’s the difference between an atheist today and one from say, 50 years ago? Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, and Hitchens have received plenty of criticism. I’m not going to debate here whether or not they deserve it. Keep in mind though that criticizing the “new atheists” by quoting other atheists is not a refutation against atheism nor does it do anything to prove god, which seems to be the central purpose of going after the “new atheists.”
Claim: The cosmological argument doesn’t actually talk about a “first cause.”
“Very good questions, it might seem—except that (as everyone who knows something about the philosophy of religion is aware) that is not what the Cosmological Argument for the existence of God says. In fact, not one of the best-known defenders of the Cosmological Argument in the history of philosophy ever gave this stupid “everything has a cause” argument—not Plato, not Aristotle, not al-Ghazali, not Maimonides, not Thomas Aquinas, not John Duns Scotus, not G.W. Leibniz, not Samuel Clarke, not Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, not Mortimer Adler, not William Lane Craig, not Richard Swinburne.”
After looking into the cosmological argument I’d dare to say that it depends on who you ask the question to. I suspect that most people will associate it with the “everything has a cause argument.”
I will accept that the argument did not originate as the first cause argument, though that is what it has become.
“In the scholastic era, Aquinas formulated the "argument from contingency", following Aristotle in claiming that there must be something to explain why the Universe exists. Since the Universe could, under different circumstances, conceivably not exist (contingency), its existence must have a cause – not merely another contingent thing, but something that exists by necessity (something that must exist in order for anything else to exist).[6] In other words, even if the Universe has always existed, it still owes its existence to an Uncaused Cause,[7] although Aquinas used the words "...and this we understand to be God."[8]
Aquinas's argument from contingency is distinct from a first cause argument, since it assumes the possibility of a Universe that has no beginning in time. It is, rather, a form of argument from universal causation. Aquinas observed that, in nature, there were things with contingent existences. Since it is possible for such things not to exist, there must be some time at which these things did not in fact exist. Thus, according to Aquinas, there must have been a time when nothing existed. If this is so, there would exist nothing that could bring anything into existence. Contingent beings, therefore, are insufficient to account for the existence of contingent beings: there must exist a necessary being whose non-existence is an impossibility, and from which the existence of all contingent beings is derived.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument#The_argument_from_contingency)
However, today we do have proponents of the argument who word it as the “first cause” argument:
“According to the argument, the existence of the Universe requires an explanation, and the creation of the Universe by a First Cause, generally assumed to be God, is that explanation.
In light of the Big Bang theory, a stylized version of argument has emerged (sometimes called the Kalam cosmological argument, the following form of which was set forth by William Lane Craig[5]):
Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
The Universe began to exist.
Therefore, the Universe had a cause.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument#The_argument)
William Lane Craig, isn’t he one of the names Keser lists as not speaking of the “everything has a cause” argument? Keser can dance around this all he wants but it is clear. Today the cosmological argument does stand for “first cause.”
Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt for a moment. Assuming the cosmological argument is valid, how then does this make the case for a god of let’s say, the Roman Catholic faith? It doesn’t. Congratulations, you’ve proven God. You have not however, proven why this God gives a damn about what I do with my life.
Keser actually addresses this argument:
“Richard Dawkins is equally adept at refuting straw men. In his bestselling The God Delusion, he takes Aquinas to task for resting his case for God’s existence on the assumption that “There must have been a time when no physical things existed”—even though Aquinas rather famously avoids making that assumption in arguing for God. (Aquinas’s view was instead that God must be keeping the world in existence here and now and at any moment at which the world exists, and that this would remain true even if it turned out that the world had no beginning.) Dawkins assures us that Aquinas gives “absolutely no reason” to think that a First Cause of the universe would have to be all-powerful, all-good, all-knowing, etc.; in reality, Aquinas devoted hundreds of pages, across many works, to showing just this.
The “he wrote a lot on the subject” argument is a logical fallacy. I could devote hundreds of pages showing how homeopathy works. Scientists would still rightfully call me a quack.
Keser doesn’t like the refutation of the cosmological argument from the perspective of the “first cause”. He prefers to take the views of people such as Aquinas. As noted above, Aquinas gave the contingency argument, which despite Keser’s claims that it is different from the “first cause” argument, shares similar problems. “The idea that everything that exists has an explanation for its existence is completely unfounded. Even if it was founded, this would not imply that everything (existence) has an explanation for its existence, which seems to be a logical impossibility” (http://atheism.wikia.com/wiki/Argument_from_Contingency)
Proponents of the cosmological argument are pretending to know more than they, or anyone else for that matter is capable of knowing.
From there Keser goes on to criticize the “new atheists”. Really what’s the difference between an atheist today and one from say, 50 years ago? Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, and Hitchens have received plenty of criticism. I’m not going to debate here whether or not they deserve it. Keep in mind though that criticizing the “new atheists” by quoting other atheists is not a refutation against atheism nor does it do anything to prove god, which seems to be the central purpose of going after the “new atheists.”
Glenn Beck is a Nazi
http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/155615/
Here’s proof that even the religious think Glenn Beck is a fanatical wingnut.
“Glenn Beck recently accused Christian pastors who preached social justice (helping the poor) of being Communists and Nazis.
I am a pastor who preaches justice for the poor, and I am neither a Communist nor a Nazi. Neither was Jesus.
First, let’s define some terms. The Nazi party under Adolph Hitler was a party of, by and for industrialists, bankers, militarists and racist white supremacists. Any pastor preaching justice for the poor, more benefits for the working class and equality for minorities soon would have wound up in a concentration camp.
Industrialists, bankers and racists generally don’t vote for candidates or policies that favor sacrificing of themselves for the good of the poor or disenfranchised.
Communists, for the most part, are atheists who try to squelch religion. They want nothing to do with Christians who demand religious freedom and the right to spread the Gospel of Christ.
I joined the army when I was a young man to fight communism.
The Bible on this subject is crystal clear. From beginning to end, Scripture admonishes believers who have the means to give generously to the poor.
I urge Beck to read Matthew 25:31-46. Pay close attention to verse 46 if you thing Jesus was kidding.
Read Luke 16:13-15: “Detestable,” Jesus says about those who hoard wealth rather than spread it around to the needy. Read Ephesians 4:28, where Paul commands believers to work hard and make lots of money. Why? So they can have something to give to the poor.
Hundreds of passages in the Bible reaffirm the desire for social justice as the most godly of behavior. To suggest otherwise is to be counted among the false teachers Jesus warns about in Matthew 24:24.
I implore my fellow Christians to renounce the teachings of Beck and others who pervert the word of God.
By the way, Beck uses code words, too. “Freedom,” for example, stands for the right to be self-serving and greedy. In other words, it means “It’s all about me.”
I’m usually hostile towards the faithful but, I say to this pastor, well done. While I disagree that we need to follow the teachings of Jesus to do good, why can’t you simply be motivated by the need to help your follow humans? I’m glad to see there are moderates willing to denounce the fundamentalists. If only this would happen more often.
Here’s proof that even the religious think Glenn Beck is a fanatical wingnut.
“Glenn Beck recently accused Christian pastors who preached social justice (helping the poor) of being Communists and Nazis.
I am a pastor who preaches justice for the poor, and I am neither a Communist nor a Nazi. Neither was Jesus.
First, let’s define some terms. The Nazi party under Adolph Hitler was a party of, by and for industrialists, bankers, militarists and racist white supremacists. Any pastor preaching justice for the poor, more benefits for the working class and equality for minorities soon would have wound up in a concentration camp.
Industrialists, bankers and racists generally don’t vote for candidates or policies that favor sacrificing of themselves for the good of the poor or disenfranchised.
Communists, for the most part, are atheists who try to squelch religion. They want nothing to do with Christians who demand religious freedom and the right to spread the Gospel of Christ.
I joined the army when I was a young man to fight communism.
The Bible on this subject is crystal clear. From beginning to end, Scripture admonishes believers who have the means to give generously to the poor.
I urge Beck to read Matthew 25:31-46. Pay close attention to verse 46 if you thing Jesus was kidding.
Read Luke 16:13-15: “Detestable,” Jesus says about those who hoard wealth rather than spread it around to the needy. Read Ephesians 4:28, where Paul commands believers to work hard and make lots of money. Why? So they can have something to give to the poor.
Hundreds of passages in the Bible reaffirm the desire for social justice as the most godly of behavior. To suggest otherwise is to be counted among the false teachers Jesus warns about in Matthew 24:24.
I implore my fellow Christians to renounce the teachings of Beck and others who pervert the word of God.
By the way, Beck uses code words, too. “Freedom,” for example, stands for the right to be self-serving and greedy. In other words, it means “It’s all about me.”
I’m usually hostile towards the faithful but, I say to this pastor, well done. While I disagree that we need to follow the teachings of Jesus to do good, why can’t you simply be motivated by the need to help your follow humans? I’m glad to see there are moderates willing to denounce the fundamentalists. If only this would happen more often.
UN Blasphemy Law
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/mar/25/blasphemy-law-ad-hoc-committee
A proposed international blasphemy law by the UN must be stopped. It would be devastating to the right of free speech.
“In the 17th century, Galileo was imprisoned for asserting views on scientific and religious matters which were deemed heretical and offensive to the Roman Catholic church.
Four hundred years later, a rogue UN committee is working to resurrect the same ideology that landed Galileo in jail: the notion that the law is intended to protect ideas, instead of human beings.
That committee goes by the label of the "ad hoc committee on the elaboration of complementary standards" a lengthy and vague name, even by UN standards. Known to insiders simply as the "ad hoc committee", its mandate is as ambiguous as its name.
Established in the wake of a controversial 2001 UN conference on racism held in Durban, South Africa, the ad hoc committee was given the mandate to write a new treaty on racism – despite the fact that no legal experts have identified any substantive gaps in international law on racism.
Currently, the ad hoc committee has turned its obfuscated eye to free expression issues, specifically "defamation of religion".
Since 1999, the UN, at the prompting of the 47- member Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), has passed a non-binding resolution asserting that speech deemed offensive to another faith is a violation of international law. While the resolution is relatively toothless, it provides cover for domestic blasphemy laws used to restrict proselytism and religious speech around the world.
But certain members of the ad hoc committee have determined that non-binding is not enough. Urged on by a number of African nations and the OIC, they want to up the ante and bind this concept into international law. More specifically, they want to enshrine the concept as an "optional" amendment to an existing international treaty – one which most courts in the world look to for direction on racism. The committee is currently reviewing a proposed amendment by Pakistan to the international convention for the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination (ICERD) that would criminalise "insults to religion".
This would be a very bad solution to a very real problem.
Religious tension is a natural byproduct of an increasingly globalised society in which we are constantly surrounded by speech and ideas that offend us. Andres Serrano's picture of a crucifix in a jar of urine, Sarah Silverman's film "Jesus is Magic", and most egregiously, the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, have all set off cultural debates about when speech should be restricted, especially when dealing with sensitive topics like religion.
Furthermore, discrimination based on religion is on the rise around the world. A recent report by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life shows that 32% of countries in the world have high restrictions on religion, while 70% of the world's population lives in a country with similarly high restrictions.
Recent events – including the referendum on a minaret ban in Switzerland, re-publication of the Danish cartoons, and the French government's efforts to ban the burqa – continue to provoke the ire of the Muslim world. And the aggressive efforts by some to purge any semblance of religion from the public square have provoked other faithful practioners: Alevi mosques are illegal in Turkey, yarmulkes are forbidden in public schools in France, and home Bible studies are harassed in San Diego. The grievances manifested in these UN resolutions are sincere.
However, an international blasphemy treaty with binding effects on domestic laws is not going to assuage secularists or people of faith. Rather it will only create new tensions and further entrench the "religious freedom for me but not for thee" attitude that has increasingly dominated the diplomatic discourse for the past decade.
Additionally, this treaty would empower governments to decide theological questions for believers and would only strengthen the legitimacy of domestic blasphemy laws found in countries like Pakistan and Sudan, where the definition of blasphemy is so broad that the laws are used to settle business disputes.
This week in Geneva, the UN human rights council will determine the future of the ad hoc committee. It will decide whether to move forward with the drafting of this binding treaty or to focus on practical and realistic steps to address the growing discrimination and violence victims around the world experience everyday.
The ad hoc committee cannot be permitted to upend human rights in further entrenching the "defamation of religions" concept, lest the United Nations wants the blood of countless more Galileos on its hands.”
Censoring speech will not silence it and will, as the article mentioned, not ease tensions.
A proposed international blasphemy law by the UN must be stopped. It would be devastating to the right of free speech.
“In the 17th century, Galileo was imprisoned for asserting views on scientific and religious matters which were deemed heretical and offensive to the Roman Catholic church.
Four hundred years later, a rogue UN committee is working to resurrect the same ideology that landed Galileo in jail: the notion that the law is intended to protect ideas, instead of human beings.
That committee goes by the label of the "ad hoc committee on the elaboration of complementary standards" a lengthy and vague name, even by UN standards. Known to insiders simply as the "ad hoc committee", its mandate is as ambiguous as its name.
Established in the wake of a controversial 2001 UN conference on racism held in Durban, South Africa, the ad hoc committee was given the mandate to write a new treaty on racism – despite the fact that no legal experts have identified any substantive gaps in international law on racism.
Currently, the ad hoc committee has turned its obfuscated eye to free expression issues, specifically "defamation of religion".
Since 1999, the UN, at the prompting of the 47- member Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), has passed a non-binding resolution asserting that speech deemed offensive to another faith is a violation of international law. While the resolution is relatively toothless, it provides cover for domestic blasphemy laws used to restrict proselytism and religious speech around the world.
But certain members of the ad hoc committee have determined that non-binding is not enough. Urged on by a number of African nations and the OIC, they want to up the ante and bind this concept into international law. More specifically, they want to enshrine the concept as an "optional" amendment to an existing international treaty – one which most courts in the world look to for direction on racism. The committee is currently reviewing a proposed amendment by Pakistan to the international convention for the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination (ICERD) that would criminalise "insults to religion".
This would be a very bad solution to a very real problem.
Religious tension is a natural byproduct of an increasingly globalised society in which we are constantly surrounded by speech and ideas that offend us. Andres Serrano's picture of a crucifix in a jar of urine, Sarah Silverman's film "Jesus is Magic", and most egregiously, the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, have all set off cultural debates about when speech should be restricted, especially when dealing with sensitive topics like religion.
Furthermore, discrimination based on religion is on the rise around the world. A recent report by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life shows that 32% of countries in the world have high restrictions on religion, while 70% of the world's population lives in a country with similarly high restrictions.
Recent events – including the referendum on a minaret ban in Switzerland, re-publication of the Danish cartoons, and the French government's efforts to ban the burqa – continue to provoke the ire of the Muslim world. And the aggressive efforts by some to purge any semblance of religion from the public square have provoked other faithful practioners: Alevi mosques are illegal in Turkey, yarmulkes are forbidden in public schools in France, and home Bible studies are harassed in San Diego. The grievances manifested in these UN resolutions are sincere.
However, an international blasphemy treaty with binding effects on domestic laws is not going to assuage secularists or people of faith. Rather it will only create new tensions and further entrench the "religious freedom for me but not for thee" attitude that has increasingly dominated the diplomatic discourse for the past decade.
Additionally, this treaty would empower governments to decide theological questions for believers and would only strengthen the legitimacy of domestic blasphemy laws found in countries like Pakistan and Sudan, where the definition of blasphemy is so broad that the laws are used to settle business disputes.
This week in Geneva, the UN human rights council will determine the future of the ad hoc committee. It will decide whether to move forward with the drafting of this binding treaty or to focus on practical and realistic steps to address the growing discrimination and violence victims around the world experience everyday.
The ad hoc committee cannot be permitted to upend human rights in further entrenching the "defamation of religions" concept, lest the United Nations wants the blood of countless more Galileos on its hands.”
Censoring speech will not silence it and will, as the article mentioned, not ease tensions.
Sam Harris TED Talk
Sam Harris recently gave a TED Talk on how science can explain morality. Watch it here: http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_right.html
Atheist Billboards
http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/topstories/news-article.aspx?storyid=153839&catid=3
The atheist billboard campaign continues:
“JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- "Don't Believe in God? You're Not Alone." Those are the words that will be appearing on two billboards on the First Coast, one in St. Augustine and one in Orange Park.
The reason behind these billboards?
The Northeast Florida Coalition of Reason has created the billboards with $2,300 in funding from the United Coalition of Reason (UnitedCoR) and are to bring awareness to millions of "freethinkers, humanists, atheists and agnostics living in the United States."
"Nonreligious people sometimes don't realize there's a community out there for them because they're inundated with religious messages at every turn," said Fred Edwords, national director of the United Coalition of Reason. "So we hope this will serve as a beacon and let them know they aren't alone."
Shawn Liu with the Northeast Florida Coalition of Reason says the billboards are also intended to generate discussion and thought.
"They are in no way meaning to be offensive, derogatory, demeaning. We are not intending this to be an attack on anybody," said Liu who says he is an atheist.
Chris Nwasike says he believes in God and the freedom of expression. He is currently involved in hosting a "Keep God in America" rally this weekend in Jacksonville.
Nwasike says this country has steered away from Christian principals that have deep roots in American history.
"We're not enemies. I would like to sit down with them and kind of figure out where they are coming from over a cup of coffee and just kind of have fun with it," said Nwasike.
The billboards will be located in Bellair-Meadowbrook Terrace area on the west side of Blanding Boulevard just north of Parkwood Drive, facing north; and one will be located in St. Augustine South on the west side of the Dixie Highway (U.S. Hwy. 1), almost a mile south of SR 312, facing south.
The billboards were scheduled to go up Wednesday, but may be appearing as early as today and are part of a national campaign with similar billboards already appearing in the Tampa Bay area, Tuscon, Sacramento and Seattle.
There were also bus ads in Des Moines and Detroit. Last year, United CoR-sponsored billboard, bus, and subway ads appeared in 20 cities, including Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Dallas, Tulsa, Phoenix and San Diego.
"We also want to let the general public know that those of us who don't believe in a higher power live in the area, too," added Stephen Peek, coordinator of Northeast Florida CoR.
"Folks may not know that people like us can be found everywhere. We're family members, friends, neighbors and coworkers. So we think it's time that we became open about our views, just as others are open about theirs."”
The atheist billboard campaign continues:
“JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- "Don't Believe in God? You're Not Alone." Those are the words that will be appearing on two billboards on the First Coast, one in St. Augustine and one in Orange Park.
The reason behind these billboards?
The Northeast Florida Coalition of Reason has created the billboards with $2,300 in funding from the United Coalition of Reason (UnitedCoR) and are to bring awareness to millions of "freethinkers, humanists, atheists and agnostics living in the United States."
"Nonreligious people sometimes don't realize there's a community out there for them because they're inundated with religious messages at every turn," said Fred Edwords, national director of the United Coalition of Reason. "So we hope this will serve as a beacon and let them know they aren't alone."
Shawn Liu with the Northeast Florida Coalition of Reason says the billboards are also intended to generate discussion and thought.
"They are in no way meaning to be offensive, derogatory, demeaning. We are not intending this to be an attack on anybody," said Liu who says he is an atheist.
Chris Nwasike says he believes in God and the freedom of expression. He is currently involved in hosting a "Keep God in America" rally this weekend in Jacksonville.
Nwasike says this country has steered away from Christian principals that have deep roots in American history.
"We're not enemies. I would like to sit down with them and kind of figure out where they are coming from over a cup of coffee and just kind of have fun with it," said Nwasike.
The billboards will be located in Bellair-Meadowbrook Terrace area on the west side of Blanding Boulevard just north of Parkwood Drive, facing north; and one will be located in St. Augustine South on the west side of the Dixie Highway (U.S. Hwy. 1), almost a mile south of SR 312, facing south.
The billboards were scheduled to go up Wednesday, but may be appearing as early as today and are part of a national campaign with similar billboards already appearing in the Tampa Bay area, Tuscon, Sacramento and Seattle.
There were also bus ads in Des Moines and Detroit. Last year, United CoR-sponsored billboard, bus, and subway ads appeared in 20 cities, including Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Dallas, Tulsa, Phoenix and San Diego.
"We also want to let the general public know that those of us who don't believe in a higher power live in the area, too," added Stephen Peek, coordinator of Northeast Florida CoR.
"Folks may not know that people like us can be found everywhere. We're family members, friends, neighbors and coworkers. So we think it's time that we became open about our views, just as others are open about theirs."”
Darwinism is not a Religion
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/8355/
Authors of the book “What Darwin Got Wrong” have called Darwinism a religion.
“It’s a secular religion, for sure, an atheistic banner under which the white knights of scientific rationality rally in their fight against the forces of darkness. There are countless manifestations of this unwholesome religious Darwinian fervour, more than can be listed here.”
You would think if they had more sense they’d realize that proponents of the theory of evolution do not worship Darwin. We are willing to say that he was wrong on issues, if the evidence proves it. Not that any credible biologist will tell you the book “What Darwin Got Wrong” actually has any credible evidence to support their claims.
The authors also act as if there is some sort of incredible revelation in arguing that Darwin’s theory cannot explain the origins of life.
“It is very hard to dissuade them, to tell them that this process is indeed real and ubiquitous but cannot explain the origin of species, pace Darwin.”
Excuse my blunt language but, no shit. Fodor and Palmarini destroy their own credibility by bringing the origin of species argument up.
Authors of the book “What Darwin Got Wrong” have called Darwinism a religion.
“It’s a secular religion, for sure, an atheistic banner under which the white knights of scientific rationality rally in their fight against the forces of darkness. There are countless manifestations of this unwholesome religious Darwinian fervour, more than can be listed here.”
You would think if they had more sense they’d realize that proponents of the theory of evolution do not worship Darwin. We are willing to say that he was wrong on issues, if the evidence proves it. Not that any credible biologist will tell you the book “What Darwin Got Wrong” actually has any credible evidence to support their claims.
The authors also act as if there is some sort of incredible revelation in arguing that Darwin’s theory cannot explain the origins of life.
“It is very hard to dissuade them, to tell them that this process is indeed real and ubiquitous but cannot explain the origin of species, pace Darwin.”
Excuse my blunt language but, no shit. Fodor and Palmarini destroy their own credibility by bringing the origin of species argument up.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Wrong Wrong Wrong
http://www.jdnews.com/articles/unattributed-74224-issue-article.html
My response to a letter to the editor in the Jacksonville News:
Darwin never refuted his theory. Why do people continue to insist on propagating this lie?
“`Shortly after his death, Lady Hope addressed a gathering of young men and women at the educational establishment founded by the evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody at Northfield, Massachusetts. She had, she maintained, visited Darwin on his deathbed. He had been reading the Epistle to the Hebrews, had asked for the local Sunday school to sing in a summerhouse on the grounds, and had confessed: "How I wish I had not expressed my theory of evolution as I have done." He went on, she said, to say that he would like her to gather a congregation since he "would like to speak to them of Christ Jesus and His salvation, being in a state where he was eagerly savouring the heavenly anticipation of bliss."
`With Moody's encouragement, Lady Hope's story was printed in the Boston _Watchman Examiner_. The story spread, and the claims were republished as late as October 1955 in the _Reformation Review_ and in the _Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland_ in February 1957. These attempts to fudge Darwin's story had already been exposed for what they were, first by his daughter Henrietta after they had been revived in 1922. "I was present at his deathbed," she wrote in the _Christian_ for February 23, 1922. "Lady Hope was not present during his last illness, or any illness. I believe he never even saw her, but in any case she had no influence over him in any department of thought or belief. He never recanted any of his scientific views, either then or earlier. We think the story of his conversion was fabricated in the U.S.A. . . . The whole story has no foundation whatever."' (http://www.holysmoke.org/cretins/darwin2.htm)
Please, for the sake of your own credibility do not use this myth as an argument against evolution.
You are half-right when you say neither evolution nor creationism can be tested scientifically. Creationism cannot be tested as the claims it makes are completely unscientific and cannot be falsified. Creationism relies on supernatural entities which exist outside the realm of science. Evolution, on the other-hand, is testable.
“Evolution is observable and testable. The misconception here is that science is limited to controlled experiments that are conducted in laboratories by people in white lab coats. Actually, much of science is accomplished by gathering evidence from the real world and inferring how things work. Astronomers cannot hold stars in their hands and geologists cannot go back in time, but in both cases scientists can learn a great deal by using multiple lines of evidence to make valid and useful inferences about their objects of study. The same is true of the study of the evolutionary history of life on Earth, and as a matter of fact, many mechanisms of evolution are studied through direct experimentation as in more familiar sciences.” (http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php#b6)
I’m stunned (though maybe I shouldn’t be) that you would bring up the Hitler argument. Hitler was not influenced by the theory of evolution as scientists know it. He was a supporter of Social Darwinism yes, but, that is a twisted view of evolutionary theory. Even if this pathetic and overused assault against people who accept evolution had any basis in reality it wouldn’t actually undermine the theory itself. The truth of science is not affected by the ideas it may give rise to.
You clearly have no understanding of what evolution is given your view that it is faith.
My response to a letter to the editor in the Jacksonville News:
Darwin never refuted his theory. Why do people continue to insist on propagating this lie?
“`Shortly after his death, Lady Hope addressed a gathering of young men and women at the educational establishment founded by the evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody at Northfield, Massachusetts. She had, she maintained, visited Darwin on his deathbed. He had been reading the Epistle to the Hebrews, had asked for the local Sunday school to sing in a summerhouse on the grounds, and had confessed: "How I wish I had not expressed my theory of evolution as I have done." He went on, she said, to say that he would like her to gather a congregation since he "would like to speak to them of Christ Jesus and His salvation, being in a state where he was eagerly savouring the heavenly anticipation of bliss."
`With Moody's encouragement, Lady Hope's story was printed in the Boston _Watchman Examiner_. The story spread, and the claims were republished as late as October 1955 in the _Reformation Review_ and in the _Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland_ in February 1957. These attempts to fudge Darwin's story had already been exposed for what they were, first by his daughter Henrietta after they had been revived in 1922. "I was present at his deathbed," she wrote in the _Christian_ for February 23, 1922. "Lady Hope was not present during his last illness, or any illness. I believe he never even saw her, but in any case she had no influence over him in any department of thought or belief. He never recanted any of his scientific views, either then or earlier. We think the story of his conversion was fabricated in the U.S.A. . . . The whole story has no foundation whatever."' (http://www.holysmoke.org/cretins/darwin2.htm)
Please, for the sake of your own credibility do not use this myth as an argument against evolution.
You are half-right when you say neither evolution nor creationism can be tested scientifically. Creationism cannot be tested as the claims it makes are completely unscientific and cannot be falsified. Creationism relies on supernatural entities which exist outside the realm of science. Evolution, on the other-hand, is testable.
“Evolution is observable and testable. The misconception here is that science is limited to controlled experiments that are conducted in laboratories by people in white lab coats. Actually, much of science is accomplished by gathering evidence from the real world and inferring how things work. Astronomers cannot hold stars in their hands and geologists cannot go back in time, but in both cases scientists can learn a great deal by using multiple lines of evidence to make valid and useful inferences about their objects of study. The same is true of the study of the evolutionary history of life on Earth, and as a matter of fact, many mechanisms of evolution are studied through direct experimentation as in more familiar sciences.” (http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php#b6)
I’m stunned (though maybe I shouldn’t be) that you would bring up the Hitler argument. Hitler was not influenced by the theory of evolution as scientists know it. He was a supporter of Social Darwinism yes, but, that is a twisted view of evolutionary theory. Even if this pathetic and overused assault against people who accept evolution had any basis in reality it wouldn’t actually undermine the theory itself. The truth of science is not affected by the ideas it may give rise to.
You clearly have no understanding of what evolution is given your view that it is faith.
Christianity and Islam, Not so Different
http://www.qantara.de/webcom/show_article.php/_c-478/_nr-1025/i.html
Harald Brandt argues that there is a lot in common between evangelical Christians and Muslim creationists. I’m sure the two groups would protest to that assertion:
“Fossilised Thinking Proves God's Existence
Evangelical Christians and Muslim creationists – such as the Turkish anti-Darwinist Harun Yahia – have one thing in common: their fight against materialism and the secular state. Harald Brand has the details
"Darwin has been disproved. His theory of the origin of the species is wrong. Millions of fossils prove that neither the animals nor the plants have changed since their creation by Allah." This is the quintessence of the message spread by the Turkish anti-Darwinist Adnan Oktar in over 200 books and videos and on dozens of websites.
Under the pseudonym Harun Yahya, he published the first volume of the Atlas of Creation in 2006, a large-format, luxuriously designed and illustrated book weighing in at almost 15 pounds, tens of thousands of which were distributed free of charge to universities, schools and research institutes in Europe.
In January 2007 a copy of the pseudo-scientific work landed on the desk of the mathematician and then socialist European parliament member Guy Lengagne, who has been following the phenomenon of creationism since 1997.
The Islamic world as a creationist powerhouse
All creationist groups, most of them based in North America, share a common conviction that the biblical genesis story is an accurate portrayal of the origin of all species. But the fact that a movement had been founded in the Islamic world with sufficient funds to launch a major assault on several European states was a surprise to Guy Lengagne.
Secular France reacted promptly. At the instigation of the education ministry, the evolutionary biologist Hervé LeGuyader wrote a report proving the scientific irrelevance of the theses advanced in the Atlas of Creation. Yet the creationists' aim is not actually promoting scientific debate, according to Guy Lengagne.
Their actual objective, he says, is to found a theocracy. Lengagne regards the creationists as the current spearhead of reactionary political forces. He has produced a detailed report for the European Council's cultural commission on the threat posed by creationist ideas to the educational system in the European Community, pointing out the close collaboration between Christian and Islamic creationists.
Guy Lengagne's report sources the studies of the academic historian Jacques Arnould, whose 2008 book Dieu versus Darwin (God versus Darwin) draws attention to the close relations between the American Institute for Creation Research (ICR) and the Turkish education ministry over more than twenty years.
When Adnan Oktar launched his private academic foundation Bilim Arastirma Vakfi (BAV) in Istanbul in 1991, the list of conference participants included leading figures from the ICR such as Duane Gish and John Morris.
Interest in uneducated citizens
"Capitalism has an interest in uneducated citizens – efficient at their work but nothing more!" Guy Lengagne said in an interview on creationism in 2008. It is always easier to rule over ignorant people than people who think, who ask the right questions and perhaps even protest, he explained.
"There's a sentence in my report that was controversially discussed, but I insisted on it despite all the objections. That sentence is: Preventing the teaching of evolution theory is an assault on human rights," says Lengagne.
"I don't know how many branches of science come together in evolution theory – palaeontology, genetics, probability, continental drift – they all play a role in the evolutionary model. Preventing young people from gaining this knowledge, which humanity has accumulated over hundreds if not thousands of years, means preventing them from understanding the world."
Western media often describe developments in the Islamic world as a "return to traditional values". "That's absolutely incorrect," says the Islam scholar Olivier Roy, who makes out clear parallels between all forms of religious fundamentalism threatening the secular foundations not only of Turkey, in his 2008 book La Sainte Ignorance (Sacred Ignorance).
The same Islam everywhere
Traditionalists cite passed-down knowledge, classical exegesis by religious authorities, whereas fundamentalists claim to have direct access to the sacred text. They also stake a claim to universal validity, something previously non-existent in this form. The same Islam everywhere. Cultural, historically evolved differences no longer play a role and are deliberately ignored.
The modern forms of fundamentalism are products of globalisation, says Olivier Roy, taking elements from different cultures and putting them together as one sees fit. Adnan Oktar alias Harun Yahia is a typical example of this strategy:
"It is very important for Harun Yahia to position himself in the centre of an inter-faith dialogue," says so Roy. "He wants to appear less a defender of the Qur'anic truth and more a defender of the creation myth shared by all religions."
This strategy is clearly aimed at a European audience, according to Olivier Roy. The Islam scholar can well imagine there are American circles for which it is more important to spread creationist ideas than Christianity itself:
"That's more or less how 'Intelligent Design' works. The creationists have changed their strategy in recent years. While they were previously only interested in announcing the absolute truth of the bible, they're now trying to conquer a field that isn't Christian. They're not saying, 'Creationism is true because it corresponds with the letter of the bible,' any more; what they're saying now is, 'Creationism is true because evolution isn't scientific.'"
So it's a question of finding a non-religious concept that allows criticism of the theory of evolution. And that concept is "Intelligent Design".
Fighting materialism and secularism
What evangelical Christians have in common with Muslim creationists is their fight against materialism and the secular state. More and more examples of this type of multi-faith alliance are emerging, says Olivier Roy:
"I've been observing a phenomenon in Turkey with particular interest for many years: the fact that the movement I refer to as Islamic neo-fundamentalism is orienting itself more and more towards the categories of Protestant evangelicalism."
Olivier Roy believes this also applies to norms – the defence of the family, the attitude towards homosexual marriage and abortion: "This form of neo-fundamentalism is a relatively apolitical movement from the middle class, often going hand in hand with good social integration – and very strict in terms of norms and morals. A movement that is co-opting the subjects of the religious right in America."
Although Adnan Oktar's theses have no scientific basis, they do have a disastrous effect on Turkish society. The editor-in-chief of the Istanbul-based scientific magazine Bilim ve Gelecek cites a study his team carried out at various universities a few years ago:
"Turkey's poor education system means that even many biology students don't believe in evolutionary theory. A sample at five key universities in Istanbul, Ankara and Kocelida showed that 80 percent of respondents – including advanced students – consider Adam and Eve the ancestors of humanity. Of course that's not what they're taught officially in the curriculum, but because the system consists solely of learning by rote the students have no chance to learn the inner logic of scientific thought. They learn evolutionary theory, but they still believe in Adam and Eve."
Harald Brandt
Christianity and Islam: different names same bullshit.
Harald Brandt argues that there is a lot in common between evangelical Christians and Muslim creationists. I’m sure the two groups would protest to that assertion:
“Fossilised Thinking Proves God's Existence
Evangelical Christians and Muslim creationists – such as the Turkish anti-Darwinist Harun Yahia – have one thing in common: their fight against materialism and the secular state. Harald Brand has the details
"Darwin has been disproved. His theory of the origin of the species is wrong. Millions of fossils prove that neither the animals nor the plants have changed since their creation by Allah." This is the quintessence of the message spread by the Turkish anti-Darwinist Adnan Oktar in over 200 books and videos and on dozens of websites.
Under the pseudonym Harun Yahya, he published the first volume of the Atlas of Creation in 2006, a large-format, luxuriously designed and illustrated book weighing in at almost 15 pounds, tens of thousands of which were distributed free of charge to universities, schools and research institutes in Europe.
In January 2007 a copy of the pseudo-scientific work landed on the desk of the mathematician and then socialist European parliament member Guy Lengagne, who has been following the phenomenon of creationism since 1997.
The Islamic world as a creationist powerhouse
All creationist groups, most of them based in North America, share a common conviction that the biblical genesis story is an accurate portrayal of the origin of all species. But the fact that a movement had been founded in the Islamic world with sufficient funds to launch a major assault on several European states was a surprise to Guy Lengagne.
Secular France reacted promptly. At the instigation of the education ministry, the evolutionary biologist Hervé LeGuyader wrote a report proving the scientific irrelevance of the theses advanced in the Atlas of Creation. Yet the creationists' aim is not actually promoting scientific debate, according to Guy Lengagne.
Their actual objective, he says, is to found a theocracy. Lengagne regards the creationists as the current spearhead of reactionary political forces. He has produced a detailed report for the European Council's cultural commission on the threat posed by creationist ideas to the educational system in the European Community, pointing out the close collaboration between Christian and Islamic creationists.
Guy Lengagne's report sources the studies of the academic historian Jacques Arnould, whose 2008 book Dieu versus Darwin (God versus Darwin) draws attention to the close relations between the American Institute for Creation Research (ICR) and the Turkish education ministry over more than twenty years.
When Adnan Oktar launched his private academic foundation Bilim Arastirma Vakfi (BAV) in Istanbul in 1991, the list of conference participants included leading figures from the ICR such as Duane Gish and John Morris.
Interest in uneducated citizens
"Capitalism has an interest in uneducated citizens – efficient at their work but nothing more!" Guy Lengagne said in an interview on creationism in 2008. It is always easier to rule over ignorant people than people who think, who ask the right questions and perhaps even protest, he explained.
"There's a sentence in my report that was controversially discussed, but I insisted on it despite all the objections. That sentence is: Preventing the teaching of evolution theory is an assault on human rights," says Lengagne.
"I don't know how many branches of science come together in evolution theory – palaeontology, genetics, probability, continental drift – they all play a role in the evolutionary model. Preventing young people from gaining this knowledge, which humanity has accumulated over hundreds if not thousands of years, means preventing them from understanding the world."
Western media often describe developments in the Islamic world as a "return to traditional values". "That's absolutely incorrect," says the Islam scholar Olivier Roy, who makes out clear parallels between all forms of religious fundamentalism threatening the secular foundations not only of Turkey, in his 2008 book La Sainte Ignorance (Sacred Ignorance).
The same Islam everywhere
Traditionalists cite passed-down knowledge, classical exegesis by religious authorities, whereas fundamentalists claim to have direct access to the sacred text. They also stake a claim to universal validity, something previously non-existent in this form. The same Islam everywhere. Cultural, historically evolved differences no longer play a role and are deliberately ignored.
The modern forms of fundamentalism are products of globalisation, says Olivier Roy, taking elements from different cultures and putting them together as one sees fit. Adnan Oktar alias Harun Yahia is a typical example of this strategy:
"It is very important for Harun Yahia to position himself in the centre of an inter-faith dialogue," says so Roy. "He wants to appear less a defender of the Qur'anic truth and more a defender of the creation myth shared by all religions."
This strategy is clearly aimed at a European audience, according to Olivier Roy. The Islam scholar can well imagine there are American circles for which it is more important to spread creationist ideas than Christianity itself:
"That's more or less how 'Intelligent Design' works. The creationists have changed their strategy in recent years. While they were previously only interested in announcing the absolute truth of the bible, they're now trying to conquer a field that isn't Christian. They're not saying, 'Creationism is true because it corresponds with the letter of the bible,' any more; what they're saying now is, 'Creationism is true because evolution isn't scientific.'"
So it's a question of finding a non-religious concept that allows criticism of the theory of evolution. And that concept is "Intelligent Design".
Fighting materialism and secularism
What evangelical Christians have in common with Muslim creationists is their fight against materialism and the secular state. More and more examples of this type of multi-faith alliance are emerging, says Olivier Roy:
"I've been observing a phenomenon in Turkey with particular interest for many years: the fact that the movement I refer to as Islamic neo-fundamentalism is orienting itself more and more towards the categories of Protestant evangelicalism."
Olivier Roy believes this also applies to norms – the defence of the family, the attitude towards homosexual marriage and abortion: "This form of neo-fundamentalism is a relatively apolitical movement from the middle class, often going hand in hand with good social integration – and very strict in terms of norms and morals. A movement that is co-opting the subjects of the religious right in America."
Although Adnan Oktar's theses have no scientific basis, they do have a disastrous effect on Turkish society. The editor-in-chief of the Istanbul-based scientific magazine Bilim ve Gelecek cites a study his team carried out at various universities a few years ago:
"Turkey's poor education system means that even many biology students don't believe in evolutionary theory. A sample at five key universities in Istanbul, Ankara and Kocelida showed that 80 percent of respondents – including advanced students – consider Adam and Eve the ancestors of humanity. Of course that's not what they're taught officially in the curriculum, but because the system consists solely of learning by rote the students have no chance to learn the inner logic of scientific thought. They learn evolutionary theory, but they still believe in Adam and Eve."
Harald Brandt
Christianity and Islam: different names same bullshit.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Blog Really is Full of hot air
http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2010/03/22/how-little-you-know-the-deniable-darwin-by-david-berlinski/
This blog is named “Hot Air”, which given the subject matter of the article, is an appropriate title. The claims in the article regarding evolution are what we would expect from an Intelligent Design proponent. Let’s take the time to pick them apart piece-by-piece.
“Berlinski argues that the Darwinists remain very far from demonstrating and evidencing how evolution via random mutation and natural selection could explain what the evolutionists claim it explains – that is, everything.”
Supporters of evolution would never (should never) make the claim that evolution explains everything. This is a tactic used by the IDers. Its intention is to say that since evolutionists claim that evolution explains everything even though it cannot, that evolution is therefore false. It is difficult to debate this claim due to this false assertion. There is no point in attempting to prove that random mutation and natural selection explains “everything”.
“The most you can say about Berlinski’s argument on this score – the argument he actually makes as opposed to the one he’s frequently assumed to be making – is that it points, insistently, to obviously “design-like” aspects of the natural world that no biologist has been able to explain except by childlike inferences, circular reasoning, and “just-so” stories – how this, that, or the other biological peculiarity might/must have served a survival purpose – and by scandalously oversold pseudo-experiments.”
Pointing to “design-like” aspects of the natural world is not a refutation of evolutionary theory. All Berlinkski has succeeded in doing is proving that scientists do not possess all the answers. Scientists would hasten to agree. Beyond that, how does Berlinksi account for aspects of nature that appear to be the work of a designer who got drunk one night? (see: Flying Spaghetti Monster). Evidence of poor design isn’t proof that evolution occurred. It is intended to show that the argument that nature was designed does not hold up in a scientific debate.
“Yet if we can’t really explain how the incredible yet inescapably fundamental complexity of a single functioning living cell arises and elaborates itself, armies of just-in-time enzymes translating intricately arranged protein instructions into vitality, then in the broad sense whatever else we know, or think we know, about the origins of higher organisms and ecosystems remains at root a narrative, a matter of taste or contingency, not a full-fledged theory in the same way that relativity and quantum mechanics are theories – good and tested to n decimals, as Berlinski likes to remind his readers.”
The complexity of a cell is not evidence for design. The author here is unable to entertain the notion that complex aspects of nature occurred without a designer. Translated: it’s too complex for me to understand. Therefore, evolution is false. The argument comes from the idea of irreducible complexity put forth by Michael Behe and is best refuted by the following:
“To understand why the scientific community has been unimpressed by attempts to resurrect the so-called argument from design, one need look no further than Michael J. Behe’s own essay. He argues that complex biochemical systems could not possibly have been produced by evolution because they possess a quality he calls irreducible complexity. Just like mousetraps, these systems cannot function unless each of their parts is in place. Since “natural selection can only choose among systems that are already working,” there is no way that Darwinian mechanisms could have fashioned the complex systems found in living cells. And if such systems could not have evolved, they must have been designed. That is the totality of the biochemical “evidence” for intelligent design.
Ironically, Behe’s own example, the mousetrap, shows what’s wrong with this idea. Take away two parts (the catch and the metal bar), and you may not have a mousetrap but you do have a three-part machine that makes a fully functional tie clip or paper clip. Take away the spring, and you have a two-part key chain. The catch of some mousetraps could be used as a fishhook, and the wooden base as a paperweight; useful applications of other parts include everything from toothpicks to nutcrackers and clipboard holders. The point, which science has long understood, is that bits and pieces of supposedly irreducibly complex machines may have different — but still useful — functions.
Behe’s contention that each and every piece of a machine, mechanical or biochemical, must be assembled in its final form before anything useful can emerge is just plain wrong. Evolution produces complex biochemical machines by copying, modifying, and combining proteins previously used for other functions.
…
And Behe may throw up his hands and say that he cannot imagine how the components that move proteins between subcellular compartments could have evolved, but scientists actually working on such systems completely disagree. In a 1998 article in the journal Cell, a group led by James Rothman, of the Sloan-Kettering Institute, described the remarkable simplicity and uniformity of these mechanisms. They also noted that these mechanisms “suggest in a natural way how the many and diverse compartments in eukaryotic cells could have evolved in the first place.” Working researchers, it seems, see something very different from what Behe sees in these systems — they see evolution.” (http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/nhmag.html)
Science has explained what IDers are claiming it has been unable to.
This blog is named “Hot Air”, which given the subject matter of the article, is an appropriate title. The claims in the article regarding evolution are what we would expect from an Intelligent Design proponent. Let’s take the time to pick them apart piece-by-piece.
“Berlinski argues that the Darwinists remain very far from demonstrating and evidencing how evolution via random mutation and natural selection could explain what the evolutionists claim it explains – that is, everything.”
Supporters of evolution would never (should never) make the claim that evolution explains everything. This is a tactic used by the IDers. Its intention is to say that since evolutionists claim that evolution explains everything even though it cannot, that evolution is therefore false. It is difficult to debate this claim due to this false assertion. There is no point in attempting to prove that random mutation and natural selection explains “everything”.
“The most you can say about Berlinski’s argument on this score – the argument he actually makes as opposed to the one he’s frequently assumed to be making – is that it points, insistently, to obviously “design-like” aspects of the natural world that no biologist has been able to explain except by childlike inferences, circular reasoning, and “just-so” stories – how this, that, or the other biological peculiarity might/must have served a survival purpose – and by scandalously oversold pseudo-experiments.”
Pointing to “design-like” aspects of the natural world is not a refutation of evolutionary theory. All Berlinkski has succeeded in doing is proving that scientists do not possess all the answers. Scientists would hasten to agree. Beyond that, how does Berlinksi account for aspects of nature that appear to be the work of a designer who got drunk one night? (see: Flying Spaghetti Monster). Evidence of poor design isn’t proof that evolution occurred. It is intended to show that the argument that nature was designed does not hold up in a scientific debate.
“Yet if we can’t really explain how the incredible yet inescapably fundamental complexity of a single functioning living cell arises and elaborates itself, armies of just-in-time enzymes translating intricately arranged protein instructions into vitality, then in the broad sense whatever else we know, or think we know, about the origins of higher organisms and ecosystems remains at root a narrative, a matter of taste or contingency, not a full-fledged theory in the same way that relativity and quantum mechanics are theories – good and tested to n decimals, as Berlinski likes to remind his readers.”
The complexity of a cell is not evidence for design. The author here is unable to entertain the notion that complex aspects of nature occurred without a designer. Translated: it’s too complex for me to understand. Therefore, evolution is false. The argument comes from the idea of irreducible complexity put forth by Michael Behe and is best refuted by the following:
“To understand why the scientific community has been unimpressed by attempts to resurrect the so-called argument from design, one need look no further than Michael J. Behe’s own essay. He argues that complex biochemical systems could not possibly have been produced by evolution because they possess a quality he calls irreducible complexity. Just like mousetraps, these systems cannot function unless each of their parts is in place. Since “natural selection can only choose among systems that are already working,” there is no way that Darwinian mechanisms could have fashioned the complex systems found in living cells. And if such systems could not have evolved, they must have been designed. That is the totality of the biochemical “evidence” for intelligent design.
Ironically, Behe’s own example, the mousetrap, shows what’s wrong with this idea. Take away two parts (the catch and the metal bar), and you may not have a mousetrap but you do have a three-part machine that makes a fully functional tie clip or paper clip. Take away the spring, and you have a two-part key chain. The catch of some mousetraps could be used as a fishhook, and the wooden base as a paperweight; useful applications of other parts include everything from toothpicks to nutcrackers and clipboard holders. The point, which science has long understood, is that bits and pieces of supposedly irreducibly complex machines may have different — but still useful — functions.
Behe’s contention that each and every piece of a machine, mechanical or biochemical, must be assembled in its final form before anything useful can emerge is just plain wrong. Evolution produces complex biochemical machines by copying, modifying, and combining proteins previously used for other functions.
…
And Behe may throw up his hands and say that he cannot imagine how the components that move proteins between subcellular compartments could have evolved, but scientists actually working on such systems completely disagree. In a 1998 article in the journal Cell, a group led by James Rothman, of the Sloan-Kettering Institute, described the remarkable simplicity and uniformity of these mechanisms. They also noted that these mechanisms “suggest in a natural way how the many and diverse compartments in eukaryotic cells could have evolved in the first place.” Working researchers, it seems, see something very different from what Behe sees in these systems — they see evolution.” (http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/nhmag.html)
Science has explained what IDers are claiming it has been unable to.
OMG!!! OBAMA EQUALS NAZI MUSLIM!!!!
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-22/scary-new-gop-poll/?cid=hp:mainpromo2
Stupidity is a prerequisite for being a Republican.
“67 percent of Republicans (and 40 percent of Americans overall) believe that Obama is a socialist.
57 percent of Republicans (32 percent overall) believe that Obama is a Muslim
45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was "not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president"
38 percent of Republicans (20 percent overall) say that Obama is "doing many of the things that Hitler did"
Scariest of all, 24 percent of Republicans (14 percent overall) say that Obama "may be the Antichrist."”
Welcome to the Republican Party. Those of you with a brain need not apply.
Stupidity is a prerequisite for being a Republican.
“67 percent of Republicans (and 40 percent of Americans overall) believe that Obama is a socialist.
57 percent of Republicans (32 percent overall) believe that Obama is a Muslim
45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was "not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president"
38 percent of Republicans (20 percent overall) say that Obama is "doing many of the things that Hitler did"
Scariest of all, 24 percent of Republicans (14 percent overall) say that Obama "may be the Antichrist."”
Welcome to the Republican Party. Those of you with a brain need not apply.
Defending Ann Coulter (I assure you writing this was painful)
I have often referred to myself as a “free speech nut”. I will defend speech no matter how terrible it is. Unfortunately, this stance requires me to defend the likes of the lowest-scum on this planet. Ann Coulter fits that description.
Coulter will soon visit the University of Ottawa. Needless to say, this has caused an uproar among the student body. Some have even gone as far as suggesting she should be thrown in jail for hate speech.
“You will realize that Canadian law puts reasonable limits on the freedom of expression. For example, promoting hatred against any identifiable group would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges. Outside of the criminal realm, Canadian defamation laws also limit freedom of expression and may differ somewhat from those to which you are accustomed. I therefore ask you, while you are a guest on our campus, to weigh your words with respect and civility in mind.”
As the article points out, it is unlikely that there exists a legal case against her:
“Hate speech has to be near fully void of relevant comment on issues of public interest. In fact this is written right into the criminal code and anyone charged with promoting hatred has recourse to several defences. The defences include truth, commenting on religious topics, making comments that stem from religious beliefs, and making comments that are on a topic of public interest.”
(http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2010/03/22/throw-coulter-in-jail/)
Ann Coulter may be a deluded fundamentalist Christian psychopath but, what she says is relevant. It is relevant in the sense that it shows the public the extreme right-wing view of issues such as religion and politics.
Universities tend to lean to the side of political correctness. Students are more interested in censoring extreme opinions than encouraging debate. Ironically, the uproar over Coulter’s has already given her more attention than if the student body had not opposed the visit.
I find it unlikely that any sensible student will be swayed by Coulter’s arguments. Allowing her to speak also gives people a chance to confront her. I’m sure she will find a large difference between the intellect of the student body and her fellows at Fox News. Free speech gives Coulter the right to speak in this country. It also gives the students the right to point out what a fucking moron she is.
Update: It's disappointing that she wasn't able to speak out the University of Ottawa. Allowing her to speak would've given the student body the opportunity to debate against her directly.
Coulter will soon visit the University of Ottawa. Needless to say, this has caused an uproar among the student body. Some have even gone as far as suggesting she should be thrown in jail for hate speech.
“You will realize that Canadian law puts reasonable limits on the freedom of expression. For example, promoting hatred against any identifiable group would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges. Outside of the criminal realm, Canadian defamation laws also limit freedom of expression and may differ somewhat from those to which you are accustomed. I therefore ask you, while you are a guest on our campus, to weigh your words with respect and civility in mind.”
As the article points out, it is unlikely that there exists a legal case against her:
“Hate speech has to be near fully void of relevant comment on issues of public interest. In fact this is written right into the criminal code and anyone charged with promoting hatred has recourse to several defences. The defences include truth, commenting on religious topics, making comments that stem from religious beliefs, and making comments that are on a topic of public interest.”
(http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2010/03/22/throw-coulter-in-jail/)
Ann Coulter may be a deluded fundamentalist Christian psychopath but, what she says is relevant. It is relevant in the sense that it shows the public the extreme right-wing view of issues such as religion and politics.
Universities tend to lean to the side of political correctness. Students are more interested in censoring extreme opinions than encouraging debate. Ironically, the uproar over Coulter’s has already given her more attention than if the student body had not opposed the visit.
I find it unlikely that any sensible student will be swayed by Coulter’s arguments. Allowing her to speak also gives people a chance to confront her. I’m sure she will find a large difference between the intellect of the student body and her fellows at Fox News. Free speech gives Coulter the right to speak in this country. It also gives the students the right to point out what a fucking moron she is.
Update: It's disappointing that she wasn't able to speak out the University of Ottawa. Allowing her to speak would've given the student body the opportunity to debate against her directly.
Even Secularism Has Limits
http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Quebecers+rally+secularism+agenda/2712763/story.html
Quebec is pushing for secularism but are they taking it too far?
“As demonstrations go, the small protest in front of the cathedral in Trois Rivières on International Women's Day two weeks ago went almost unnoticed.
About 20 demonstrators with handwritten placards called on the Quebec government to stop accommodating religious minorities like Muslim women who wear the niqab - a face veil with a slit for the eyes.
It's time to stop tolerating religious practices "that pollute our society and deny the principle of equality between men and women," said organizer Andréa Richard, 75, a former nun and author of two books harshly critical of organized religion.
Richard called for a charter of "la laïcité" that would make Quebec an officially secular state.
Another demonstrator seconded the proposal: André Drouin, the former town councillor from Hérouxville - population 1,200 - whose 2007 bylaw banning the stoning of women sparked a furor over the accommodation of minorities and led to the Bouchard-Taylor Commission.
"In Quebec, 85 per cent of people don't want religious accommodation," Drouin, 62, a retired engineer who has been promoting his views to audiences across Canada, said in an interview this week.
Just a few short months ago, the idea of removing all signs of religion from the public sphere was confined to a vocal minority. But support for secularism - the belief that religion should be excluded from government and education - has never been higher in Quebec, a province that once deeply identified with the Roman Catholic Church.
On Thursday, Richard and other proponents met Parti Québécois opposition leader Pauline Marois and immigration critic Louise Beaudoin to put forward her views on a secularism charter.
"Quebec is ready for secularism," said Richard, who founded a pressure group called Citizens of the World two weeks ago. People are tired of "accommodating this one and accommodating that one," she said.
In recent weeks, disparate groups ranging from hard-line indépendantistes to long-time advocates of scrubbing every last trace of religion from the public sphere have joined forces to put secularism on the political agenda.
In the National Assembly, the PQ has hammered relentlessly at the Liberal government to adopt a charter of secularism.
On Tuesday, 100 intellectuals, including former premier Bernard Landry, sociologist Guy Rocher, writer Jacques Godbout and journalist Marie-France Bazzo, signed a manifesto in Le Devoir calling for Quebec to become a secular state where the wearing of any religious garb like a hijab, cross or yarmulke by civil servants would be banned.
The Charest government, in full retreat, has hardened its stance on minority accommodation.
Last week, Quebec Family Minister Tony Tomassi vowed to stamp out religious instruction in publicly subsidized daycares - one day after he said he had no problem with religion in daycares. The National Assembly followed up by voting unanimously for a PQ motion to ban religion from subsidized daycares.
In the wake of revelations that a niqab-clad woman was expelled from a government French class for immigrants, Immigration Minister Yolande James has taken a hard line against the face veil and promised guidelines on the wearing of such religious symbols as the hijab (head scarf) by public employees.
But for secularism's true believers, like Daniel Baril, an organizer of this week's manifesto and former president of the Mouvement laïque québécois, such measures don't go far enough.
"Rather than dealing with this case by case, we need to affirm the secular character of the state," said Baril, who would take down crucifixes from every public building in the province and ban public employees from wearing religious garb.
"Whether it is a kippa or a cross or a turban or a kirpan, public employees should not wear any religious sign, just as we don't accept that public employees should be allowed to wear political emblems," Baril said.
"When I go to a government agency, I do not want to receive a non-verbal religious message that I did not solicit," Baril added. "Religion should not intrude in public services." Such talk is alarming to Daniel Cere, a professor of religion and public policy at McGill University.
"It's almost like ideological apartheid. It's a very denigrating attitude toward religion," he said.
Cere lamented that the government has backed away from the "open secularism" recommended by the Bouchard-Taylor Commission.
Its 2008 report proposed removing the crucifix from the National Assembly, allowing students to continue to wear the hijab, kippa, turban or kirpan in class, and banning prayers at city council meetings.
"The Bouchard-Taylor approach to secularism is one that is the most compatible with the best instincts of the Canadian-Quebec tradition," Cere said.
However, the government's recent hard line on accommodation of religious minorities is closer to the strict laïcité recommended by France's Stasi Commission in 2003, which banned all religious garments or symbols in schools, hospitals, government and other public spaces.
For sociologist Rocher, 85, an originator of the manifesto on secularism, following in France's footsteps is a logical progression from the Quiet Revolution. The secularization of Quebec in the 1960s ended "La grande noirceur," when the late premier Maurice Duplessis governed hand-in-hand with the powerful Catholic Church.
"Bouchard-Taylor is dead," said Rocher, who sat on the Parent Commission in the 1960s and was involved in setting up the CEGEP system in the late '60s and early '70s.
"With open secularism, there are no rules, no guidelines," he said.
Secularism isn't anti-religious - it puts everyone on an equal footing, Rocher said.
"It would get us out of the 'case-by-case' approach we have now," he said. "It has no political vision." But Daniel Weinstock, a philosophy professor at the Université de Montréal who holds the Canada Research Chair in Ethics and Political Philosophy, said that hard-line secularism tends to bolster the values of the majority at the expense of other groups.
"It's the minority's religious symbols that keep getting targeted for special attention," he said.
People notice visible signs of other religions but tend to overlook their own, like a Christmas tree in front of city hall, Weinstock said. "They're part of the oxygen that we breathe." Weinstock co-signed a pluralist manifesto in January that warned that talk of cracking down on all visible manifestations of religion is fanning anti-minority sentiments.
Cere agreed. "Bottom line, it's a problem with a new religious community, which is Islam," he said.
Adopting hard-line secularism could lead to the closing of private faith-based schools and social-service institutions with deep roots in Quebec, Cere warned.
"If you get this kind of consensus about daycare, you wonder what the next step is," he said. "I think religious education is going to come under attack."”
I would say they’re taking this too far. While I do support the removal of most religious symbols from the public space, I believe that pushing for a ban on religious garments is another matter. I do not feel as if religion is being pushed on me if someone is wearing a headscarf or a cross around their neck. I find the practice to be odd but, I see no problem in it. The government should have the power to control what religious symbols are displayed in the public setting. However, the government does not have the power to control what the individual wears. To do so would be a violation of personal freedom.
Quebec is pushing for secularism but are they taking it too far?
“As demonstrations go, the small protest in front of the cathedral in Trois Rivières on International Women's Day two weeks ago went almost unnoticed.
About 20 demonstrators with handwritten placards called on the Quebec government to stop accommodating religious minorities like Muslim women who wear the niqab - a face veil with a slit for the eyes.
It's time to stop tolerating religious practices "that pollute our society and deny the principle of equality between men and women," said organizer Andréa Richard, 75, a former nun and author of two books harshly critical of organized religion.
Richard called for a charter of "la laïcité" that would make Quebec an officially secular state.
Another demonstrator seconded the proposal: André Drouin, the former town councillor from Hérouxville - population 1,200 - whose 2007 bylaw banning the stoning of women sparked a furor over the accommodation of minorities and led to the Bouchard-Taylor Commission.
"In Quebec, 85 per cent of people don't want religious accommodation," Drouin, 62, a retired engineer who has been promoting his views to audiences across Canada, said in an interview this week.
Just a few short months ago, the idea of removing all signs of religion from the public sphere was confined to a vocal minority. But support for secularism - the belief that religion should be excluded from government and education - has never been higher in Quebec, a province that once deeply identified with the Roman Catholic Church.
On Thursday, Richard and other proponents met Parti Québécois opposition leader Pauline Marois and immigration critic Louise Beaudoin to put forward her views on a secularism charter.
"Quebec is ready for secularism," said Richard, who founded a pressure group called Citizens of the World two weeks ago. People are tired of "accommodating this one and accommodating that one," she said.
In recent weeks, disparate groups ranging from hard-line indépendantistes to long-time advocates of scrubbing every last trace of religion from the public sphere have joined forces to put secularism on the political agenda.
In the National Assembly, the PQ has hammered relentlessly at the Liberal government to adopt a charter of secularism.
On Tuesday, 100 intellectuals, including former premier Bernard Landry, sociologist Guy Rocher, writer Jacques Godbout and journalist Marie-France Bazzo, signed a manifesto in Le Devoir calling for Quebec to become a secular state where the wearing of any religious garb like a hijab, cross or yarmulke by civil servants would be banned.
The Charest government, in full retreat, has hardened its stance on minority accommodation.
Last week, Quebec Family Minister Tony Tomassi vowed to stamp out religious instruction in publicly subsidized daycares - one day after he said he had no problem with religion in daycares. The National Assembly followed up by voting unanimously for a PQ motion to ban religion from subsidized daycares.
In the wake of revelations that a niqab-clad woman was expelled from a government French class for immigrants, Immigration Minister Yolande James has taken a hard line against the face veil and promised guidelines on the wearing of such religious symbols as the hijab (head scarf) by public employees.
But for secularism's true believers, like Daniel Baril, an organizer of this week's manifesto and former president of the Mouvement laïque québécois, such measures don't go far enough.
"Rather than dealing with this case by case, we need to affirm the secular character of the state," said Baril, who would take down crucifixes from every public building in the province and ban public employees from wearing religious garb.
"Whether it is a kippa or a cross or a turban or a kirpan, public employees should not wear any religious sign, just as we don't accept that public employees should be allowed to wear political emblems," Baril said.
"When I go to a government agency, I do not want to receive a non-verbal religious message that I did not solicit," Baril added. "Religion should not intrude in public services." Such talk is alarming to Daniel Cere, a professor of religion and public policy at McGill University.
"It's almost like ideological apartheid. It's a very denigrating attitude toward religion," he said.
Cere lamented that the government has backed away from the "open secularism" recommended by the Bouchard-Taylor Commission.
Its 2008 report proposed removing the crucifix from the National Assembly, allowing students to continue to wear the hijab, kippa, turban or kirpan in class, and banning prayers at city council meetings.
"The Bouchard-Taylor approach to secularism is one that is the most compatible with the best instincts of the Canadian-Quebec tradition," Cere said.
However, the government's recent hard line on accommodation of religious minorities is closer to the strict laïcité recommended by France's Stasi Commission in 2003, which banned all religious garments or symbols in schools, hospitals, government and other public spaces.
For sociologist Rocher, 85, an originator of the manifesto on secularism, following in France's footsteps is a logical progression from the Quiet Revolution. The secularization of Quebec in the 1960s ended "La grande noirceur," when the late premier Maurice Duplessis governed hand-in-hand with the powerful Catholic Church.
"Bouchard-Taylor is dead," said Rocher, who sat on the Parent Commission in the 1960s and was involved in setting up the CEGEP system in the late '60s and early '70s.
"With open secularism, there are no rules, no guidelines," he said.
Secularism isn't anti-religious - it puts everyone on an equal footing, Rocher said.
"It would get us out of the 'case-by-case' approach we have now," he said. "It has no political vision." But Daniel Weinstock, a philosophy professor at the Université de Montréal who holds the Canada Research Chair in Ethics and Political Philosophy, said that hard-line secularism tends to bolster the values of the majority at the expense of other groups.
"It's the minority's religious symbols that keep getting targeted for special attention," he said.
People notice visible signs of other religions but tend to overlook their own, like a Christmas tree in front of city hall, Weinstock said. "They're part of the oxygen that we breathe." Weinstock co-signed a pluralist manifesto in January that warned that talk of cracking down on all visible manifestations of religion is fanning anti-minority sentiments.
Cere agreed. "Bottom line, it's a problem with a new religious community, which is Islam," he said.
Adopting hard-line secularism could lead to the closing of private faith-based schools and social-service institutions with deep roots in Quebec, Cere warned.
"If you get this kind of consensus about daycare, you wonder what the next step is," he said. "I think religious education is going to come under attack."”
I would say they’re taking this too far. While I do support the removal of most religious symbols from the public space, I believe that pushing for a ban on religious garments is another matter. I do not feel as if religion is being pushed on me if someone is wearing a headscarf or a cross around their neck. I find the practice to be odd but, I see no problem in it. The government should have the power to control what religious symbols are displayed in the public setting. However, the government does not have the power to control what the individual wears. To do so would be a violation of personal freedom.
A baseless claim to silence debate
http://www.stumpreport.com/000616-nazi-ideology-alive-and-well-in-the-eu
I posted the following response to this blatantly pro-Israel article:
“You're argument that implies that anyone who is critical of the actions of Israeli is an anti-semite who supports Nazism is despicable. It is nothing more than a low-blow designed to stifle any constructive debate over the issue.
I do not deny Israel's right to exist and defend itself. However, to suggest that criticism of Israeli's actions, which at times are unjustified, is motivated by a hatred of Jews is out of line. We should condemn any attacks on innocent Palestinians just as we should condemn any attacks on innocent Israeli's, both sides are guilty in this conflict. Both sides must be willing to acknowledge that fact if peace is to be obtained.
I won't argue that there is a sense of hypocrisy in regards to Western nations criticizing Israel for expanding it's terrority. Consider however, the fact that these actions may not be in Israel's best interest as it only creates anomosity towards the state from Arabs within the region.”
I’ll update if I get a response
I posted the following response to this blatantly pro-Israel article:
“You're argument that implies that anyone who is critical of the actions of Israeli is an anti-semite who supports Nazism is despicable. It is nothing more than a low-blow designed to stifle any constructive debate over the issue.
I do not deny Israel's right to exist and defend itself. However, to suggest that criticism of Israeli's actions, which at times are unjustified, is motivated by a hatred of Jews is out of line. We should condemn any attacks on innocent Palestinians just as we should condemn any attacks on innocent Israeli's, both sides are guilty in this conflict. Both sides must be willing to acknowledge that fact if peace is to be obtained.
I won't argue that there is a sense of hypocrisy in regards to Western nations criticizing Israel for expanding it's terrority. Consider however, the fact that these actions may not be in Israel's best interest as it only creates anomosity towards the state from Arabs within the region.”
I’ll update if I get a response
Monday, March 22, 2010
Going Green May not Mean Eating Green
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2712011
A new study calls into question the idea that eating less meat will save the environment:
“Eating less meat will not reduce global warming, and reports that claim it will are distracting society from finding real ways to beat climate change, a leading air quality expert said on Monday.
"We certainly can reduce our greenhouse gas production, but not by consuming less meat and milk," Frank Mitloehner, an air quality expert at the University of California-Davis, said as he presented a report on meat-eating and climate change at a conference of the American Chemical Society in California.
Blaming cows and pigs for climate change is scientifically inaccurate, said Mr. Mitloehner, dismissing several reports, including one issued in 2006 by the United Nations, which he said overstate the role that livestock play in global warming.
The UN report "Livestock's Long Shadow," which said livestock cause more anthropogenic greenhouse gases than all global transportation combined, merely distract from the real issues involved in climate change and are a distraction in the quest for true solutions to global warming, Mr. Mitloehner said.
The notion that eating less meat will help to combat climate change has spawned campaigns for "meatless Mondays" and a European campaign launched late last year, called "Less Meat Less Heat."
Former Beatle Paul McCartney, one of the world's best-known vegetarians, was a driving force behind "Less Meat Less Heat."
"[Mr.] McCartney and others seem to be well-intentioned but not well-schooled in the complex relationships among human activities, animal digestion, food production and atmospheric chemistry," Mr. Mitloehner said.
"Smarter animal farming, not less farming, will equal less heat," Mr. Mitloehner said.
"Producing less meat and milk will only mean more hunger in poor countries."
Developing countries "should adopt more efficient, Western-style farming practices, to make more food with less greenhouse gas production," Mr. Mitloehner added.
Rather than focusing on producing and eating less meat, Mr. Mitloehner said developed countries "should focus on cutting our use of oil and coal for electricity, heating and vehicle fuels."
In the United States, transportation creates an estimated 26% of all greenhouse gas emissions, whereas raising cattle and pigs for food accounts for about 3%, he said.
The UN report, issued in 2006, said global livestock rearing was responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions measured in carbon dioxide equivalents. The UN report said that was more than the greenhouse gases produced by transport.”
I’m not sure what to think of this study. It’ll be interesting to see if it garners more attention and feedback from the scientific community.
A new study calls into question the idea that eating less meat will save the environment:
“Eating less meat will not reduce global warming, and reports that claim it will are distracting society from finding real ways to beat climate change, a leading air quality expert said on Monday.
"We certainly can reduce our greenhouse gas production, but not by consuming less meat and milk," Frank Mitloehner, an air quality expert at the University of California-Davis, said as he presented a report on meat-eating and climate change at a conference of the American Chemical Society in California.
Blaming cows and pigs for climate change is scientifically inaccurate, said Mr. Mitloehner, dismissing several reports, including one issued in 2006 by the United Nations, which he said overstate the role that livestock play in global warming.
The UN report "Livestock's Long Shadow," which said livestock cause more anthropogenic greenhouse gases than all global transportation combined, merely distract from the real issues involved in climate change and are a distraction in the quest for true solutions to global warming, Mr. Mitloehner said.
The notion that eating less meat will help to combat climate change has spawned campaigns for "meatless Mondays" and a European campaign launched late last year, called "Less Meat Less Heat."
Former Beatle Paul McCartney, one of the world's best-known vegetarians, was a driving force behind "Less Meat Less Heat."
"[Mr.] McCartney and others seem to be well-intentioned but not well-schooled in the complex relationships among human activities, animal digestion, food production and atmospheric chemistry," Mr. Mitloehner said.
"Smarter animal farming, not less farming, will equal less heat," Mr. Mitloehner said.
"Producing less meat and milk will only mean more hunger in poor countries."
Developing countries "should adopt more efficient, Western-style farming practices, to make more food with less greenhouse gas production," Mr. Mitloehner added.
Rather than focusing on producing and eating less meat, Mr. Mitloehner said developed countries "should focus on cutting our use of oil and coal for electricity, heating and vehicle fuels."
In the United States, transportation creates an estimated 26% of all greenhouse gas emissions, whereas raising cattle and pigs for food accounts for about 3%, he said.
The UN report, issued in 2006, said global livestock rearing was responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions measured in carbon dioxide equivalents. The UN report said that was more than the greenhouse gases produced by transport.”
I’m not sure what to think of this study. It’ll be interesting to see if it garners more attention and feedback from the scientific community.
School Removes "Belief in God" From Mission Statement
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Culture/Default.aspx?id=944070
A school in Ohio has decided to temporarily removed “belief in God” from its mission statement. This decision has one pastor feeling rather upset.
“The Lake Township (Ohio) Board of Education has dropped "belief in God" from its mission statement.
On behalf of some local atheists, the Board decided December 14 to temporarily remove the phrase, but the Freedom from Religion Foundation is threatening to sue if the phrase is not kept out permanently. Pastor Jack Coontz of Uniontown Chapel of Faith suggests that majority rules.
"We have many churches; [we are] building new churches in our community. And for a handful of people to say that they don't like that, you know, this is America," he contends.
Coontz recommends that the few atheist parents there could home school their children, just as many Christian parents do as a way to keep their children out of a public school environment. He believes the Board of Education ought to stand its ground. "We are children of God. We're not a floor mat for anyone to wipe their feet on us. We are Christians and we're God's people," the pastor notes.
The pastor adds that the answer to the problem in Lake Township and elsewhere throughout the country is "Christians staying on their knees and taking care of this here with God. God's hearing prayer," he affirms, "and he still answers prayers."
A permanent decision on omitting the reference to God has not been made.
The Uniontown Chapel pastor has served on the police force for 29 years in addition to his pastoral duties. He is currently chief of police.”
Well pastor, I’d say you need to get out more. Not every American is a Christian who believes he or she is a child of God. You may believe that your prayers are answered but there of those who do not. The Founding Fathers wanted Church and State to remain separate because they understand that there was no way every citizen of
America would share the views of the faithful. You say that Ohio has many churches. Great, go pray there. Stay out of the schools.
A school in Ohio has decided to temporarily removed “belief in God” from its mission statement. This decision has one pastor feeling rather upset.
“The Lake Township (Ohio) Board of Education has dropped "belief in God" from its mission statement.
On behalf of some local atheists, the Board decided December 14 to temporarily remove the phrase, but the Freedom from Religion Foundation is threatening to sue if the phrase is not kept out permanently. Pastor Jack Coontz of Uniontown Chapel of Faith suggests that majority rules.
"We have many churches; [we are] building new churches in our community. And for a handful of people to say that they don't like that, you know, this is America," he contends.
Coontz recommends that the few atheist parents there could home school their children, just as many Christian parents do as a way to keep their children out of a public school environment. He believes the Board of Education ought to stand its ground. "We are children of God. We're not a floor mat for anyone to wipe their feet on us. We are Christians and we're God's people," the pastor notes.
The pastor adds that the answer to the problem in Lake Township and elsewhere throughout the country is "Christians staying on their knees and taking care of this here with God. God's hearing prayer," he affirms, "and he still answers prayers."
A permanent decision on omitting the reference to God has not been made.
The Uniontown Chapel pastor has served on the police force for 29 years in addition to his pastoral duties. He is currently chief of police.”
Well pastor, I’d say you need to get out more. Not every American is a Christian who believes he or she is a child of God. You may believe that your prayers are answered but there of those who do not. The Founding Fathers wanted Church and State to remain separate because they understand that there was no way every citizen of
America would share the views of the faithful. You say that Ohio has many churches. Great, go pray there. Stay out of the schools.
Book is Full of Misconceptions of Atheists
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/atheism.is.personal.rebellion.against.god.says.philosopher/25529.htm
A book analyzing the psychology of atheists would be a highly interesting read. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case with Spiegel’s book. While it’s implied that his work is groundbreaking what we find is a view of atheists that is typical of many fundamental theists.
“A professor of philosophy and religion at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana, Spiegel has written a 130-page book, The Making of an Atheist, in response to the New Atheists. But unlike the numerous responses that have emerged from Christian apologists, Spiegel's book focuses on the moral-psychological roots of atheism.”
A professor of philosophy and religion does not possess the credentials to write a reliable book on psychology. It’s no wonder then, that Spiegel cannot accept the idea that atheists have a disbelief in god due to a lack of evidence.
“He admits that it could appear unseemly or offensive to suggest that a person's lack of belief in God is a form of rebellion. But he said in a recent interview with the Evangelical Philosophical Society that he was compelled to write the book because he is convinced that "it is a clear biblical truth.”
Now, there are anti-theists, such as myself. I do have a sense of rebellion against god because I find the idea of a god to be rather unpleasant. However, the majority of non-believers are not rebelling against god. They’d probably say, “How can you rebel against something that likely does not exist?” No, non-believers are guided by the lack of evidence.
Spiegel attempts to argue, using a creationist as opposed to scientific analysis of the universe, that we are rejecting evidence of God’s existence.
“God has made His existence plain from creation – from the unimaginable vastness of the universe to the complex micro-universe of individual cells, Spiegel notes. Human consciousness, moral truths, miraculous occurrences and fulfilled biblical prophecies are also evidence of the reality of God.”
This statement does not provide insight into the psychology of atheists. Instead, it is the view of a religious person who has no concept of how the universe works. The beauty of the universe and the words of the Bible are not proof of either God’s existence or an atheist rebellion against God.
The following reads as if it was ripped from the pages of Conservapedia:
“Examining the psychology of atheism, Spiegel cites Paul C Vitz who revealed a link between atheism and fatherlessness.
"Human beings were made in God's image, and the father-child relationship mirrors that of humans as God's 'offspring'," Spiegel states. "We unconsciously (and often consciously, depending on one's worldview) conceive of God after the pattern of our earthly father.
"However, when one's earthly father is defective, whether because of death, abandonment, or abuse, this necessarily impacts one's thinking about God.”
Personally, I consider the relationship with my father fairly strong. I didn’t stop believing in God because I stopped believing in my father. The lack of evidence is what caused me to question my faith.
Alas, we will have to wait until a real book on the minds of atheists is released. Until then we are stuck with Spiegel’s pile of crap.
A book analyzing the psychology of atheists would be a highly interesting read. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case with Spiegel’s book. While it’s implied that his work is groundbreaking what we find is a view of atheists that is typical of many fundamental theists.
“A professor of philosophy and religion at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana, Spiegel has written a 130-page book, The Making of an Atheist, in response to the New Atheists. But unlike the numerous responses that have emerged from Christian apologists, Spiegel's book focuses on the moral-psychological roots of atheism.”
A professor of philosophy and religion does not possess the credentials to write a reliable book on psychology. It’s no wonder then, that Spiegel cannot accept the idea that atheists have a disbelief in god due to a lack of evidence.
“He admits that it could appear unseemly or offensive to suggest that a person's lack of belief in God is a form of rebellion. But he said in a recent interview with the Evangelical Philosophical Society that he was compelled to write the book because he is convinced that "it is a clear biblical truth.”
Now, there are anti-theists, such as myself. I do have a sense of rebellion against god because I find the idea of a god to be rather unpleasant. However, the majority of non-believers are not rebelling against god. They’d probably say, “How can you rebel against something that likely does not exist?” No, non-believers are guided by the lack of evidence.
Spiegel attempts to argue, using a creationist as opposed to scientific analysis of the universe, that we are rejecting evidence of God’s existence.
“God has made His existence plain from creation – from the unimaginable vastness of the universe to the complex micro-universe of individual cells, Spiegel notes. Human consciousness, moral truths, miraculous occurrences and fulfilled biblical prophecies are also evidence of the reality of God.”
This statement does not provide insight into the psychology of atheists. Instead, it is the view of a religious person who has no concept of how the universe works. The beauty of the universe and the words of the Bible are not proof of either God’s existence or an atheist rebellion against God.
The following reads as if it was ripped from the pages of Conservapedia:
“Examining the psychology of atheism, Spiegel cites Paul C Vitz who revealed a link between atheism and fatherlessness.
"Human beings were made in God's image, and the father-child relationship mirrors that of humans as God's 'offspring'," Spiegel states. "We unconsciously (and often consciously, depending on one's worldview) conceive of God after the pattern of our earthly father.
"However, when one's earthly father is defective, whether because of death, abandonment, or abuse, this necessarily impacts one's thinking about God.”
Personally, I consider the relationship with my father fairly strong. I didn’t stop believing in God because I stopped believing in my father. The lack of evidence is what caused me to question my faith.
Alas, we will have to wait until a real book on the minds of atheists is released. Until then we are stuck with Spiegel’s pile of crap.
A Tale of Abuse
The fourteen-year-old boy is abruptly awoken from his sleep. Wearing only a nightdress he is taken down the stairs to a dark room. Tired and confused he is still unaware of the horror about to fall upon him. Next thing he knows the nightdress is lifted up over his head exposing his naked body. He is forced down on his knees by a much old and taller man who then proceeds to stand on top of the young boy’s hands. Another man takes a belt, one that the boy would later discover he himself had made, and begins to flog the child who cries out in vain.
This story is made more terrific by the fact that it’s real.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/03/18/ireland.abuse.fallout/index.html?hpt=C2
What’s even more disturbing is that thousands of people like John Kelly experienced similar ordeals of rape and abuse at the hands of the Catholic Church. These priests are nothing more than vile predators, who if not for their positions would be left to rot in cold, dark cells for the remainder of their worthless lives.
This story is made more terrific by the fact that it’s real.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/03/18/ireland.abuse.fallout/index.html?hpt=C2
What’s even more disturbing is that thousands of people like John Kelly experienced similar ordeals of rape and abuse at the hands of the Catholic Church. These priests are nothing more than vile predators, who if not for their positions would be left to rot in cold, dark cells for the remainder of their worthless lives.
Useless Website
http://www.evolutionguy.com/booklet1/
There’s a new site out there that argues that evolution is a myth and *gasp* scientists know this but have been covering it up for years. I haven’t looked at the arguments in detail, you have to pay in order to do so. However, a brief glance of the bullet points indicates that what you’ll get for your hard-earned dollars are typical creationist talking points. The site fails to provide any information on the author’s background. I’m doubting it has anything to do with evolutionary science. At the bottom of the page we see “Did humans live with the dinosaurs”, which should throw any credibility this author has out of the window.
There’s a new site out there that argues that evolution is a myth and *gasp* scientists know this but have been covering it up for years. I haven’t looked at the arguments in detail, you have to pay in order to do so. However, a brief glance of the bullet points indicates that what you’ll get for your hard-earned dollars are typical creationist talking points. The site fails to provide any information on the author’s background. I’m doubting it has anything to do with evolutionary science. At the bottom of the page we see “Did humans live with the dinosaurs”, which should throw any credibility this author has out of the window.
Gays in Military=Genocide, Apparently
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/03/ex-general_links_gay_troops_to.html
Bigotry at its finest:
“A retired Marine general told senators on Thursday that the Dutch Army failed to protect the city of Srebrenica during the Bosnian war partly because of the presence of gay soldiers in its armed forces.
John J. Sheehan, a former NATO commander who retired in 1997, made his comments during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy that bans gay people from openly serving in uniform.
The collapse of the Soviet Union led European militaries, including the Netherlands, to believe there was no longer a need for active combat capabilities, Sheehan said.
"As a result, they declared a peace dividend and made a conscious effort to socialize their military," he said, noting that the Dutch allowed troops to join unions and enlisted openly gay soldiers. Dutch forces were poorly led and unable to hold off Serb forces in 1995, leading to the execution of Bosnian Muslims and one of the largest European massacres since World War II, Sheehan said.”
Sheehan is so blinded by his ignorance that he fails to see the other possibility, of which he notes, that European militaries were simply not trained for active combat capabilities. Later on in the hearing he does concede to this point:
“Sheehan later clarified that the general liberalization of the Dutch military contributed to the Srebenica debacle.”
Why not just say that in the first place? Instead, Sheehan felt inclined to single out gays and lesbians as being the catalyst for a tragedy.
Bigotry at its finest:
“A retired Marine general told senators on Thursday that the Dutch Army failed to protect the city of Srebrenica during the Bosnian war partly because of the presence of gay soldiers in its armed forces.
John J. Sheehan, a former NATO commander who retired in 1997, made his comments during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy that bans gay people from openly serving in uniform.
The collapse of the Soviet Union led European militaries, including the Netherlands, to believe there was no longer a need for active combat capabilities, Sheehan said.
"As a result, they declared a peace dividend and made a conscious effort to socialize their military," he said, noting that the Dutch allowed troops to join unions and enlisted openly gay soldiers. Dutch forces were poorly led and unable to hold off Serb forces in 1995, leading to the execution of Bosnian Muslims and one of the largest European massacres since World War II, Sheehan said.”
Sheehan is so blinded by his ignorance that he fails to see the other possibility, of which he notes, that European militaries were simply not trained for active combat capabilities. Later on in the hearing he does concede to this point:
“Sheehan later clarified that the general liberalization of the Dutch military contributed to the Srebenica debacle.”
Why not just say that in the first place? Instead, Sheehan felt inclined to single out gays and lesbians as being the catalyst for a tragedy.
Does Prayer Benefit Us?
Does prayer have any benefits? I recently came across an article in the Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-schrei/the-burden-of-proof-how-a_b_504667.html) that mentioned “numerous studies that demonstrate the neurological benefits of prayer.” Naturally, I sought to determine whether or not it’s the prayer that causes the benefits or if another force is at work.
First off, some background on the history of studies on prayer:
“Determining the efficacy of prayer has been attempted in various studies since Francis Galton first addressed it in 1872. Some studies have demonstrated benefit, some have demonstrated harm, and some have found no benefit from prayer. Others suggest that the topic is outside the realm of science altogether. According to the Washington Post, "...prayer is the most common complement to mainstream medicine, far outpacing acupuncture, herbs, vitamins and other alternative remedies.” (Researchers Look at Prayer and Healing, Washington Post, March 24, 2006)
Immediately we can see a problem with the statement in the Huffington Post, it fails to acknowledge studies that have found no benefit from prayer. It would be helpful if the studies mentioned in the Post article were referenced so they could be examined. Alas, this is not the case and we are forced to take the author at his word. Needless to say, this is not proof of the effectiveness of prayer, especially after the negative studies are factored in.
The following is information regarding positive results from prayer:
“A study published in 2008 used Eysenck's dimensional model of personality based on neuroticism and psychoticism to assess the mental health of high school students based on their self-reported frequency of prayer. For students both in Catholic and Protestant schools, higher levels of prayer were associated with better mental health as measured by lower psychoticism scores. However, among pupils attending Catholic schools, higher levels of prayer were also associated with higher neuroticism scores” (Leslie J. Francis et al. Prayer and psychological health in "Mental Health, Religion & Culture, Volume 11, Issue 1 January 2008").
“Many accept that prayer can aid in recovery, not due to divine influence but due to psychological and physical benefits. It has also been suggested that if a person knows that he or she is being prayed for it can be uplifting and increase morale, thus aiding recovery. (See Subject-expectancy effect.) Many studies have suggested that prayer can reduce physical stress, regardless of the god or gods a person prays to, and this may be true for many worldly reasons. According to a study by Centra State Hospital, "the psychological benefits of prayer may help reduce stress and anxiety, promote a more positive outlook, and strengthen the will to live” (Mind and Spirit. from the Health Library section of CentraState Healthcare System. Accessed May 18, 2006.).
“One condition that may affect the efficacy of intercessory prayer is whether the person praying has a connection to the person prayed for. A 2005 study published by The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine alleges evidence that healers in a variety of modalities were able to remotely influence the MRI-measurable brain activity in partners who were physically and electrically isolated, though little effort has been made to corroborate this study's conclusions” (Achterberg J, Cooke K, Richards T, Standish LJ, Kozak L, Lake J (December 2005). "Evidence for correlations between distant intentionality and brain function in recipients: a functional magnetic resonance imaging analysis". J Altern Complement Med 11 (6): 965–71. doi:10.1089/acm.2005.11.965. PMID 16398587.).
The trend that should be obvious from these studies, considering that it is mentioned, is the common factor of positive thinking. Would it then be incorrect to assume that positive thoughts, and not the prayer itself, are what cause the benefits? We also need to consider studies that show the ineffectiveness of prayer.
“Some studies of prayer effectiveness have yielded null results” (O'Laoire S (November 1997). "An experimental study of the effects of distant, intercessory prayer on self-esteem, anxiety, and depression". Altern Ther Health Med 3 (6): 38–53. PMID 9375429.)
“A 2001 double-blind study of the Mayo Clinic found no significant difference in the recovery rates between people who were (unbeknownst to them) assigned to a group that prayed for them and those who were not” (Aviles JM, Whelan SE, Hernke DA, et al. (December 2001). "Intercessory prayer and cardiovascular disease progression in a coronary care unit population: a randomized controlled trial". Mayo Clin. Proc. 76 (12): 1192–8. doi:10.4065/76.12.1192. PMID 11761499.).
Notice the difference between the people in the Mayo Clinic study and the other studies. In the other studies, people knew they were being prayed for. It is not so much the prayer that is effective but the knowledge that someone is praying for you (i.e. thinking of you).
We must be mindful of these multiple possibilities. It did not take a lot of digging to see the link between prayer and positive thoughts. When we factor in positive thoughts it becomes clear that it is not the prayer that is the source of benefits.
First off, some background on the history of studies on prayer:
“Determining the efficacy of prayer has been attempted in various studies since Francis Galton first addressed it in 1872. Some studies have demonstrated benefit, some have demonstrated harm, and some have found no benefit from prayer. Others suggest that the topic is outside the realm of science altogether. According to the Washington Post, "...prayer is the most common complement to mainstream medicine, far outpacing acupuncture, herbs, vitamins and other alternative remedies.” (Researchers Look at Prayer and Healing, Washington Post, March 24, 2006)
Immediately we can see a problem with the statement in the Huffington Post, it fails to acknowledge studies that have found no benefit from prayer. It would be helpful if the studies mentioned in the Post article were referenced so they could be examined. Alas, this is not the case and we are forced to take the author at his word. Needless to say, this is not proof of the effectiveness of prayer, especially after the negative studies are factored in.
The following is information regarding positive results from prayer:
“A study published in 2008 used Eysenck's dimensional model of personality based on neuroticism and psychoticism to assess the mental health of high school students based on their self-reported frequency of prayer. For students both in Catholic and Protestant schools, higher levels of prayer were associated with better mental health as measured by lower psychoticism scores. However, among pupils attending Catholic schools, higher levels of prayer were also associated with higher neuroticism scores” (Leslie J. Francis et al. Prayer and psychological health in "Mental Health, Religion & Culture, Volume 11, Issue 1 January 2008").
“Many accept that prayer can aid in recovery, not due to divine influence but due to psychological and physical benefits. It has also been suggested that if a person knows that he or she is being prayed for it can be uplifting and increase morale, thus aiding recovery. (See Subject-expectancy effect.) Many studies have suggested that prayer can reduce physical stress, regardless of the god or gods a person prays to, and this may be true for many worldly reasons. According to a study by Centra State Hospital, "the psychological benefits of prayer may help reduce stress and anxiety, promote a more positive outlook, and strengthen the will to live” (Mind and Spirit. from the Health Library section of CentraState Healthcare System. Accessed May 18, 2006.).
“One condition that may affect the efficacy of intercessory prayer is whether the person praying has a connection to the person prayed for. A 2005 study published by The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine alleges evidence that healers in a variety of modalities were able to remotely influence the MRI-measurable brain activity in partners who were physically and electrically isolated, though little effort has been made to corroborate this study's conclusions” (Achterberg J, Cooke K, Richards T, Standish LJ, Kozak L, Lake J (December 2005). "Evidence for correlations between distant intentionality and brain function in recipients: a functional magnetic resonance imaging analysis". J Altern Complement Med 11 (6): 965–71. doi:10.1089/acm.2005.11.965. PMID 16398587.).
The trend that should be obvious from these studies, considering that it is mentioned, is the common factor of positive thinking. Would it then be incorrect to assume that positive thoughts, and not the prayer itself, are what cause the benefits? We also need to consider studies that show the ineffectiveness of prayer.
“Some studies of prayer effectiveness have yielded null results” (O'Laoire S (November 1997). "An experimental study of the effects of distant, intercessory prayer on self-esteem, anxiety, and depression". Altern Ther Health Med 3 (6): 38–53. PMID 9375429.)
“A 2001 double-blind study of the Mayo Clinic found no significant difference in the recovery rates between people who were (unbeknownst to them) assigned to a group that prayed for them and those who were not” (Aviles JM, Whelan SE, Hernke DA, et al. (December 2001). "Intercessory prayer and cardiovascular disease progression in a coronary care unit population: a randomized controlled trial". Mayo Clin. Proc. 76 (12): 1192–8. doi:10.4065/76.12.1192. PMID 11761499.).
Notice the difference between the people in the Mayo Clinic study and the other studies. In the other studies, people knew they were being prayed for. It is not so much the prayer that is effective but the knowledge that someone is praying for you (i.e. thinking of you).
We must be mindful of these multiple possibilities. It did not take a lot of digging to see the link between prayer and positive thoughts. When we factor in positive thoughts it becomes clear that it is not the prayer that is the source of benefits.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
What's Wrong with Texas?
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2010/03/the_next_governor_of_texas.php
Texas, everywhere you turn you find a crazy fundamentalist:
“A jail guard in Texas has been fired from his position after saying a whole lot of quite obnoxious things to his fellow officers. And Stephen Johnson has some seriously crazy opinions:
In October, he interrupted a private conversation among jail staff and "interjected his own opinions," telling them all gays should be annihilated, sheriff's reports show. He also said that whites were the superior race and that he supported slavery, reports show.
Johnson said the Bible supported his opinions, reports show.
He showed a co-worker an ancestry binder that he said proved his family once owned several slaves, reports said. Johnson refused to leave after co-workers told him they were offended by his comments, according to reports.
It gets worse:
"I believe that all dinosaurs were born of Satanic angel who has sex with woman and the animal kingdom that created ungodly reptilian creatures none of these were on the Ark," Johnson said.
Johnson also said that he didn't believe in homosexuality and "that they should be put to death," according to his statement. But he said his beliefs don't lead him to treat gays differently.
I think we've found the poster child for the new Texas social studies standards.”
“Satanic angel who has sex with woman.” If you need proof that fundamentalists suffer from some sort of mental disorder, here it is.
Texas, everywhere you turn you find a crazy fundamentalist:
“A jail guard in Texas has been fired from his position after saying a whole lot of quite obnoxious things to his fellow officers. And Stephen Johnson has some seriously crazy opinions:
In October, he interrupted a private conversation among jail staff and "interjected his own opinions," telling them all gays should be annihilated, sheriff's reports show. He also said that whites were the superior race and that he supported slavery, reports show.
Johnson said the Bible supported his opinions, reports show.
He showed a co-worker an ancestry binder that he said proved his family once owned several slaves, reports said. Johnson refused to leave after co-workers told him they were offended by his comments, according to reports.
It gets worse:
"I believe that all dinosaurs were born of Satanic angel who has sex with woman and the animal kingdom that created ungodly reptilian creatures none of these were on the Ark," Johnson said.
Johnson also said that he didn't believe in homosexuality and "that they should be put to death," according to his statement. But he said his beliefs don't lead him to treat gays differently.
I think we've found the poster child for the new Texas social studies standards.”
“Satanic angel who has sex with woman.” If you need proof that fundamentalists suffer from some sort of mental disorder, here it is.
A Question of Freedom of Religion
http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Remove+niqab+medicare+card/2689482/story.html
Quebec’s Human Rights Commission ruled that a request for women to remove the niqab is not a violation of religious freedom.
“A niqab-clad woman must uncover her face to confirm her identity when applying for a Quebec medicare card, the province’s human rights commission says.
And she does not have the right to insist on being served by a woman when doing so, the commission said in an opinion issued Tuesday.”
It seems like a fair decision, the province isn’t demanding that the niqab is banned outright. Therefore, this is a reasonable compromise.
I’m fascinated by the power of religion to make people think that disobeying the tenets of their faith, even if it’s only for a few seconds, will result in eternal punishment. Wouldn’t an all-knowing and forgiving God understand that removing the niqab was necessary?
Quebec’s Human Rights Commission ruled that a request for women to remove the niqab is not a violation of religious freedom.
“A niqab-clad woman must uncover her face to confirm her identity when applying for a Quebec medicare card, the province’s human rights commission says.
And she does not have the right to insist on being served by a woman when doing so, the commission said in an opinion issued Tuesday.”
It seems like a fair decision, the province isn’t demanding that the niqab is banned outright. Therefore, this is a reasonable compromise.
I’m fascinated by the power of religion to make people think that disobeying the tenets of their faith, even if it’s only for a few seconds, will result in eternal punishment. Wouldn’t an all-knowing and forgiving God understand that removing the niqab was necessary?
Respect the Ways of the Jedi
http://www.torontosun.com/news/weird/2010/03/17/13260641.html
I have to wonder if this man is serious in his belief or if he is using this as a way to point the humour in the idea that people’s religious views should be immune to any form of criticism or discrimination.
“Chris Jarvis of Southend, England, says wearing his hood up is his religious right.
The subscriber to the Jedi Faith - from the Star Wars fictional universe ‹ was asked to remove his hood in a Southend Jobcentre recently, reports the U.K.'s Daily Mail.
But instead of using the Force to convince staff they didn't really want him to comply with the dress code, Jarvis alleged he was being discriminated against.
“I am a Star Wars follower. It means following the way of the Jedi,” Jarvis told the Daily Mail. “The main reason is I want to wear my hood up and I have got a religion which allows me to do that.
“Someone with their own religious views is allowed to wear what their religion says ‹ the Sikhs are able to carry a great big dagger. My religion allows me to wear my hood.”
The father of three wrote Jobcentre Plus to complain of the incident. They sent him back an apology letter.
“We as an organization have a duty of care to both customers and staff, therefore for security reasons we ask customers to remove their hoods. I have spoken to member staff and it was not their intention to offend your beliefs,” the letter says.
Despite the apology, Jarvis intends to sue, the Daily Mail reports.
In a 2001 census, about 30,000 people in the U.K. listed Jedi as their religion, making it the fourth most popular belief system in the country.
In the 2001 Canadian census, 20,000 people identified as followers of the Jedi faith.
Other English-speaking countries saw similar numbers. A widespread Internet campaign helped spark the Jedi census phenomenon.”
Hmm, I wonder if it would be possible for me to get tattoos that are visible on my arm and when told to cover them at work I could just claim it to be part of a religion that requires me to modify my appearance.
I have to wonder if this man is serious in his belief or if he is using this as a way to point the humour in the idea that people’s religious views should be immune to any form of criticism or discrimination.
“Chris Jarvis of Southend, England, says wearing his hood up is his religious right.
The subscriber to the Jedi Faith - from the Star Wars fictional universe ‹ was asked to remove his hood in a Southend Jobcentre recently, reports the U.K.'s Daily Mail.
But instead of using the Force to convince staff they didn't really want him to comply with the dress code, Jarvis alleged he was being discriminated against.
“I am a Star Wars follower. It means following the way of the Jedi,” Jarvis told the Daily Mail. “The main reason is I want to wear my hood up and I have got a religion which allows me to do that.
“Someone with their own religious views is allowed to wear what their religion says ‹ the Sikhs are able to carry a great big dagger. My religion allows me to wear my hood.”
The father of three wrote Jobcentre Plus to complain of the incident. They sent him back an apology letter.
“We as an organization have a duty of care to both customers and staff, therefore for security reasons we ask customers to remove their hoods. I have spoken to member staff and it was not their intention to offend your beliefs,” the letter says.
Despite the apology, Jarvis intends to sue, the Daily Mail reports.
In a 2001 census, about 30,000 people in the U.K. listed Jedi as their religion, making it the fourth most popular belief system in the country.
In the 2001 Canadian census, 20,000 people identified as followers of the Jedi faith.
Other English-speaking countries saw similar numbers. A widespread Internet campaign helped spark the Jedi census phenomenon.”
Hmm, I wonder if it would be possible for me to get tattoos that are visible on my arm and when told to cover them at work I could just claim it to be part of a religion that requires me to modify my appearance.
School Board Asking Religious Leaders to Open Meetings With Prayer
http://www.theledger.com/article/20100316/NEWS/3165044/1338
Polk County School Board is apparently being run by religious fanatics who don’t understand the First Amendment.
“Polk County School Board members decided Tuesday to ask various religious leaders to open their meetings with prayer.
Board Member Frank O'Reilly suggested the idea. Currently, board members rotate turns to lead the group in a prayer before each meeting.
"We have a list of members of clergy throughout the area," O'Reilly said. "Include all of the religious people and we can end this," O'Reilly said, referring to recent scrutiny of the practice of prayers before government meetings.”
Fortunately, secularists, including a Jewish organization have spoken out against the proposal.
“Members of the Lakeland chapter of Atheists of Florida and its state leader spoke Monday at the Lakeland City Commission meeting, calling for an end to the invocations. Last month, the leadership of Temple Emanuel, the Jewish synagogue in Lakeland, sent letters to county, school board and Lakeland leaders, asking that the policy be altered to a moment of silence instead of a spoken prayer.”
What’s worrying though is that the decision was inspired by laws that already exist in Polk County.
“The change in policy brings the school board into alignment with the policies of several other government bodies in the county, including the Polk County Commission and the Lakeland City Commission.
The courts have tended to view that policy as more constitutionally sound than having elected officials, themselves, offer the prayers.”
Actually, what would be more constitutionally sound would be to not bring in religious figures to lead the prayers and instead have a moment of silence. If an official wishes to pray, he or she can do so privately without forcing it upon everyone else.
Polk County School Board is apparently being run by religious fanatics who don’t understand the First Amendment.
“Polk County School Board members decided Tuesday to ask various religious leaders to open their meetings with prayer.
Board Member Frank O'Reilly suggested the idea. Currently, board members rotate turns to lead the group in a prayer before each meeting.
"We have a list of members of clergy throughout the area," O'Reilly said. "Include all of the religious people and we can end this," O'Reilly said, referring to recent scrutiny of the practice of prayers before government meetings.”
Fortunately, secularists, including a Jewish organization have spoken out against the proposal.
“Members of the Lakeland chapter of Atheists of Florida and its state leader spoke Monday at the Lakeland City Commission meeting, calling for an end to the invocations. Last month, the leadership of Temple Emanuel, the Jewish synagogue in Lakeland, sent letters to county, school board and Lakeland leaders, asking that the policy be altered to a moment of silence instead of a spoken prayer.”
What’s worrying though is that the decision was inspired by laws that already exist in Polk County.
“The change in policy brings the school board into alignment with the policies of several other government bodies in the county, including the Polk County Commission and the Lakeland City Commission.
The courts have tended to view that policy as more constitutionally sound than having elected officials, themselves, offer the prayers.”
Actually, what would be more constitutionally sound would be to not bring in religious figures to lead the prayers and instead have a moment of silence. If an official wishes to pray, he or she can do so privately without forcing it upon everyone else.
Students Ignorant of Scientific History
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/03/17/2010-03-17_survey_british_students_say_buzz_lightyear_luke_skywalker_first_men_on_moon.html
I’m not sure whether or not the results of this survey should be of any concern given the age of the students.
“The students, who ranged in age from 4 to 16, responded with a slew of creative answers that included:
"Toy Story"'s Lightyear was the first man to set foot on the moon (it was Neil Armstrong). Luke Skywalker from "Star Wars" also was named.
Sir Isaac Newton invented fire, while others answered he created the Internet (he actually developed the theory of gravity).
Alexander Graham Bell was named by a majority of students as the inventor of the telephone, but other answers included the Queen of England and Charles Darwin (who developed the theory of evolution).”
The responses are almost laughable though again we have to consider the age of the respondents. It’s likely that they have never been educated on the issue (though oddly they are familiar with the names of people like Newton and Darwin so how they don’t know what these people actually did is strange).
I’m not sure whether or not the results of this survey should be of any concern given the age of the students.
“The students, who ranged in age from 4 to 16, responded with a slew of creative answers that included:
"Toy Story"'s Lightyear was the first man to set foot on the moon (it was Neil Armstrong). Luke Skywalker from "Star Wars" also was named.
Sir Isaac Newton invented fire, while others answered he created the Internet (he actually developed the theory of gravity).
Alexander Graham Bell was named by a majority of students as the inventor of the telephone, but other answers included the Queen of England and Charles Darwin (who developed the theory of evolution).”
The responses are almost laughable though again we have to consider the age of the respondents. It’s likely that they have never been educated on the issue (though oddly they are familiar with the names of people like Newton and Darwin so how they don’t know what these people actually did is strange).
Respect Humanity
http://galusaustralis.com/2010/03/2817/the-atheist-delusion/
“While I have no reason to believe that atheists in general are devoid of morality and purpose, the question that remains unanswered is “what is their justification for having a morality and a purpose?” Why does a bunch of atoms (regardless of complexity) require a code of ethics and morality? Furthermore, why would a bunch of chemicals be so concerned if another bunch of chemicals happens to feel that there is some form of metaphysical force that makes certain arrangements of chemicals (living things) sacred?”
My take on this issue is that we as humans are all connected to the web of life and each other. We are not separate from the universe from which we spawned. Therefore, this connection entices us to act in a moral manner towards our fellow creatures. I have an obligation to other humans to treat them with dignity and respect. Not because I believe in a supernatural source of morality but, simply because my mind tells me it is the right thing to do.
“While I have no reason to believe that atheists in general are devoid of morality and purpose, the question that remains unanswered is “what is their justification for having a morality and a purpose?” Why does a bunch of atoms (regardless of complexity) require a code of ethics and morality? Furthermore, why would a bunch of chemicals be so concerned if another bunch of chemicals happens to feel that there is some form of metaphysical force that makes certain arrangements of chemicals (living things) sacred?”
My take on this issue is that we as humans are all connected to the web of life and each other. We are not separate from the universe from which we spawned. Therefore, this connection entices us to act in a moral manner towards our fellow creatures. I have an obligation to other humans to treat them with dignity and respect. Not because I believe in a supernatural source of morality but, simply because my mind tells me it is the right thing to do.
Detroit Bus Campaign Comes Under Attack
http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2010/03/pro-atheist_ads_on_smart_buses.html
I really want to know what gets people so up in arms over an advertisement that does nothing to attack religion.
“Apparently some people aren't happy with a new ad campaign targeting Metro Detroit atheists.
Earlier this month, the Detroit chapter of the United Coalition of Reason purchased pro-atheist banner ads on the sides of Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation buses. Against a sky background, they read "Don't believe in God? You are not alone."
In a press release today, the group says the word "Don't" was either scratched out or torn off some the ads.
"Acts like this give a striking reminder that our message is necessary," said Ruthe Milan, coordinator of Detroit CoR. "Without a doubt, prejudice against atheists and agnostics is still very real in American life."
The group also says SMART replaced the ads free of charge, which originally cost $5,250.
"Because this has happened, we stand even more resolved in our goal of being outspoken about our ideas," Milan added. "And we expect that this vandalism will convince even more nontheistic Detroiters that getting organized is important for the cause of religious liberty."”
The message is positive it should not be viewed as insulting in anyway. If the advertisements said “religion is stupid and atheists are the enlightened ones” I could understand the opposition. Otherwise, the opposition is just childish behaviour by childish minds.
I really want to know what gets people so up in arms over an advertisement that does nothing to attack religion.
“Apparently some people aren't happy with a new ad campaign targeting Metro Detroit atheists.
Earlier this month, the Detroit chapter of the United Coalition of Reason purchased pro-atheist banner ads on the sides of Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation buses. Against a sky background, they read "Don't believe in God? You are not alone."
In a press release today, the group says the word "Don't" was either scratched out or torn off some the ads.
"Acts like this give a striking reminder that our message is necessary," said Ruthe Milan, coordinator of Detroit CoR. "Without a doubt, prejudice against atheists and agnostics is still very real in American life."
The group also says SMART replaced the ads free of charge, which originally cost $5,250.
"Because this has happened, we stand even more resolved in our goal of being outspoken about our ideas," Milan added. "And we expect that this vandalism will convince even more nontheistic Detroiters that getting organized is important for the cause of religious liberty."”
The message is positive it should not be viewed as insulting in anyway. If the advertisements said “religion is stupid and atheists are the enlightened ones” I could understand the opposition. Otherwise, the opposition is just childish behaviour by childish minds.
This Summarizes Religion Wonderfully
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28532
Yes, The Onion is satire but, this article nails religion on the head.
“PITTSBURGH, PA–Arcane, poorly translated scrolls etched by an unknown hand thousands of years ago were taken at face value Monday, when Pittsburgh orthodontist Donald Reuss consulted an English translation of a Hebraic manuscript titled "Deuteronomy" for guidance in a personal crisis.
"I was at my wits' end over what to do about my failing marriage," Reuss said. "Marjorie and I thought about counseling, therapy, even divorce. In the end, though, I got the help I needed from a book of stories inscribed by an itinerant Middle Eastern shepherd many millennia ago."
Reuss said he learned of the antediluvian text from a friend following an argument with his wife. "Bob said he had a book that I should read," Reuss said. "I figured it would be some sort of self-help book written by one of those professional therapists born in the latter half of the 20th century. But to my surprise, it was a contemporary printing of a historical and genealogical account of the growth and persecution of the Jewish people, originally written in ancient Hebrew. And you know what? Not only were the tales relevant to my situation, they're completely true!"
Deuteronomy, like the four other books with which it is often collected, is believed to have originated from the oral folklore of nomadic Jews who wandered the deserts of the Middle East. The stories that emerged from this oral tradition were handed down through subsequent generations and ultimately written down in now-dead tongues. In the modern era, the books have proven to be of great interest both to historians specializing in ancient Middle Eastern tribal cultures and to people with problems.
Reuss is not the only troubled American to consult an ancient Nile Valley manuscript in recent years. In April 1998, Wayzata, MN, homemaker Brenda Smolensk credited "Exodus" with guiding her through a period of severe depression.
"I was deeply confused about my place in the world," Smolensk said. "I needed to know what life was all about, what I was put on Earth for. Luckily, that exact matter had been discussed in Exodus by a roving scribe some 4,000 years ago."
"At first, I was skeptical about what relevance these ancient writings could possibly have to my situation," Smolensk continued. "But they actually deal with all kinds of germane topics, from what meats one should not eat due to mankind's lack of refrigeration technology to the pre-Iron Age accounts of territorial disputes affecting a certain area of the Fertile Crescent."
"We are pleased that so many have found comfort and guidance in God's word," said Peter Wanamaker, president and founder of In His Name Books, a publishing house specializing in archaic texts of the sort which aided Reuss and Smolensk. "The problems that plague modern man have not changed, and neither have the solutions."
Well put, religion is nothing more than a fairy tale that has been able to prevail throughout history. It shows the willingness of the human mind to latch onto these feel good ideas without examining the history of the idea.
Yes, The Onion is satire but, this article nails religion on the head.
“PITTSBURGH, PA–Arcane, poorly translated scrolls etched by an unknown hand thousands of years ago were taken at face value Monday, when Pittsburgh orthodontist Donald Reuss consulted an English translation of a Hebraic manuscript titled "Deuteronomy" for guidance in a personal crisis.
"I was at my wits' end over what to do about my failing marriage," Reuss said. "Marjorie and I thought about counseling, therapy, even divorce. In the end, though, I got the help I needed from a book of stories inscribed by an itinerant Middle Eastern shepherd many millennia ago."
Reuss said he learned of the antediluvian text from a friend following an argument with his wife. "Bob said he had a book that I should read," Reuss said. "I figured it would be some sort of self-help book written by one of those professional therapists born in the latter half of the 20th century. But to my surprise, it was a contemporary printing of a historical and genealogical account of the growth and persecution of the Jewish people, originally written in ancient Hebrew. And you know what? Not only were the tales relevant to my situation, they're completely true!"
Deuteronomy, like the four other books with which it is often collected, is believed to have originated from the oral folklore of nomadic Jews who wandered the deserts of the Middle East. The stories that emerged from this oral tradition were handed down through subsequent generations and ultimately written down in now-dead tongues. In the modern era, the books have proven to be of great interest both to historians specializing in ancient Middle Eastern tribal cultures and to people with problems.
Reuss is not the only troubled American to consult an ancient Nile Valley manuscript in recent years. In April 1998, Wayzata, MN, homemaker Brenda Smolensk credited "Exodus" with guiding her through a period of severe depression.
"I was deeply confused about my place in the world," Smolensk said. "I needed to know what life was all about, what I was put on Earth for. Luckily, that exact matter had been discussed in Exodus by a roving scribe some 4,000 years ago."
"At first, I was skeptical about what relevance these ancient writings could possibly have to my situation," Smolensk continued. "But they actually deal with all kinds of germane topics, from what meats one should not eat due to mankind's lack of refrigeration technology to the pre-Iron Age accounts of territorial disputes affecting a certain area of the Fertile Crescent."
"We are pleased that so many have found comfort and guidance in God's word," said Peter Wanamaker, president and founder of In His Name Books, a publishing house specializing in archaic texts of the sort which aided Reuss and Smolensk. "The problems that plague modern man have not changed, and neither have the solutions."
Well put, religion is nothing more than a fairy tale that has been able to prevail throughout history. It shows the willingness of the human mind to latch onto these feel good ideas without examining the history of the idea.
Breaking the Law Will Undermine Efforts
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/7443307/Greenpeace-chief-breaking-law-justifiable-in-fight-against-climate-change.html
Radicalism is not the answer to the question of how do we make people aware of the realities of climate change.
“Kumi Naidoo said the organisation had no intention of scaling back its tactics as he compared protesters' actions to Mahatma Ghandi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King saying they too broke the law.
"In some ways we will probably intensify it because all the science is telling us that time is running out for this planet," he said.
However he emphasised that the group was "deeply committed to peace" and would not resort to violence.
Last week 54 Greenpeace protectors were charged with trespass after spending the night on the roof of the Houses of Parliament in October last year.”
He needs to clarify what he means by breaking the law. While he does call for people to be “committed to peace” and that no one should resort to violent, he is taking for granted the thought that everyone will behave in a similar manner. I find this to be problem with any advocate of using “law-breaking” to get a point across. All it takes is one fool to go too far in his or her actions, peaceful unlawful protest can quickly turn violent. Such actions will only undermine the cause of those in the environmental movement.
I really have no idea as to what is being accomplished by spending the night on the roof of the Houses of Parliament. If the protestors used their heads, they’d realize the debate isn’t even going to be about climate change, it will be about their actions.
Radicalism is not the answer to the question of how do we make people aware of the realities of climate change.
“Kumi Naidoo said the organisation had no intention of scaling back its tactics as he compared protesters' actions to Mahatma Ghandi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King saying they too broke the law.
"In some ways we will probably intensify it because all the science is telling us that time is running out for this planet," he said.
However he emphasised that the group was "deeply committed to peace" and would not resort to violence.
Last week 54 Greenpeace protectors were charged with trespass after spending the night on the roof of the Houses of Parliament in October last year.”
He needs to clarify what he means by breaking the law. While he does call for people to be “committed to peace” and that no one should resort to violent, he is taking for granted the thought that everyone will behave in a similar manner. I find this to be problem with any advocate of using “law-breaking” to get a point across. All it takes is one fool to go too far in his or her actions, peaceful unlawful protest can quickly turn violent. Such actions will only undermine the cause of those in the environmental movement.
I really have no idea as to what is being accomplished by spending the night on the roof of the Houses of Parliament. If the protestors used their heads, they’d realize the debate isn’t even going to be about climate change, it will be about their actions.
Harper's War on Climate Science
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Climate+change+scientists+feel+muzzled+Ottawa+Documents/2684065/story.html
If you needed proof that the Harper government is attempting to silence climate scientists, here it is.
“A dramatic reduction in Canadian media coverage of climate change science issues is the result of the Harper government introducing new rules in 2007 to control interviews by Environment Canada scientists with journalists, says a newly released federal document.
"Scientists have noticed a major reduction in the number of requests, particularly from high profile media, who often have same-day deadlines," said the Environment Canada document. "Media coverage of climate change science, our most high-profile issue, has been reduced by over 80 per cent."
The analysis reviewed the impact of a new federal communications policy at Environment Canada, which required senior federal scientists to seek permission from the government prior to giving interviews.
In many cases, the policy also required them to get approval from supervisors of written responses to the questions submitted by journalists before any interview, said the document, obtained in an investigation into the government's views and policies on global-warming science that was conducted by Climate Action Network Canada, a coalition of environmental groups.
The document suggests the new communications policy has practically eliminated senior federal scientists from media coverage of climate-change science issues, leaving them frustrated that the government was trying to "muzzle" them.
"Many (federal climate change) scientists are recognized experts in their field, have received media training, and have successfully carried out media interviews for many years," said the document, leaked by an Environment Canada employee who asked not to be named.
"Our scientists are very frustrated with the new process. They feel the intent of the policy is to prevent them from speaking to media."
The Environment Canada analysis noted that four prominent scientists, who regularly spoke for the government on climate change science issues, appeared in only 12 newspaper clippings in the first nine months of 2008, compared with 99 clippings over the same period in 2007.
"There is a widespread perception among Canadian media that our scientists have been 'muzzled' by the media relations policy," said the Environment Canada document. "Media coverage of this perception, which originated with a Canwest story in February 2008, is continuing, with at least 47 articles in Canadian newspapers to date."
The document also noted that government scientists voiced their displeasure to communications officials about the policy during meetings in June 2008. A few months later, a couple of requests for interviews with scientists in the midst of the 2008 federal election campaign were never answered, including one request that was "denied" after it was forwarded to the office of former environment minister John Baird.
Andrew Cuddy, 21, who led the investigation by Climate Action Network, said that it reveals "troubling evidence" about the government's approach to climate-science research, funding, appointments on science panels and communications.
"We've catalogued a host of evidence from different areas," said Cuddy. "They kind of all point to the government trying to undermine climate science research. (It) goes against their public statements saying that they're committed to research and that they believe the fundamentals of climate science."
The coalition said that one of the biggest concerns is whether the government is adequately funding climate-science research at Environment Canada and other departments after refusing to offer new subsidies for an independent research organization, the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Science, considered to be the lead agency for global warming research in Canada's universities.
"It's definitely a scandal," said Graham Saul, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada. He added that the government was "muzzling scientists; they're putting climate deniers in key oversight positions over research, and they're reducing funding in key areas. . . . It's almost as though they're making a conscious attempt to bury the truth."
Environment Minister Jim Prentice told reporters last week that the government wasn't trying to shut down the foundation but wanted it to report on how it spent previous grants of $110 million dating back to the year 2000.
"It's appropriate I think at this point that we take stock of what we've achieved for those dollars," Prentice said. "We'll work together with the foundation to make sure that that happens. They've got the resources to do it and we'll assess it from there."
The foundation says it has funded nearly 200 research projects that have led to breakthroughs in climatology, meteorology and oceanography, transforming operations in the federal government and private companies. But it has described Prentice's approach as a "nightmare scenario" since it no longer has money for new research.
In a statement e-mailed to Canwest News Service, Environment Canada said the new communications policy has allowed its scientists and experts to interact directly with the media on numerous occasions.
"The new policy merely assures that communications with the media are co-ordinated, to achieve the goals set out above — namely, quick, accurate and consistent responses across Canada," said the statement.
It added that it responded to 254 climate change-related requests in 2008 and 428 climate change requests in 2009.
The department also said it has taken many steps to inform Canadians about the work done by government scientists, including partnerships with other departments, new content added to websites such as www.science.gc.ca and the publication of Envirozine, an Environment Canada newsletter, as well as publishing about 700 peer-reviewed articles per year.”
This report brings back unpleasant memories of George Bush’s anti-science policies. Environment Canada claims that it makes communication easier but, the scientists certainly don’t view it that way. I’m inclined to side with the scientists as (political branch of) Environment Canada represents the interests of the Environment Minister and by extension the PMO.
If you needed proof that the Harper government is attempting to silence climate scientists, here it is.
“A dramatic reduction in Canadian media coverage of climate change science issues is the result of the Harper government introducing new rules in 2007 to control interviews by Environment Canada scientists with journalists, says a newly released federal document.
"Scientists have noticed a major reduction in the number of requests, particularly from high profile media, who often have same-day deadlines," said the Environment Canada document. "Media coverage of climate change science, our most high-profile issue, has been reduced by over 80 per cent."
The analysis reviewed the impact of a new federal communications policy at Environment Canada, which required senior federal scientists to seek permission from the government prior to giving interviews.
In many cases, the policy also required them to get approval from supervisors of written responses to the questions submitted by journalists before any interview, said the document, obtained in an investigation into the government's views and policies on global-warming science that was conducted by Climate Action Network Canada, a coalition of environmental groups.
The document suggests the new communications policy has practically eliminated senior federal scientists from media coverage of climate-change science issues, leaving them frustrated that the government was trying to "muzzle" them.
"Many (federal climate change) scientists are recognized experts in their field, have received media training, and have successfully carried out media interviews for many years," said the document, leaked by an Environment Canada employee who asked not to be named.
"Our scientists are very frustrated with the new process. They feel the intent of the policy is to prevent them from speaking to media."
The Environment Canada analysis noted that four prominent scientists, who regularly spoke for the government on climate change science issues, appeared in only 12 newspaper clippings in the first nine months of 2008, compared with 99 clippings over the same period in 2007.
"There is a widespread perception among Canadian media that our scientists have been 'muzzled' by the media relations policy," said the Environment Canada document. "Media coverage of this perception, which originated with a Canwest story in February 2008, is continuing, with at least 47 articles in Canadian newspapers to date."
The document also noted that government scientists voiced their displeasure to communications officials about the policy during meetings in June 2008. A few months later, a couple of requests for interviews with scientists in the midst of the 2008 federal election campaign were never answered, including one request that was "denied" after it was forwarded to the office of former environment minister John Baird.
Andrew Cuddy, 21, who led the investigation by Climate Action Network, said that it reveals "troubling evidence" about the government's approach to climate-science research, funding, appointments on science panels and communications.
"We've catalogued a host of evidence from different areas," said Cuddy. "They kind of all point to the government trying to undermine climate science research. (It) goes against their public statements saying that they're committed to research and that they believe the fundamentals of climate science."
The coalition said that one of the biggest concerns is whether the government is adequately funding climate-science research at Environment Canada and other departments after refusing to offer new subsidies for an independent research organization, the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Science, considered to be the lead agency for global warming research in Canada's universities.
"It's definitely a scandal," said Graham Saul, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada. He added that the government was "muzzling scientists; they're putting climate deniers in key oversight positions over research, and they're reducing funding in key areas. . . . It's almost as though they're making a conscious attempt to bury the truth."
Environment Minister Jim Prentice told reporters last week that the government wasn't trying to shut down the foundation but wanted it to report on how it spent previous grants of $110 million dating back to the year 2000.
"It's appropriate I think at this point that we take stock of what we've achieved for those dollars," Prentice said. "We'll work together with the foundation to make sure that that happens. They've got the resources to do it and we'll assess it from there."
The foundation says it has funded nearly 200 research projects that have led to breakthroughs in climatology, meteorology and oceanography, transforming operations in the federal government and private companies. But it has described Prentice's approach as a "nightmare scenario" since it no longer has money for new research.
In a statement e-mailed to Canwest News Service, Environment Canada said the new communications policy has allowed its scientists and experts to interact directly with the media on numerous occasions.
"The new policy merely assures that communications with the media are co-ordinated, to achieve the goals set out above — namely, quick, accurate and consistent responses across Canada," said the statement.
It added that it responded to 254 climate change-related requests in 2008 and 428 climate change requests in 2009.
The department also said it has taken many steps to inform Canadians about the work done by government scientists, including partnerships with other departments, new content added to websites such as www.science.gc.ca and the publication of Envirozine, an Environment Canada newsletter, as well as publishing about 700 peer-reviewed articles per year.”
This report brings back unpleasant memories of George Bush’s anti-science policies. Environment Canada claims that it makes communication easier but, the scientists certainly don’t view it that way. I’m inclined to side with the scientists as (political branch of) Environment Canada represents the interests of the Environment Minister and by extension the PMO.
Ireland to Vote on Blasphemy Law
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/15/ireland-referendum-blasphemy-law
The blasphemy law should have never been accepted in the first place.
“Ireland is to hold a referendum on removing a blasphemy ban from the constitution, the justice minister announced yesterday.
At the beginning of the year, the republic introduced legislation making blasphemy a crime punishable with a fine of up to €25,000 (£22,800).
The law defines blasphemy as "publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters sacred by any religion, thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion, with some defences permitted". The referendum will be held this autumn.”
The law should be opposed by anyone who believes in free speech, believers and non-believers alike. Here’s to hoping common sense prevails in Ireland.
The blasphemy law should have never been accepted in the first place.
“Ireland is to hold a referendum on removing a blasphemy ban from the constitution, the justice minister announced yesterday.
At the beginning of the year, the republic introduced legislation making blasphemy a crime punishable with a fine of up to €25,000 (£22,800).
The law defines blasphemy as "publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters sacred by any religion, thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion, with some defences permitted". The referendum will be held this autumn.”
The law should be opposed by anyone who believes in free speech, believers and non-believers alike. Here’s to hoping common sense prevails in Ireland.
Educate People on Religion
http://www.3news.co.nz/Does-religion-have-a-place-in-education/tabid/423/articleID/146392/Default.aspx
I’m not going to get into details with this story here I just wanted to respond to the question being asked by the title, “Does religion have a place in education?” The answer is of course: yes. Religion can be taught in schools as long as it is not presented as fact. It is important for students to understand how various religions have affected our societies and cultures.
I’m not going to get into details with this story here I just wanted to respond to the question being asked by the title, “Does religion have a place in education?” The answer is of course: yes. Religion can be taught in schools as long as it is not presented as fact. It is important for students to understand how various religions have affected our societies and cultures.
The Insanity of the Texas School Board
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/14/backstory-how-the-texas-t_n_496831.html
The recent decision in Texas to remove Thomas Jefferson’s explanation of how Enlightenment thinkers have influenced revolutions is the latest sign that the far right’s grasp on America society is tightening. Jeremy Binckes writes about how this came to be.
“In Texas, Thomas Jefferson is set to be removed from the textbook standards explaining how Enlightenment thinkers have influenced revolutions since 1750. Replacing him will be the French theologian John Calvin.
After a long and emotionally-charged debate, the Texas Board of Education -- dominated by a group of conservatives -- voted last week to make this and a host of other changes to the state curriculum, a move that has wide-ranging implications for students across the country.
How did this happen?
A Conservative Clique On The Board
The Board of Education consists of 15 elected officeholders. The split is 10-5 in favor of Republicans. Of those 10, seven are highly conservative.
"This is a board controlled by extremists who have determined to turn Social Studies classrooms into a tool to promote their ideology," said Dan Quinn, spokesman for the Texas Freedom Network. "They've been successful in turning what should be a curriculum document into a political manifesto."
(TFN is a nonpartisan group which "advances a mainstream agenda of religious freedom and individual liberties to counter the religious right," according to its Web site.)
“We're not [partisan]," said former chairman and current board member Don McLeroy, a Republican and a dentist with an engineering degree.
The Board members "are not being guided by any sort of rigorous academic standards. This is a purely political fight for them," said Ed Brayton, editor of the Michigan Messenger. Brayton is also the President of Michigan Citizens for Science, and has written extensively about the Texas school board on his blog.
Seven of the most conservative board members tend to vote en bloc. Brayton calls the group the "Wingnut Brigade."
"They're very cliquish," fellow board member Mary Helen Berlanga, a Democrat from Corpus Christi, Tex. said of the seven. "They come in together, and they go out together, and they leave in cars together. They already have their agenda by the time they're here. Whether they're talking on the phone, emailing each other, I don't know. "
The group of Republicans on the board includes David Bradley, a Republican from Beaumont and an insurance and real estate executive whose children were home-schooled. (Two other board members have also chosen to either home-school or send their children to private schools.)
Last Thursday, a discussion arose over how to describe the United States' economy:
Scholars on the curriculum teams had argued that "capitalism" and "free market" are commonly used terms in economics courses and everyday discourse...
Terri Leo (R- Spring): "I do think words mean things. . . . I see no reason, frankly, to compromise with liberal professors from academia."
Patricia Hardy (R- Weatherford) notes that the scholar (Larry Wolken) who recommended that "capitalism" and "free market" be used in the standards teaches at Texas A&M and is a Republican. He is "not some kind of crazy liberal," she says.
Ken Mercer (R- San Antonio) said that he thought capitalism is a good word, but "academics don't."
After the discussion, the board voted to strike all instances of "capitalism" from the state's curriculum. In an interview, McLeroy told the Huffington Post that he was not paying full attention during that stretch of the long meeting, but defended the decision.
"It was not a liberal academic plot to make capitalism [a bad word]," he said. "When I heard it, I just heard it as a general statement... I thought it was a statement on liberal professors."
The Michigan Messenger's Brayton, who has been closely following the debate, put the decision in context: "They view [current] textbooks as being liberally biased, so their way to combat it is to throw in some things that their side wants and take out some of the things that they disagree with, regardless of the opinion of academics."
"Oh they're very clever," Berlanga said. "And they cover up their tracks."
An Emphasis On Christianity
Thomas Jefferson's status as an Enlightenment era figure is in jeopardy -- at least in Texas.
McLeroy wanted "to focus just on the enlightenment folks," he said. "The enlightenment, the way I understand it, are the ones like Montesquieu, Locke, Hobbes, all those folks. And Jefferson was in another generation. The founders were building on the enlightenment."
McLeroy said he wanted students to learn that the French Revolution was built on different ideals than the American Revolution.
"In the Americas," he said, "it had a different basis. I'm not the scholar that can just pop those things out, I just have my general impressions."
Berlanga, one of the Democrats on the board, had a different take.
"They talk about the Founding Fathers like they were all Christians," she said. "There were a couple that may have believed what she [Leo] believed, they weren't necessarily of her religion, so I think she may have realized that with Thomas Jefferson, and deleted him, though she may have given another reason for him in doing it."
(Jefferson was a Deist, not a Christian).
On Thursday, the board struck down -- on another straight 10-5 party line vote -- a measure by Democratic board member Mavis Knight to "examine the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others."
In other words, one of the key freedoms of this country -- freedom of religion.
"Her amendment was an interpretation," McLeroy said. "That's why I voted against it."
He added: "You're going to have checks and balances in the government -- that's a biblical viewpoint of the nature of man, that man is fallen, is a sinner. You don't use the Christian language, but that was the sign of the times."
Brayton called that interpretation "profoundly contrary to the historical record."
"John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison wrote the Federalist Papers to explain each and every provision of the Constitution to a population that was overwhelmingly Christian and convince them to vote for it. If they could have pointed to biblical sources for those provisions, that would have been a very powerful argument in favor of ratification. Yet not once is the Bible mentioned anywhere in those 85 essays. And not once, according to the notes of those in attendance, was the Bible ever referenced at the constitutional convention in Philadelphia to justify a concept or provision," according to Brayton.
"Religion," Berlanga said. "Everything was about Religion. There was one [amendment] that said Battle of San Jacinto gave religious freedom. And one lady in the audience came up to me later and said 'religious freedom? That's when the Texas Rangers began hanging the Hispanics.
"When you vote against them you almost seem like an atheist, so you gotta be real careful," Berlanga said of the other board members. "I'm Catholic. I believe in Christ, but I don't think we can be forcing our religion down anybody's throat. We can't force them to have the same philosophy we have. And when people arrived in Jamestown, it was all about 'freedom of religion,' not that they were going to follow one religion."
The board, Brayton said, is ultimately inviting a legal challenge, and "they don't care."
"They're oblivious to legal reality," Brayton added, "and convinced that they're going to win these battles, even though they've lost for decades. It's old wine in new skin."
Texas schools already have elective Bible history courses. The changes would put the bible in Social Studies, to be included in history curriculum.
A Re-Write Of American History
In Texas, where half of the four million students are Hispanic, references to the cultural contributions of Latinos are being pruned from the curriculum.
"Dolores Huerta, co-founder of United Farm Workers of America, was removed in the third-grade standards because she's a socialist," the Texas Freedom Network's Quinn wrote in an e-mail. "They left Helen Keller in the same standard, apparently not realizing that she was a staunch socialist."
"What's the difference?" asked Berlanga.
Last Thursday night, Berlanga left the board meeting in protest.
"I've had it. This is it. I'm leaving for the evening," Berlanga said. "The board is pretending this is white America, Hispanics don't exist. I've never seen a rewrite like this. This is a step backwards."
(Berlanga left in response to a claim by Leo that stereotyping is "sometimes it's a positive thing.")
Huerta was not the only prominent Hispanic left out of the curriculum. Santa Barraza, a Mexican-American painter and teacher whose family is from Texas, was removed after a board member found a painting of hers "questionable." She was replaced by Tex Avery, a Texas-born animator famous for creating well-known cartoon characters like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.
In a sign of how sweeping the changes were, hip hop music was removed as a cultural influence, and the Civil Rights movements was glossed over.
"We're dealing with people who don't want to face ... reality," Berlanga said. "They don't want to deal with the truth. They don't want to be reminded that, in our past, America made mistakes. And when you have the U.S. cavalry that killed all those Native Americans, and then you have the Texas Rangers who killed all those Hispanics who did not commit any crimes, and have the Ku Klux Klan, you don't have any of that. They didn't try and put in this information."
What the group wanted, however, was an amendment offered by McLeroy to require students to "describe presidential actions and Congressional votes by party to address minority rights in the United States, including desegregation of the Armed Forces, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965."
The Texas Freedom Network speculated that this amendment (with the party clause later stripped) was little more than a ploy to show Republicans voting for civil rights.
A Loose Relationship With The Facts
In a discussion over economics standards, one board member said that he had never heard of Milton Friedman, the famous economist and Nobel Prize winner. Another amendment was introduced to analyze the link between the decline of the dollar and the creation of the Federal Reserve, later changed and amended as a link between the decline of the dollar and the detachment of the dollar from the gold standard.
In January, the board removed the children's story "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" from the third grade reading list because its author, Bill Martin Jr., shares the name of DePaul University professor Bill Martin, who wrote "Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative Of Liberation."
(On further review, the story was added back to the curriculum last week.)
"We have been so critical of other countries who indoctrinate children and brainwash them," she added. "And I feel that that's what we're preparing them to do."
A discussion over gender roles was even more puzzling. The current curriculum asks students to examine how the traditional roles of men and women had changed since the 1950's. But the seven staunch conservatives on the board said the feared the text would promote trans-sexualism and sex change operations.
"They take everything to the extreme," Berlanga said. "They don't trust the teachers, they don't trust the school districts. It has to be their way or the highway."
One amendment required students to learn about the "unintended consequences" of the Great Society, affirmative action, and Title IX programs, and another replaced references to "democratic societies" to references to "republican societies."
The Path Forward
There is still a chance that between now and May-- the public comment period before the standards are officially adopted -- some of what the board decided last week could be undone.
"Whether it's too late for social studies, I don't know," Berlanga said. She added that she hopes that teachers and the public will voice their complaints.
"The far-right groups have been very well organized, and frankly, they have the backing of a national news network," Quinn said. "Fox has gone wall-to-wall coverage on this over the last few days. They've had representatives of these groups talking constantly about Texas teachers and curriculum writers taking our Christmas out of the standards, Founding Fathers out the standards. When conservatives and Fox claim that there are radical leftists who hate Christians and are removing the founding fathers from the standards, not only are they lying."”
The Texas school board is being hijacked by radicals who believe that there is a liberal agenda in the school system to wipe out Christianity. These people have no respect for academia and are not interested in teaching facts. The only acceptable form of education is one that caters specifically to their world view. In trying to remove any bias that may exist in the curriculum they are quickly succeeding in inserting a conservative bias. They are crackpots living in an alternate reality. Now they are trying to pull the rest of us into that reality.
The recent decision in Texas to remove Thomas Jefferson’s explanation of how Enlightenment thinkers have influenced revolutions is the latest sign that the far right’s grasp on America society is tightening. Jeremy Binckes writes about how this came to be.
“In Texas, Thomas Jefferson is set to be removed from the textbook standards explaining how Enlightenment thinkers have influenced revolutions since 1750. Replacing him will be the French theologian John Calvin.
After a long and emotionally-charged debate, the Texas Board of Education -- dominated by a group of conservatives -- voted last week to make this and a host of other changes to the state curriculum, a move that has wide-ranging implications for students across the country.
How did this happen?
A Conservative Clique On The Board
The Board of Education consists of 15 elected officeholders. The split is 10-5 in favor of Republicans. Of those 10, seven are highly conservative.
"This is a board controlled by extremists who have determined to turn Social Studies classrooms into a tool to promote their ideology," said Dan Quinn, spokesman for the Texas Freedom Network. "They've been successful in turning what should be a curriculum document into a political manifesto."
(TFN is a nonpartisan group which "advances a mainstream agenda of religious freedom and individual liberties to counter the religious right," according to its Web site.)
“We're not [partisan]," said former chairman and current board member Don McLeroy, a Republican and a dentist with an engineering degree.
The Board members "are not being guided by any sort of rigorous academic standards. This is a purely political fight for them," said Ed Brayton, editor of the Michigan Messenger. Brayton is also the President of Michigan Citizens for Science, and has written extensively about the Texas school board on his blog.
Seven of the most conservative board members tend to vote en bloc. Brayton calls the group the "Wingnut Brigade."
"They're very cliquish," fellow board member Mary Helen Berlanga, a Democrat from Corpus Christi, Tex. said of the seven. "They come in together, and they go out together, and they leave in cars together. They already have their agenda by the time they're here. Whether they're talking on the phone, emailing each other, I don't know. "
The group of Republicans on the board includes David Bradley, a Republican from Beaumont and an insurance and real estate executive whose children were home-schooled. (Two other board members have also chosen to either home-school or send their children to private schools.)
Last Thursday, a discussion arose over how to describe the United States' economy:
Scholars on the curriculum teams had argued that "capitalism" and "free market" are commonly used terms in economics courses and everyday discourse...
Terri Leo (R- Spring): "I do think words mean things. . . . I see no reason, frankly, to compromise with liberal professors from academia."
Patricia Hardy (R- Weatherford) notes that the scholar (Larry Wolken) who recommended that "capitalism" and "free market" be used in the standards teaches at Texas A&M and is a Republican. He is "not some kind of crazy liberal," she says.
Ken Mercer (R- San Antonio) said that he thought capitalism is a good word, but "academics don't."
After the discussion, the board voted to strike all instances of "capitalism" from the state's curriculum. In an interview, McLeroy told the Huffington Post that he was not paying full attention during that stretch of the long meeting, but defended the decision.
"It was not a liberal academic plot to make capitalism [a bad word]," he said. "When I heard it, I just heard it as a general statement... I thought it was a statement on liberal professors."
The Michigan Messenger's Brayton, who has been closely following the debate, put the decision in context: "They view [current] textbooks as being liberally biased, so their way to combat it is to throw in some things that their side wants and take out some of the things that they disagree with, regardless of the opinion of academics."
"Oh they're very clever," Berlanga said. "And they cover up their tracks."
An Emphasis On Christianity
Thomas Jefferson's status as an Enlightenment era figure is in jeopardy -- at least in Texas.
McLeroy wanted "to focus just on the enlightenment folks," he said. "The enlightenment, the way I understand it, are the ones like Montesquieu, Locke, Hobbes, all those folks. And Jefferson was in another generation. The founders were building on the enlightenment."
McLeroy said he wanted students to learn that the French Revolution was built on different ideals than the American Revolution.
"In the Americas," he said, "it had a different basis. I'm not the scholar that can just pop those things out, I just have my general impressions."
Berlanga, one of the Democrats on the board, had a different take.
"They talk about the Founding Fathers like they were all Christians," she said. "There were a couple that may have believed what she [Leo] believed, they weren't necessarily of her religion, so I think she may have realized that with Thomas Jefferson, and deleted him, though she may have given another reason for him in doing it."
(Jefferson was a Deist, not a Christian).
On Thursday, the board struck down -- on another straight 10-5 party line vote -- a measure by Democratic board member Mavis Knight to "examine the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others."
In other words, one of the key freedoms of this country -- freedom of religion.
"Her amendment was an interpretation," McLeroy said. "That's why I voted against it."
He added: "You're going to have checks and balances in the government -- that's a biblical viewpoint of the nature of man, that man is fallen, is a sinner. You don't use the Christian language, but that was the sign of the times."
Brayton called that interpretation "profoundly contrary to the historical record."
"John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison wrote the Federalist Papers to explain each and every provision of the Constitution to a population that was overwhelmingly Christian and convince them to vote for it. If they could have pointed to biblical sources for those provisions, that would have been a very powerful argument in favor of ratification. Yet not once is the Bible mentioned anywhere in those 85 essays. And not once, according to the notes of those in attendance, was the Bible ever referenced at the constitutional convention in Philadelphia to justify a concept or provision," according to Brayton.
"Religion," Berlanga said. "Everything was about Religion. There was one [amendment] that said Battle of San Jacinto gave religious freedom. And one lady in the audience came up to me later and said 'religious freedom? That's when the Texas Rangers began hanging the Hispanics.
"When you vote against them you almost seem like an atheist, so you gotta be real careful," Berlanga said of the other board members. "I'm Catholic. I believe in Christ, but I don't think we can be forcing our religion down anybody's throat. We can't force them to have the same philosophy we have. And when people arrived in Jamestown, it was all about 'freedom of religion,' not that they were going to follow one religion."
The board, Brayton said, is ultimately inviting a legal challenge, and "they don't care."
"They're oblivious to legal reality," Brayton added, "and convinced that they're going to win these battles, even though they've lost for decades. It's old wine in new skin."
Texas schools already have elective Bible history courses. The changes would put the bible in Social Studies, to be included in history curriculum.
A Re-Write Of American History
In Texas, where half of the four million students are Hispanic, references to the cultural contributions of Latinos are being pruned from the curriculum.
"Dolores Huerta, co-founder of United Farm Workers of America, was removed in the third-grade standards because she's a socialist," the Texas Freedom Network's Quinn wrote in an e-mail. "They left Helen Keller in the same standard, apparently not realizing that she was a staunch socialist."
"What's the difference?" asked Berlanga.
Last Thursday night, Berlanga left the board meeting in protest.
"I've had it. This is it. I'm leaving for the evening," Berlanga said. "The board is pretending this is white America, Hispanics don't exist. I've never seen a rewrite like this. This is a step backwards."
(Berlanga left in response to a claim by Leo that stereotyping is "sometimes it's a positive thing.")
Huerta was not the only prominent Hispanic left out of the curriculum. Santa Barraza, a Mexican-American painter and teacher whose family is from Texas, was removed after a board member found a painting of hers "questionable." She was replaced by Tex Avery, a Texas-born animator famous for creating well-known cartoon characters like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.
In a sign of how sweeping the changes were, hip hop music was removed as a cultural influence, and the Civil Rights movements was glossed over.
"We're dealing with people who don't want to face ... reality," Berlanga said. "They don't want to deal with the truth. They don't want to be reminded that, in our past, America made mistakes. And when you have the U.S. cavalry that killed all those Native Americans, and then you have the Texas Rangers who killed all those Hispanics who did not commit any crimes, and have the Ku Klux Klan, you don't have any of that. They didn't try and put in this information."
What the group wanted, however, was an amendment offered by McLeroy to require students to "describe presidential actions and Congressional votes by party to address minority rights in the United States, including desegregation of the Armed Forces, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965."
The Texas Freedom Network speculated that this amendment (with the party clause later stripped) was little more than a ploy to show Republicans voting for civil rights.
A Loose Relationship With The Facts
In a discussion over economics standards, one board member said that he had never heard of Milton Friedman, the famous economist and Nobel Prize winner. Another amendment was introduced to analyze the link between the decline of the dollar and the creation of the Federal Reserve, later changed and amended as a link between the decline of the dollar and the detachment of the dollar from the gold standard.
In January, the board removed the children's story "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" from the third grade reading list because its author, Bill Martin Jr., shares the name of DePaul University professor Bill Martin, who wrote "Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative Of Liberation."
(On further review, the story was added back to the curriculum last week.)
"We have been so critical of other countries who indoctrinate children and brainwash them," she added. "And I feel that that's what we're preparing them to do."
A discussion over gender roles was even more puzzling. The current curriculum asks students to examine how the traditional roles of men and women had changed since the 1950's. But the seven staunch conservatives on the board said the feared the text would promote trans-sexualism and sex change operations.
"They take everything to the extreme," Berlanga said. "They don't trust the teachers, they don't trust the school districts. It has to be their way or the highway."
One amendment required students to learn about the "unintended consequences" of the Great Society, affirmative action, and Title IX programs, and another replaced references to "democratic societies" to references to "republican societies."
The Path Forward
There is still a chance that between now and May-- the public comment period before the standards are officially adopted -- some of what the board decided last week could be undone.
"Whether it's too late for social studies, I don't know," Berlanga said. She added that she hopes that teachers and the public will voice their complaints.
"The far-right groups have been very well organized, and frankly, they have the backing of a national news network," Quinn said. "Fox has gone wall-to-wall coverage on this over the last few days. They've had representatives of these groups talking constantly about Texas teachers and curriculum writers taking our Christmas out of the standards, Founding Fathers out the standards. When conservatives and Fox claim that there are radical leftists who hate Christians and are removing the founding fathers from the standards, not only are they lying."”
The Texas school board is being hijacked by radicals who believe that there is a liberal agenda in the school system to wipe out Christianity. These people have no respect for academia and are not interested in teaching facts. The only acceptable form of education is one that caters specifically to their world view. In trying to remove any bias that may exist in the curriculum they are quickly succeeding in inserting a conservative bias. They are crackpots living in an alternate reality. Now they are trying to pull the rest of us into that reality.
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