Beck says Compares Creationists to Galileo

I'm sorry for sharing this. I'm so, so sorry.

But when Beck claimed that Bill Nye is on the wrong side of history for attacking creationism, I couldn't just keep that to myself.

Not only did Beck knock common core standards and refer to fighting creationism as "segregat[ing] a group of people" and "eradicat[ing] a type of thought," but he equated Bill Nye's "Big Think" video on creationism to the Catholic Church's attacks on Galileo.

Read at your own Risk Pt 2.

Our friendly neighborhood silent mouthpiece of right wing inanity is back at work. The street preacher I saw last semester was back again this week with new material.

This one is full of goodies about the horrors of GAY MARRIAGE!!

Here's the full document. The sloppiness is (mostly) due to my scanner.

I especially love the citation at the end:

"Continuous Informatin: Mark Levin, Steve Deave, Glen Beck, Mark Steyn, David Barton, Phyllis Schlafly, D. James Kennedy, Ph. D., Michael Youssef, Ph. D., Walter E Williams"

You can't lose when you've got good material.

Read at your own Risk

Yesterday I ran into a street preacher of sorts in front of the UPenn bookstore. He didn't say a word, he just stood their with his sign handing out booklets:

"Benjamin Franklin said of America: 'Atheism is unknown there...'
GOD MADE YOU FOR HIS PURPOSE.
Atheism is sin. God teaches."

I couldn't resist and grabbed a copy of the booklet. From what I saw I may have been the only one to do so; he wasn't pushy.  Maybe I'll go through the claims later, or at least put together a greatest hits, but for now I just want to post the booklet in it's entirety for reference. Read on at your own risk.

Face to Face with Destiny

Some say the journey is a particular percentage of the reward. To get to the SSA conference yesterday, I took a bus from downtown LA to the Strip in Vegas for $25 bucks. A great money saver to be sure, but since I had no travelling companion the seating arrangement became a game of roulette.

So, what are the odds that when travelling to a skepticism or atheism related event that the person in the seat next to you holds some really reeaaally wacky beliefs? If I were going by empirical measurements, so far the odds are near 100%.

This trip was no exception, as a pretty 18 year old girl with a skateboard sat next to me on the very last pick-up point.  The first few minutes were uneventful as we awkwardly avoided eye contact, both internally deliberating whether or not we should make first contact. When I finally broached the silence to introduce myself, I had just unwittingly opened a Pandora's Box. I should have had my first clue that this girl was worthy of a Tim Minchin 9 minute beat poem when she said that her name was Destiny.

For a short time the conversation was lighthearted and innocent as we discussed our respective origins and destinations, families and friends, and other such introductory small talk. Then, just as I was starting to think I had lucked out with my seating companion, without warning a wild Zubatshit appears.

"So what do you think about the 'theory' that we landed on the moon?"-Destiny

Through some incredible act of willpower, I manged to keep my hand from impacting my face at high speed. Still, my heart sank as I considered that we still had 4 hours of bus ride ahead of us and no seat belts existed capable of keeping me secure in my seat during this wild ride.

After taking a few minutes to regain inner composure, I realized I was wearing my SpaceX swag so the question may not have been as random as I thought. So I delicately replied that I believed we did land on the moon. Scratch that, I'm nearly certain that we landed on the moon. I then went on to explain the retro-reflective mirrors left there by Apollo astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, and how you can demonstrate that the mirrors are there by shooting a laser at the moon. Science rocks!

She seemed to think this was an interesting piece of trivia but promptly hypothesized that maybe they just sent the mirror there with robots or something.

But the fun was just getting started, as over the course of the next three hours I learned interesting things about our world that I never realized were facts, including but not limited to:

• Adam and Eve lived to by 930 years old. (Her Grandpa didn't believe this and tried to talk her out of it but she showed him where it was in the Bible and that obviously proved she was right).
• Evolution didn't happen because I don't believe we evolved from monkeys. God made each of us individually with great care. Even AIG takes issue with this argument. (It also took her a while to search for the word EVOLVE when she was trying to explain what "those scientists" believe).
• Red tides and the Yangtze river turning blood red are signs of the end times (seas and rivers turn to blood and all that right?).
• Obama's new healthcare law will require implanting RFID tags for insurance reasons in the hand, which was possibly the Mark of the Beast. Either that or the chips they're putting in our head is the mark..
• The rapture is going to happen and I feel sorry for anyone who will be alive for Satan's 1000 year reign. Sucks to be them!
• America is number 1...in MACHISMO! Ya we're badasses!! (China's number 2 BTW)
• We have a right to bear arms, and Obama is taking our guns because someone had an accident and shot up a bunch of people somewhere.
• Dragons are real! They found one frozen in ice that had some charred knights next to it. I saw it on Animal Planet. The government is also trying to cover it up because they want to feel superior to those pesky dragons.
• Animal Planet also explained how they found a Mermaid, cause they're real too. 

Aside to Animal Planet: I know your documentaries are really cool fictional "what-if" CGI fantasies and I sincerely hope you know that, but clearly that fact isn't as obvious to your audience as you might think. When people see a "documentary" on Animal Planet or History Channel or Discovery, they seem to be under the (mis)apprehension that they will contain actual facts.

We covered a lot more ground than this in our 4 hours together, but I don't want to strain my brain any more than I already have recalling the experience. For the first couple stories I attempted to put forth counter evidence if I was aware of any, but we so quickly descended into depths of conspiracy madness that I had never even heard of some of the details that she knew with such confidence to be true. 

At that point, I reverted to an "I've never heard of this, please point me to the evidence so I can investigate further" type responses. I simply stated my skepticism, a few reasons why I had doubts, and left it at that. 

Rule number one when strating an argument with a believer is have an exit strategy. If you know you will be unable to extradite yourself from the conversation (say by being stuck on a bus or plane for 4 hours), diplomacy must be your number one priority. I do regret not having the opportunity to mention that I'm an Atheist and on my way to a conference of like minded students, but to paraphrase Tim Minchin: may as well be 4 hours back in time for all the chance you'll change your mind.

Wingnut Folder: Cherry Picking Edition

Once again it's time to immerse myself in the bin of ineptitude that is my wingnut folder. Running for the Worst Thinking from a Think Tank award this week is CFACT.org, an advocacy group nominally dedicated to proving that "the power of the market combined with the applications of safe technologies could offer humanity practical solutions to many of the world’s pressing concerns."

Sounds good right? Well, read on at your own risk. (Some Emphasis Added)

Collin,
The scientific evidence continues to mount against the global warming scare.
Last week even Rachendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, finally acknowledged that there has been no global warming for seventeen years.

Yet President Obama, who wouldn't utter a peep about global warming throughout the long campaign, resurrected it election night and then featured it prominently in his inaugural and state of the union addresses.

The facts are against him, yet President Obama is going all out:

• He appointed radical climate change alarmist John Kerry as his new Secretary of State.

• He has instructed EPA to impose new, draconian carbon restrictions on power plants certain to raise energy prices and cost jobs.

• And he even said in his State of the Union address he’ll stop at nothing to push the Green agenda -- “if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations [from global warming], I will.”

CFACT's friends and supporters see right through the President’s radical agenda. And if you’re like us, you may ask yourself, “who could possibly fall for this global warming hooey?” 

You're not going to like the answer.   

The President's new global warming push is having a powerful impact on public opinion. Polls show, believe it or not, more and more people coming back into the climate fold. It's not like it was at the beginning of the scare, but every backwards nudge to public support is cause for real concern.    

So what to do about it? We know we can't rely on the establishment media to get the true facts out. Not without a good hard shove anyway. 

But CFACT will not stand idly by. We're taking action.

I'll start with a point of agreement, we can't trust the mainstream media to get out the facts on climate change.  According to MediaMatters, the major news networks combined devoted less than 8 minutes TOTAL in 2012 for Sunday news to coverage of climate change. Add to that nightly news and the number rises to only about 65 minutes. That is an appalling lack of coverage for such a major issue.

I also want to thank CFact for citing their source for the graph on their billboard (despite not labeling axis, denoting scale, reference or anything else but two labeled data points). That citation made it so much easier to find out exactly how misleading their chart is.

To make things easier, here is the same chart from that paragon of accurate science reporting the Daily Mail with axis labeled (albeit incorrectly). 

There are a couple of inconvenient facts about this chart. The data actually shows tenths of a degree above and below the world temperature average of 1961-1990, so the chart already shows a 0.5 C increase in average global temperatures since that time period.

But more importantly, they left out the rest of the HadCRUT4 data from before 1997.

HadCRUT4 data from 1975 on, start of CFACT chart is the dotted line.

Interesting how they only showed the second half of that chart. This chart starts at 1975 because that does actually indicate a change in the trend with statistical significance.

Let's zoom out some more.

From HadCRUT4 Report. Start of CFACT chart shown by Green Line

Well would you look at that! Amazing how a little context changes the meaning of a chart isn't it?
So how did the Daily Mail pick the start date of that chart to be 1997? Here's David Rose's explanation.

A Some critics claim this newspaper misled readers by choosing start and end dates that hide the continued warming. 

In fact, we looked at the period since 1997 because that’s when the previous warming trend stopped, and our graph ended in August 2012 because that is the last month for which Hadcrut 4 figures were available.

At least he's honest about intentionally cherry picking the data. But he goes on...

In April, the Met Office released figures up to the end of 2010 – an extremely warm year – which meant it was able to say there had been a statistically significant warming trend after 1997, albeit a very small one. However, 2011 and 2012 so far have been much cooler, meaning the trend has disappeared. This may explain why the updated figures were issued last week without a media fanfare

So two years of "much cooler" global temperatures is all it takes to completely negate a 35-100 year trend?

Well let's take that trend from 1975-1997, extrapolate it, and see where we should be right now.

Thanks to Tamino for the data crunching

As you can see, the apparent plateau in the data is actually an artifact of the temperature increasing much faster than the trend line between 1996-97. The downtick in temperature rise from 1997-2012 has just now balanced the uptick from 1975-97.

I'm no climate scientist, but that still looks like a rising trend to me.

Consequences of Gay Marriage according to Tony Perkins

Decided to go through my email wingnut folder and right on top was this GEM from Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (FRC). (Emphasis mine)

Dear Collin,
This year the U.S. Supreme Court will hear two cases that will also have a lasting impact on the very soul of our nation.

Windsor v. United States could overturn the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that codifies the traditional, historic definition of marriage as a covenant relationship between one man and one woman. 

Likewise, Hollingsworth v. Perry could permanently overturn California's amendment to preserve traditional marriage under Proposition 8.

If the Supreme Court does not uphold the constitutionality of these two laws, it will not only lead to the destruction of traditional marriage as we know it, but subvert our American democratic process and force people like you and me to affirm counterfeit matrimony or face punishment by the federal government. 

We simply cannot let this happen! 

Hollywood, the education establishment, and even the Obama administration are working overtime to indoctrinate you, me, and other Americans into thinking that same-sex "marriage" is exactly the same as heterosexual marriage,

 Both my laughter and tears are locked in battle trying to outdo each other. Gay marriage will not lead to the destruction of a single "traditional" marriage. You know what it will lead too? Gay people getting married.

That's it! Full stop! Case closed! Can we get back to work now?

But according to Tony, there's a lot more we should be worried about should the Supreme court overturn DOMA. Lets see if I can help him answer some of his pressing concerns about the future.

And if they succeed, what will ultimately happen to those of us who rely on Scripture as a guide to life and refuse to "change our politically incorrect views?"

• Will the federal government now tell pastors what they can and cannot preach from the pulpit so it conforms to approved government speech?

Ummm..no. 1st amendment makes that illegal. Next?

• Will pastors who preach against same-sex "marriage" and homosexual behavior be prosecuted for hate speech?

Only if they are actually spewing hate speech from the pulpit.

• Will churches that refuse to host same-sex "weddings" lose their tax exemptions?

Probably not, which is a crying shame.

And there are other very serious consequences:

• The military will have to provide "married" housing to same-sex couples at taxpayer expense.

 They damn well better. All the best for our fabulous men and women in uniform right? Also, why are you so concerned about the taxpayer expense of military spouse housing and not, say, the military?

• Christian adoption agencies will be forced to place children with same-sex couples or close their doors.

Only if they take government money. If they are discriminating for any reason, the government can have no part in it. Really! It's in that constitution you wave around when we try to take away your guns!

• Christian-owned companies and even para-church ministries will be coerced to extend married benefits to same-sex couples.

If by "coerced" you mean dragged kicking and screaming into the next century (in your case probably the 19th) by social progress, then yes you will definitely be coerced. If you mean the government will be interfering with your ministries or private businesses, then no. 1st amendment.

• And children who won't affirm the legitimacy of the homosexual "lifestyle" choice will be forced to undergo psychological counseling.

First of all, no they won't go through psychological counseling. If they're bullying kids based on their sexuality  they'll be treated the same as any other bully.

But secondly, how is it okay, Tony Perkins, to approve of putting gay youth through traumatic, damaging, and ineffective camps that purport to change their sexual orientation, but not okay to change kids' minds about the legitimacy of being gay through counseling?

And you are worried about the damage gays are doing to society?

Watch Revisionaries Online

In case you missed it on PBS or won't be at your local viewing, the full documentary "Revisionaries" is now available online at PBS.

If you haven't heard of it, it follows the drama of the Texas textbook controversies when Don McLeroy tried to rewrite both science and history in public schools around the country.

Texas is the second largest single adoption state in the nation, but with California having budget issues they are the single largest buyer of textbooks in the nation. As a result, textbook publishers are unlikely to release books that do not conform to Texas standards. This gives the Texas board of education almost unilateral control of science, health, and history education for the next few decades.

Watch The Revisionaries on PBS. See more from Independent Lens.

Times Square Tracts

While in New York last weekend, I was astounded by the combination of religious extremes present. Pictures being worth 1000 words, this will probably be my longest post ever. In times square we were waiting in line for broadway tickets, I was handed this tract by a guy just going down the line.

 Right across the street I picked up this tract.

Front:

Back:

And then the advertisements! Here's one for Mormon.org (fortunately way above eye level)

I didn't get a picture but there was a full video ad for Scientology that read:

"Are you a seeker of knowledge?<Transition>Dare to think for yourself.<Transition>Scientology.org"

Over the course of the day I also saw street advertisers for Scientology, Jehovah's Witnesses selling watchtower magazines, and a Watchtower building.

In the end I got a couple new propaganda pieces for my collection and a renewed appreciation for how publicly visible these cults actually are in our metropolitan centers.

Fox News Fails at Math (Again)

I know Fox news had some serious math problems when it came to election night, but I had just attributed it to confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance.

But turns the problem was even simpler: they never had a grade school level education in math.



 A 3rd grade school worksheet about the distributive property of multiplication with the title "distribute the wealth" is apparently pushing a liberal agenda.

What. The. Fuck?

It gets even better. Host Eric Bolling used this as an example of how liberal indoctrination is deeply embedded in education.

“So it starts in third grade and guess what happens?” Bolling remarked. “Through their whole educational experience, they continually get indoctrinated, even through college.”

Greg Gutfeld jumped in with his own foot lodged deep in his mouth.

“Everybody has anecdotal evidence of this,” co-host Greg Gutfeld agreed. “I think the only way leftism can survive is through indoctrination because its number one adversary is reality. So you got to get them young and it’s perfect for kids. Paul Krugman’s logic is child’s play: Share your stuff… A lot of this comes from the teachers. They get their news from The Huffington Post and their antiperspirant from a health food store. This is the way they live.”

 They also accused history books of being biased for talking about the Bush presidency as it actually happened.

Bolling advised parents to read their children’s history books because his son’s textbook addressed the Iraq war “and they were very, very liberally biased, saying George Bush went in there because he heard there were weapons of mass destruction and they were never found. It was a very liberal bias to the history books.”

And as we all know, reality has a liberal bias.

(Via Raw Story)

Pope Says Atheists Deny Human Dignity

The Pope has taken to twitter again today and actually said something that caught my attention. Granted it's still mindless prattle, but in this instance it was slightly offensive prattle.

When you deny God, you deny human dignity. Whoever defends God is defending the human person.
— Benedict XVI (@Pontifex) December 21, 2012

Well I for one do not believe in God, nor do I deny human dignity. Those who ascribe all of our great accomplishments, talents, and capacity for good to their invisible friends are the true enemies of human dignity.

FRC Drops UPS for Dropping BSA

A press release from the Family Research Council (FRC) has announced that they will no longer be using UPS as their package distributor in response to UPS dropping service to the Boy Scouts.

Brown is doing right by you LGBT Community!

In my opinion, the UPS has been released from an association with two horrible organizations and all is well.

But as we've seen before, the FRC thinks that UPS is the one with the moral failings.

"The mission of the Boy Scouts is 'to instill values in young people' and 'prepare them to make ethical choices,' and the Scout's oath includes a pledge 'to do my duty to God' and keep himself 'morally straight.' It is entirely reasonable and not at all unusual for those passages to be interpreted as requiring abstinence from homosexual conduct. UPS should not try to impose the competing values of the sexual revolution upon the Boy Scouts."-Link

Wait...UPS is trying to impose their sexual values on the Boy Scouts? No no no no no...no. As they say, the MISSION of the Boy Scouts is "to instill values in young people." The UPS foundation's mission is "to leverage our business expertise and resources to help deliver innovating and sustainable solutions to address some of the world's most pressing challenges."

UPS is not pushing a moral agenda, that would be the Boy Scouts. UPS simply decided to not support them in that endeavor. The worst part is, FRC even acknowledges this and still gets it wrong.

"The Scouts, unlike UPS, are about instilling character and leadership into America's boys. UPS, in the name of 'tolerance,' can't tolerate such efforts."-Link

UPS, in the name of 'tolerance', has decided to not associate itself with a group that is very intolerant. To me, that sounds completely consistent, especially considering the preceding paragraph of the press release:

"The Scouts' policy is also a matter of security. After hundreds of cases of child sex abuse plagued the organization, the Boy Scouts tried to create a membership criterion that reduces the risk to Scouts, and that protects the rights of their parents to be the first to discuss topics like sexual orientation with their children."-Link

The insinuation that gays (or atheists for that matter) are more likely to RAPE CHILDREN is not only patently false, it is out and out bigotry. And this is not a unique quote. The FRC and BSA both have a long history of saying LGBT people are dangerous to children.

"As for their longstanding policy on homosexuality, the Boy Scouts are doing what every parent would want them to: putting children's safety first." -Link

But still, FRC calls UPS "intolerant," "anti-freedom," and "anti-religion."

"Ironically, in adopting a policy designed to exclude the Boy Scouts from funding. the UPS Foundation has acted directly against the value you ostensibly seek to promote—diversity. Indeed, in its supposed effort to act against one form of 'discrimination,’ the Foundation has itself engaged in another—by discriminating on the basis of religion against the many religious bodies which teach abstinence from homosexual conduct, and against all of the members of those bodies who adhere to those teachings. For example. this places the UPS Foundation in the position of discriminating against the largest religious body in the United States, the Roman Catholic Church: against the largest Protestant denomination in the country, the Southern Baptist Convention; and against the largest religious supporter of the Boy Scouts, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints."-Tony Perkins, President FRC

Right...the Catholics, the Baptists, and the Mormons are all being discriminated against when we say we don't like how they treat gay people and that we want nothing to do with them. This persecution complex has gone too far.

The Egg Came First, Get Over It.

I was recently reading an article by physicist Lawrence Krauss on his debate with William Lane Craig and the troubles he had. It's a good article and I encourage you to read it.

When he came to the cosmological argument the old idiom that I've heard or read so many times reared it's head again: which came first the chicken or the egg? I would have expected myself to be desensitized to such a common trope, but I stumbled over the phrase this time.

My immediate thought this time around was, don't we know the answer to that question? And indeed we do. Scientists have known for years that dinosaurs laid eggs millions of years before a subset of them eventually evolved into chickens. Eggs even predate the dinosaurs by millions of years. Case closed, can we pick a different phrase now to represent an unsolvable conundrum?

Then a wave of morbid curiousity swept over me and I wondered what Ken Ham had to say about all this, because clearly he cannot avail himself of the scientific answer as it requires acceptance of, if not evolution, the accepted geologic timescale.

Ask Google and yea shall receive. I give you the Answers in Genesis article entitled, appropriately enough, "Which Came First - The Chicken or the Egg?" I've highlighted the most interesting bits.

Some questions don’t ever seem to get resolved. Some matter, and others don’t. What about the age-old question of the chicken or the egg? Does the Bible give us a clue, and does it matter? 

... 

As with other questions, worldview dictates your answer. Evolutionists assert that birds evolved from reptiles over millions of years, so the reptiles eventually laid the egg that hatched as a chicken. The egg came first. 

What do creationists believe? On Day Five of Creation Week, God created “every winged bird according to its kind” (Genesis 1:21). God created mature birds with the ability to reproduce. So the bird was first, ready to lay eggs. 

While we know that birds came first, that fails to address the specific question about domesticated chickens. Is it possible to determine the chicken’s ancestor that was created on Day Five? Classification research is a very young field, but chickens happen to be one of the creatures that creationists have investigated to identify the original parent kinds.1 

What they found is interesting. Analyzing all the relevant biblical words for chickens and birds, then studying which modern birds can mix (hybridize) with chickens, along with statistical analysis of similar physical traits, they found evidence that chickens belong to the potential created kind of the Galliformes order. 

These birds appear to have been among the clean animals on the Ark. As they diversified and filled the earth after the Flood, many different species appeared. Some of these were preserved in post-Flood sediments. The earliest fossils look like pheasants and similar wild birds. It’s possible that it was not until later that the modern species of domesticated chickens (Gallus domesticus) appeared. 

The Creator placed designs for immense diversity within the genetics of the original kinds. As this diversity was passed from parent to offspring, most likely a non-chicken bird eventually laid an egg containing a chicken. So, technically speaking, it’s very likely that the Gallus domesticus egg came first. 

There is so much here to talk about, so I'll just go in order.

Worldview certainly dictates your answer, insofar as you worldview demands unquestioning obedience to authority and permits dismissal of evidence. But having a fixed answer does not guarantee accuracy. Evolutionists don't "assert" that birds evolved from dinosaurs, they show that it is the case using evidence and  reason.  

This is a textbook example of projection, as in the next paragraph the creationist answer is asserted via the Bible as usual. "God created mature birds with the ability to reproduce. So the bird was first, ready to lay eggs." That's it, full stop. No more reason is given other than one verse in an ancient book. 

And in the very next sentence the creationist has moved from assertion to certain knowledge. "While we know that birds came first, that fails to address the specific question about domesticated chickens."

Ironically, the rest of the article is a quasi-evolutionary explanation of how the modern chicken species evolved (they don't use the word but that's what they are in fact saying) from the first of the Galliformes kind.

They then proceed to explain away the fact that they are describing a sort of hyperspeed 6000 year long evolutionary process by adding the claim that God included the recipes for all those derivative species in the original coding. This is a level of cognitive dissonance that must require herculean effort to maintain.

Why Eric Hovind has become a Presuppositionalist

If you're not familiar with Eric Hovind, infamous son of Kent Hovind (aka. Dr. Dino, aka Inmate 06452-017), I'm sorry for introducing him to you.

Eric used to peddle straight up creationist nonsense that was a wonder to behold. Take this from his series "Creation Minute" explaining why the Colorado river would have had to flow uphill to carve the grand canyon.

But since then, he has teamed up with presuppositionalist and "virtuously circular argument" making preacher Sye Ten Brugencate. Sye runs a little website called proofthatgodexists.org (which as I just checked today it looks like he let his domain registration expire, odd).

How and why did Eric go from at least trying to address the evidence and arguments to trying to use philosophy to justify ignoring it outright? Well today I came across this transitional form where Hovind explains exactly why he gave up on arguing the evidence: "it doesn't work."

Worst thing a Christian could Say? No, I don't think so.

As predicted, the list of horrible comments in response to the Connecticut shooting keeps growing. Friendly Atheist shared this one and said it was the worst thing a Christian could say following the tragedy.

The problem is, I can think of a lot worse things that they could say, as horrible as this comment is. I don't see any relevant difference between this comment about the Connecticut shooting and the justifications that apologists like Doug Wilson or William Lane Craig give for the slaughter of the Canaanite children in the OT: "They're with Jesus now, so they were the recipients of an 'infinite good.'"

Actually I can think of one difference, the Canaanite genocides probably never happened.

The comment thread got pretty heated, but he doubled down on his statement a few comments later:

 

I want to draw attention to two bits of this: Carole's comment that it "doesn't matter if they were Christians or not, because they were innocent children which means they automatically have a place in Heaven." How is this any different from Mormons retroactively baptizing dead Jews? Doesn't matter what you were in life, you have to be Christian in the afterlife.

And finally, John says "they will finally understand how this is the BEST Christmas for them, just as it will be the BEST for us when we get to heaven." Words cannot express.

Can't your nonsense wait even 24 hours for mourning?

In case you haven't heard already, there's been a horrific shooting at an elementary school in Connecticut. Not five hours after the story broke, the crazies have already sprung onto the scene to point blame at  secularists like me.

First there was Eric Hovind's tweet:

And then there was Bryan Fisher's opinion that God didn't prevent the tragedy because "God is not going to go where he is not wanted."

I'm sure there will be many more to follow but these happened so fast after the tragedy that they warrant special scorn.

No, taking school sponsored prayer out of the classroom in accordance with the constitution did NOT cause this shooting. No, I am not responsible for the shooting because I want everyone to be treated equally. And no, putting prayer back in will not magically prevent these tragedies from happening again, Mr. Fisher.

I don't get offended easily, but when someone blames me and mine for causing something like this in a brain exploding use of a nonsequitur and then asking if I'm HAPPY ABOUT IT? Fuck you Eric Hovind, and the Dino you rode in on.

"You weren't born that way, you just had demon sex"

Apparently some Christians still haven't got the message that being gay is a natural, inherited biological trait. According to the Christian mag Charisma, the quickest way to being gay is get raped by a sexual demon.

I'm not kidding, it actually says "sexual demon."

Painting of a Succubus

As any fan of Lost Girl can tell you, the most common sex demons are succubi (a female demon who assaults mostly men) and incubi (a male demon who assaults mostly women). According to Contessa Adams, a former stripper and demon rape survivor turned evangelist, they come at you when you're sleeping.

"These spiritual rapists, as Adams describes them in her book, Consequences, often prey on people by performing sexual acts through nightmares and erotic dreams."

Either that or people just have nightmares and erotic dreams...

"Some people become so dependent upon these demonic experiences that they actually look forward to them. 'Anybody that has been attacked by them will tell you ... they're worried [that] they could not find that pleasure with mortal people,' says Adams, who claims she was once possessed by sexual demons."

So the dreams are so good that you'd rather sleep alone? Wow, sign me up for a sex demon! But apparently there's a terrible side effect of demon possession.

"Sometimes they also lure people into homosexual behavior. Adams says the succubus spirit that used to attack her confused her so much that she contemplated becoming a lesbian."

Apparently, if you have erotic dreams about someone of the same sex and are turned on by it you aren't a lesbian; you're just contemplating becoming one. I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure that if you are turned on by someone of the same sex, then you're already gay.

And there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT, but I digress.

So say I have been beset by a sex demon, how to I get rid of all this amazing sexual pleasure?

"The Holy Spirit has to reprogram you. If you're not programmed for obedience, it's hard to do so," she teaches. "Once you come out of that world, you're learning what you can do and what you cannot do. With the Holy Spirit, if [you] go to touch that fire, He will quicken you and tell you, 'No.'"
Adams also notes that disobedience also produces fear, which is another tool Satan uses.

So you can choose to be "reprogrammed" to be unquestioningly obedient to someone who is watching your every sexual thought and be terrified of disobeying him, or keep the amazing lucid sex dreams.  Hmm decisions decisions. 

Overall though, the theme throughout the article is that having any interest in sex whatsoever is evil, literally demonic, and akin to torture. Sex is an awful dirty dangerous thing and you should save it for the person (of the opposite sex obviously) that you love. 

Why do I care what these people believe? Because I wasn't far off myself. 

Now I wasn't brought up with demons, but Satan certainly was a mainstay of my religion.  The devil was out to tempt you in all sorts of ways and having sex, thinking about sex, or even masturbating was Satan's way to get a hold of you. Since all of those things are statistically nearly impossible to avoid, you are guaranteed to feel guilty about some of it. That sort of repression is not something you get past overnight, and in many ways  I'm still fighting it daily.

Maybe someday I'll tell that story, but not feeling it right now.

(Via AlterNet)

Ravi Zacharias Blames Darwin, Nietzsche for Moral Decline of Society

Ravi Zacharias is featured in a new video from Focus on the Family  explaining how we got to this state of moral decline in our society.

Full Transcript: emphasis added

How we got to where we are today...It has not happened without warnings, that is for sure.
If I were to take one hinge on which this slide was hanging, I would say it was Fredric Nietzsche the German Philosopher.

When he popularized the phrase "God is dead", and uh [unintelligible] in the 19th century he said then we are going to live either with megalomania or erotomania: the drive for pleasure or the drive for power, the clenched fist or the phallus, Hitler or Hugh Hefner. It's exactly what happened. 

Going back even slightly before Nietzsche, Charles Darwin in his Descent of Man...Darwin had said that if his Naturalistic Framework were taken as a scaffolding for metaphysical extrapolations and judgments and so on, he said the violence that would break out would be unparalleled.   

Because if Naturalism is all we have, man is nothing more than nature, then we have got no moral framework to look to.  He talked about the violence that would come. Nietzsche said that the 20th century would become the bloodiest century in history, because of the philosophical ramifications of the death of god. So how did we get here?  We got here starting off by killing god, then killing ethics, now we are killing men.

Now Nietzsche did write "God is Dead," though the words were uttered by a character he created called the Madman.  Nietzsche also wrote that "there will be wars the like of which have never been seen on earth before." Also it is generally accepted that the 20th century was the bloodiest in history.  But here ends Ravi's overlap with reality.

Nietzsche's "prediction" that the 20th century would be the bloodiest century never existed.  He never said the 20th century, the next century, or anything like that.  He also did not attribute the wars to a moral failing in God's death, as Ravi asserts.  Here is what he actually said. Sorry that it's so long, but context is important here. I've highlighted the important bits.

I know my fate. There will come a day when my name will recall the memory of something frightful—a crisis the like of which has never been known on earth, the memory of the most profound clash of consciences and the passing of a sentence upon all that has before been believed in, demanded and sanctified. I am not a man, I am dynamite. And with it all there is nothing of the founder of a religion in me. Religions belong to the rabble; after coming into contact with religious people I always feel that I must wash my hands. I do not want "believers”, I think that I am too full of malice to believe even in myself; I never speak to masses. I have a terrible fear that one day I shall be considered "holy”. You will understand why I publish this book beforehand—it is to prevent people from wronging me. I refuse to be a saint; I would rather be a clown. Maybe I am a clown. I am nevertheless, or rather not nevertheless, the mouthpiece of truth; for nothing more false has ever existed than a saint. But my truth is terrible: for hitherto lies have been called truth. The Revaluation of all Values, this is my formula for mankind’s greatest step towards coming to its senses—a step which in me has become flesh and genius. My destiny ordained that I should be the first decent human being and that I should feel myself opposed to the falsehood of millennia. I was the first to discover the truth and for the simple reason that I was the first who became conscious, to sense the lie as a lie. My genius lies in my nostrils. I contradict as no one has contradicted before and yet I am the very opposite to a negative spirit. I am the herald of joy the like of which has never existed before; I have discovered tasks of such a height that has never been seen before my time. Mankind can only now begin to hope again, now that I have lived. Thus I am necessarily a man of Destiny. For when Truth battles against the lies of millennia there will be shock waves, earthquakes, the transposition of hills and valleys such as the world has never yet imagined even in its dreams. The concept "politics” then becomes entirely absorbed into the realm of spiritual warfare. All the mighty worlds of the ancient order of society are blown into space—for they are all based on lies: there will be wars the like of which have never been seen on earth before. Only after me will there be grand politics on earth.

Nietzsche predicts that there will be wars not because "God is Dead" and we have no grounding for morals. He said when the religions, so entrenched in society, began to be exposed as lies they would not go quietly.

Nietzsche laid the blame for these predicted wars directly at the feet of those who would seek to defend lies against Truth.  The shockwaves and conflict would come from the overturning of the paradigm, not a destruction of morality.

But Ravi would clearly never give this quote context because he simultaneously holds up Nietzsche as devil and prophet, destroyer of God and clairvoyant. If Nietzsche held such great predictive power, would Ravi accept his judgement of religions as lies?  I doubt so.

Still, Ravi at least twisted Nietzsche's actual words to his purposes.  In contrast, he appears to have invented from whole cloth Darwin's fears of a naturalistic world. Despite my best efforts I could find nothing remotely close to Ravi's words in Descent of Man or in Origin of Species to be generous. I challenge the reader to find the source Ravi draws from, but until a textual origin is found for the sentiment I must assume that Ravi has extracted it from a rather unsanitary orifice.

Facebook Conversations I Regret Starting: Part 13049

Once upon a time, before I had this blog, I would have very few avenues to vent my frustrations or openly express my opinions. Unfortunately this meant that occasionally I would lose all self control on Facebook and respond to one of the inane posts that comes across my feed daily from my extremely conservative Christian friends.

What follows is an example I decided to keep.

Back in March, an extreme group of evangelists set up on the SDSU campus with a lot of crazy signs.

The one that sparked controversy was "homosexuality is a sin" and the Gay Straight Alliance held a very successful counter-protest.

One of my friends however, I'll call him Steve, was saying a lot of negative things about the way the GSA responded and about their beliefs.

A couple days later Steve posted the following to Facebook and I lost my cool.  (Steve's comments in red, mine in orange).

Click Here to Enlarge

Most of the conversation speaks for itself, but I want to draw special attention to Steve's last comment:

It is possible that gays were in fact oppressed in ancient Israel, much as they are today. (I mean ostracized, hated, etc.) -- The problem is, I can't see how [Lev 20:13] oppresses them.  They don't have a right to have whatever kind of sexual activity they want to.  If homosexuals are oppressed, then so are zoophiles or people who commit incest. [emphasis added]

They don't have a right to have whatever kind of sexual activity they want to? Maybe not, but damn right they can have whatever kind of consensual sexual relationship that they want.  Animals don't consent to bestiality and children aren't consenting adults when it comes to pedophilic incest. There simply is no comparison here. I get so frustrated when I have to deal with these arguments again and again.

But this approach was novel in its stupidity.  It doesn't say put homosexuals to death, only to kill them if they have gay sex?  It boggles the mind to realize people can compartmentalize that way.

Other people jumped onto the thread at this point, and I largely abandoned the conversation since I knew it wasn't going to get better.  Still, I kept this snippet, ironically, as a reality check for when I need to remember what I used to sound like when I was a Christian of that sort.  I was not far from where Steve is today, and reminding myself of that helps keep me honest.

Uganda "Kill the Gays" Bill Removes Death Penalty

The so-called "Kill the Gays" bill in Uganda has had some teeth removed this week.  Just last month, Ugandan Speaker Rebecca Kadaga announced that the bill would be passed in December as "A Christmas gift to the Ugandan people."

However, under a mix of largely international and some internal pressure, MP David Bahati announced that the charge of "aggravated homosexuality" will no longer carry the death penalty. This is progress of a kind, but nothing to cheer over. Nothing that was considered criminal in the original law has been legalized, nor has the intent of the bill or the will of the people changed.

Bahati said the bill now focuses on protecting children from gay pornography, banning gay marriage, counseling gays, as well as punishing those who promote gay culture. Jail terms are prescribed for various offenses, he said, offering no details. The most recent version of the bill hasn't been publicly released. 

In 2009, when Bahati first introduced the bill, he charged that homosexuals threatened family values in Uganda and that gays from the West were recruiting poor Ugandan children into gay lifestyles with promises of money and a better life. He said a tough new law was needed because a colonial-era law against sodomy was not strong enough.
(Via Associated Press)

Note the extreme amount of overlap between Bahati's rhetoric and that of the religious right here in America.  The similarity is startling but not surprising, as the Ugandans adopted almost all of it from western Evangelical Christians working in the country.

Both claim that homosexuals "threaten family values" and that gays are "recruiting children into gay lifestyles."  Both seek to ban gay marriage, seek ineffective and harmful reparative therapy for homosexuality, and introduce or maintain sodomy laws.

With the death penalty removed, Ugandan sentiment has only been brought closer in line with the religious right of America, and even then there are influential American evangelical preachers who still seek to kill or eliminate gays from the population in one way or another.  The fact that they cannot hope to implement such a law here is the only discernible difference.

Still, the Ugandan bill does have one unique element that makes it infinitely worse than anything being proposed in America. By "punishing those who promote gay culture," the act of questioning the law or speaking out in favor of gay rights has been warped into an act of sedition.  This affront to free speech serves not only to eliminate a right essential to a well-functioning democracy but also to criminalize all efforts to ever remove this law.  Within this clause lies the power to charge any parliamentarian proposing a repeal of the anti-gay bill with "promoting gay culture."

We should be thankful that the death penalty has been removed from the pending legislation but terrified of the staying power the current language imparts to the law. If this law passes, the bigotry it contains will be nearly intractable.

This is not a battle we can afford to lose in the fight for LGBT rights abroad. If we fail now, Uganda may be locked into a cycle of self sustaining hatred for a generation.

Christianity Isn't A Religion? O'Reilly Vs. Silverman

Venaloid just posted this commentary on the recent Dave Silverman interview on the O'Reilly Factor.

In the interview, O'Reilly actually asserts that the government can endorse Christmas legally because "Christianity is not a religion, it's a philosophy."  

Christianity isn't a religion?

Anyways, I'm not going to bother responding to Bill's inanity because Dave Silverman and Venaloid did such a good job already. Enjoy and share.