Culture Wars
tfk | May 24, 2010Shorter Martin Cothran: How Whiteliberaldemocrats voted on the Civil Rights Act of 1964:
Rand Paul can't be a racist for opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in 2010 because there were racist Democrats who opposed it in 1964.
Cothran doesn't know why everyone is beating up on Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul for saying he'd vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I mean, sure, the Civil Rights Act does a bunch of stuff that Cothran has no intention of actually discussing, but look how the voting pattern in 1964 doesn't tell a clean story about how one party is a bunch of Freedom…
tfk | May 24, 2010Before they discovered Casey Luskin, the Disco. 'Tute's legal nerve cluster resided in Seth Cooper. Cooper offered his sage advice to the school board in Dover, PA, then left first for the staff of a state legislator, and then high-tailed it to a conservative legislative activism group in DC, leaving Disco. to Casey. Disaster ensued.
This is only relevant because I came across Seth Cooper's website, which includes this summary of his earlier career:
Prior to his work with ALEC, Seth worked in 2007 as a contract attorney in Washington State. He also served as a Caucus Staff Counsel in the…
tfk | May 24, 2010From Eric Hovind's twitter feed, we get a photo and a caption:
Hanging out with Dr Stephen Meyer from the Discovery Institute. Wow, smart guy!
For those who can't keep track, Hovind is the son of Kent Hovind, currently serving time in a federal prison on charges related to tax evasion. Hovind created "Dinosaur Adventure Land," a young earth creationist theme park, and adopted the stage persona "Dr. Dino" for his speaking tours. Hovind claims a doctorate from a diploma mill: Patriot Bible University. He also claims that creationism is excluded from schools because of a secret conspiracy…
tfk | May 20, 2010Panel moves âReligious Freedom Actâ:
A Senate panel narrowly approved legislation Tuesday whose supporters say reaffirms constitutional guarantees of freedom of religious expression.
Approval came over the objections of those who contend Senate Bill 606 is unnecessary because the U.S. Constitution and the Louisiana Constitution already protect religious freedom.â¦
The measure, sponsored by state Sen. Danny Martiny, R-Metairie, also had support from Baptist and Catholic church representatives as well as the head of a group that promotes a pagan church.
Valli Henry, president of the…
tfk | May 20, 2010For a long time, the Disco. 'tute insisted that "intelligent design" is science, and that questions about who did the designing are theological and beyond ID's scope. IDolators insist that ID can be evaluated without knowing anything about the nature of the designer.
This never made sense.
So in defending ID against a negative book review, Disco. Fellow Jay Richards distracts himself from denying global warming to launch a defense of ID as good theology:
Letâs imagine someone who does explicitly invoke God in explaining some feature of nature, someone like Thomas Aquinas. Does "inserting God…
tfk | May 20, 2010Martin Cothran, staffer with the Family Foundation of Kentucky and generally awful person, is excited about Rand Paul's recent primary victory in the Kentucky Senate race. "Is Rand Paul the de facto leader of the Tea Party?", he asks:
In fact, one of the Tea Party's long-term problems is that it doesn't have a single, recognizable leader. It may have just found one.
Paul has the intellectual ability to articulate the Tea Party case in a way Palin can't.
(Palin is "the fairy godmother of conservative politics," in Cothran's telling.)
Anyway, the question then is what this intellectual leader…
tfk | May 19, 2010Bruce Chapman, head Disco. DJ, thinks we're going through global cooling:
It certainly seems so this spring. Winter on the East Coast was grim and summer temperatures are hard to find now in the West. Snowfall also higher than in decades past. It doesn't mean anything except this: there is (and should be) a real debate.
In fact, NASA found this to have been the hottest April on record, and the hottest January-April on record. Which is to say, this was not a notably cool spring. April also saw the lowest snowfall on record for that month.
In other words, it doesn't matter that Chapman…
tfk | May 18, 2010The Pope is likely to have a lot of reading soon:
Roman Catholics can send now text messages of support to Pope Benedict XVI, Italian public television said Saturday, as the Church faces an international paedophile scandal.â¦
All messages sent to the special number -- +39 335 18 63 091 -- will be passed along to the pope by the end of May, the broadcaster said. They will be shown from Sunday during the television show "In His Image".
Interestingly, there are a number of websites that will let you send free SMS messages to an Italian number.
tfk | May 18, 2010
In the video above, you can watch Indiana's Rep. Mark Souder yammer about creationism with staffer Lisa Jackson. He crows about his on-screen experience in Expelled: No Intelligence, and his efforts to twist Smithsonian emails into a conspiracy.
Souder recently won his primary election, but just resigned from Congress after revealing that he carried on an affair with Ms. Jackson. Given that the two also made a video about the importance of abstinence, the affair is a little bit embarrassing. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
tfk | May 13, 2010Ophelia Benson continues to tangle with the silly and unjustifiable argument by Sam Harris that science can produce morality. Harris has shown himself to be beyond the realm of reason on this matter (and perhaps others), but if it brings her joy, I say mazel tov. At long last, someone is deploying against Harris what may be the most powerful argument against using theism to justify morality: Euthyphro's dilemma.
Classicists reading this will recall this from the Socratic dialogue in which Socrates prepares to fight the accusation that his views corrupted the youth of Athens. Euthyphro is…
tfk | May 12, 2010So remember how I posted a thing about how "critical analysis" is just another Marxist/postmodernist catchphrase adopted by fundamentalists to advance their religious/political agenda? I thought it was interesting, but relatively uncontroversial.
Rob Crowther, Disco. 'Tute's scribe in residence, objects not because of the basic thesis of the piece, but because I didn't clearly indicate that Crowther thinks Camille Paglia is a creationist. That, at least, is what I take him to mean by saying I "impl[ied] the exact opposite" of this:
Camille Paglia has made interesting comments about global…
tfk | May 11, 2010When I first heard about an attack ad in Alabama charging that gubernatorial candidate Bradley Byrne was in favor of evolution, I didn't even bother blogging it. Of course Roy Moore â famously removed from the state judiciary for unconstitutionally forcing religious symbols into public places â would use evolution as a weapon against his opponents.
But now former state board of education member Byrne is defending himself against the attack, not by standing up for evolution, but by denying the charge that he thinks "evolution ⦠best explains the origin of life." According to Politico,…
tfk | May 10, 2010Those who follow creationism carefully know that after it became clear that Intelligent design would fail in court, the new strategy which took the field often simply called for "critical analysis" of evolution. The practical effect is the same as when creationism is forced into the curriculum, but the phrasing is more pleasant to the ear. I was reminded of this in reading a generally insipid conversation between Margaret Wente (bolded) and Camille Paglia:
But in education today â even in primary-school education â all we hear about is âcritical thinking.â All the facts are available on the…
tfk | May 10, 2010I'm honestly undecided about Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court. She's got a distinguished record of legal service and scholarship, though few publications to document her views. Larry Lessig likes her, Glenn Greenwald doesn't. At the end of the day, President Obama likes her, and the general sense is that the Senate will like her well enough. She'll be confirmed, becoming the 3rd woman on the current Court, and the 4th ever to serve on the nation's highest court. Maybe Diane Wood will get the nod next time.
There's been some obnoxious nosecounting about her religious views,…
tfk | May 6, 2010S.E. Cupp has become a minor bete noir here, partly because I've been tracking reaction to her profoundly inaccurate book. But today, she actually says something I agree with. Or at least, she accidentally implies something I agree with.
The essay is a bit of sports commentary, or rather sports journalism commentary. She can't fathom why Keith Olbermann is blogging for MLB.com, while Rush Limbaugh wasn't allowed to buy a football team. It all comes down to politics, she's sure. She recites various things Olbermann has said which she finds offensive (e.g., saying President Bush foisted "fake…
tfk | April 29, 2010Lord love her, S.E. Cupp has posted the first chapter of her book Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media's Attack on Christianity. That means I've now inflicted two chapters of the damnable thing on myself, and I feel no better for it. You'll recall that the first chapter I saw was her look at evolution. I summarized:
S.E. Cupp's handling of science and religion misrepresents the nature of evolution, obscures the science of biology, and dismisses the deeply-held religious views of most Christians outside of the fundamentalist subculture. This is the sort of misrepresentation which leads her…
tfk | April 29, 2010I've been playing around in the Oxford English Dictionary's definition and usage history for "atheism" and "atheist," and found this rather relevant to ongoing discussions.
1876 GLADSTONE in Contemp. Rev. June 22 By the Atheist I understand the man who not only holds off, like the sceptic, from the affirmative, but who drives himself, or is driven, to the negative assertion in regard to the whole Unseen, or to the existence of God.
Now, far be it for me to suggest that dictionaries, let alone the particular usages they indicate from 153 years ago, are correct, but I think Gladstone is making…
tfk | April 29, 2010Yesterday I made the offhand comment, "Say what you will about creationists, some of them have genuine critical thinking skills." I followed that up by adding "garbage in, garbage out." My meaning there may have been obscure, and commenter PhysioProf objected:
Dude, I get that you are now fully invested in how mean and shitty some atheists are and how wonderful and enlightening and allegorical religion can be. But all this "splitting the middle" "both sides do it" false equivalency shit is causing you to lose your fucking mind.
Which wasn't my point at all. My point is that critical…
tfk | April 28, 2010So Fox News breathlessly reported that Chinese researchers had found Noah's ark. "Has Noah's Ark been found on Turkish mountaintop?," they asked, dumbly. "No," answered slacktivist.Gawker replied at greater length:
A group of evangelicals found some 4,800-year-old wood on top of Mount Ararat. They are "99.9 pecent" sure that it's Noah's ark. This is totally real, which is why it's on the front page of Fox News' "SciTech" section.
Slacktivist didn't actually just say "no," he expanded on the point by noting:
The expedition seems to have found a wooden structure. They hear hoofbeats, so they'…
tfk | April 26, 2010Last Saturday, we put on the first ever SkeptiCal: Northern California Science and Skepticism Conference. It was pretty awesome.
The organizers included Bay Area Skeptics and Sacramento Area Skeptics, and we managed to fill a 200 seat auditorium by advertising to our members, other northern California skeptics groups, some email alerts to JREF, CSI, and Skeptics' Society members, and helpful plugs by prominent podcasters and bloggers.
Shortly before Genie Scott flew off to receive the highest honor granted by the National Academy of Sciences, she gave a talk about the relationship of science…