I would be the first to admit that the readership of Pharyngula is not a representative slice of America. We've self-selected for cynics and skeptics and atheists and science-minded people, and that's all right … that's the way I like it.
The viewership of something like ABC News, on the other hand, is something different. There you are getting a wider segment of the citizenry, including a lot of people who would faint and have heart palpitations if they were exposed to what Pharynguloids consider routine. You've got to appreciate it when John Allen Paulos uses his ABCNews soapbox to criticize the religiosity of our politicians — apparently he's gotten a few savage emails over it already.
The comments on the article are a good mix, too — some are looney-tunes outraged Christians, but there are a number of relieved atheist/agnostic/non-dogmatic types who are pleased to see someone speak out against the poisoning of politics with faith. Maybe it would be a good idea for more godless people to head over their and express support for a good and frank columnist…hint, hint.
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This is great that a secular viewpoint is showcased on a notable news service. Maybe secularism is reaching critical mass -- our message is too reasonable to keep being marginalized.
We need a good Battle-cry for the Pharynguloids. Somehow, Kapla seems a little overused. Any suggestions?
It won't let me comment (just gives a weird error message). Do I have to register or something first?
"Maybe it would be a good idea for more godless people to head over their . . ."
Uhh, head over their what?
How can secularism be marginalized in the USA? It's the foundation of the government!
Or... was.
The comments section over there is full of the same old crap. All those thoughtless christians who "don't exist" apparently read the ABC news blog.
One nutter claims that behemoth and leviathan are biblical descriptions of dinosaurs (ripped strait from AiG no doubt) and claims that there were no dinosaur fossils known at the time the bible was written, so the only way for those references in the bible to make sense is if man and dinosaur 'cavorted' as Paulos said. He then goes onto say that we must base our beliefs on fact. The irony makes kittens cry.
You know, I'm aware that evolutionary biology isn't taught much in school, but statements like these make me think that ancient world history isn't taught at all.
Warning, before posting set up an account on ABC. I had an entire comment in and posted it. At that point I was sent to the registration page, I registered (account names are tough to come by (Dana123321 was taken among others). Then, my post wasnt posted and I had an empty post box. Im too tired to retype everything fresh, but will warn others to register then post. There are plenty of godbots posting there already making me feel like joining the welcoming embrace of christ so I can be a schmuck too.
Any suggestions?
Nothing "family-friendly"
There should be a litmus test. The test should be this: Can the politician explain their ethos rationally without reliance or reference to their religion.
The thought is simply that if a politician bases policy on their superstition and not on logic and reason then they should not be allowed to run. Period. This should be the MINIMUM requirement to enter into a SECULAR government position. There should also be reprimands anytime they invoke their religion while working for the people (i.e. outside of their private and personal affairs).
Lorax is right, you do need an account on ABCnews.com, and I couldn't post a comment with Firefox, either - got an error. Internet Explorer sent it through fine, though.
There seems to be a running discussion in that comment thread, mostly just two people ranting against us abominable secularists! I wouldn't advise joining the debate, but please give Paulos your support, it's an excellent article.
Let's play "Post priceless comments from that thread!"
I'll start:
Winnar!
Lorax, the comments box looking empty after you've jumped through the registration hoops means the comment you'd typed before starting the hoops process got posted when you were returned to the original page with comments box. I went through the same thing, did retype, and wound up with a double post.
Blah, that abc site is crap. Here's what I tried to post but was unable to:
To paraphrase Sam Harris, it is absolutely astounding and downright frightening to realize that a person cannot be elected to hold the highest office in the country if (s)he does not believe that there is some invisible, magical man in the sky who reads people's minds and defies the laws of physics and probability to grant wishes.
Never mind. Apparently ONE of those tries worked. I still say the site is complete crap though.
Come on, I'm bored at work, someone else play with me! <.< That came out bad. Play zee game!
Qapla' in the right pronunciation wouldn't be all that bad, actually... though you're right it's a bit boring, meaning just "success".
One of the commenters at ABC cites the existence of Flood myths in 'world cultures' as evidence for the Noah story.
Hmmm... let's take this one for a spin. The Noachian flood was supposed to represent the slaughter of all humanity (bar one boatload) by (a benevolent, merciful) God. If this were true, there would certainly be no surviving witnesses outside the ark, and there would have been nobody to preserve or record any such story in any other culture.
I suppose we shouldn't try to use logic in this argument. The same commenter thinks that humans and dinosaurs coexisted...
If you win will you thank the voters or your non-existent
god? If you lose will you blame the voters or the devil?
Are all you morons beseeching the same non-existent god,
and if only one of you wins, will you others excoriate
the winner's god and claim that your god has better plans
for you? You freaking morons, you are all losers with or
without your god.
I managed to get a comment posted using Firefox. Hardest part is coming up with a user name that's not taken.
Technically not a question, as such.
We must have the freedom to determine what is true and what is not true.
Posted by:
PQQAm 11:07 AM
I determine gravity to be untrue, now watch how my truth spreads around the planet!
I want details on Huckabee program to amend the US Contitution. What will be the amendments or the New Constitution, and when will he start the process ?
Will there be a mandatory tithe ? Which wooden images and idols will have to be torn down ?
I'd like to ask either one if they're more embarrassed of their own crackpot beliefs or of the fact that so many Americans are willing to overlook their crackpot beliefs.
You know... If you remove the parenthetical quips, that quote almost achieves a sort of poetry.
Derek at #17...though I'm loathe to defend the belief in the flood, your logic is flawed. After all, if everyone except that boatload of people was killed, then all the cultures of Earth are descended from them, and OF COURSE they'd have myths about the flood.
Thanks Nan, you were right. My post is there posted under Differentmembername41. (Those who tried registering know where that name comes from.) For those with free time and an evil streak, go post-play with PQQAm, s/he seems like such an easy person to rile.
#16, I don't know whether to be depressed that I've been proven so unequivocally wrong, or delighted. ;)
It would be kind of hard to sum us all up in a battle-cry. Unless you were ok with it being really really long.
Messrs Chucklehead and Romnuts,
How does your religion support or refute this type of action and excuse:
http://www.rawstory.com/news/mochila/Man_says_exorcism_led_to_wife_s_de…
# 20 I don't see a question mark at the end of that
sentence.
My question:
If, hypothetically, God told you to declare war on Canada... would you?
Zero wrote: We need a good Battle-cry for the Pharynguloids. Somehow, Kapla seems a little overused. Any suggestions?
How about SPOON!, or maybe CEPHALOPOD!
I specially liked the question on wether the candidates thought that God had an opinion on the Riemann Hypothesis.
Afterall, I always assumed that if God had existed, he must have been a really brilliant mathematician, and a musician. Maybe he hid his "secrets" behind the zeros of the Zeta function, and composed the music of the primes.
Those are all great questions, but I've got one more:
Q: [Candidate], you've publicly expressed your commitment to conservative values and the morals and guidance of the Christian faith and God, respectively. So how long until we can expect to find that you, like Larry Craig, Mark Foley, et al., are in actuality an airport-bathroom cruising, meth-smoking, dirty-emails-to-teens-writing, Sunday-school-dress-wearing, donkey-raping, confessional gloryhole using, rubber-chicken-frotteurising hypocrite? I've got a pool going here at my office, you see....
How 'bout: "Reality!"
or
"PYGMIES + DWARFS!"
If you read the comments in first-to-last order, the wacky comments from Christians far out number the thoughtful comments left later, which were presumably left by people who found the article through blogs such as this one. So I'm not sure there is hope for humanity yet.
My favorite comment what this one:
#25, except not all cultures have a flood myth. The Hawaiians don't. No rivers in the island to flood. And even if there WAS a flood, how do you know it was Noah's? It could have been from India or Korea or Iroquois. Plus all these floods happened during different years. There's no evidence of a flood around the world at the same time. Where did the water come from? Where did the water go? A planet covered in water would have an atmosphere too humid to be breathable.
poke (#35)- That is funny: someone figured out that the way to insult a godless science person is to acuse him of having FAITH! Ouch! And BLIND faith! No! Stop! Please! Don't use the CAPITAL LETTERS on me!
Actually, I might hurt myself trying not to burst out laughing at work. (Is that the plan?)
I like that poke's BLIND FAITHer measures things in units of 'more than anything [s/he] know[s]'.
I would guess that a unit of 'anything BLIND FAITHer knows' is pretty small indeed.
So i wanted to post a "good job fine sir" comment over there, and they wanted me to register. I don't want to be a silly-assed statistic for a news corporation i can't stand.
AND, pandora is playing snoop dogg, and he agrees with me.
Charles @ 20,
See, the trouble with you Flood apologists is...
(OK, I jest.)
However, I really do think that the point the loonies are making is that global flood myths provide independent confirmation of the Noah story. I've never heard them claim that the myths just have a common origin in the middle east...
Irrespective of the obvious disparities between the various myths, the claim (for the reasons I gave above)is obviously false in its own terms.
Oops - Charles @ 25, not 20.
#33: Corrolary question: Why don't you just come out now and get it over with?
Re: Noachian Flood: Can you spell "genetic bottleneck"?
SG
To me the flood is the single greatest point to show the bible isn't innerant. Some try and mangle it down to reed sea instead of red but that removes all the grandeur and value of the story. It makes it well, not to impressive and certainly not global.
Dan @31: "SPOON"
+1
I caught John Allen Paulos on the "Point of Inquiry" podcast a few weeks back and he gave a great interview. I can't wait to read his new book.
As to the candidate questions, though, we probably shouldn't exempt the Democrats simply because they are less overtly batshit-crazy than their GOP counterparts. They all burned up debate time last Summer laboriously parsing out their religious beliefs.
"I determine gravity to be untrue, now watch how my truth spreads around the planet!"
Posted by: Dutch Delight | February 4, 2008 12:30 PM
We'd be more impressed if it went flying off in a straight line
1. We are all (supposedly) descended from Adam and Eve.
2. Hamm (or one of them, I can never keep them strait) pissed of god and was 'cursed' with black skin (cool, less skin cancer (now THAT's a curse)) and had to serve everyone else again. This was the christian justification for slavery.
3. Noah and his wife were the only two humans to survive this Noah-count flood.
Query: Why are there still multiple skin tones extant on earth if we are all descendents of Noah and his wife?
Maybe we atheists should threaten to leave the US and move to say, Sweden, if the religionists take greater control of the country. Can you imagine what would happen if all the intelligent people left? The religious wouldn't know how anything works.
Re: #49:
Noah and his wife weren't the only survivors; the whole family, including nameless wives, were on the boat. Ham was Noah's son, and Ham's son Canaan was punished for his father's (Ham's) indiscretion at seeing his father (Noah, Canaan's grandfather) drunk and naked. Here's how Noah responded:
Gen 9:25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.
I don't think skin tone was a factor, just the servitude.
Some of those comments were scary. Like this one: "We have documented evidence (in writing) that men lived together (at the same time) as dinosaurs. People who have never read the Bible don't know this. "
WHAT? What evidence? And if there WAS such evidence, people who hadn't read the Bible would also know about it, right?
Oh, and someone mentioned "behemoth and leviathan being dinosaurs..." There's a video on youtube of some nutball creationists singing a song about it to children, which you can find here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xKDKq_PPbk
Oh, and also, Jesus fights athiests, which you can find here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IblzBerSFk&feature=related
Must be microevolution.
Re: Dan @31: "SPOON"
I'm right behind you!
NOT IN THE FACE! NOT IN THE FACE!
Reminds me of the Penn & Teller Bullshit! creationism episdoe where they voted on the sex of a rabbit, writing down symbols on cards.
Penn: "I vote (turns card to show female symbol) female. Teller votes (Teller shows him card)...Prince."
I'd ask him Magical or non-Magical?. Bill Clinton was asked "boxers or briefs, after all, so why not?
Emailed John directly over this (never met him but I like his work especially recent book and the ABC post). I don't usually do "fan letters" but the ABC post was a lot like PZ's and other in that it really carves into the issue without waffling and deserved some offsetting comments to the crap I figured he had to put up with.
From his response to me, John generally indicated he's gotten some rather vitriolic and often confused (as I think he put it) email. On the other hand the pz posse here and those from other good blogs are certainly raising the content bar for the comments at ABC.com. The reviews of John's latest book are quite good (or at least the ones I've seen) so that's a nice sign - I'm still waiting for a copy I ordered to arrive by mail.
"I'm sure there's one big question on everybody's mind, and I imagine you are the man to answer that. How is Elvis, and have you seen him lately? "
"Facts, Hercule, facts, behind them lays the whole fabric of deductive truth." Inspector Jacques Clouseau 'A Shot in the Dark (1964)
In addition to the dinosaurs/humans comments mentioned above, these were a few of my favorites...
"The Bible is the ONLY thing that teaches absolute perfection."
"Atheists believe in rocks and trees as their creator."
"Archeology has proven time and time again that the Bible is a dependable source of information."
"There is no such thing as a way to date anything. It is just a number that someone picked out of a hat"
"Read the Bible and you wont (sic) find things in there that cant (sic) be proven."
"If anyone shows me a fossil of an organism in between species then I'll eat my words."
I don't even know where to begin...absolutely incredible. It's truly scary that people this ignorant have the power of the vote.
And how about "Viva Cephalopoda" for the rallying cry?
There you have it, right there. Behemoth and Leviathan are mentioned in the Bible. They were big. God tells Job that Behemoth was created at the same time as human beings, and the Psalmist says that God fed people with the meat of Leviathan. If you read the Bible, you'd know that. (I on the other hand had to look it up.)
SPOON! works for me.
After all, aren't we pretty much just going sane in a crazy world?
Leviathan on dark rye, specifically.
Dan the Other writes..."After all, aren't we pretty much just going sane in a crazy world?"
Point. Set. Match.
SPOON! it is.
PZ, have you read Professor Paulos' book, Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up yet? I found it to be a stimulating and short read, perfect for an airline flight.
Leviathan on a Kaiser roll with lots of yellow mustard just makes my day. And none of that pouffy Poupon crap. A whole crunchy garlic dill wouldn't hurt, too.
I have had trouble posting on the ABC News website in the past. They once kicked me off permanently just for saying nice things about Kirk Cameron's ass. I just reregistered under a different name.
"What would you ask Huckabee and Romney?"
I would ask them to leave.
What would I ask them? You mean apart from "Why don't you just FOAD?"
My favourite comment is this one - I can't tell if it's ironic or not, but it sure is a great read:
PZ, I prefer "god-free" to "godless", same as I prefer "child-free" to "childless", etc. What say you?
@71 - This is the Anasazi creation myth (okay - I looked it up on Teh Internets).
At least we're getting to hear "all sides of the debate" in the comments section at ABC.
#51: RE: Hamm, Caanan, etc. Thanks. I can never keep the lineages strait. But it was all one family, right? I mean, except for the wives (in the bible, they don't count much).
#56 said Bill Clinton was asked "boxers or briefs, after all, so why not?. Given the age of most of the Republican hopefuls, I think the answer would be, "Well, Depends."
Cheetahs went through a genetic bottleneck several thousand years ago- probably down to a single family- leaving all modern cheetahs so closely related to each other that you can graft skin from one cheetah to another without immune rejection. If the flood had happened, EVERY species on the planet ought to display the same level of genetic bottleneck.
The conclusion is obvious: the Flood only happened to cheetahs.
Wait wait wait wait...
You mean Noah got wasted and passed out naked, but his grandson got punished for it?
Pefect Old Testament logic there.
Romeny: Are you wearing your magic underpants?
Huckabee: You say you want an amendment to make the US Constitution accord with "The Word of God" regarding abortion:
1. what do you say to the majority of Orthodox Jews whose interpretation of the Torah is that life does not being at conception but at approximately the end of the first trimester,
2. do you believe that the US Constitution should also be amended in accord with the Will of God as it applies to adultery, fornication and blasphemy?
3. Have you considered using as a campaign slogan "Don't fuck with Huck"?
Re: #75
Yes, that really makes sense doesn't it? Noah gets drunk and passes out naked. His son, Ham, sees this and covers his father up with a skin blanket. (Believe me, this happens. I've covered up my own father more times than I can count.) Then Noah wakes up, sees the blanket, and realized Ham saw him naked. (Again, based on my experience, a grain of truth here.) Noah is furious at Ham, so he punishes Ham's son. Makes sense. But here's the best part. It's not just Canaan who gets punished, it's every one of Canaan's descendents for all eternity who have to endure forced servitude.
WTF?
And there I was thinking that passing out naked is the speciality of the rugby boy. Who'da thunk?
Well, I've learnt my lesson from the Bible. Don't help out your parents. Especially when they're nude and drunk.
Could someone please explain the SPOON joke?
Anyone else willing to bet that this PQQAm character is like FtK's daughter or sister?
I second the motion. And while you're at it, I'd appreciate the same for "PYGMIES + DWARFS".
That's it PZ, you're going to need to put in a glossary.
While wiki isn't the greatest resource in the world:
Pygmies + Dwarfs can be learned here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharyngula_%28blog%29
And The Tick's battle cry 'SPOOOON!' can be found here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112196/quotes
Happy reading.
Where did the water come from? Where did the water go? A planet covered in water would have an atmosphere too humid to be breathable.
Posted by: Alverant | February 4, 2008 1:59 PM
Don't you read the bible? Obviously it came through the windows in the big transparent dome that expands over the flat earth.
1. what do you say to the majority of Orthodox Jews whose interpretation of the Torah is that life does not being at conception but at approximately the end of the first trimester,
Posted by: Ian Gould | February 5, 2008 9:34 AM
Actually the bible also says that a baby isn't worth anything until after it's already been out of the mother for a month. It says it in Leviticus 27:6 and again in Numbers 3:15-16. There is also of course the penalty in Exodus 21:22-23, for harming a woman in a way that kills a developing fetus without killing the mother, which happens to be a fine rather than life for a life.
I bring that one up a lot to fetus fetishists who use the bible to justify their idiocy. They've yet to have an answer that doesn't involve Christians not being beholden to the old testament or telling me i'm 'interpreting' or some other such nonsense. It's till fun to see them squirm.
As far as the question at hand. I'd ask him what the going rate to sell my daughter into slavery was and ask if it would be adjusted for inflation. I'd also ask him if it's ok to have multiple wives such as in Genesis 4:19, 16:1-4, Dt 21:15, 1 Kg 11:2-3 and other chapters or if it's not ok as in Mark 10:11 or Matthew 19:9.
re: selling your daughter into slavery
The unerring eternal infallible bibble does not adjust for inflation, or anything else.
Many thanks.
As for the battle cry, I'm thinking "Praise be Darwin!"
Just to make 'em twitch.
"Are you shitting me? And I have a followup: No, seriously, are you shitting me?"
Qapla' in the right pronunciation wouldn't be all that bad, actually... though you're right it's a bit boring, meaning just "success".
Could someone please explain the SPOON joke?