Absurd religious wingnutery
palmd | April 8, 2009I'm not real interested in blogging about politics. It's just not my thing. But the recent increase in absurd and frankly scary rhetoric from the right is giving me the shpilkes. It's not just the tea-baggers (heh heh...I said "tea bagger"), but I might as well say something about their lame-ass tea parties. These tea parties differ, but many of them involve sending tea bags to a representative or to the IRS to protest taxes. These "parties" don't actually protest higher taxes, just the idea of taxes. After all, taxes have always sucked, and no one was having tea parties under Reagan,…
palmd | March 27, 2009Pope Benedict, the former head of the same Church body that ran the Inquisition, has done it again. He just committed an act which is morally equivalent to involuntary sodomy, and did it to an entire continent.
Africa, the epicenter of the AIDS pandemic, sometimes seems to have not all that much going for it---AIDS drugs are expensive, some leaders have been idiots, but there have been some bright lights, such as Botswana's comprehensive HIV prevention program.
So when some German dude walks in and tells everyone that condoms are wrong and may make the problem worse, one might consider…
palmd | March 18, 2009I often write about "cult medicine", that is, medical practices that share many characteristics of cults: they are based on faith, they follow charismatic leaders, they separate people from their money---you know, like The Church of Scientology. The COS has everything going for it---a religious arm, a health care arm (the Citizens Commission on Human Rights), and an educational arm. In fact, the more I learn about these wackos, the scarier (and funnier) they seem. You see, it turns out that these folks have a lot of front organizations. Unlike more traditional religions, that are happy to…
palmd | March 16, 2009Over at Neurotopia, Scicurious has been doing some terrific writing about depression. Mental illness is a topic I've written about many times, so I was inspired to look into the vault and see what kind of goodies I had back there. Well, since I truly loathe people who dole out dangerous medical lies, I figured it was time to dust off this little bit on Scientology and mental illness, rework them a bit, and share them with you again.
The problem
Depression, in the medical sense, is not a mood...it is a severe
disorder originating in the brain, and affecting the entire body. Major…
palmd | March 10, 2009As the term of President B. Hussein Obama begins its transformation of American democracy into a socialist state, one guy saw early indications of his minority-led red revolution.
"He spent his childhood in a Mohammadean country," the guy said, "they could easily have started his indoctrination at that time."
Citing no sources, but using flawless reasoning, the guy reported that the clues are everywhere.
"Do you see how he can't go anywhere without a teleprompter? What better way to feed him the party line? This way, his handlers can feed him lines in real time, and they can be safely…
palmd | March 6, 2009If someone were to write a biography of the Creationist neurosurgeon, "Unhinged" would be an apt title. He used to content himself with rants against philosophical materialism, and evangelize for dualism with a zealous religiosity. But that wasn't enough. The "forces of secularism" seemed to keep growing, despite his desire to see some heavenly smiting. In his latest rants, the gloves are off---it's scalpels at twenty paces.
Let's see what's got Egnor so exercised.
First came the announcement by Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) that they would boycott Louisiana…
palmd | February 19, 2009I don't link to Pharyngula very often---our content just doesn't intersect that much, but I followed a link from today's post and had a good laugh.
You see, some comedian creationist cult leader put out a new book, and the reviews on Amazon are a real hoot. From one review:
My only disappointment with the proofs provided in this book is that my favorite, Eve, isn't listed among them. Evolution could have made her look like anything at all--like Rush Limbaugh, a big hairy wookie, or a naked mole rat for example. There's no way Adam would have tapped that. Instead, God chose to fashion one…
palmd | February 19, 2009It seems the same questions keep coming up when looking at the cult leaders of the infectious disease promotion movement. When you listen to them preach or read their liturgy you can't help thinking, "dumb, evil, or both?" I think I'm going to vote for "both" when it comes to Deirdre Imus. Her sermon last week in the Huffington Post was so far over the top that my nose is still bleeding from climbing her tower of intellectual excrement.
Her title advises health consumers, "On Vaccinations: Consider the Source and Follow the Money."
I don't know what that means, but Deirdre explains, "…
palmd | February 17, 2009I'm getting really tired of this nature vs. nurture debate when discussing homosexual rights. It's always interesting to investigate the origins of human behavior, and occasionally something is found to be purely genetic, but I suspect that sexuality, like many human attributes, has a complex mix of biological and non-biological causes. That doesn't piss me off. What pisses me off is the insistence by right wing religious cults on "proving" that homosexuality is a choice.
Sexuality phenotype is a tough concept if you really think about it. The harder you try to nail down the difference…
palmd | February 12, 2009The Pope has decided that forgiven doesn't mean forgotten. When he recently un-excommunicated some dissenters, and they continued to spew hateful, anti-semitic Holocaust-denial, the Pope's silence implied consent. He is silent no more. That isn't to say he has re-excommunicated the offender, but he has called him out. It's a start.
palmd | January 28, 2009Look, the Pope gets to make the rules---it's his club and he gets to decide who plays and who doesn't. The Vatican does not claim to be democratic. That being said, all decisions rest on him, and him alone, and cannot be blamed on "the will of the people". The buck really does stop with Papa. So when he invites rabid anti-semites back into the fold, it's a reflection of his personal beliefs. Catholicism, and Christianity in general, places a premium on forgiveness---it's some good shit for the soul, and the story of Pope John-Paul II reconciling with his would-be assassin is truly heart-…
palmd | January 21, 2009I'm one of those wacky idealists for whom January 20th was a great day. But with those high hopes, I have some fairly high expectations of our new president, one of the first of which is to repeal the Church Amendment, an HHS directive allowing health care providers to abandon proper ethics without consequence.
I've done quite a bit of blogviating about so-called conscience clauses, the rules that would allow health care providers to deny patients care not because it is outside the standard of care but because it bothers the personal beliefs of the provider. In case my previous writings…
palmd | January 21, 2009Nearly a year ago, a young girl was killed by her parents. She was dying of diabetic ketoacidosis, and her parents provided only prayer. They weren't living on some compound under the thrall of some cult leader. They weren't living in a third-world country far from modern medical care. They were living in the middle of Wisconsin, and had access to any care they might need, but while their child suffered, the parents did the equivalent of nothing. This type of situation has been done to death, but since the parents are about to go on trial, let's review the responsibilities of the state…
palmd | January 16, 2009Remember those pesky conscience laws the Bush administration is trying to ram into our collective orifaces on their way out the door? No?
Let me remind you.
You see, the theocrats who are on their way out on Tuesday want to step up enforcement of the so-called Church Amendment, which protect health care providers (defined broadly) from the consequences of their own malpractice. With Church in place, your doctor (if she receives federal funds) can refuse to tell you about or prescribe birth control (as one example). Of course, she can do that anyway, but the Church Amendments protect her…