Culture Wars
tfk | August 24, 2009In 1925, John Scopes was tried and convicted of violating Tennessee's Butler Act. His trial was ginned up as a constitutional test case by the ACLU and as an economic stimulus plan for the town of Dayton, TN. The trial was promoted as "the trial of the century," celebrity lawyers were recruited for both sides, and the town did all it could to attract journalists and onlookers.
The trial wound up famously embarrassing William Jennings Bryan, who died shortly after the trial, and before an appellate court overturned the conviction he won on a technicality. While laws like the Butler Act stayed…
tfk | August 16, 2009Steve Benen reviews the ways in which Republicans now ranting about how insurance reform will kill grandma once loved their 'death panels,' adding:
If reality had any meaning in modern politics, these "death panel" clowns would be laughed out of the building, and humiliated for life.
The whole enterprise of the modern GOP seems to fit entirely into the category of what philosopher Harry Frankfurt described in his famous essay On Bullshit. He distinguished several approaches to truthfulness in statements. On one hand, people can be truthful â concerned about the accuracy of what they say and…
tfk | August 5, 2009I've been slow in writing this review only because the kerfuffle over Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future by Chris Mooney, Sheril Kirshenbaum distracted me. Yes, there's a lot of controversy, but I'm going to set that aside, ignore other reviews, and give my own take here. A response to some of the reviews will follow separately.
"Americans are dumb." This is the reaction I get most often when talking about the creation/evolution conflict, and it's the premise of many actions by the scientific community (which includes both scientists and a broader group of…
tfk | July 24, 2009Shorter David Klinghoffer:
Wah!
Slightly longer Klinghoffer:
Why are people whose views I misrepresent and for whom I have invented a derogatory name so unpleasant to me? Damned deadbeats. Also, academia is the only field of endeavor where people are jerks. The world of business is filled with ambrosia and brotherly love.
Bonus flashback Klinghoffer:
Sure I said "Hitler understood something about Judaism that even many Jews today donât grasp," added that "Hitlerâs insight into Judaism [is] ⦠a profound theme in rabbinic literature," and praised Hitler's "fascination with and knowledge of…
tfk | July 16, 2009PZ Myers doesn't care for Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future by Chris Mooney, Sheril Kirshenbaum. In objecting to it, he quotes Jerry Coyne's objection:
I could find little in Unscientific America that has not been said, at length, elsewhere.
Setting aside the merits of this claim for a moment (a full review will come shortly, but I'm in the midst of unpacking from one trip and getting ready to embark on another), this is a somewhat odd complaint for either of these men to level.
Coyne, after all, is blogging in support of his recent book Why Evolution Is…
tfk | July 15, 2009There are a number of people who, even when they are right, get things very wrong.
To whit, Michael Gerson, former Bush speechwriter, reacting to Francis Collins's nomination as NIH director (h/t Joel). He notes that Collins is well-qualified, and that it's odd how a few people are agitated that Collins is forthrightly religious. He makes the odd claim that this speaks to the state of evangelical Christianity, when it doesn't really. If Francis Collins were typical of evangelicals, it would be great, but he's a pro-evolution, pro-stem cell, egghead scientist. Not a lot of evangelicals fit…
tfk | July 14, 2009
The local Fox affiliate did a story on the controversial issues workshop I'm part of here in Florida. You can see me talking to the teachers about a minute into the video above.
Alas, the reporter got the story a bit wrong. Teachers were never forbidden from saying the word "evolution," the standards themselves simply avoided the e-word. The teachers know that, but the reporter missed the point.
More on the conference in a couple days.
tfk | June 16, 2009A week or so ago, John West pimped a new Disco. Inst. website on faith and religion in the Washington Post's On Faith blog. His claims were as mendacious as you would expect from looking at the site, most bizarrely inventing a movement of "new theistic evolutionists," when the folks he names are simply repeating a position on the compatibility of faith and science which has been part of Christian theology since the time of Augustine of Hippo. You don't need to know more about West's piece.
NCSE Faith Project Director Peter Hess responded in On Faith today. His brief reaction to West: "He…
tfk | June 15, 2009Why Aren't Scientists Allowed to Believe In God?
It's a shame that some people try to stop scientists from believing in God.
Is Darwinian Evolution Compatible with Religion?
Scientists who accept evolution are wrong to believe in God.
Sounds like they need to work on message discipline.
tfk | June 10, 2009Martin Cothran, the hateful bigot who touted the words of an anti-Semitic Holocaust denier on Holocaust Remembrance Day, is confused. He cannot fathom why I called him a moral monster.
The reason is simple. On June 4, less than a week after George Tiller was shot and killed in his church, Cothran advocated that "the murder of abortionists" be "safe and legal." This is disgusting.
Cothran offers no particular defense for the conscienceless (and tasteless, natch) attempt at justifying cold-blooded murder. Like Scott Roeder, who pulled the trigger on George Tiller, Cothran is "deadly…
tfk | June 8, 2009
Apologies for the profanity in the cartoon above, but it is as nothing compared to the eldritch horror quoted below. I offer Penny Arcade's theory as a possible explanation of where this comes from.
Martin Cothran, who blogs for the Disco. Inst., who purports to teach logic (though he's has odd affections for elementary fallacies), and who works for Kentucky's Focus on the Family ally, wants to "keep the murder of abortionists safe and legal." Seeking clarification of that insane title, we learn that:
Reading Ann Coulter is, for me, something of a guilty pleasure, given her gift of…
tfk | June 3, 2009Hilzoy and Megan McArdle have had an exchange over abortion, which includes, as these discussions always do, a ton of talking-past-each-other. This tends to happen, because anti-choicers tend to ignore the pregnant woman, and put all their attention on the well-being of the embryo (and my friend John B., a member of George Tiller's church, has a great post showing how this framing of the issue has influenced our national discourse on abortion). Pro-choice advocates are focused on the pregnant woman's rights, and have diverse views on the moral status of an embryo. This results in one…
tfk | June 1, 2009Medgar Evers was a civil rights activist in Mississippi. Growing up black in a state where dark skin was a crime, he had the courage to stand up for his rights and the rights of his friends and family. He organized boycotts, sued for admission to a segregated law school, and became field secretary for the NAACP.
His house was attacked with Molotov cocktails, but he didn't back down. In Phil Ochs' immortal phrasing, "They tried to burn his home and they beat him to the ground/ But deep inside they both knew what it took to bring him down." And on June 12, 1963, returning home from a…
tfk | May 28, 2009Texas Board of Education chairman Don McLeroy's nomination to continue in that capacity was just rejected by the Texas Senate.
For all the gory details, check out TFN's liveblog. The vote was 19-11 in favor, and requires 2/3 for approval. The Senate President briefly had trouble with the math, either thinking 19>20 or that 30 * 2/3 ≠ 20, but it all sorted out.
Check out my article on events in Texas for more background on McLeroy's antics.
tfk | May 21, 2009Reluctant as I am to endorse anything on America's Shittiest Website™, this article should be required reading for any politically active atheist. It's written as advice for social conservatives/political evangelicals, but for reasons which have implications I won't get into, it applies equally well to the New Atheists or whatever their favored term is these days.
Maggie Gallagher, a loon associated with various fringe evangelical projects like limiting access to marriage and complaining loudly about how much sex everyone else is having, observes:
Social conservatives simply have not been…
tfk | May 7, 2009Martin Cothran takes a break from defending Pat Buchanan's anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial to pick a fight over the definition of the Holocaust. All you need to know is that the definition employed by Yad Vashem, the Anti-Defamation League, historians at the Holocaust History Project, and Wikipedia (for what it's worth) all use is now my "pet definition of the Holocaust."
Apparently he also thinks I "sa[id] that Focus on the Family defends Holocaust denial," which I never did (a typo in an earlier post could have been misinterpreted to indicate that, so I've clarified that post). I did…
tfk | May 5, 2009I've been curious how close Disco. Inst. blogger and Focus on the Family stooge Martin Cothran would get to defending Holocaust denial in the abstract, rather than defending the Holocaust denial of Pat Buchanan specifically. In comments at his blog, Cothran inches closer. I observed that:
You say Buchanan "does not deny the Holocaust." I've offered the generally accepted definition of the Holocaust, and shown that Buchanan denies it. You've offered no definition of the Holocaust, and point only to the fact that Buchanan uses the word.
This is like the old joke:
Q:If you call a tail a leg,…
tfk | April 7, 2009John B, of Blog Meridian, notes that an Oklahoma legislator is pushing a bill requiring a Ten Commandments be placed in the state Capitol. Given that Jews, Catholics, and Protestants all define the commandments differently, an enterprising journalist enquired which version he would be endorsing. "Probably an Oklahoma version," said Sen. Randy Brogdon.
John comments:
Gives new meaning to the term "state religion," no?
tfk | April 2, 2009I'll try to post a synopsis of the Islam and Evolution Symposium I participated in at McGill one of these days, but until then you can get a taste of it by viewing the presentations online. Especially interesting for those of you obsessed with all things Josh, my presentation.
In short, a great time was had by all, with lots of great conversations in the sessions, and among the participants over the several days of the conference.
tfk | March 30, 2009John West is gloating about the new Texas science standards, and in doing so, he's lost track of the truth:
Evolutionists typically cast themselves as the champions of secular reason against superstition, but in Texas they tried to inject religion into the debate at every turn.
Indeed, this past week it seemed that they couldn't stop talking about religion. They boasted about their credentials as Sunday School teachers and church elders. They quoted the Bible and appealed to theology. And, of course, they attacked the religious beliefs of their opponents, branding them religious…