Freethinker Sermonettes
revere | September 9, 2007A few days ago we brought you Word from Australia that Osama bin Laden had driven through several high security checkppoints on the way to Bush's hotel in Sydney, Australia. He just wanted to tell him it was "all a misunderstanding." Given the heavy security for Bush's visit, making it through these checkpoints was like a miracle.
Well, it turns out, sadly, it wasn't really a miracle. Osama wasn't really Osama, but a member of the cast of Australian Broadcasting's TV show, The Chasers. "The Miracle of the Checkpoints" just wasn't in the script of Australian security theater. But The Chasers…
revere | September 1, 2007I've been thinking more about the significance of the Dawkins-Harris-Dennett-Hitchens-PZ genre of atheism writing. Matt Nisbet and other folks seem to feel very threatened by it, worrying about an anti-secular backlash. Just saying it that way makes me want to laugh. Oh, those uppity atheists! But that's just one of the anti-Dawkins tropes. Another is that the "New Atheist" (itself an invidious term) is intellectually unsophisticated and ignorant about religion and theology. I'll freely admit I am not an expert on theology. Why would I want to waste my time? I'm not an expert in astrology,…
revere | August 26, 2007I don't mean to pick a fight with a fellow Science Blogger, but I'm afraid I have to. If not a fight, at least register a strenuous remonstrance, if I may frame it that way. The object of my displeasure is Matt Nisbet over at Framing Science, who seems to have a bee in his neurons about what he calls "The New Atheists," meaning those atheists who say, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more." Since that is one of the reasons for our Freethinker Sunday Sermonettes, I might be forgiven for taking it somewhat personally.
Since I have an interest in the "framing" issue myself, and…
revere | August 19, 2007It seems like just a few weeks ago (maybe because it was just a few weeks ago) we brought you the stupidity of the South Carolina couple who saw angels in the clouds. Not that this kind of thing is so uncommon. People have a tendency to organize their sense data into patterns and those patterns clearly have a learned and cultural component. What was so stupid was the local news station reporting this as "news." If the couple had seen a giant scrotum and penis in the sky, would the TV station have reported a Big Prick in the Sky? The willingness of the mainstream news media to broadcast this…
revere | August 12, 2007Everyone knows Fred Phelps is a vile, obnoxious, cruel and probably psychopathic Christofascist (one of the well known subdivisions of the worldwide fascist movement, which includes Islamofascists, Judeofascists, Hindufascists and many other religiofascists; it is an ecumenical movement, which even includes godless fascists like Christopher Hitchens). For those of you lucky enough never to have heard of him, Phelps is pastor of the notorious Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, famous for picketing the funerals of Iraqi war soldiers with the claim that they died because the military…
revere | August 5, 2007Steven D. Levitt, the economist and author of Freakonomics, has made a living explaining counterintuitive notions to people on the basis of hidden incentives for human behavior. I haven't read Freakonomics, although it sounds interesting. My behavior is constrained by time. Maybe an incentive will come out of hiding and ratchet the book up my priority list. Still, you'd think a best-selling author of an economics book wouldn't be so surprised when another genre, that on its face doesn't seem like the stuff of best-sellerdom, makes the grade. But Levitt is still surprised that atheist books (…
revere | July 29, 2007The lecherous and hypersexed pizza delivery boy might be a porn movie cliche but not likely welcome in Ave Maria, Florida:
If Domino's Pizza founder Thomas S. Monaghan has his way, a new town being built in Florida will be governed according to strict Roman Catholic principles, with no place to get an abortion, pornography or birth control.
The pizza magnate is bankrolling the project with at least $250 million and calls it "God's will."
Civil libertarians say the plan is unconstitutional and are threatening to sue.
The town of Ave Maria is being constructed around Ave Maria University, the…
revere | July 22, 2007The story of North Carolina uber Christian Coy Privette, arrested on charges of aiding and abetting prostitution (being a "john") is, on its surface, just another tale of hypocrisy, one among many:
Privette, the president of the Christian Action League in North Carolina, was charged July 19 with six counts of aiding and abetting prostitution.
According to arrest documents secured by the Biblical Recorder, Privette's alleged actions took place in a Rowan County hotel between May 4 and June 25. Tiffany Denise Summers, 32, of Salisbury, N.C., was charged with six counts of prostitution in…
revere | July 15, 2007A couple of days ago my SciBling, PZ, at Pharyngula, posted a characteristically funny and on target rant about the preternaturally religious country we both live in. Displaying a map of the US, thematically colored by frequency of religious affiliation, he commented:
It shows the concentration of ignorant, deluded, wicked, foolish, or oppressed victims of obsolete mythologies in the United States, with the lighter colors being the most enlightened and the dark reds being the most repressed and misinformed. (PZ, "I'm surrounded!" at Pharyngula)
Some people took great exception to this (see…
revere | July 8, 2007The only triple pun I know is in a stanza from a Pete Seeger song, Passing Through:
I saw Adam leave the garden
With an apple in his hand,
I said, "Now you're out
What are you gonna do?
Plant some crops and pray for rain,
Maybe raise a little Cain,
I'm an orphan and I'm only passing through." (words and music by Dick Blakeslee)
Raise a little Cain/cane. Heh, heh.
It's fine for Adam to pray for rain and make a clever joke. Adam didn't exist. The Governor of Alabama does. Yesterday marked the end of the Governor's call for a Week of Prayer for Rain in Alabama. Yes. That's right. A state-…
revere | July 1, 2007Suppose you had a dog and, mirabile dictu, you found he was able to do mathematics? What would you thnk?
Stan Tuten held up a board and scribbled down a basic algebra problem:
If a=2, and b=3, what is axb-1?
Micah, a terrier mix with penetrating eyes like black molasses, glanced at the board.
"Micah?" said Dr. Cindy Tuten, a physician and Stan Tuten's wife. "Do you understand the problem?"
She held one hand high in the air with a bowl of cut tomatoes and cooked chicken (the dog's reward) and the other out for the dog's answer. Micah tapped his paw once.
"Once means 'yes' and twice means 'no…
revere | June 24, 2007Epicurus' old questions are yet to be answered. Is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil? -- David Hume, quoted in Konner, The Atheist's Bible
The tremendous number of bad things that happen to innocent people has always been a problem for flacks for an All Powerful and All Loving God. I'm always curious to see how they explain it. The latest contribution from Dr. John Pearrell, pastor of Gateway Community Church in Covington, Georgia is both refreshing in its…
revere | June 17, 2007What's the US's largest Protestant denomination? The Southern Baptist Convention. If you want to make a bigoted remark about Islam or atheism, where do you go to do it? The Southern Baptist Convention.
Comments about Islam have generated controversy at past Southern Baptist meetings. In 2002, a former Southern Baptist Convention president, the Rev. Jerry Vines, called Muhammad, the Muslim prophet, a "demon-possessed pedophile." (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
Along comes Watergate criminal, Chuck Colson. Colson went to the clink after pleading no contest to obstruction of justice. In prison he…
revere | June 10, 2007Rudy Giuliani, the erstwhile US Presidential hopeful, had his moment on Tuesday's CNN debate. I'm sure you've seen it. Over and over again. I won't bother doing it here. If you haven't seen it, here is a YouTube version. Rudy is explaining his "Catholic position" on abortion (you know which one, the one that starts, "On September 11, 2001 . . . ") when his response was obliterated by lightning-induced static. The Big Guy was sending a message. And the Catholic blogs noticed. Here's a typical response:
This is just too good. As Giuliani was trying to explain his 'Catholic' position on issues…
revere | June 3, 2007The Economist, a right of center journal of news and opinion I find quite interesting (as do many other lefties), has noticed that atheism is big in the book market. Comparing Hitchen's book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything with Francis Collins's The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief they come up with a rather bizarre conclusion: whether you are a rationalist like Hitchens who comes up on the side of atheism or a scientist/rationalist like Collins who cleaves to the devout depends on whether you "have an intrinsic feeling for religion or not." Errr…
revere | May 27, 2007You know atheism is making headway when it starts to elicit new, and more desperate, forms of push back. It's no longer possible burn atheists at the stake, at least not in the US, but you can tar and feather them with accusations that they are as bad as -- what? As bad as the intensely religious? Yes. That's the new tactic. Richard Dawkins is a Fundamentalist:
Despite its minority status, atheism has enjoyed the spotlight of late, with several books that feature vehement arguments against religion topping the bestseller lists.
But some now say secularists should embrace more than the…
revere | May 20, 2007Mutatis mutandis is a Latin phrase used by philosophers to indicate that an argument made in one circumstance carries over to another, "the necessary changes having been made."
Most of us don't know much about Sikhs, which is why this dispute, which has escalated into violence and civil disorder in the Punjab, displays its irrationality to us so easily. We aren't burdened by any associations, historical resonances, political nuances. The whole thing can be seen in its pristinely pure stupidity:
Sikhs are angered over an advertisement in local newspapers earlier this week showing the head of a…
revere | May 13, 2007Nebraska is a pretty red state (meaning Republican and conservative, not lefty as it did in my youth). All the statewide office holders are Republicans except for junior Senator Ben Nelson who might as well be a Republican. The state went two to one for Bush in 2004. Two to one. This is God's country. Well, not quite. At least not in the religion section of the Lincoln Journal Star this weekend which carried a long story about freethinker and Lincoln, Nebraska citizen Rob McEntarffer, 38 years old, and working in the Lincoln Public Schools District Office. He describes the first time, in…
revere | May 6, 2007For the past two days I have been in a remote location at a small academic conference not connected with bird flu. I'm multitasking, now, writing this while listening to a founder of the critical legal studies movement in days of yore. It's been extremely interesting and always a pleasure to talk, argue and break bread with people with different perspectives from different backgrounds. One of the things you get at meetings like this are good jokes and cartoons others use in their talks you can steal for your own. Early on a noted philosopher of science put up a Sidney Harris cartoon showing…
revere | April 29, 2007America is starting to reawaken from one of its periodic religious revivals. They happen with tiresome regularity, every three or four decades, but it's a damped oscillation. Each time the amplitude of the wave is lower and the DC signal between blips more secular. Freethinker books are appearing on the bestseller lists, occupying more prominent space in bookstores (even if some of that space is bought by publishers, it is a reflection of the market, just as the pile of Christian books has been). In the last couple of weeks atheism has appeared in prime slots of cable TV. Joe Scarborough,…