Freethinker Sermonettes
revere | April 22, 2007I missed it in December when PZ alerted us to the challenge of an afterlifetime: The Blasphemy Challenge. The "challenge" (scare quotes here because some of us find this pretty easy) is to declare your lack of faith with a YouTube video. The only requirement is that at some point you must utter the words, "I deny the Holy Spirit."
According to the Challenge's sponsors, the "Holy Spirit" is an invisible ghost who Christians believe dwells on Earth as God's representative. Denying that this Holy Harvey exists is considered the ultimate sin: "Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never…
revere | April 15, 2007I don't like getting involved in internecine warfare, least of all amongst my SciBlings. But a recent OpEd in WaPo by two fellow bloggers I admire, Matt Nisbet of Framing Science and Chris Mooney of The Intersection prompts me to set fingers to keyboard. It is Richard Dawkins that provoked it. Good for Dawkins. Once again he is exposing muddled thinking. And he didn't even have to write about it:
Leave aside for a moment the validity of Dawkins's arguments against religion. The fact remains: The public cannot be expected to differentiate between his advocacy of evolution and his atheism. More…
revere | April 8, 2007It's Sunday -- Easter Sunday for Christians -- and time for Freethinker Sermonette, so you probably thought you'd get a day off from mathematical models. After all, we've just completed 18 posts on the subject and if you've read them all, you're exhausted. So it must be a day of rest, right? No such luck. More on mathematical models, offered in a spirit of conciliation and perhaps explanation why I don't mind the differences of opinion that erupt in the comment threads. A mathematical model tells me I shouldn't mind:
To model the evolution of opinions, physicists Renaud Lambiotte and Marcel…
revere | April 1, 2007When last we checked the problem of salmonella contaminated peanut butter they had traced it to the ConAgra Peter Pan factory in Sylvester, Georgia. But how could living organisms get into the peanut butter? Last week FDA investigators announced they had found two "environmental positives" in the plant, one in some cleaning equipment and the other "in relation to the roaster." The roaster? Give me a break. It would be a miracle if Salmonella survived in the roaster.
And apparently that's the answer. Here's what I found over at my SciBling Mike the Mad Biologist's blog:
Questions?
revere | March 25, 2007My flu wiki partner, fellow blogger and friend Melanie of Just a Bump in the Beltway fame sent me an email on Friday with subject line: The Times They are a Changin'. In the email was a summary of findings from a recent survey of Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes: 1987-2007 by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Pew has been doing these surveys periodically and they present a picture of shifting attitudes on "values" issues. They now show a welcome return to earlier, more moderate views on helping our fellow citizens, a less friendly attitude toward the use of…
revere | March 18, 2007The big news in the world of atheism this week is the admission by northern California congressman Pete Stark that he was a nontheist. In officially making his declaration of non faith, Stark has breached what many think of as the last religious taboo in American politics.
Mr Stark, who has served in Congress since 1973, admitted his "non-theism" after the Secular Coalition for America, an advocacy group in Washington, offered a $1,000 bounty to the person who could identify the "highest-level atheist, agnostic, humanist or any other kind of non-theist currently holding elected public office…
revere | March 11, 2007I don't believe in God, but I think I know how God would feel if he or she or it or they actually existed. Because we have a dog. Having a dog is like having your own small, pious believer. Unconditional love. Total dependence. True, obedience is just fair, but our dog worships us no matter how we treat her. And we treat her disgracefully -- that is, better than we treat our fellow humans. Mrs. R., of course, understands the pooch better than I do because it's "her" dog and if you ask Mrs. R. the best dog in the world:
Pet owners notoriously make excuses for their own animal's bad behaviour…
revere | March 4, 2007Since I am a professor I know better than most that professors can say stupid things (feel free to interpret that as self-referential paradox). My example du jour is Paul Campos, a law professor at the University of Colorado. In a nonsensical Commentary published by the Scripps Howard newspaper chain, he tries to make the case there are almost no genuine atheists. That's why Americans are so intolerant of atheists (I guess in his view it's not really intolerance, because there aren't really any atheists). He specifically mentions polls showing that a lack of religious belief is a…
revere | February 25, 2007I've said before I quite like Christmas as a secular holiday. I might be an atheist, but I like the sense of generosity, the urging (albeit with commercial motives) to do something nice for those we care about and those we don't know, the emphasis on Peace on Earth and Goodwill towards All. Too bad we can't do that more than just at Christmas. Unfortunately, this is not what I had in mind:
Imagine if the religious right's beloved "war on Christmas" was a year-round affair. Legions of lawyers ready to pounce on school and civic administrators, the persistent neon buzz of ACLU-paranoia in the…
revere | February 18, 2007The American electorate is apparently not too keen on having a Mormon as the next President. Compared to an atheist, however, a Mormon is a Highly Desirable Personage.
Gallup Poll, 2/9- 11, 2007:
If your party nominated a well-qualified Candidate for the White House in 2008 who was a ___, would you vote for that person? (h/t DailyKos)
Yes
No
Catholic
95%
4%
Black
94
5
Jewish
92
7
A woman
88
11
Hispanic
87
12
Mormon
72
24
Married for third time
67
30
72 years…
revere | February 11, 2007The far right smear machine against John Edwards has moved into territory close to home: attacking Edwards by attacking his newly hired bloggers, Amanda Marcotte (of Pandagon fame) and Melissa McEwan (from the equally eminent Shakespeare's Sister). The big media (cable news of all stripes, AP and New York Times) are reporting it just as it comes off the far right tickertape, as usual. It's not an accident that Amanda and Melissa are noted and notable progressive feminist bloggers. Not an accident unless you believe in the tooth fairy, anyway. Why is in the Sermonette? Because the thin end of…
revere | February 4, 2007Austin Cline is one of the more incisive regular writers on atheism. This week he discusses a Paula Zahn show on CNN that begins with a brief vignette about couple in a small town in Mississippi who complained to their son's public elementary school principal about time spent in bible study and prayer. Yes, his public elementary school. For their trouble they became outcasts. No one would speak to them or let their children play with their children. When it was later revealed they were atheists, the father's boss got calls complaining he had brought an atheist to town. People drove parked in…
revere | January 28, 2007Let's identify the enemy correctly. In a democracy, the enemy is cynicism. All enemies of democracy want you to be cynical about whether you can affect anything your government does. Cynicism is deeply anti-democratic. Even on a day where we gathered by tens or hundreds of thousands to tell our political leaders they must stop the madness and they are deaf. On such a day, especially, cynicism is the enemy.
CNN's (pathetic) coverage of yesterday's large visit to Washington, DC by antiwar lobbyists (why are we protesters but Halliburton's pro-war profiteers are lobbyists?) lasted a few hours on…
revere | January 21, 2007When newspaper columnist Art Buchwald died on Wednesday I had to laugh. Forgive me if this shocks you, but he always made me laugh, even when he died. In an interview on PBS's Newshour, Jeffrey Brown played a video of Buchwald reading the first sentence he would write if he were to write his obituary in The New York Times. Looking straight into the camera, with a twinkle in his eye, he says, "I'm Art Buchwald and I died today." I laughed.
Buchwald developed kidney failure in December of 2005 and elected not to have dialysis, instead entering a hospice to die on his own terms, and then, when…
revere | January 14, 2007The arguments over atheism are getting pretty raucous. It's not coming just from the religious right. It's also on the secular left (examples here and here, or here on Science blogs here and here). Apparently there is supposed to be a new kind of atheist, the fundamentalist atheist: intolerant, rigid and deliberately offensive to the many gentlefolk believers that certainly exist. The two biggest targets for this charge are Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. Daniel Dennett is getting off easy and the new book (Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam ) by Michel…
revere | January 7, 2007My curiosity over the epistemology of complaints about alternative medical claims aside, I have no doubt that there is a ton of quackery out there. Some is easy to identify (magnetic bracelets, etc.), some is officially sanctioned (health claims for vitamins, various over the counter pharmaceuticals sold by Big Pharma, etc.) and some of it is sacrosanct. Literally. Now in Ohio a televangelist is being sued for the false claim that she and her husband could cure illnesses like cancer with prayer. Or rather that God can. They are just channeling God, I guess. Which is supposed to make it OK.…
revere | December 31, 2006According to wingnut whacko James Pinkerton, nut case columnist for Newsday, at least one war is going well, these days: the war against The War on Christmas:
So Christmas has survived yet another year.
Yes, there has been a war on Christmas, fought by a few lefty lawyers who managed to buffalo some multiculturalist bureaucrats and politicians. But it's been a losing war:
First, and most obviously, there's the steadfast religiosity of the American people; polls routinely show that 90 percent of Americans believe in God. Secular progressives have done their best to knock the faith out of…
revere | December 24, 2006It's not just Sunday, but it's Christmas Eve. Time for my annual In Praise of Christmas Sermonette. Because, yes, I am a big fan of Christmas. As a proud member of the godless, I am not a bit embarrassed or chagrined. As far as I'm concerned, it's a lovely secular holiday. I'll explain why, but I also know the winter holidays can be a difficult and sad time for many people. The darkness of the season and the emotional freight of family associations contributes, no doubt. My views are not even shared by everyone in my own family. So this is not meant to be why everyone should like Christmas.…
revere | December 17, 2006I don't watch much network TV and I certainly don't watch Charlie Sheen's new show, Two and a Half Men. So I didn't know that the Christian Right is going bonkers over his mocking of Christ, Christmas and Christians earlier this week. At least that's their version.
Apparently what he did is sing his own version of a Christmas Carol:
"CBS approved Sheen's adaptation of the favorite Christmas carol, making it into a vulgar sex song," said Donald E. Wildmon, Chairman of AFA, in a statement. "The network and sponsors paid Sheen to mock Christ, Christmas and Christians. Many in the Christian…
revere | December 10, 2006I see a lot of crap about how atheists are narrow-minded and intolerant of religion and distort the Constitution. Maybe some are and do, but for sheer nuttiness, stupidity and delusion, any aberrations from the usual behavior of the godless can't hold a candle to the faithful. The Sunday before the last minute holiday shopping is a good time for some levity. I suppose it depends a little on your sense of humor whether you think some of this utter, complete, total and idiotic nonsense is levity or not, but I'm an optimist. The toilet is half empty rather than half full:
The recent furor over U…