Religious Extremism

I hate to do this to you but I have to fisk a fisking. You see, Dr. Michael Egnor, the creationist neurosurgeon, was a bit miffed about my takedown of a particularly idiotic post of his. For those of you who left your program at the gate, Egnor is a (apparently competent) neurosurgeon in New York. He's known on the internets for having joined up with the creationist cult pseudoscientific organization, the Discovery Institute. Just as DI has little to say of relevance to the history of life on Earth, Egnor has little of relevance to say about medical science, as far as I can tell. The…

I'm off to the west coast (of Michigan) for a few days, and if I don't blog, I shall die...or something. So I have a few posts from my old blog to share with you. As my child approaches school age, I worry about school board battles a little bit more. I hate politics, but I can see myself forced to get involved at some point. And I find myself wondering, what is it about some Evangelical Christians? Why is their faith so weak? Is God testing them? I ask this because of their constant griping about "equal time" for Creationism in public schools. Given that science classes are supposed to teach…

Here's a bit of a surprise. In California, our Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. Opponents quickly arranged a ballot proposition to reverse the ban. Support for the ban has been slipping, from almost 50% earlier in the year, to 42% in July, and now to 38% in the latest Field Poll. Mark Schoofs reports in today's Journal that the Mormons are large backers of the marriage ban proposition: Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have contributed more than a third of the approximately $15.4 million raised since June 1 to support Proposition 8. The ballot initiative, if…

I've written often about the ethics of doctors and pharmacists imposing their own morals on their patients and customers. Our Sb pharmacologist has as well. And even though all of our legitimate professional organizations recognize this line, Bush's Department of Health and Human Services has jumped into the ring to join a fight that should never have started. And just to demonstrate how single-mindedly idiotic an evangelical (small "e") mindset can be when applied to medicine, PZ Myers, uber-atheist, received an interesting solicitation (please, don't quote-mine that). To remind you of…

I'm so angry I can barely type coherently. I have very strong feelings about abortion, but I believe it is possible to respectfully disagree about the ethical issues involved. I have an obstetrics colleague who does not perform abortions, but refers patients needing this service to others. That's the ethical way for a doctor to oppose abortion---don't do it, don't prosteletize, refer out. My personal feeling is a woman has the right to control her body and all that dwells within, but I can see why others would disagree. All that being said, if you chose a profession that will, by its…

I was trying to avoid weighing in on this one, but blogorrhea always wins. I won't bother rehashing the details of the imbroglio---if you don't know, well, you've been sleeping. Go on...google "pharyngula cracker"...I can wait. OK, now that you've caught up, here's my two cents. I'm conflicted about this. It's not usually a good thing to offend people's deeply held beliefs unless those beliefs are deeply offensive. A free society requires a great deal of tolerance. This of course cuts both ways--if Catholics can expect reasonable peace, so can those who criticize their beliefs. As I…

Arghhh!!! Framing. What is it? Is it a way of communicating issues effectively to diverse populations? Or is it another word for compromising your values until they become meaningless? In his latest piece, SciBling Matt Nisbet shows it to be the latter. While many of us are shaking our heads as we are forced to choose a candidate who panders to religion, Nisbet praises Obama's strategy of co-opting the Religious Right's message by supporting faith-based charities. If your only goal is to elect Obama, perhaps this is a good strategy. If your goal is to continue to improve our (secular…

A number of years ago, I saw an older physician reading a book with an intriguing title---God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan, by Jonathan Spence. Like most Americans, I know very little about Chinese history. I certainly had no idea that there was a massive civil war in 19th century China that by most estimates killed around 20 million people. Twenty. Million. People. By comparison, the American Civil War, which took place in roughly the same time period, took around 700,000 lives (military, disease, civilian, etc.). I'm not a historian, and I read the book a…

The WSJ brings us news of increasing opposition to laws that would protect faith healing. Or as I call it, negligence. As usual it has required the death of innocents before people will come to grips with common sense. The recent death from untreated diabetes of an 11-year-old Wisconsin girl has invigorated opposition to obscure laws in many states that let parents rely on prayer, rather than medicine, to heal sick children. Dale and Leilani Neumann of Weston, Wis., are facing charges of second-degree reckless homicide after their child, Madeline Kara Neumann, died on Easter after slipping…

Many of my fellow bloggers, and many fellow Michiganders, have noted a breath of fresh air out of (ironically) the Motor City. This quote from Real Detroit Weekly's review of Expelled hits on an important point. By way of background, the following quote refers to the incident where biologist PZ Myers (who happens not to believe in any gods) was kicked out of a screening of the movie: Mathis laughs before offering two reasons why he told the security guard at the screening not to let Myers in. First, Mathis says, "He has viciously attacked me personally and attacked the film." Just to…

I don't normally blog on religion, but there has been an jump in foolish writing coming from the wacky end of the religious spectrum. On the top of the list are folks like Vox Day and Geisler and Turek (I Don't Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST). For some Christians, faith isn't enough, apparently---they want logic and science to be on their side. Apologists perform some crazy cognitive acrobatics to try to prove that their beliefs have some objective reality. (Huge hat tip to Deacon Duncan over at Evangelical Realism.) Apologists like to think that they are persecuted for their pursuit…

Cults kill. It's really that simple. But different cults kill in different ways. It's not just Jonestown and Killer Kool Aid (OK, Flav-r-Aid). The so-called mainstream cults that are particularly dangerous, because we tolerate them. Jehovah's Witnesses have their own brand of craziness. It's not bad enough that they come to your door to annoy you in person, but they forbid their members life-saving medical interventions---for no good reason. Christian Scientists decline medical care because some lady 150 years ago got better despite the interventions of 19th century quacks. Then there'…

It had seemed at first that there would be no help for the living children of the killer parents in Wisconsin. But, in a fit of rational behavior, the authorities removed the remaining children from their parents care. I hate to see families broken up, but until the parents are deprogrammed, it simply isn't safe for kids to live in that house. The parents apparently have ties to the "Unleavened Bread Ministries", who admit to eschewing medical care in favor of prayer. The cult has been unenthusiastic about claiming the family as members. As quoted by ABC news, David Ells, the cult…

Another example of a barbaric belief that the whole world must condemn and fight against. An Australian Imam, after a series of gang rapes by Muslim men in that country, has come out and blamed the women for it (yes, this link is to the Worldnutdaily, but the same thing has been reported, with direct quotes, in many other sources). "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat?" the sheik said in his sermon. "The…

Yahoo News reports: Arshad Misbahi of the Manchester Central Mosque confirmed his views in a conversation to John Casson, a local psychotherapist... "I asked him what would be the British Muslim view? He repeated that in an Islamic state these punishments were justified. They might result in the deaths of thousands but if this deterred millions from having sex, and spreading disease, then it was worthwhile to protect the wider community." "I checked again that this was not a matter of tradition, culture or local prejudice. 'No,' he said, 'It is part of the central tenets of Islam: that sex…

Stop and imagine for a moment what it would be like to be stoned to death - buried up to your chest with only your neck and head above ground and pelted with rocks (small ones so you don't die too quickly) until your flesh is ripped open and the pain is unbearable and you finally die. Now think about the fact that such killings, of gays and women who are not virgins or are caught in adultery, are routine in much of the Islamic world. This blog even has a link to a video of an actual stoning, which I cannot watch. And this blog has some suggestions on what we can do to help stop such killings…

Who do you root for in a battle like this? I hate to agree with the Pope, but in this case he was right to pronounce that much of the Quran is "evil and inhuman" and that Islam was a religion spread by the sword. Of course, the same can be said about the Bible and Catholicism (and it is especially ironic for a Pope to object to religion being spread through violence), but at least Christianity absorbed enough of secular philosophy from the Enlightenment to humanize it so that it is no longer enforced with violence except in the rarest of circumstances. But the irony of the whole situation is…

Howard Friedman reports that a movement to change the Hudood Ordinances in Pakistan - a set of harshly oppressive laws that result in the imprisonment and death of thousands of women for charges like adultery - is being opposed by a coalition of Islamic parties in that country. Last month, the Pakistani government amended the law to lessen the punishment for women charged with having sex outside marriage (naturally, there was no punishment for men having sex outside of marriage) and released 6500 women who had been jailed on such charges. Just make sure that you don't say that Islam is…

Bartholomew has a lot more detail on Bishop Bonifes Adoyo, the head of the Pentecostal church in Kenya trying to get all the hominid fossils found there hidden from view in the national museum. As expected, he has a long history of nuttiness including claiming that golf might lead to demon possession.

And here's a perfect example. Rabbi Yehuda Levin is still ranting like a lunatic about the gay pride event in Jerusalem, as Agape Press reports. And you're gonna love this logic: Orthodox Jewish rabbi Yehuda Levin fears that this homosexual pride event is turning the Holy City into a "homo city" -- and he is worried that the government's support of the week will bring on severe judgment from God... The rabbi also notes that Israel's prime minister and Hezbollah's leader cannot explain why they have gone to war at this time. Levin believes they may have had no choice. "The answer may be…