The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXXV

The week in fundie . . .

1. The Unintentional Irony award goes to the opponents of the International Baccalaureate curriculum at a high school in Upper St Clair, Pennsylvania, who appear to be of the view that it comes straight from Chairman Mao:

   "The IB program is anti-American. It does not teach the basic patriotic values of the United States," said Judy Brown, 64, a retired merchandising and sales representative who has a daughter that attended Upper St. Clair schools. "It's almost like brainwashing."

   A hostile board member was heard to utter:

   "Faith is certain. It is more certain than all human knowledge because it is founded on the very word of God who cannot lie;" and, "Jesus Christ as the redeemer of man is the center and purpose of human history. That is why all authentically religious tradition must be allowed to manifest their own identity publicly, free from any pressure to hide or disguise it."

   Got that? Not forcing Jeebus and flag-waving patriotism down the throats of students constitutes "brainwashing." (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)
   
2. A Catholic bishop in Chicago is seeking legal changes that would shield Church institutions from having to pay out "excessive damages" in sex abuse lawsuits, on the grounds that they "jeopardize the mission of the church" and hence "place an excessive burden on the free exercise of religion for American Catholics." Oh, please. If the Catholic church wishes to minimise the damages resulting from sex abuse lawsuits, the answer is absurdly simple: it needs to stop engaging in or sheltering the perpetrators of sexual abuse. (Chicago Tribune, via the Atheist Experience)
3. Sherri Shepherd, who is proving herself to be someone you want in your corner should you ever find yourself playing team Trivial Pursuit, opines: "I don't think anything predated Christians." The Greeks? The Romans? "Jesus came before them." Shepherd is quite the polymath: not only is she full-bottle on world history, she's also formidable on the earth sciences. (The Huffington Post, via Pharyngula)
4. Florida's Palm Beach Community College refuses to provide health benefits to same-sex partners of its employees. It is more than willing, however, "to offer workers insurance for their pets." (365Gay.com, via Morons.org)
5. A Saudi appeals court judge has threatened to sentence a rape victim to death if she appeals against her current sentence of 200 lashes and six months in prison for "illegal mingling" with an unrelated male. (via Bartholomew's Notes on Religion)
   

Just to make it worth your while . . .

Pat Condell on Catholic morality


The videos of this year's Beyond Belief conference are now available online.

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The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXX

The week in fundie:

1. There's been plenty of chatter on Oz blogs regarding the Family First "I can't believe it's not a Christian political party" Christian political party:

   About time there was some scrutiny of "Family" First (Mr Lefty)
   Family First home movies (Grods)
   Family First stifles free speech (Grods)
   Absolutely no connection between Family First and the church at all (Grods)
   “Right-Wing” Christian Australia’s War on Liberal Democracy (Thinker's Podium)
   

2. Southern Baptist seminary course teaches women students to "graciously submit to their husbands' leadership." Students learn "how to set tables, sew buttons and sustain lively dinnertime conversation." (via The Atheist Experience)
   
   More over the fold . . .
3. Pope Benedict on faith-based schools: "It is incumbent upon governments to afford parents the opportunity to send their children to religious schools by facilitating the establishment and financing of such institutions."(via Dogma Free America)
   
4. In case you missed it, Tuesday October 23 was the Earth's birthday. 6010 years young. "Why was she born so beautiful, why was she born at all? . . ." (via The Atheist Experience)
5. From a creationist lesson plan:

   Evaluation: Students will be monitored by teacher observation during the classroom discussion, group work and answering the appropriate questions. Reflection paragraphs will be collected. The teacher will try to determine the students’ new courage and ability to defend their belief in the Creator.

   How's that for academic freedom? (via Pharyngula)
6. According to Pravda, Melbourne University biologists have discovered that dolphins descended from the human inhabitants of Atlantis. (via Pharyngula)
7. Re-closeted gay fundie James Hartline's explanation for the recent fires in California:

   They shook their fists at God and said, “We don't care what the Bible says, We want the California school children indoctrinated into homosexuality!” And then Governor Schwarzenegger signed into law the heinous SB777 which bans the use of “mom” and “dad” in the text books and promotes homosexuality to all school children in California.
   
   And then the wildfires of Southern California engulfed the land like a raging judgment against the radicalized anti-christian California rebels.

   
   (via Pharyngula)
8. "Security Moms": there is a new conservative group in the US (actually a front group for a conservative Washington think-tank) that agitprops in favour of the Bush Administration's national security and foreign policies. Family Security Matters has advocated that Bush make himself President-for-Life (in the tinpot dictator sense), and ranks universities and colleges (all of them) #2 in its list of the "Ten Most Dangerous Organizations in America" (behind Media Matters). (via Kazim's Korner)
9. Banning Harry Potter: it's not just for Protestant fundies anymore. (Boston Globe)
10. Evangelical Christian UK Army Chief of Staff declares that "Christian leaders and chaplains in the Army [are] needed to equip soldiers for" life after death. (via Dogma Free America)
    

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The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXVIII

The week in fundie . . .

1. Ann Coulter wants "Jews to be perfected." (Via Pharyngula)
2. Air America adds ex-evangelical Christian Dan Barker's Freethought Radio to its line-up, and FOX News screams "GODLESS PROGRAMMING!!" (Via Pharyngula)
3. Under Christian and Muslim pressure, UK teachers are becoming reluctant to teach evolution and are being urged to teach creationism.
4. Left Behind Games: Criticise our sad excuse for a computer game, and we'll sue! (Bartholomew's Notes on Religion)
5. Kent Hovind talks to God. And God talks back. Yessireebob!
6. US Department of Defence greenlights fundamentalist Christian proselytism in the military. (Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
7. Catch the Fire: Baby Jesus told Pastor Nalliah that he wants John Howard to win the election (Alan Matheson)

Ann Coulter: Anti-Semite
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Blog Against Theocracy: Atheists in private schools

This post has been inspired by recent events involving an acquaintance of mine whose contract as a teacher at a religious private school was terminated when it was discovered (I assume via that most cherished of pastimes in John Howard's Australia: dobbing) that said teacher operated a blog containing views contrary to the religious doctrines of the school. The teacher had not made any reference to the school on the blog, nor had students or teachers been made aware of the blog's existence by its author. (Truth be told: I'm not even aware of the sacked teacher's religious affiliation.)

The OUT Campaign, drawing inspiration from gay and lesbian liberation movements, urges atheists to "come out of the closet"--to demonstrate to a theistic world that we are not the horned and scaly demons we are imagined to be. We are your fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters. We are your local firefighters or policemen, or doctors, or community workers. We may even be your teachers. & c. & c. Therein lies a slight problem (one doubtless recognised by OUT Campaign organisers): there are some careers in which it is more difficult and dangerous to be an "out" atheist or non-theist than others.

For example, I am an English teacher by trade and an atheist. But given the proportion of private to public schools in Australia, it is clearly against my professional interests to be an "out" atheist, because it would significantly decrease my employment opportunities. This is despite the fact that (a) being an atheist makes no difference whatsoever to my ability to teach English well, any more than if I were a teacher of mathematics, science, economics or history (Christians--apart from a select few who hold that pi=3--don't do mathematics differently than non-Christians, for instance); and (b) being an atheist makes no difference whatsoever to my ability to support the "ethos" of the school--unless, that is, someone wishes to meet Christopher Hitchens' challenge and point to a moral action that a believer could perform but which could not possibly be performed by a non-believer. Should I secure employment with such a school, it would also be against my professional interests to discuss my atheism with my colleagues--even in private over a few beers--because, as my friend's experience demonstrates, it is the kind of thing that could be used against me.

This isn't paranoia--it happened. It is curiously ironic that, in a supposedly modern, enlightened mature liberal democracy such as Australia, one is best advised to adopt a pseudonym if one wishes to speak one's mind freely--particularly on matters religious or political. But there it is: if you are a non-theist, have a blog, teach in a religious private school and wish to keep your job, anonymity is the best policy. That, and being extremely careful about who you share your blog address with.

It may be objected that private schools are just that--private--and therefore have the right to determine their own hiring policies. Furthermore, nobody is forced to seek employment there. Private schools, however, comprise a significant proportion of the education sector, and one of the main reasons for this is that for many years they have received federal funding. Lamentably, private schools overall tend also to provide better teaching and learning environments (e.g. facilities, behaviour management, etc.) than public schools. In other words, money which might have been directed to public schools, and which might have helped improve conditions there, has instead been used to promote the growth of private education. And given that private schools are permitted to discriminate on the basis of religious belief or non-belief, whereas public schools are not, the federal government is effectively endorsing discrimination against non-theists with taxpayer's money by funding private schools. That's not to say that I oppose federal funding of private schools. But I do think certain conditions should apply, and one of these is that schools receiving taxpayer funds in a secular liberal democracy should not have hiring policies that discriminate on the basis of religious belief or non-belief. Does that sound so unreasonable? Furthermore, is it really fair or just that teachers are locked out of a substantial proportion of schools merely by virtue of the fact that they are non-believers?

But I digress. I think much of the systemic discrimination against non-theists in private schools stems largely from their invisibility--were it to be more generally acknowledged that non-believers are just as "normal" and moral as any believer, such discrimination might not be so much of a problem. And this can most effectively be achieved if atheists are prepared to "out" themselves. Even if attitudes don't shift so quickly at the level of the schools themselves, there might develop greater legal and governmental advocacy and support for atheists if they were more visible. On the other hand, atheists who "out" themselves do so at potentially great personal, or at least financial risk. That alone is enough to discourage me from outing myself, and I think there would be many atheists in the same boat.

Kudos, however, to those atheists who do have the courage to stand up and be counted, both here and and in the US.
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Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXIII

The week in fundie:

1. Malaysian woman, born to Muslim parents but raised as a Hindu by her grandmother, claims intimidation and mental torture during her imprisonment for renouncing Islam in favour of Hinduism.
   
2. Anglican Bishops blame floods on TEH GAY.
   
3. Jesus Camp screening at Perth's Revelation Film Festival 15/7/07
4. Religious Right protests promotion of Hindu professor to head of religion department at Lutheran-owned university
5. Bush administration flooded with graduates from a poorly-rated Christian fundamentalist law school
6. Kansas Education Board member unapologetic about her efforts to get Christianity into public schools through the back door
7. Yet another Christocrat Big Day Out: "American Vision"
8. Fundamentalism with a friendly face?
   

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Idiocracy

Synopsis: The story is told from the perspective of Joe, an army librarian who, along with prostitute Rita, becomes a guinea-pig in a top-secret military hibernation experiment. After a prostitution scandal forces the closure of the army base on which the experiments are being conducted, the sarcophagi containing the hibernating Joe and Rita are forgotten. They emerge 500 years later in an America that has become, as a result of low fertility among intelligent people, overrun by idiots. The most popular TV show features a man who is repeatedly kicked in the testicles. The most acclaimed movie features 90 minutes of someone's bare buttocks, punctuated by the occasional fart. The nation faces widescale famine because the crops have dried up, a result of years of being irrigated by a sports drink full of electrolytes.

Joe, a man of painfully average intelligence in his own time, suddenly finds himself the smartest man in the world. After several brushes with the law (and jailtime owing to the incompetence of his lawyer), he is recruited by the President to solve the impending food crisis, and is given a week to do so. When his ingenious plan--to irrigate the crops with water rather than a sports drink--fails to produce immediate results, Joe is sentenced to gladiatorial combat with monster trucks in a demolition derby arena. When the crops start growing, Joe is saved from certain death and eventually becomes President, signalling the dawn of a new era. As he declares in his address to Congress,

There was a time when reading wasn't just for fags. And neither was writing. People wrote books and movies. Movies with stories, that made you care about whose ass it was and why it was farting. And I believe that time can come again!

This is a film that you can't really take at face value. At face value, it comes across as just another lame, low-budget gross-out comedy replete with toilet humour and terrible acting. But then you realise that's the whole point: the very species of teenage knuckledragger who would be attracted to Idiocracy based on its face-value qualities is the very target of the film's satire. Actually, there are other targets, too: anti-intellectualism, corporatism, materialism, and the dumbing-down of education (Joe's "lawyer" received his degree from a city-sized warehouse retail store). And guess which news channel the idiots are watching in this dystopian future? In 1997, director Mike Judge gave us the brilliant Beavis and Butthead Do America; Idiocracy shows us what happens when Beavis and Butthead run America.

Wikipedia notes some of the difficulties the film faced upon its 2005 release. It was only released to a handful of screens across the U.S., and "20th Century Fox, the film's distributor, did nothing to promote the movie." Nor was it screened for critics. It is speculated that Fox, unhappy with the unflattering portrayal of its news channel as well as the film's anti-corporate message, deliberately sabotaged the film's chances of garnering a wide audience. The closing sequence of the film features a theme-park tour of world history in which Charlie Chaplin leads the Nazi Party and dinosaurs are featured as World War Two combatants; perhaps, in a country which recently saw the opening of a multi-million-dollar Creation Museum where humans are shown walking with dinosaurs, the satire hit too close to the mark for comfort. In any case, you can get it on DVD now.

See also: "The Movie Hollywood Doesn't Want You To See" (Slate) Read more!

Pell and Hickey: cult leaders without a cult

National Day of Secularism

May the 26th

What does the Catholic Church in Australia have against secularism, liberal democracy and the Enlightenment? Quite a lot, it seems, because in the last 24 hours no less than two high-ranking clergy have warned Australian Catholic politicians that if they vote in favour of expanded stem-cell research, they risk being kicked out of Benedict's gang. By now you would have heard about Sydney Archbishop Cardinal George Pell's heavying of Catholic parliamentarians in NSW who are considering voting in support of a therapeutic cloning bill currently being debated in the Lower House:

Cardinal George Pell has warned Catholic politicians they face "consequences" in the life of the church should they vote for an "immoral" bill before the NSW Parliament to expand stem cell research.

[. . .]

"These possibilities are quite grotesque and I'd be very surprised if they had approval throughout the population," he said.

"To create a human embryo for the express purpose of using it and destroying, that's the way we treat lab rats. It's totally inappropriate for human beings. It's a perverse new direction in human experimentation.

"I don't think Catholic politicians, Christian politicians or pro-life politicians who has properly informed their conscience should vote for these changes."

"Cloning is not quite the same as abortion and the legislation for such a thing as cloning is different from actually performing cloning," Dr Pell told reporters.

"But it is a serious moral matter and Catholic politicians who vote for this legislation must realise that their voting has consequences for their place in the life of the church."

As Bruce points out, Pell seems to be taking his Escriva-esque contribution to political science, what he calls "normative democracy"--"simply a case of “norms” (coincidentally parallel to church doctrine) that the state was not allowed to breach (in other words if the Church dictates against it Australia doesn’t get a say)"--to a new level. But one wonders whether Pell's acting entirely off his own bat, or in response to a memo from head office, given that this morning Perth Archbishop Barry Hickey issued his own fatwa against stemcell research. Hickey has form, of course: early last month, in response to a similar call from Pope Benedict, he declared that any doctor performing an abortion would be excluded from communion and would potentially face excommunication. Declaring that Catholics who vote for therapeutic cloning are acting against the Church's teaching, Hickey said:

"I had to speak about conscience and I would call on Catholic politicians to examine their conscience before taking communion if they supported stemcell research."

I don't want politicians Catholic or otherwise to "examine their conscience" on this issue (or any other) if it means that they stay up nights worrying about whether their sky-daddy will cast them into a lake of unquenchable fire for eternity if they disobey the orders of the Archbishop. Because, let's face it, that's insane. I want them to use one of the few opportunities they get in party political life to actually use their brains--and in the process, to tell the likes of Pell and Hickey to go fuck themselves. Fortunately, that's what they seem to be doing.

Courtesy of SMH. And too bloody right!

Let us hope, then, that Catholic school principals show as much backbone. As Mikey blogged a few days ago, earlier in the week Pell proclaimed that school principals in his archdiocese would have to take an "oath of fidelity" regarding Church teaching on homosexuality, birth control, and the ordination of women:

In a first for the Australian church, the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, is set to extend the oath of fidelity and profession of faith, a requirement of church law for bishops, priests and heads of seminaries, to all senior educational leaders.
The oath demands "religious submission of intellect and will" on questions of faith and morals - even if these are inferred but not defined by the pope and his bishops - and an acceptance that everything solemnly taught by church tradition is divinely inspired.
It suggests they would be bound not only to impart these teachings but to live by them. [Emphasis added]

Religious submission of intellect and will? Can I just suggest, to any principal who is seriously considering "submitting his or her intellect and will" to the sky-daddy's representatives on Earth, that you don't deserve to be at the helm of an educational institution in the 21st century? Perhaps management training at McDonalds is more your speed, because schools (real schools, that is) are supposed to develop in students the ability to think and to reason for themselves, not to transform them into mindless religious automatons.

Indeed, Pell seems to be taking cue from Jerry Falwell. Just look at what he has in store for those poor students whose parents are fool enough to believe that five to twelve in the Catholic education system will magically transform their little darlings into model citizens:

Among its other new measures are marriage preparation classes for senior secondary school students, twice-yearly reviews of its educational bodies, and forums so Catholic politicians can be updated on church teachings.
There will also be renewed efforts to teach youth about "sexuality and life issues" through formal courses and seminars, and measures to bring in to the fold young people inspired by next year's World Youth Day.
Cardinal Pell has taken an intense interest in Catholic education, ordering the rewriting of the religious education curriculum, and aiming to turn around Catholic thinking that faith is caught, not taught.

Sorry: that's not a school, it's a madrassa. All this talk about getting values back into the classroom . . . when did education stop being a value?

In the end, though, you have to laugh at these gentlemen who have been so cloistered from reality that they appear to think this is the eleventh century, there's still a Great Chain of Being and the secular powers still defer to religious authority unquestioningly. Unfortunately for them, most Australians, and indeed many Catholics, have voted with their feet on abortion, birth control, women's rights, gay rights and stem cell research. Pell and Hickey and cult leaders without a cult.

See also Ninglun's post
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The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XVIII

The week in fundie:

1. Homophobic street preacher whines about hypocrisy because he has been refused permission to march in a gay pride parade. (Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars. Incidentally, the WorldNetDaily article detailing the poor oppressed anti-gay activist's plight refers to said gay pride parade as a "gay" pride parade. Why the scare quotes? Are the participants not gay? Are they only pretending to be gay? Why do wingnuts do this? Are they stupid or something?)
2. Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, ultra-Orthodox Jews are threatening violence against this year's gay pride parade, having acted upon similar threats in previous years. (Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
3. And if you happen to be gay--or even if you're accused of being gay--in post-Saddam Iraq, it significantly increases your chances of being shot, burned and/or beheaded by Shi'a fundamentalist death squads. (Via uruknet) (Warning: follow the links at your own risk--they contain images that are definitely NSFW.) Isn't faith a wonderful thing?
   
4. Over in Pakistan, a Christian man has been sentenced to death for allegedly insulting Mohammed. (Via Richard Dawkins.net)
5. Confused by "NOMA?" US Republican Presidential candidate Sam Brownback unpacks it for you in an op-ed for the New York Times. The way to balance science and faith is to cherry-pick those elements of science which are consonant with your religious ideology (or could be interpreted to be so); if it doesn't agree with your religious presuppositions, you simply write it off as "atheistic theology posing as science." Simple, no? (Richard Dawkins.net) (More info. on the science-friendly Brownback campaign in this post)
6. New Zealand is set to get its own version of Ken Ham's Creation Museum. (Via Pharyngula)
7. Why some people resist science (Via Pharyngula)
   

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Fundie PC: the War On Harry Potter

Image via Cox and Forkum

Harry Potter has again been accused of corrupting the youth of America.

A suburban Atlanta mother who believes the best-selling Harry Potter books promote witchcraft said Tuesday she may take her quest to ban the writings from her county schools to federal court after a state judge rejected her latest effort.

[. . .]

Mallory has tried to ban the books from county school library shelves since August 2005, arguing that the popular fiction series is an attempt to indoctrinate children in witchcraft.

Ban Harry Potter? Doesn't she realise that Voldemort and his Death Eaters are still out there?

And how about this for a textbook case of fundamentalist Christian cognitive dissonance (or is it just blatant hypocrisy?):

At Tuesday’s hearing, Mallory argued in part that witchcraft is a religion practiced by some people and, therefore, the books should be banned because reading them in school violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

“I have a dream that God will be welcomed back in our schools again,” Mallory said. “I think we need him."

Emphases added. I think Mallory needs a better lawyer--one quick enough to advise her that her case might have a better chance of success if she keeps her mouth closed. Meanwhile, I'm off to watch the quidditch.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be released on July 21. Read more!

TEH BIG WORDS

Some blogger (see this post at Bruce's for more details) has accused me--out of the clear blue sky--of suffering "delusions of grandeur," just because I used TEH BIG WORDS in a sentence. Here's the offending sentence:

Presuppositionalist apriorism also rears its ugly head in debates about whether atheists can be moral, whether evolutionists can be moral, etc.

Granted: it's not the kind of language you're likely to hear at the footy, but the idea that it demonstrates my having delusions of grandeur is completely nonsequitous (oops! Another big word). The only explanation I can come up with is that whenever this individual sees someone using TEH BIG WORDS, he concludes that it's all part of a conspiracy to make him feel stupid. Bruce and I only used TEH BIG WORDS, you see, because we think we're betterer than him.

Well, my friend, I've got another big word for you: projection.

Image courtesy of Dinosaur Comics. Click to enlarge.

P.S. I'm actually something of an advocate for plainer English. When I was teaching essay writing earlier in the year, I was amazed at how difficult it was to disabuse my students of the myth that they would get bad marks if they didn't use unnecessarily big words (many of which they plainly misunderstood anyway) and convoluted prose. They were convinced that to adopt a simpler approach would be to appear "unprofessional"--as if maintaining an image of professionalism is more important than getting a message across.

On the other hand, it is possible to be too zealous about the push for simplified prose. The basic presupposition of the Plain English movement is that anything and everything can and should be expressed in terms accessible to "the man in the street." I say, however, that plain English is good only when it clarifies a message; plain English is bad when it dilutes or dumbs down a message. (I'm thinking here of those plain English versions of Shakespeare they're using (not exclusively, I hasten to add) in high schools these days.) As Einstein said: "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."

In any case, whatever my friend's agenda, I really don't think it's as innocuous as a call for plainer English.
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The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XVII

The week in fundie:

1. US military discharges 58 Arab linguists for being gay. What's that line from Apocalypse Now? "The war's being run by four-star clowns who are going to wind up giving the whole circus away." (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
2. Eighth-grade student proves creationism with Epsom salts and wins Christian school science fair. It need not be pointed out to my intelligent readers, surely, that the real idiot in this tale is not the kid but the "science teacher" who bestowed the award. (via Pharyngula)
3. "Dinosaurs were on Noah's Ark"--introducing Ken Ham's Creation Museum. (Found this in the "Offbeat" section of ABC News Online--further evidence of Aunty's leftist Darwinist bias)
4. How to smack down Scientologists (and other purveyors of woo) (Richard Dawkins.net)
   

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As far as teachers who are passionate about their discipline go, Simmo puts me to shame

Good post. Read more!

The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XV

The week in fundie:

1. Christian students cry "persecution!" because they're not allowed to abuse homosexuals at their high school. (via Pharyngula)
2. Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort claim that they can prove God's existence without the Bible . . . by referring to the Ten Commandments. Kirk and Ray: YOU FAIL. (See the unedited Nightline debate between Cameron/Comfort and the Rational Response Squad here, and see also the recap by FriendlyAtheist)
3. Pope Benedict threatens to excommunicate Catholic politicians who don't force their religious beliefs regarding abortion on the populace. (Austin Cline)
4. Meet Jesus' favourite Congresswoman. (via Pharyngula)
5. School bus driver fired for gay personal ad. (Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
6. Pakistan's legislature considers a bill to execute people for leaving Islam. (Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
7. WorldNetDaily: "STARBUCKS HATES GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
8. UPDATE: Hundreds of thousands of homophobes attend gay hate rally in Rome.
   

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A question for Julie Bishop and Kevin Donnelly

I just marked one of my students down for using the word "Abo" in a class debate on the films Rabbit-Proof Fence and Australian Rules. Does that make me a Maoist, anti-American, left-wing, Trojan Horse brainwashing thug?

Me

My student

P.S. My justification for penalising the student was that the use of such a pejorative term was inappropriate in the context of a formal debate, and that it might distract or alienate the audience--something that public speakers (and debate participants in particular) should generally try to avoid. Read more!

What to do with the "marching morons"

As a teacher, and as someone who from time to time has said unkind things about "bogans," I feel chastened by PZ Myers' latest post--a response to an editorial by SF writer Ben Bova extolling the virtues of a 50s SF tale called "The Marching Morons," predicting a world overrun by "dummies."

Myers takes issue with the obvious elitism of the story, as well as its attempt to ground the intellectual class distinction in biology. He retorts: "People, they are us."

That's where the Kornbluth story fails. It assumes the morons are unchangeably moronic, and treats the elite as unchangeably special. The only solution to their problem is to get rid of the morons, launching them into space to die. Bova's editorial, while not as cynically eliminationist, still pretends that the only answer is perpetuation of a distinction that doesn't exist biologically.

Here's the real solution to the "marching moron" problem: teach them. Give them fair opportunities. Open the door to education for all. They have just as much potential as you do. Bova complains that people aren't willing to work for change, but this is exactly where we can work to improve minds — but we won't if we assume the mob is hopeless.

Read the rest--it's one of the best Pharyngula posts I've seen in a long time. Read more!

A Humanist school chaplain?

On the subject of threats to the separation of church and state in Australia, you might recall that last year the Howard Government announced the National School Chaplaincy Programme, which "will provide annual support of up to $20,000 for government and non-government school communities seeking to establish school chaplains or to further enhance services already being provided," commencing in the 2007 school year.

The National School Chaplaincy Programme aims to support school communities that wish to access the services of a school chaplain. School chaplains are already making valuable contributions to the spiritual and emotional wellbeing of school communities across Australia and the Australian Government has responded to the call that their services be made more broadly available.

The government website doesn't spell out exactly what "spiritual wellbeing" is, nor how it might be measured, but perhaps a more keen-eyed reader than myself can locate this information for me. The programme sponsors chaplains across the spectrum of belief in Australia--Anglicans, Baptists, Buddhists, Catholics, Church of Christ, Hindus, Muslims, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews, Lutherans, Orthodox, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Salvos, Uniting Church and "Others"--but it is unclear whether the "Other" category includes atheists and humanists (or Pastafarians). According to Education Minister Julie Bishop, it's all part of the drive to get "values" into Australian public schools--"values" being the sole province of the religious, you see.

It might surprise you to learn, therefore, that humanist chaplains do exist--though whether they would qualify for funding under the Howard Government programme is another matter. In an interview with the Institute for Humanist Studies, the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University, Greg Epstein, described what his job entails:

It is certainly a unique job, and most people really don't know that there has been a humanist chaplain here at Harvard for over 30 years now. A lot of people are curious: what exactly does a Humanist chaplain do? We like to say that the Humanist chaplaincy is dedicated to building, educating and nurturing a diverse community of humanists, agnostics, atheists and the non religious at Harvard and beyond.Nurturing is a very important aspect of chaplaincy work. People have real emotional needs around issues of birth, death, struggles in life, depression, anxiety, but also the joys of life having somebody to share those with, having a community of people to share those with. So I do a lot of counseling for people around both the happy and the sad times in life.

[. . .]

"Is humanism a religion?" is certainly a question that comes up a lot. I think that humanism is a life stance. A life stance is something that functions sociologically like a religion it's role in people's lives, the way that people draw on humanism as an inspiring life stance meaning that it is not just a philosophy. Humanism is not just what we think, it is not just our abstract ideas about the nature of the universe. It is also the way that we live on a day to day basis.The reason we have a chaplaincy here at Harvard, is to acknowledge that this is a broad and diverse community where people have real, everyday, day to day needs beyond simply answering academic questions in the laboratory or in the classroom. Whether you happen to believe in God or not, you still have those kinds of needs, and there needs to be an institution that is dedicated to serving people in their struggles with those needs, in their dealing with those needs.

The rest of the interview can be found here. Epstein has a bit of a dig at the "New Atheists" (i.e. Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris), asking "don't you think human life is about more than just science?" (Do they really suggest otherwise, though?) He sees humanist chaplains as part of a larger project to build a humanist community and institutions, and he also thinks humanists should get together and sing.

We also need to sing. We need to make the experience of being part of the humanist community sing, on a metaphorical level, to be able to read poetry together, and to sort of see the emotional side of life. But we also need to sing literally. Like you said, with Julia, to have those choruses. A song like John Lennon's "Imagine," great example.

In short, Epstein seems like a really, really annoying person. But perhaps he serves as a model for the kind of chaplain that those "values neutral" humanist and atheist students in high schools should, by rights, be granted access to under the Howard Government's chaplaincy programme. Read more!

Baby Jesus told me to beat up your son

An atheist high school student, Reed Braden, lent his atheist friend his copy of The God Delusion. The friend's father found the book, phoned Braden and informed him that he would personally be returning the book that evening (having placed the call at 11pm).

He read me my address (I assume he got it from the phonebook) and told me, "You made this too easy." I obsessively checked every lock in my house and went to sleep with a metal baseball bat held across my chest.

He sounded a bit drunk on the phone and I assumed he wouldn't drive across town to deliver my book in his state, so I called the school and left a message, asking to deny him a visitor's pass to the student areas of the building. He indeed came to school, and I assume he tried to visit me but was intercepted by the principal first. Whatever occurred, he ended up talking to my principal and demanded that I be punished for "handing out literature" and attempting to convert his already-Atheist son to Atheism.

Sidenote: The Gideons stopped cars in our parking lot a week ago to deliver Bibles to every person leaving the school... without school intervention.

Full details and follow-up at Braden's blog. Incredibly, the school is actually making up its mind about whether to punish him for his "sin." Read more!

Archie does fundies

Zaius Nation presents: "Archie and friends--with special guest star Test Tube Jesus."

Gold. Absolute gold.

(Via Light Remembered) Read more!

The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XIII

The week in fundie:

• Jim Crow in Jerusalem: on Israel's "modesty buses"--public buses which service Orthodox Jewish neigbourhoods--men sit up the front while women passengers are forced to sit in the back. (via Pharyngula)
• Rosa Parks in Jerusalem: a woman who dared to challenge the bus policy last November was beaten up by the local Israeli chapter of the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. (via Pharyngula)
• Utah Republican: "Immigration is a Satanic plot!" (Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
• Illinois student arrested for handing in a "violent" writing assignment to his teacher. (Just like Cho Seng-Hui!!!) He's Asian. (Just like Cho Seng-Hui!!!) (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
• Another own-goal for the Right in the debate over the VT shootings: Judith Reisman blames the massacre on the killer's "erototoxins." (Erototoxins, as Ed Brayton explains, "are hypothetical chemicals released in the brain when one views dirty pictures that, Reisman claims, actually 'change the structure' of the brain. They're the biochemical equivalent of Mr. Snuffleupogus on Sesame Street; only Judith Reisman can see them.") (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
• Dutch creationist "re"-builds Noah's Ark. (via Pharyngula)
• Arkansas man sues public library after he claims his sons saw a book about lesbian sex there. (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
  

Read more!

Blog of the day: The VT Blame Game

Cynical-C Blog has a running list of everyone and everything that has been blamed for the VT shootings. So far, the list stands at 72.

One pundit, from the undeservedly-titled blog American Thinker, blames the VT English department for "teaching hate" (don't bother looking for any supporting evidence, however: this guy likes to argue by assertion too):

I wonder if Cho took the senior seminar by Professor Knapp, on "The self-justifying criminal in literature." Because he certainly learned to be a self-justifying criminal. Or whether he sat in courses with Nikki Giovanni, using her famous self-glorifying book, "The Prosaic Soul of Nikki Giovanni (2003)". Maybe he read Professor Bernice Hausman's "Changing Sex: Transsexualism, technology, and the idea of gender" --- just the thing for a disoriented young male suffering from massive culture shock on the hypersexual American campus. [Emphasis added]

So university English departments should censor their curricula and their research so as not to offend disoriented young men suffering from culture shock on "hypersexual" university campuses? I don't know who is the bigger appeaser: this guy, or Dinesh D'Souza.

Via Dispatches From the Culture Wars. Read more!