After that I wasn’t really surprised.  Ignorance is very rarely confined to science alone.

“The National Center for Science Education is antichrist.”

Just about anything that is said afterwards can be discredited by this first sentence alone.  This is a debate about whether or not religion should be taught in public schools under the guise of Intelligent Design.  Intelligent Design has been proven time and again to be a slapdash repackaging of creationism in secular sounding terms in a feeble attempt to get it into science curriculum.  The National Center for Science Education isn’t antichrist, they’re simply asking that science curriculum reflects the separation of church and state that was established with the founding of this country.  To call the NCSE antichrist is to call America and most of the founding fathers antichrist while at the same time revealing your true religious motives right from the get go.

“Text taken from The Quest for Right, a 7-book series on origins based on physical science, the old science of cause and effect:”

As far as I know science is still operating under the same old system of theorize, test, modify, and test again until you get it right or get as close to right as is possible with current technology and methodology.  It’s the same system that has been in use since the beginning of the Enlightenment, and it’s the same system that has consistently validated ideas like evolution that have gotten your panties in such a twist.  Could it be that you’re hearkening back to the pure science of the dark ages that served humanity so well for so long?

“Special note on obstructionism: In 1916, one thousand scientists were polled as to their belief in a deity (i.e., God). Of the ones responding, 60 percent had no religious belief. A follow-up study 80 years later revealed that the percentage of atheists, someone who does not believe in or denies the existence of God, among scientists remains shockingly high: 78 percent of physicists, 58 percent of biologists, and 55 percent of mathematicians are atheists.”

This is one of the biggest gripes that I have with modern religions.  Why is it shocking that scientists don’t believe in God?  Why is this such a scandal?  Why do the religious have this impulse to convert everyone around them to their particular belief system?  In short, who cares if they don’t believe in God?  It doesn’t surprise me that a good deal of scientists don’t hold a religious belief one way or the other.  Their whole life revolves around coming up with a suitable cosmology that is based on observable evidence and rigorous testing, which is something that no religion in the world can stand up to.  There is no case for God other than taking it on faith, and you’ll forgive me if I prefer scientists who question the world around me rather than taking it at face value based on ancient and outdated tribal morality.

 ”Sixty percent of those polled by the University of Georgia historian Edward Larson snubbed Judaism, Islam, and Christianity by equating “belief in a deity and an afterlife with superstition based on fear and wishful thinking.” Nature, 4-09-1997″

At the risk of sounding pedantic, here is the dictionary.com definition of superstition:

1.	a belief or notion, not based on reason or knowledge, in or of the ominous significance of a particular thing, circumstance, occurrence, proceeding, or the like.

2.	a system or collection of such beliefs.

3.	a custom or act based on such a belief.

4.	irrational fear of what is unknown or mysterious, esp. in connection with religion.

5.	any blindly accepted belief or notion.

Sounds like religion fits the definition of superstition perfectly!  Moving on.

“Even more disturbing, only 10 percent of those polled “expressed an intense desire for immortality” (that is, going to heaven), thus, signifying that on the average only 10 percent of physicists, biologists, and mathematicians are under covenant.”

Again you’re showing your ass by revealing your true motives.  Basing an argument against science on the fact that scientists aren’t “under covenent” is ridiculous.  Freedom of religion means they have the freedom to no religion, but that shouldn’t affect how they do their job either way.  Ethical scientists have their own system, the scientific method, that has done pretty well so far.

“The great majority (90 percent) have little or no regard for God but, rather, oppose Him, promoting the error that the earth and all that is in existence happened by chance. The mystical tenet governs every aspect of academic science”

There is a subtle but very distinct difference between actively opposing God and teaching a cosmology that has no room for God, though that’s a distinction lost on the religious.  If an experiment was carried out tomorrow that proved once and for all that God did exist then that would be put into the science textbooks, but so far the almighty creator of the universe has been strangely silent for the past five thousand years.  Science teachers aren’t actively trying to convert their classrooms to radical atheism, they are simply teaching the sum total of centuries of scientific inquiry.  It’s not the scientists’ fault that God hasn’t shown any evidence of his existence once in all that time, and it isn’t the teacher’s job to teach religion to students.  Religion and schools are separate, and that’s how it should be.  If you’re interested in theocracy then you can move to Iran where they’re more welcoming to that brand of close-minded thinking.

“To the point, obstructionists: scientists, biologists, mathematicians, and the NEA, teach the innocents within the classroom that there is no God.”

Again, God and religion shouldn’t be taught in the classroom.  We are a secular society that has the basis for that secularism written into the Constitution.  I for one am glad that I live in a society where freedom of inquiry and freedom of thought is considered a basic human right that is part of the highest law in the land.  Otherwise we might live in a world where creationist theocrats such as C. David Parsons got their way and stifled true understanding of the universe with a tragically limited cosmology written by primitive nomads six-thousand years ago.

Technorati Tags: C. David Parsons, secularism, religion, creationism, intelligent design, The Quest For Right, theocracy

The “academic freedom” tactic is just another example of Intelligent Designers taking a good idea and perverting it as a means to their own disingenuous ends. I wholly agree that academic freedom is a good thing, but that freedom doesn’t extend to allowing teachers to dress up their religion in vaguely scientific terms and poorly thought-out logical fallacies and teach it as fact in the classroom.

Let’s be clear, what the ID crowd is advocating isn’t academic freedom, it’s institutionalized ignorance. Intelligent Design can’t be proven. Religion is taken on faith, and as such there is no test that man could ever devise to prove or disprove the existence of God. Any student who has taken biology and genetics courses in college can easily poke thousands of holes in the “scientific” rationale for Intelligent Design with evidence to back up their claims while the Intelligent Design groups are forced to rely on facile appeals to the ignorance and incredulity of the masses. As the courts and the overwhelming evidence has proven time and again, Intelligent Design is nothing more than an attempt to sneak religious teaching into the school system, and teaching religion is most definitely verboten.

Of course that didn’t stop the Alabama legislature from trying to use a false appeal to “academic freedom” in the language for the bill:

“[teachers have the right to] present scientific information pertaining to the full range of scientific views in any curricula or course of learning “

The last time I checked, no reputable scientist opened up their copy of the Bible and took every cosmological statement found therein at face value. Even people who study the Bible for a living admit that there’s a lot in there that’s contradictory and just plain wrong when seen through the lens of a modern world view. Intelligent Design and creationism are not part of the scientific debate anywhere but amongst the creationist academic pariahs at the Discover Institute. The ID crowd is attempting to create the illusion of scientific controversy where none exists, because the hard evidence consistently disproves just about every idea they espouse.

“no student in any public school or institution of higher education … shall be penalized in any way because he or she may subscribe to a particular position on any views.”

I don’t know about you, but I certainly hope that the future doctors and scientists of America are flunked if they fail basic 100 level science courses because they insist that religion trumps reason and evidence. The country will be in a sad state in a few decades if the people who wrote this bill eventually have their way. Of course I do have to admit that it would have made the biology and genetics classes I took in college much easier if we were simply allowed to say “God made it happen” on exams instead of drawing detailed cladograms and blending nasty smelling chunks of beef to isolate and analyze the genetic material over the course of several weeks.

On the plus side, the language in that bill would have provided legal protection for the teaching of Pastafarianism in the schools, but it’s probably a better idea to just keep all religion out of the classroom no matter how noodly and delicious it may be.

via Bad Astronomy

Technorati Tags: alabama, creationism, intelligent design, HB923

This is most important — insist, as heatedly as any extreme fundamentalist, that the Bible must be read in the most naively literal sense in all passages, and therefore the tiniest mistake or scribal error invalidates the whole thing and any religion based on it.

My problems with religion are leveled squarely at the fundamentalist flavors of every major world religion out there today. You can feel free to believe the Dawkins argument that tolerance of moderate religion lends credibility to the more extreme elements of that religion, but I like to embrace a more live and let believe philosophy as long as that belief doesn’t involve suicide bombing, shooting up abortion clinics, kneecapping Catholics or Protestants for wandering into the wrong neighborhood in Dublin, or any other number of religious practices that wouldn’t be considered acceptable in polite company. Religious fundamentalists, unfortunately, are usually the source of most of those nasty glorifications of God that I just mentioned.

And where does this absolute certainty in the goodness of suicide bombings and religiously motivated murder come from? A literal interpretation of the Bible or whatever holy book you prefer, of course! So here is my proposition to religious groups out there who are tired of hearing from atheists who insist on a literal interpretation of everything in the Bible: We’ll stop taking everything in the Bible literally the instant that you afford us the same courtesy, and not a moment sooner.

(Of course even admitting that the Bible isn’t meant to be taken literally and attempting to “interpret” the good book can lead to some pretty wacky and wildly divergent belief systems, but it’s still a step above believing that the murder of homosexuals is justified because God said so in Leviticus.)

Biblical literalism is the root cause of a lot of the religious cancers that are currently poisoning an otherwise rational and secular Western society, so don’t think for an instant that I’m not going to give up the easy pot-shots that come from a literal interpretation of the Bible for as long as people insist on living their lives by that same literal interpretation.

Biblical literalism has led to dubious religious interpretations that glorify intolerance and murder. Biblical literalism has led entire segments of the population to reject scientific teaching because their pastor told them that God snapped the universe into existence 6000 years ago in a happy-go-lucky time when man and dinosaur coexisted in harmony. There’s a compelling argument to be made that our adventures in the middle east for the past half a century have as much to do with the belief that Jesus will be coming back there at any moment to throw everyone who doesn’t believe in him into a lake of fire as they do with oil supplies, as well as a whole host of other ideas that have no business in modern society.

So you can bet your crucifix that lampooning the practice of Biblical literalism wherever it rears its ugly head is going to continue to be a vital and justifiable part of the debate against religions that condone the practice. As long as religious sects that promote Biblical literalism continue to try and shove their beliefs down the collective throats of everyone around them, as long as religious groups try to legislate based on their own narrow interpretation of the divine, that narrow literal interpretation will continue to be justifiably dissected and refuted by individuals with a more rational mindset.

Technorati Tags: Bible, Christianity, Islam, Biblical literalism, atheism

I’m starting this feature with John McCain mainly because he has broken ahead of the pack as the front runner for the Republicans while the Democrats are still mired in a neck and neck race that might not be resolved until they get to the convention in Denver later this year.

So where does McCain stand on religious issues?  Can we look forward to a more secular society under a McCain presidency, or will it be more of the same religiously informed bad decision making that we’ve had to endure under the Bush presidency?  He went through his 2000 campaign and the start of the current campaign with a more centrist political stance, but in recent months he’s been courting the religious right in an effort to get a piece of that voting block that put George W. in the White House for two terms, and as a result he’s said some alarming things concerning religion and politics.

(more…)

Enjoy this quote from Mr. Scot:

The notion that science literacy in the U.S. is substandard is rooted in the results of science surveys that include questions about evolution. Without doubt a much larger fraction of the US populace doesn’t believe in mud to man evolution than compared to any other industrialized nation. So in those surveys they give the “incorrect” answer to questions about the origin of life… the weight of the “wrong” answers about evolution pulls down the average and makes it appear a few other countries are doing a better job of science education.

American students don’t believe in evolution.  Evolution is accepted sciene that hasn’t been disproven to this point, and there’s certainly more empirical evidence for evolution than for the alternate idea that an invisible man in the sky snapped his fingers and everything suddenly appeared.  Americans say they don’t believe in evolution, preferring the irrational invisible man theory, and as a result we score lower on science tests.  So DaveScot would have us believe that if you don’t like the results of an exam then you just change the standards until you’re right!

Here’s the thing.  If you want to excel in science standards then you need to actually have a solid grounding in science.  There is overwhelming evidence in favor of evolution, that’s how science works.Saying that you don’t believe the foundational theory that sets the groundwork for the entire study of biology would be like saying that you don’t believe in gravity.  A society where over 60% of the population didn’t believe in gravity would be the laughing stock of the scientific community and would deserve the low scores they received, but these creationists would like you to believe that evolution is somehow different because it contradicts the prevailing mythology of the day.

Sorry, but science education shouldn’t work that way.

DaveScot takes a few more liberties with logic and rational thinking and eventually rapes the law of syllogism in a back alley to come up with this gem:

Disbelief in evolution makes a country into a superpower - militarily, economically, and yes even scientifically… Education in America is working just fine, thank you, judging by the fruits of American science and engineering. Disbelief in Darwinian evolution, if anything, leads to greater technological achievements not lesser.

Let’s parse this: America leads the world in terms of scientific achievement.  Most Americans are in a state of religiously induced self-delusional ignorance concerning evolution.  Therefore, a lack of belief in evolution makes America a superpower! 

This is simplistic and flawed, to put it mildly.  America is a leading scientific powerhouse in the world right now, true, but a lot of those scientific minds are coming from other countries that have a proper science curriculum that is presumably unclouded by the religious myopia our educators are suffering here in the states. 

Then there’s also the pesky little fact that the scientific community that is creating all of this progress does for the most part believe in evolution.  The majority of the American population out there that’s content to stew in their own ignorance aren’t helping to move science in America forward.  A small subset of the population that prefers education over ignorance is doing all the work.  So don’t try to claim that not believing in evolution creates a superpower just because most of the idiots living in that superpower and working outside of the sciences prefer fairy tales to fact.

Technorati Tags: Intelligent Design, DaveScot, Uncommon Descent, science education, evolution, science standards

I suppose this should be a good sign for those of us who believe in things like the scientific method and rational thought.  The young earth creationists are probably close to the end of their rope if they’ve been reduced to the debate equivalent of claiming their opponent is a big poopy head and is therefore wrong.  But still, it’s an annoyance.

This rubbish is coming from the noted evolutionary biologists Ken Ham and Charles Ware.  Wait, what’s that?  They aren’t evolutionary biologists?  Ken Ham is the founder of the Creation Museum, an institution that based its whole existence on the “scientific” premise that ancient nomads living in the middle of a desert were privy to secret knowledge about the beginnings of the universe that we couldn’t hope to fathom with our modern body of knowledge?  And Charles Ware is the president of a bible college in Indiana?  Neither one of them have any sort of scientific background whatsoever, unless you happen to drink the same Kool-Aid and consider trying to use ancient mythology to discredit modern science to be a scientific pursuit all its own.

So Ken and Chuck have written a book where they manage to make a tenuous link between Darwinian theory and the mass genocides carried out by 20th century heavy-hitters like Hitler and Stalin.  They’ve taken a historical connection that would be laughed at by the dumbest high school World History student and built an entire argument out of the premise in a feeble attempt to discredit the idea by attacking the man.  Enjoy this choice quote from the book:

“Stalin, Hitler and Mao were responsible for the deaths of tens of millions — and it can be shown they did this because of the influence of Darwinian naturalism.”

Let’s be clear about one thing, Ken and Chuck.  Darwin’s ideas have nothing to do with racism.  They deal with gradual changes in species over time that eventually give rise to new species in the animal kingdom, but nowhere in there does Darwin come close to the racially charged rhetoric that you’re putting into his mouth well over a century after the fact.  Stalin, Hitler, and Mao were all megalomaniacs who killed anyone who got in the way of their rise to power or who had resources that they needed, sort of like that Moses guy you all like so much. 

Darwinian naturalism had nothing to do with their rise to power and the eventual mass bloodletting that resulted.  The desire to grab power and hold onto it no matter what the consequences for outside groups had everything to do with it, a theme that I’m sure Ken and Chuck are familiar with from their readings in Genesis and Exodus.  Religious groups were persecuted because they were in direct competition with the state for power, and in the 40s it just so happened that the major religions under these dictators didn’t have as many tanks at their disposal as Stalin.

Despite the inherent flaws in their argument, I’m almost willing to give this one to the creationists.  If Darwin is suddenly going to be held accountable for every secular tinpot dictator that comes along and commits atrocities then that means that we get to hold religion accountable for every mass genocide in the history of the world that has been committed in the name of a supreme being.  Religion has been the ultimate genocidal dictator throughout history, and nothing that supposedly secular dictators have done in modern times can hold a candle to the carnage that has taken place over the years in the name of religion.

Technorati Tags: creationists, Intelligent Design, evolution, Darwin, rational thought, young earth creationists, Ken Ham, Charles Ware, Creation Museum, bible, religion