CNN reports that the Church of Scientology is partnering with ministers of low-income Christian churches to provide free tutoring, using L. Ron Hubbard’s “study technology.” More at the Secular Outpost.
Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation responds to criticisms from Chuck Norris. Scary number quoted: Campus Crusade for Christ’s 2006 annual revenue, $497,516,000. (Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)
And boy, are they crazy. (Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)
I appeared on KTVK-TV 3 News last night, as the token skeptic for a story about a photograph of the painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe that supposedly weeps. It was FedEx’d to St. Anthony’s Church in downtown Phoenix. I didn’t have all the details when they interviewed me (they reported it as a weeping statue), so I had fairly generic answers and they used only part of one of my sentences. I was filmed in front of our own copy of the Virgin of Guadalupe–ours is cooler than the original, since it’s an Octavio Ocampo metamorphic print (“Los Dones de La Virgen”). I also put a copy of Joe Nickell’s Looking for a Miracle in the background. In the parts they didn’t use, I pointed out that weeping icons tend to create large crowds for a church, and then be followed by copycats at other churches, and they tend to exhibit weeping behavior associated with particular individuals (like Rev. James Bruse in Virginia, who had multiple weeping statues). I also said, drawing from Nickell’s book, that the usual explanations are condensation, deliberate hoax, illusion, or imagination (the latter referring to cases of pareidolia, a word I knew would be pointless to use in a TV news interview). ...
Young-earth creationist and Discovery Institute Fellow John Mark Reynolds has written a pair of articles arguing that Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling’s outing of her character Dumbledore as gay doesn’t make him so, since the text is silent on the issue. I actually think he makes a reasonable argument, except that he heads in a personally dangerous direction when he writes: What if Rowling writes a guide to her characters in which she gives new “back story” to the characters? ...
Pirate attacks are up 14%! (Explanation.)
At Salon, Steve Paulson interviews Steven Pinker and Rebecca Goldstein about their relationship, their work, and their atheism. (Hat tip to Wade Smith on the SKEPTIC list.) Historical Comments Einzige (2007-10-16): Jim,I find much to disagree with in your assessment of Pinker in this post.:-) olvlzl (2007-10-16): I used Steven Pinker's voice for Professor Lockheart when I read my niece the second Harry Potter book. Other than that he's pretty useless. There, does that satisfy you, Einzige? ...
Chris Hallquist takes a look at the different versions of Josh McDowell’s testimony about being a former atheist who set out to disprove Christianity only to become a Christian, a finds some reasons to doubt its accuracy, as well as the quality of McDowell’s research. UPDATE (January 2, 2009): Vinny at You Call This Culture? notes that McDowell doesn’t appear to have actually been converted to Christianity on the basis of evidence: Commenting on the Hallquist post, self-identified Christian apologist Kevin H said that he had spoken with McDowell about the matter:He’s the kind of guy who is amused at all that is said about him. I noticed he was quick to correct falsehoods. For example, he told me that the evidence for Christianity was a “foot in the door” that kept him from immediately closing it. But it was the love of God that drew him. It seems he knows, whether his fault or the fault of the swirling influence of his books and speaking tours, that people have the conception that he was forced into faith by irresistable arguments. ...
A friend who took his family to the Arizona State Fair noticed a booth from the Arizona Origins Science Association last night, and so pointed me to their website. A featured link on the front page says: Have you been taught or indoctrinated? - Take a test - View the answers The test answers show that this group uncritically accepts bad arguments, such as bogus arguments for a young earth (including making up the nonexistent isotope Po 234), claiming that the extinct pig’s tooth of “Nebraska man” was ever accepted scientific evidence for human evolution, claiming that because Peking Man and Java Man are now classified as Homo erectus that it’s purely “human” and thus not evidence for evolution, claiming that Australopithecus afarensis is no different from a chimpanzee or bonobo, claiming that all radiometric dating methods are based on untestable assumptions while ignoring the internal checks provided by isochron dating and comparisons of multiple methods where their view has no explanation for agreement, claiming that there are no known beneficial mutations, claiming that index fossils and the ages of geologic strata are the only things used to mutually validate each other, and so on. It’s as if they’ve never seen the talk.origins website or the index of creationist claims. The president of the group, Dr. Joseph M. Kezele, Jr., was previously mentioned on this blog as one of the five Darwin-denying doctors in Arizona who has signed on as a supporter of the anti-evolution “Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity." UPDATE: Of special interest on the Arizona Origins Science Association website are responses to surveys about creationism that they sent to various Arizona churches. I was quite pleased to see that many local churches have given responses that challenge AZOSA’s young-earth creationism. For example, the response from Dale Hallberg, Lead Pastor at Esperanza Lutheran Church, writes a comment on the statement “The Earth is relatively young (ten thousand or less years old)" (PDF) after marking it “D” for disagree: “Get serious!" Fr. William K. Young of St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church, in response to the statement “A person must accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior to be saved from eternal separation from God,” marks it “D” and comments (PDF) “If so, God help us all!" Dr. Roger Miller, interim pastor at the First Congregational United Church of Christ, added an entire page of comments (PDF) on the survey after he had viewed AZOSA’s website, and writes (in part) that “Sadly, fundamentalism is, per solid research, a demonstration of limited cognitive complexity capacity. Your work, though spirited and apologetically well intentioned, shows both limited understanding of scripture and archaeology. As an M.D., I would hope you’d spend time working for universal healthcare and lower prescription drug costs and leave the theological work to those so trained and the science to those trained in their fields.”
The Goldwater Institute will be giving Ayaan Hirsi Ali, former Muslim turned atheist author of the book Infidel, its 2007 Goldwater award at an event in Phoenix later this year. I plan to attend and will report here afterward.