Religion

Creation Ministries International has filed a lawsuit against Answers in Genesis in Australia. From The Australian: A week after former Queensland science teacher Ken Ham opened the world’s first Creation Museum - a $33 million facility in Petersburg, Kentucky - he is being sued by the Australian evangelical organisation he helped to set up and which served as a springboard for his leap into the US evangelical movement two decades ago. … The suit focuses on a dispute over the Australian organisation’s production of a creationist magazine, sold in the US to more than 35,000 subscribers, and has led to revelations about the three-year battle between the two ministries. ...

P.Z. Myers at Pharyngula has put together a carnival of blog responses to the Answers in Genesis Creationism Museum, which includes a photographic tour of the museum. The museum’s content is as bad as you might expect.

When I wrote my tribute to Clark Adams, I included this paragraph: Suicide always provokes questions about the cause. Given Clark’s activism in support of atheism, I won’t be surprised to see opportunistic speculation on the part of some advocates of religion that Clark’s atheism was why he killed himself, but there’s no evidence to support that.Patrick Trotter has now commented on Clark’s death, exemplifying exactly what I was referring to, under the heading “When One has no Hope…": This is what happens when someone has no hope or faith. Nothing to Believe in…Nothing or No one to turn to. It’s a shame that a life this young was wasted. It’s also a shame that he spent his whole life, dedicated to waging war against God. I hope he found peace and salvation before he went…..but with his resume, I doubt it.Patrick, who I’m sure never met Clark, is making a number of erroneous assumptions–that Clark believed in nothing, that Clark had no support, that his life was “wasted,” and that he was “waging war against God.” He’s made no attempt to find out anything about Clark, what his life was like, what he thought, what he did, or the effects he’s had on other people. Patrick Trotter here demonstrates the offensiveness of a religious bigot who has no interest in understanding, and who can’t resist making the suggestion that Clark is now burning in hell for his disbelief, an argumentum ad baculum to try to keep his fellow believers in line. Clark believed in many things–he was a fan of science, of magic, of comedy, of music, of a good argument and a good joke. He was a funny man who had many friends. He lived a productive life that had positive impact on everyone around him. And he didn’t believe God existed–he no more waged war on God than on Santa Claus. He opposed religion and didn’t care for religious ritual (even in secular form)–his statement that has been most repeatedly quoted is “If atheism is a religion, then health is a disease." A contrasting Christian commentary on Clark’s death comes from Anne Jackson, who ponders the extent to which Christian stigmatization of atheists helps reinforce their negative impressions of Christianity: Aside from the extreme “turn or burn” preachers in our day, we “modern, contemporary” Christians probably do an equal part of stigmatizing those of different (or no) faiths. The “unchurched”…the “lost souls we must save!!”…I have far too often encountered the almost immediate and disapproving looks and attitude that so many of us habitually carry around when discussing someone who is a “wayward child” or “bless his heart, he’s just so lost.” I am ashamed that I have not made it a bigger priority in my own life to be more sensitive and less prideful in my faith. And as the title of this post says, I pray for mercy and forgiveness because we know not what we do. ...

(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)

Anthony Sciubba, a student at Higley High School, was featured in a profile in the school yearbook. That profile edited out some of the statement he submitted–specifically removing a statement where he gave credit to God for his accomplishments. He was told in advance that his bio would contain no references to God. The school and yearbook editors have failed to understand that voluntary, student-initiated speech attributed to no one but the student does not violate the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution. There was no establishment clause violation prevented by this censorship; the school was wrong to prohibit it. More detail and mostly uninformed commentary on this issue may be found at the Arizona Republic’s website. One commenter appealed to an Illinois federal court case in defense of the school–De La Rosa v. Rock Island School District, where a student’s cover artwork included the phrase “God Bless America.” The difference is that in that case, the expression was on the cover of the yearbook, implying that the school endorsed the expression. Ed Brayton points out that a similar case in Michigan was resolved in favor of the student with the help of the ACLU.

Who is responsible for each quote below, Jerry Falwell or Adolf Hitler? 1. My feelings as a Christian point me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. 2. This ’turn the other cheek’ business is all well and good but it’s not what Jesus fought and died for. 3. Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith…. We need believing people. 4. I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won’t have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be! 5. Universal education is the most corroding and disintegrating poison that liberalism has ever invented for its own destruction. 6. We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out. 7. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit … We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press. . .we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess. 8. This the national government will regard its first and foremost duty to restore the unity of spirit and purpose of our people. It will preserve and defend the foundations upon which the power of our nation rests. It will take Christianity, as the basis of our collective morality, and the family as the nucleus of our people and state, under its firm protection….May God Almighty take our work into his grace, give true form to our will, bless our insight, and endow us with the trust of our people. 9. Remain strong in your faith, as you were in former years. In this faith, in its close-knit unity our people to-day goes straight forward on its way and no power on earth will avail to stop it. 10. We’re fighting against humanism, we’re fighting against liberalism … we are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying our nation today.Answers may be found here. (Hat tip to James Redekop on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)

The Panda’s Thumb has dug up some writings by creationist zoologist William J. Tinkle (b. 1892, d. 1981), who was a co-founder and secretary of the Creation Research Society, which show his support for eugenics (references are to works cited in the PT article): It is an excellent plan to keep defective people in institutions for here they are not permitted to marry and bear children.[8, p. 131] [Scientists who are working at the task of improving the human race] would like to increase the birth rate of families having good heredity, while those people having poor heredity should not marry at all.[8, p. 131] A careful reading of eugenic literature reveals that it may inculcate less respect for human life. In this way it runs counter to democracy, which stresses the worth and rights of the individual. The Bible teaches that life comes from God and that it is wrong to take that which one can not give. Unfortunately there are other programs also which destroy the idea of the sacredness of life. We refer to murder on the screen, war, and the teaching that man originated from, and still is, an animal. [emphasis PT’s] ...

I agree with most of what Hitchens says, though not the part about Falwell being a conscious fraud. Though Falwell has clearly lied from time to time, I’m not personally aware of evidence to support the claim that he was a thoroughly fraudulent charlatan. (Via Pharyngula and Dispatches from the Culture Wars.) BTW, a must-read is Jerry Falwell’s cat-killing story about his father. UPDATE (May 18. 2007): More examples of Falwell lying may be found at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

Kearny board of education member Paul Castelli has apparently decided that the town hasn’t had enough controversy over history teacher David Paskiewicz’s misuse of the classroom as an evangelizing pulpit, and has gone public with a denunciation of the board’s conciliatory statement from last week. The Observer reports: “Matthew LaClair is absolutely not a hero,” Castelli said, referring to a statement the Board made last week that praised Matthew for standing up for his rights. “His parents are opportunists and it’s a combination of both Matthew and his parents. Though I leave it up to the people to decide for themselves, it’s pretty obvious that he (Matt’s father, Paul) did just as much speaking as his son did.” In addition to seeing Matt as far from a hero, Castelli also said he was not convinced the Anti-Defamation League’s curriculum was what was needed. The ADL will soon be instructing students and teachers on the parameters involved in the separation of church and state. “I would have been more comfortable if there had been more specifics as to what they would be teaching the students and teachers,” Castelli said. “It was really unclear what they were actually going to do.” He also says the Board was never given a clear resolution to a Board-directed investigation into suspected harassment against Matthew. Matthew claimed to have been harassed numerous times by classmates, including a death threat on his Myspace Web page — an incident that was investigated by the Kearny Police Department. Finally, Castelli says that despite suspected closure in the matter with the agreement, he still feels the Board is susceptible to being named in a lawsuit, should someone (he didn’t mention anyone or entity specifically) decide to sue the LaClairs.Who, and on what grounds, would someone sue the LaClairs? They’ve done nothing wrong–all they’ve done is insist that the board of education do the right thing about improper classroom behavior by a teacher whose initial defense was to deny what he had been recorded doing. Castelli is also quoted at the Observer saying that he doesn’t feel sorry for Matthew LaClair for receiving taunts and threats from classmates, stating (incorrectly) that “Throughout the ordeal, he was asked to identify the kids who had done these things to him, and not once did he identify anyone. How could anyone be expected to take action if they didn’t know whom they were taking action against? It wasn’t possible. And it wasn’t possible to feel sorry for someone unless they were willing to give up the information we needed to ensure a proper investigation took place.” As the Observer points out, “Matthew has said it was impossible to identify possible threat makers because often, taunts would be hurled from within a large group of kids. Additionally, Matthew did identify, for police, the student who made the Myspace death threat against him several months ago.”

The fire which raged across 4,200 acres of Catalina Island began near a radio tower for Christian talk radio station KBRT-AM. Three contractors working for the station were cutting steel antenna cable with a gas-powered circular saw, which ignited dry brush and quickly grew out of control. Radio talk show host Tom Leykis, an atheist, observed on his show that this fire was started by men working for a Christian radio station, which he considered ironic. His first caller suggested that the contractors might have been atheists–as if that would have been a sufficient cause for a supernatural explanation of the fire. The correct inference is that the laws of nature don’t care about your religious beliefs–lightning rods protect whorehouses as well as churches (or better, when churches choose not to use them because it’s interfering with God’s will).