Religion

Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission was quoted in the Washington Post about the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision: “This decision is a poster child for a half-century secularist reign of terror that’s coming to a rapid end with Justice Roberts and soon-to-be Justice Alito,” said Richard Land, who is president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and is a political ally of White House adviser Karl Rove. “This was an extremely injudicious judge who went way, way beyond his boundaries–if he had any eyes on advancing up the judicial ladder, he just sawed off the bottom rung.” Apparently Mr. Land believes that 1965-2005 in the United States was something like Robby Berry’s “Life in Our Anti-Christian America." Timothy Sandefur rebuts Land’s nutty comment at The Panda’s Thumb. UPDATE (February 6, 2007): An updated link for Robby Berry’s “Life in Our Anti-Christian America."

Wafah Dufour, formerly known as Wafah bin Laden, is Osama bin Laden’s niece (daughter of Yeslam bin Ladin, half-brother of Osama, and Carmen bin Ladin, author of Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia) is featured in the December GQ. She wants to be a pop star in the U.S. She hasn’t lived in Saudi Arabia since she was 10. She is a fan of The Cure, Seal, and The Beatles, and plays guitar. It seems to me that in her position, it could be dangerous to become an American pop star, since there seems to be no shortage of Muslim fundamentalists who reject the principle of free speech even while living in countries that endorse it.

Hendrik Hertzberg writes of the bogus “War on Christmas” being pushed by Fox News in The New Yorker: The War on Christmas is a little like Santa Claus, in that it (a) comes to us from the sky, beamed down by the satellites of cable news, and (b) does not, in the boringly empirical sense, exist.He goes on to note that Today’s Christmas Pentagon is the Fox News Channel, which during a recent five-day period carried no fewer than fifty-eight different segments about the ongoing struggle, some of them labelled “Christmas under attack.”and discusses John Gibson’s book and Bill O’Reilly’s role as “Patton.” Near the end, he notes: In this war, no weapons of Christmas destruction have been found—just a few caches of linguistic oversensitivity and commercial caution. Christmas remains robust: even Gibson says in his book that in America Christmas celebrators (ninety-six per cent) outnumber Christians (eighty-four per cent). But the “Happy Holidays” contagion has probably spread too far to be wiped out.O’Reilly’s response on December 20: O’REILLY: Time now for “The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day.” New Yorker magazine joins our hall of shame. We are recommending readers and sponsors avoid the publication. The reason: that magazine allows writer Hendrik Hertzberg to print dishonest propaganda fed to him by left-wing smear sites. As I previously stated, any publication or news operation that does that will be listed on BillOReilly.com as not worthy of your attention or advertising dollars. The spin and the propaganda stop here. The New Yorker magazine should be ashamed and is absolutely ridiculous. And one note to Mr. Hertzberg: You might want to rethink your practice of character assassination, sir. Just looking out for you.And Fox’s John Gibson, author of The War on Christmas, got into a shouting match with Rob Boston of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, with Gibson threatening to sue Boston for pointing out O’Reilly’s falsehood about green and red clothing being prohibited by Plano, Texas schools. As it turns out, there were some prohibitions about party items and gifts in Plano schools which included such things as paper plate color, which led to a lawsuit; that ban was revoked and the guidelines made more sensible–e.g., students could give each other religious-themed gifts, but teachers (who are acting in an official capacity and represent the state) cannot give religious-themed gifts to students. O’Reilly has retracted his comment about a ban on red and green clothing.

Judge John E. Jones III has issued his ruling in the Dover, PA intelligent design case–Dover’s ID Policy violates both the Lemon Test and the endorsement test, and so the Dover Area School District must discontinue reading the statement at the beginning of the evolution unit about Intelligent Design and the availability of Of Pandas and People in the library. The decision covers much broader ground than this, and though the orders are only directed at DASD, this decision is likely to be influential in much the way Judge Overton’s McLean v. Arkansas creation science decision was in 1982. Ed Brayton has the text of the decision and some key quotes and commentary up at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

Jim Romenesko at Poynter Forums posts an incisive article on how the Fox News Channel has been pushing this phony “War on Christmas” idea as a method of division. The article is apparently by Charlie Reina, a former Fox News Channel producer. A couple key paragraphs: Fox anchors will tell you that no one in management dictates that they bring up religion. But my experience at FNC is that, once management makes its views known, the anchors have a clear blueprint of what’s expected of them. In this case, the point man is network vice president John Moody. A scholar and biographer of Pope John Paul II, John is a devout Catholic who seldom holds back on matters of the church, or in framing his views in “good guy, bad guy” terms. For example, during the 2001 Senate hearings on John Ashcroft’s appointment as Attorney General, Moody’s daily memos to the staff repeatedly touted Ashcroft as “deeply religious” and the victim of Democrats’ intolerance. One memo suggested a question of the day: “Can a man of deep Christian faith be appointed to a federal job, or will his views be equated with racism, intolerance and mean-spiritedness?” He added: “(K)eep pounding at the question: should Ashcroft’s detractors try to be as tolerant as they would have him be?”Then there’s Fox management’s view on the separation of church and state, and on those who support it. One not-so-subtle hint came in March, 2004, after a Baghdad bombing gave reporters at a hotel in the Iraqi capital a scare. Moody’s memo that day advised FNC staffers to “offer a prayer of thanks for their safety to whatever God you revere (and let the ACLU stick it where the sun don’t shine).” Not mentioned is that the book The War on Christmas is by Fox News “Big Story” host John Gibson, or the multiple fabrications by Fox’s Bill O’Reilly. (Update on the latter: Plano schools are getting some press over their response to O’Reilly’s fabricated claim that they banned students from wearing Christmas colors.)

One Good Move has a Nightline presentation from a series called “Faith Matters” about Lou Engle’s “Justice House of Prayer.” Engel, who is supported by a wealthy woman whose identity he keeps secret, rents a $7000/mo office space which is “shaped like an arrow pointing at the Supreme Court building” where 70 interns pray 24 hours a day in shifts. They appear to be Christians of a charismatic variety, though I didn’t actually notice any speaking in tongues. They jump, they babble on, they face out the window attempting to move God to move the justices of the Supreme Court to ban abortion. They refer to Engle as “Papa Lou." These are the same people who have been praying outside of the Supreme Court building with red tape with the word “LIFE” written on it, taped over their mouths. The interns each spend three months in the program, and pay $1500 for the privilege, which includes housing costs. The internship application requires two biographical essays, recommendations from a parent and a pastor, two copies of a recent photograph, and a $20 nonrefundable application fee. If you aren’t involved in a local church or ministry, you must offer an explanation. A list of your “spiritual gifts mix” is requested. You also must describe your sources of income and whether you have any savings accounts and debt. As part of your personal history in the past year, the application asks if you’ve struggled with eating disorders, pornography, or homosexuality, whether you’ve been sexually active, and whether you’ve been pregnant or fathered a child. More at Pharyngula, and you can find the website of these lunatics here.

I’d like to call attention to two recent articles over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. The first is about Casey Luskin, blogger for the Discovery Institute. The second is about William Dembski, the “Isaac Newton of information theory." In the first piece, Brayton writes about how Luskin has referred to Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education as “Darth Vader.” Brayton quotes Luskin: “In the past I’ve compared Eugenie C. Scott to Darth Vader because she is full of internal contradictions, knows in her heart she’s lying, powerful, persuasive, and most importantly, she travels around representing the dominating power (the Empire) and fighting the good guys. All in the name of …well, I’m not exactly sure what her motivation is yet. It’s certainly not truth." Yet Luskin provides no examples of lies or ulterior motives, and has used false statements to argue against statements she has made. In one example: “I asked her why she thinks ID isn’t science. She said it isn’t science because it does not refer to natural law (a reference to Ruse’s testimony which he later recanted).” Brayton, speaking directly to philosopher Michael Ruse, asked him if, in the face of criticisms from other philosophers about his position on the demarcation between science and non-science (e.g., see Larry Laudan’s piece in Ruse’s book But Is It Science?), he holds that Intelligent Design is non-science. As Brayton writes, “He replied that it is non-science because it does not refer to natural law. If Ruse has recanted, he appears to be unaware of it." As Brayton notes in the same piece, when he’s made charges of dishonesty against William Dembski, he’s backed them up–and he’s done so yet again, showing that Dembski has continued to misrepresent the work of Douglas Axe. In a 2000 paper, Axe did work which focused on a particular gene which confers resistance to certain antibiotics. As Brayton summarizes the paper, “it showed that this particular enzyme could retain most of its function even if it was hit with a major mutational event that resulted in changing as many as 10 of its amino acid residues simultaneously, could retain some of its function (and thus still be capable of selection) even if a mutation resulted in as much as 20% of its total amino acid residues being substituted simultaneously, and that if 40 mutations happened simultaneously, it would stop functioning." Dembski, however, summarizes it this way: “But there is now mounting evidence of biological systems for which any slight modification does not merely destroy the system’s existing function, but also destroys the possibility of any function of the system whatsoever (Axe, 2000)." Brayton points out that Matt Inlay criticized Dembski for this misrepresentation on The Panda’s Thumb back in February, and that Inlay has shown that Dembski has known this is a misrepresentation for at least two years. Brayton concludes: Dembski has crossed over a line at this point, I think. I don’t think it’s any longer possible to maintain that he is merely an ideologue undergoing cognitive dissonance, or that he’s just engaging in wishful thinking of the type we are all probably prone to when defending ideas we have a personal stake in. He is now simply lying outright, and he has to know that.

A couple weeks ago (I sincerely apologize for the untimeliness of this post. Busy, busy, busy. Better late than never, I hope), Patrick Smith read my entry for the Halloween edition of the CotG and took issue with my characterization of SETI as a religion. I might be convinced to back off the “religious” label, but you’ll be hard pressed to demonstrate that SETI resembles “science." Given my low opinion of SETI, you may find it surprising that Contact is one of my top 5 favorite films. Aside from the clever way it deals with a number of deep philosophical issues, the positive way it portrays atheism, the cool special effects (the zoom-out at the beginning choked me up the first time I saw it, but luckily my girlfriend didn’t notice!), and the well-constructed plot, I pretty much fell head-over-heels for Ellie Arroway. How could you not? She’s brilliant, sexy as hell (of course, Jodie Foster is primarily responsible for that), and passionate about what’s important to her (and it isn’t the ho-hum of children!). Sadly, however, she is possessed by a fixed idea–just as possessed, by the way, as is Palmer Joss, her love interest in the story, by the idea of God. Like I said, I guess we all have our blind spots. SETI is the brainchild of astronomer Frank Drake, who also came up with what is known as the Drake Equation, which I’ll get to in a moment. Drake has been searching the skies via radio waves for 45 years, now, without uncovering a shred of evidence of alien intelligence. When confronted on this, Drake’s response strikes a disturbingly familiar chord: “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Such is the response of one who is defending a hypothesis that is not falsifiable, and that is exactly what is wrong with SETI. The excuse is always, “We haven’t looked long and hard enough.” When will that be? When does absence of evidence finally become evidence of absence? Back circa 1994, when Congress - having spent over a billion dollars on SETI - finally cut off the public funding, Drake predicted “the imminent detection of signals from an extraterrestrial civilization.” He went on, “This discovery, which I fully expect to witness before the year 2000, will profoundly change the world.” Here it is, 2005, and SETI, much like the doomsday religions that predicted the end of the world back in 2000, is still going. So, what about the Drake Equation? Its purpose is to try to come up with an estimate of how many intelligent civilizations are likely to exist in our galaxy. As an aside, I can’t figure out why the quantity R, which is the number of stars that form in the galaxy each year, is even in the equation in the first place. What does R have to do with anything? New stars are not very likely to have life-bearing planets in orbit around them, so WTF? Why not just start with the number of stars in the galaxy? If you have an answer for this, I’d love to hear it. But the real problem with the equation is that virtually every variable is a complete unknown. We don’t know how many planets there are around most stars. We don’t know how many of those might incubate life. We don’t know how many of those might evolve intelligence… We simply have no friggin’ clue, so the equation is useless even without the quantity R. Assigning a value to a variable is pulling a number out of your ass, and bears a vague resemblance to an act of faith. Who knows? Maybe tomorrow they’ll get lucky and some benevolent super-race of aliens will beam down plans for a wormhole generator, transforming our lives forever. The occurrence of such an event still wouldn’t transform SETI into science. ...

This trial just keeps getting more and more ridiculous. The board members who said they had no idea who bought the copies of Of Pandas and People have been shown to be liars on this and other issues. William Buckingham went in front of his church and solicited donations for the books, collected them personally, wrote a personal check (with a memo saying “for Pandas and People books”) and gave it to board president Alan Bonsell, who gave it to his father to purchase the books and make the donation. Bonsell ended up receiving some angry questioning directly from the judge. Mike Argento of the York Daily Record has a funny column on this examination. ...

This little parable/thought experiment was inspired by Steve’s comment in the Stirner birthday message, where he advocates for agnosticism over either theism or atheism. Imagine yourself in the following scenario: You’ve just returned home from a day at work. While you set your keys on the kitchen counter and remove your coat you can hear the familiar voices of your roommate and her/his S.O. in the other room. You start to wonder about what you might make yourself for dinner when suddenly you are startled by a loud gunshot, followed by what sounds like a body falling to the floor. Rather than getting the hell out of there you somewhat foolishly run to the other room to see what happened. Once there, you see your roommate standing there, arm outstretched, holding a still-smoking pistol pointed at what is now, apparently, a corpse. Your roommate looks at you and says “Santa Claus did it.” Do you: a) Sincerely believe that your roommate is telling the actual truth? b) Decide that, because you didn’t actually see your roommate fire the gun, you just can’t know one way or another whether Santa did it? c) Consider your roommate a murderer, and the claim to be the rationalization of a mind that has snapped? ...