Religion

“A pastor performing a baptism was electrocuted inside his church Sunday morning after adjusting a nearby microphone while standing in water, a church employee said." Rev. Kyle Lake of University Baptist Church was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital; the woman being baptised “was not seriously injured.” More on Yahoo News, via Associated Press. The story says that apparently the woman being baptised had not yet stepped into the water. No word on whether she will proceed with another pastor or church, or take it as a sign not to join this particular sect. ...

You’ve got to hand it to the Amish. At least they are consistent, unlike the vast majority of the IDiots out there who poo poo the notions of evolution while at the same time readily partaking in its fruits–medicine that would be impossible were it not for our understanding of germs and genetics. But not the Amish, who let their kids get polio rather than question “The Word.” I’m not sure what you’d call them, but you can’t call ’em hypocrites.

Dispatches from the Culture Wars points out a video available from Google’s experimental video search, that features Kirk Cameron of “Growing Pains” arguing against atheism and evolution. The most entertaining argument in the video is the argument that the banana was clearly intelligently designed. Troy Britain quotes a more extensive list of banana features (several of which are used in this video): The banana—the atheist’s nightmare. Note that the banana: 1. Is shaped for human hand ...

Apparently several members of the Bush family (including Florida Gov. Jeb and former President George Sr.) are advocates of a mystical conservative warrior named Chang. Here’s Jeb, in a speech naming Marco Rubio as Florida Speaker, after which he gave Marco a golden sword: Chang is a mystical warrior. Chang is somebody who believes in conservative principles, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism, believes in moral values that underpin a free society. I rely on Chang with great regularity in my public life. He has been by my side and sometimes I let him down. But Chang, this mystical warrior, has never let me down.The Guardian article linked above also quotes Bush Sr. periodically asking during tennis matches, “Should I unleash Chang?” (Thanks to Jack Kolb on the SKEPTIC list for this item.) Add this to the accumulating evidence for dispensationalist Christians that George W. Bush is the Antichrist, along with his former Health and Human Services director’s support for RFID tags in humans. (Tommy Thompson, like Bush, is a born-again Christian who supports “faith-based” organizations getting government money.) ...

Pharyngula cites and quotes from a study in the Journal of Religion and Society which observes that In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies. The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so. Einzige (2006-12-09): Where is Wanchick's commentary on this, given that it is a direct contradiction to the claim he made recently that, e.g., teen pregnancy is up?(Please note that - if you couldn't already tell - my tongue is currently placed firmly in my cheek) ...

The Supreme Court left the door open for Michael Newdow to bring his case again, since they threw out his case on the basis of his lack of standing (he is not the legal guardian of his daughter) and refused to address the specifics of his case. The District Court rightly relied on the precedent of the 9th Circuit’s previous ruling in his case, and entered an injunction against Elk Grove schools to prohibit the use of the “under God” language. Newdow refiled the case including two additional families as plaintiffs, where there’s no issue of standing to allow the case to be thrown out on a similar technicality this time. This will go back to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which will most likely rule the same way (thus making “under God” unconstitutional throughout the 9th Circuit), then get appealed again to the U.S. Supreme Court, where we will find out what John G. Roberts really meant when he said (near the end of Day 2 of his confirmation hearings) that he believes that the First Amendment protects the rights of nonbelievers as well as one religious sect against another (unlike Scalia, who said in his dissent in McCreary that government can endorse belief over nonbelief): DURBIN: Let me just wrap this up by asking – I think you’ve alluded to this – is it your belief that what we are trying to establish in the constitutional protection on the exercise of religion is not only to protect minorities, religious minorities, but also nonbelievers? ROBERTS: Yes. The court’s decisions in that area are quite clear. And I think the framers’ intent was as well; that it was not their intent just to have a protection for denominational discrimination. It was their intent to leave this as an area of privacy apart – a conscience from which the government would not intrude. ...

Tomorrow’s featured article on Wikipedia is “Space Opera in Scientology Doctrine," a very well-written entry that tells you pretty much all you need to know about Scientology’s cosmology. Oh, the entry on Xenu is also a good one.

Denyse O’Leary (an appallingly bad journalist who blogs in favor of Intelligent Design) wrote that she won’t become an internal critic of ID because she opposes the “academic fascism” of ID critics. I find that an appallingly weak justification for being a propagandist. Internal criticism tends to strengthen the quality of arguments and evidence, not weaken them–unless, of course, what you’re advocating is false. Einzige (2006-12-09): Are there any pro-IDers who are critical of other pro-IDers? ...

As President of the Internet Infidels, I occasionally get some interesting email. Yesterday, a guy named Theo sent me a list of three prophecies which he claims will prove the existence of precognition. Here are his three prophecies: 1. Between September 7-9 (probably on the 8th) police make dramatic news of a crazy person doing something. Lots of drama. Alot of people die. 2. On September 17 someone of importance is assasinated in the middle east. This may be related to terrorism. 3. On September 26 thousands of people are forced to relocate due to either tornado or earthquake.I objected that the first happens every day somewhere, and asked him to make it more specific–by “crazy person” did he mean someone who is mentally ill? Is the crazy person causally related to the people dying? How many people is “a lot” (at least give an order of magnitude). On the second, again I said that is nearly a daily event. Could he narrow it down to a country, or the field in which the assassinated person is “someone of importance”? On the third, I asked whether the date is the date of the event or the relocation, and whether he could be specific about the nature of the disaster and add a geographic location. Theo also claims that he predicted Hurricane Katrina “right to the day” (but didn’t say which day of the multi-day event he predicted), and in a later email said that he had made three similar prophecies (presumably one of them was about Katrina) last month, but he hasn’t yet given me the specifics. I’ll press him, and post here if I get the details. (Update: Theo says I can find the information in AOL’s “Christian Living” chat room logs, but didn’t provide them. In response to my request for specifics about what he said, he says “Several weeks ago I predicted that a major catastrophe would occur in this country and that thousands would be forced to relocate between August 29-30.” What happened to a “right to the day” prediction of a hurricane?) In my response, I asked him if he could be more specific, in which case I’d be willing to entertain a $500 wager on it with him (with proceeds donated to the charity of his choice if he gets all three right, and donated to the Internet Infidels otherwise). He told me that I don’t understand how precognition works and that my demands are unrealistic. ...

I can see that the combination of work, calculus, and an attempt at having some sort of a life is going to make it difficult for me to contribute to this blog all that often, but after Jeff Downs put up the link to a Greg Bahnsen article on Tom Wanchick’s The Good Fight, I just had to say something. Calculus can wait a few minutes while I riff on some of the stupider things in the article. [The Apostle] Paul asserts that all men know God so inescapably and clearly from natural revelation that they are left with no defense for their unfaithful response to the truth about Him. Well, then, if Paul said it, it must surely be true! After all, it’s in the Bible! This argument is so bald-faced in its arrogance (what the hell does Paul–or anyone else, for that matter–know about my beliefs and mental states?) and stupidity (it assumes, after all, what it is trying to prove) that it makes me want to… well… beat up a Christian fighter! Christianity can be shown to be, not ‘just as good as’ or even ‘better than’ the non-Christian position, but the only position that does not make nonsense of human experience…. Christianity is proved as being the very foundation of the idea of proof itself. [my emphasis] The first question that comes to mind, here, is: Which “Christianity”? The second one is this: If the whole of logic and epistemology is dependent on the fact that Jesus Christ died for our sins and rose from the grave 3 days later, then wouldn’t it be possible–in fact inevitable–that people engaged in philosophical or scientific inquiry would be able to derive Jesus’s sacrifice entirely independent of exposure to the Bible? Has such a thing ever happened in the history of science or philosophy? And how, then, does one account for the inconsistencies between the 4 gospels? The article goes on for a considerable stretch after that. It would be tiresome to attack the rest of it, since its foundation is entirely baseless, anyway. Calculus awaits. ...