Check out the amazing exercise in CYA going on over at the Parkview Christian School website. As usual, they are portraying themselves as the victims, and, in a display of pure balls, are insisting they are the ones owed an apology. School director Barbara Jordan (what relation to would-be lothario Lavern, I wonder?) whines:
Channel 13 chose to run a piece slandering our school’s name and reputation. They filmed our school doors, sign,and phone number, but did not have the professional courtesy to interview me, although I called the station manager and informed him of a falsehood…
Furthermore, we would like to add that the woman in question did not handle the situation properly. Had she called to inform me of this incident, the matter would have been handled promptly and properly….
In other words, like the Catholic Church, keep it all hush-hush, fire the guy on the down low, but don’t let the public know what kind of scumbag he is, so that he’s free to go off and get another job and sexually harass women there.
Channel 13 and the woman in question owe Parkway Christian School, Inc. a public apology for the unjust manner in which the incident was handled. My family, students, and school should not have to suffer the blame for something that we did not know was happening.
Typical crybaby Christian persecution complex. The only person who might owe your school an apology is Lavern Jordan. He’s the one whose actions embarrassed you. All the reporter did was his job, alerting the public to a public menace, or, at the very least, an ethically dubious person who has no business working in a school setting, Christian or otherwise.
Do they all have an innate sense of victimhood over in Jebusland?
syntychesays
“We already know whose (sic) driving.” Ok, I was going to watch the video–but the grammar gods tainted it with that quote…
Thats Houston media for you. Back when I lived there, friends and I used to grab a copy of the Houston Chronicle and race each other to find the first mutilation of the English language.
Shortest. Game. Ever.
syntychesays
Yes, I just tripped the irony meter by including a grammatical mistake in my previous post. Blech.
Wow gang! It gets worse! It looks like Parkview Christian School is little more than a diploma mill for teens. Most of Parkview’s “graduates” are teens who could not graduate from public schools because they couldn’t pass the TAKS test, which is required for graduation in Texas. So over at Parkview, if you’ve got a failing kid, they’ll take your $250 and let him walk down the aisle…and you don’t even have to attend classes at Parkview to graduate, either!
Just wow.
And yes, Barbara Jordan is (was? about to be no longer?) Mrs. Lavern Jordan.
ya’ll sing now…. Ding dong your god is dead. your wicked god, your mean old god. ding dong your wicked god is dead.
Bill Dauphinsays
“We already know whose (sic) driving.” Ok, I was going to watch the video–but the grammar gods tainted it with that quote…
Thats Houston media for you.
You mean that‘s Houston media? ;^)
Seriously, keep in mind that the text on the website is probably a transcription of the reporter’s voiceover, no doubt done by some intern. As such, I wouldn’t be too hard on it for mixing up two homophones… a fairly easy mistake to make.
The generally cheesy character of the report, though — the “exploding” lead-in graphics, the hokey Hebrew-ish font on the story title, the reporter’s pruriently breathless tone — was more troubling. It’s been >20 years since I lived in Houston, but I remembered the media there as a bit more professional (other than Marvin Zindler, of course, who was always a cartoon character).
Nothing about the tone of the story, though, mitigates its pathetic, disgusting content. My outrage is mixed with a sort of perplexed sadness that this bozo, having had a moment of realization that his original proposal was immoral, still thought “playing around” with this woman in a parked truck was a reasonable thing to suggest.
He’s “guiding it in” by the power of the holy spirit.
Kerry Maxwellsays
Check out the amazing exercise in CYA going on over at the Parkview Christian School website
Typical example of the pathetic, dishonest, hypocritical tactics of the self-righteous flim-flam artist.
kvinthersays
My wife and I live in Houston, and we watched this story Wednesday night in drop-jawed amazement. It just doesn’t get any seamier. Unless, of course, you’re talking about the polygamists in San Marcos. Have we got the corner on religious nuts in Texas, or what?
kvinthersays
I meant San Angelo, of course. I shouldn’t post while drinking.
Bill Dauphinsays
More interesting stuff:
If you click on the “Meet the Staff” link at the PCS website, you see only three staff members (seems a bit thin to run a high school, eh?)… one of whom is “Ms. Tami Jordan. Daughter of and Mrs. Jordan, Tami is one of the teachers here at PCS.”
To my eye, the phrase “[d]aughter of and Mrs. Jordan” hints at the recent expungement of Mr. Jordan… and in fact Lavern is not included in the staff listing.
In addition, their OPERATION GRADUATION appears to be aimed at public school administrators, suggesting that they can “Help Seniors who have completed the required number of credits for graduation-but have not been successful in passing the TAKS test- to receive their High School DIPLOMA and OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT” and, more tellingly, “Reduce the number of students on your schools’ ‘Drop Out’ List.” CYA, in other words, for schools destined to be labeled as “failing” because of dropout rates (presumably “transfers” to PCS don’t count as dropouts) or low test scores.
It looks like this is just a scam, designed to capitalize on the niche “market” created by conservatives’ emphasis on “accountability” (which is to say, high-stakes testing) in public education. As much as we’d like to pin Lavern’s opportunistic lechery on Christianity, it looks more and more like he was just a crook acting like a crook. I’m guessing the school’s “Christian” affiliation is nothing more than part of its camouflage.
Patricia C.says
#12 genegalore – ding-it! Post a warning before you sing that. *middle aged women strap on the Depends*
So fuckin’ what? Really, who cares? It’s just some guy trying to take advantage of someone and failing. What happens when an atheist at a skepticism camp for children or something similar pulls the same stunt? Don’t tell me it wouldn’t ever happen either. I’m sure there’s plenty to criticize without having to stretch like this.
Hey I wasted 8.50 seeing Expelled tonight. I snuck some video and I think some people might be interested in seeing the cell animation they ripped off of XVIVO.
It’s here… for now.
Carliesays
#20 – Wow.
Wicked Ladsays
Very disappointing. I would have expected much higher academic standards from Houston, home of the “Texas miracle” that gave George W. Bush such tremendous education cred when he took office in 2001.
Physicalistsays
To my eye, the phrase “[d]aughter of and Mrs. Jordan” hints at the recent expungement of Mr. Jordan… and in fact Lavern is not included in the staff listing.
Yep. The wayback machine doesn’t seem to have anything, but on google cache they used to call the bio page “meet our family,” and now they changed it to “meet the staff.” Bye-bye Lavern.
#20 – You’re missing the point, namely, that hypocritical holier-than-thous constantly bleat how their belief system makes them morally better than everyone else, and that it’s a requirement to have any sort of morality at all.
Stories like this just show that they’re no better than anyone else, and in many cases, is being used as a cover for their depravity (do you need reminding of how many Catholic priests were convicted of raping and/or molesting children?)
Normsays
angrynight,
Let me spell it out for you: H.Y.P.O.C.R.I.S.Y.
n
Abbie – that’s brilliant! Now all we need is to consult their lawyer to find out why you’re posting this to YouTube is perfectly okay under “Fair Use.” LOL.
Someone needs to point out to me the part in the Bible where it says “And if you breaketh My commandments, cover thine ass.” There’s got to be another part of that explaining that “Thou shalt cover thine ass thoroughly, and not leave telltale hints of thy covering, such as “daughter of and Mrs Jordan.” What spectacular morons.
genesgaloresays
He’s “guiding it in” by the power of the holy spirit.
i prefer the holy ghost. so midevil.
Will K.says
… (other than Marvin Zindler, of course, who was always a cartoon character).
Sure, but how much greater would this piece have been with Zindler on it?
Aquariasays
Ah, yes, the wonders of fundie Texas.
Don’t be so sure the school is only a diploma mill. It’s unfortunate, but true, that more schools like this permeate Texas, under the guise of Christian education. We had more than one of these in the town where I lived. A girl I worked with attended one, K-12. There was only one problem: When it came time to go to the local jr. college, she was so woefully uneducated in anything besides readin’, writin’, rithmetic (sort of), and Jeebus that she had to go to the public high school for a year, just to get some basics to attend a community college. The worst of it was that her mother, who wasn’t all that well-off to begin with (widowed fundie, not much upstairs), had worked two jobs and sacrificed many, many niceties so that she could send her children to that school. All that money, down the drain. But she was still a “belieeeeeever!” Of course, not so much that she didn’t put her other kids in public school. But she still believed in her church and her pastor. And the word. Whatever the hell that meant.
The daughter was so mad about the waste of money and having to go to school another year like she was an idiot (she wasn’t) that she started questioning her faith. By the time she could graduate “again,” she was an atheist. Big time. She was so intense about it, that I used to call her a fire and brimstone atheist, which she loved.
As for the fundie principal’s nookie-chasing, I always think it’s funny that these guys are always caught with their pants down. Almost literally! Same thing happened to Garner Ted Armstrong–twice. And if I’d had less sense at 18, it would have happened with me. And my friend. After we met him at a bar. You can bet he didn’t preach about hitting on coeds for threesomes on his Rapture TV! Shit. Why didn’t I think of accepting the offer, then, er, exposing him?
Once again, so what? People by their very nature are hypocritical to some extent. I can’t honestly say this means anything in the larger context of religion. Worst case scenario it proves the necessity of the “Bless me father for I have sinned.” thingamajig.
All it means is people are imperfect. There is such a big broad world of criticisms to bring down upon religion, from the non-evidence of deities, to contradictions in text and transmission, to simple inconsistencies between separate moral tenets. Why focus on a handful of largely discredited idiot’s? It’s like criticizing modern day psychology over Freud, it’s fucking pointless. It’s not like psychologists will fall to their knees en masse and thank you for pulling the scales from their eyes. Then you wonder why the religious just refuse to listen: It’s because it’s a pile of nonsense they’ve either already repudiated, or never believed in the first place.
Also, what the Jolly Green Giant does the Pope have to do with any of this? Different sect of Christianity, different situation completely.
(And yes, I know psychology and religion are too very different things, it’s called an analogy, they all fall apart at some point)
Rick Tsays
What happens when an atheist at a skepticism camp for children or something similar pulls the same stunt? Don’t tell me it wouldn’t ever happen either. I’m sure there’s plenty to criticize without having to stretch like this.
I’ll expand on Carlie’s “Wow” which, no doubt, was prompted by reading so much crap in such a little bag.
First of all, atheism is nothing more that non-belief. There aren’t camps to proselytize this lack of belief unlike Christians who need to promote their myths by inflicting it on the young.
Second, I won’t tell you it wouldn’t happen but the fact that you use the word “wouldn’t” points out that you don’t know of it happening yet or else you would have given us all an example. That you can’t come up with an example reveals that the majority of this crap appears to be the domain of the self righteous, those who also find self deception both easily accomplished and commonly done.
Finally, it’s true that being critical of the Christian faith is easy on many counts but the shear volume of sexual offenses committed by these people make “stretching” completely unnecessary.
Some things in life are bad
They can really make you mad
Other things just make you swear and curse.
When you’re chewing on life’s gristle
Don’t grumble, give a whistle
And this’ll help things turn out for the best…
And…always look on the bright side of life…
Always look on the light side of life…
If life seems jolly rotten
There’s something you’ve forgotten
And that’s to laugh and smile and dance and sing.
When you’re feeling in the dumps
Don’t be silly chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle – that’s the thing.
And…always look on the bright side of life…
Always look on the light side of life…
For life is quite absurd
And death’s the final word
You must always face the curtain with a bow.
Forget about your sin – give the audience a grin
Enjoy it – it’s your last chance anyhow.
So always look on the bright side of death
Just before you draw your terminal breath
Life’s a piece of shit
When you look at it
Life’s a laugh and death’s a joke, it’s true.
You’ll see it’s all a show
Keep ’em laughing as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you.
And always look on the bright side of life…
Always look on the right side of life…
(Come on guys, cheer up!)
Always look on the bright side of life…
Always look on the bright side of life…
(Worse things happen at sea, you know.)
Always look on the bright side of life…
(I mean – what have you got to lose?)
(You know, you come from nothing – you’re going back to nothing.
What have you lost? Nothing!)
Always look on the right side of life…
Sexual offenses? What if you happen to have no problem with prostitution or sexual favors? After all, it is a private school.
First of all, atheism is nothing more that non-belief. There aren’t camps to proselytize this lack of belief unlike Christians who need to promote their myths by inflicting it on the young.
Wrong. Not that I have a problem with it. Second of all, where in Christianity does it say getting a little head from your kid’s principal is okay? That’s kind of my point. The various offshoots of the Protestant reformation do not render priests infallible either.
When I say it’s not beyond an atheist to perform the same stunt, I mean precisely that. Religion doesn’t enter into it. Not that Atheists are raving sex maniacs. Well not most of them. (Not that I want to offend any raving sex maniacs. To each his/her own)
merkin j. pus-tartsays
I like how the ad at the beginning had Howie Long picking up a couple of guys in his truck under the banner “Sex offer caught on tape.”
jaspersays
more immaturity. spoiled little children.
charleysays
Good story, but I hope you don’t seriously consider this a valid reason to stay away from all Christian schools. There are plenty of other good reasons. They teach kids that fairy tales are true, they provide poor training in critical thinking, and they stifle curiosity. They teach that their religion is right, and other religions and ideas are a threat. They distort science by forcing it into a God-shaped box. They deprive their students of exposure to diverse students and teachers. I attended respected Christian schools, but I wouldn’t send my kids there if they paid me.
Sex scandals and other bad behavior, however, can happen anywhere.
Wrong. Not that I have a problem with it. Second of all, where in Christianity does it say getting a little head from your kid’s principal is okay? That’s kind of my point. The various offshoots of the Protestant reformation do not render priests infallible either.
When I say it’s not beyond an atheist to perform the same stunt, I mean precisely that. Religion doesn’t enter into it. Not that Atheists are raving sex maniacs. Well not most of them. (Not that I want to offend any raving sex maniacs. To each his/her own)
Posted by: angrynight | April 19, 2008 12:04 AM
I don’t see any prosthelyzing there. What I see is a camp free from prosthelyzing and teaching children to think.
Dangerous stuff that thinking. Second leading cause of atheism. Leading cause being – actually reading the whole bible in depth and detail.
As for your two idiotic posts, you, like most religious defenders fail to realize you’re the ones out there doing the “holier than thou” shtick day-in, day-out. Yet you get divorced more, rape children more, commit more sex and general crimes, kill more people, start more wars, and generally treat people like buckets of shit.
All he wanted to do was show her his “spiritual bone”.
AlanWCansays
Rock me baby, rock me all night long
Rock me baby, honey, rock me all night long
I want you to rock me baby,
like my back ain’t got no bone
Roll me baby, like you roll a wagon wheel
I want you to roll me baby,
like you roll a wagon wheel
Want you to roll me baby,
you don’t know how it makes me feel
Rock me baby, honey, rock me slow
Yeah, rock me pretty baby, baby rock me slow
Want you to rock me baby, till I want no more
But… but… but… Christians are so moral! This can’t be! It’s trick photography! No! He was possessed…
Yeah.. That’s it. He was possessed.
Personally, I think we should point and laugh at these Christians more.
Aquariasays
Once again, so what? People by their very nature are hypocritical to some extent. I can’t honestly say this means anything in the larger context of religion. Worst case scenario it proves the necessity of the “Bless me father for I have sinned.” thingamajig.
The whole point is that these people outright say that atheists are de facto immoral, while claiming that their faith makes them more moral. They even claim that, without a moral guide (i.e., the bible), atheists can NEVER have morality. Anybody who makes a claim of moral superiority over anyone else is vulnerable the very second ANY of them fall from grace. When they make a claim like that, they can’t whine when, by their own actions, they prove themselves not to be. They can’t try to move the goal posts and say, “Well, the faith/bible doesn’t permit it.” It’s not about what the faith permits. It’s not about what an atheist has or hasn’t done. It’s what that person has done, and it especially doesn’t change that they are hypocrites for claiming moral superiority, then demonstrating that they don’t have it after all.
As for your two idiotic posts, you, like most religious defenders fail to realize you’re the ones out there doing the “holier than thou” shtick day-in, day-out. Yet you get divorced more, rape children more, commit more sex and general crimes, kill more people, start more wars, and generally treat people like buckets of shit.
Emphasis mine.
You are an ignorant nitwit who couldn’t use that “dangerous thought” to save a fish from drowning. I link to my blog to give people some idea of where I’m coming from, not to pretty up the comments section with a pretty blue iridescent link. You don’t have to read the boring thing, just look at my links and blogroll, and I assure you there is no superstition in it.
I’m being slightly facetious but my point is valid, this has nothing to do with religion. I happen to concur with Charley. People are capable of not being particularly enamored of religion and still not throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. It’s called thinking critically.
Bubbasays
I don’t see any prosthelyzing there. What I see is a camp free from prosthelyzing and teaching children to think.
Agreed. But someone needs to talk to the webmaster of Michigan Camp Quest about the use of Comic Sans. Ugh!
gsmoovesays
Send your kids to a catholic school it turned me into a firm-nonbeliever
@Aquaria, since you were so nice not to call me a rapist, a divorcee, superstitious, a murderer, or an asshole, I’ll spare you the dullness of my wit.
My point is, it’s still just some guy, not the cornerstone cleric of Christianity. Also, you’re assuming the vast majority of believers are narcissistic assholes, which simply isn’t the case. You can be wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong again and still not be a jerk.
Tulsesays
It’s called thinking critically.
It’s called exposing hypocrisy.
Nibiensays
Honestly, is this Angrynight guy a toll?
HGsays
This guy is sick no doubt. And of course nothing like this ever happens in public school. It’s not like teacher’s solicit and actually follow through with innapropriate relations with the parents students.
Bill Dauphinsays
how much greater would this piece have been with Zindler on it?
Too right! I recall the (only half-joking) rumor that Zindler carried a “throw-down roach” on his shock-inspections of restaurant kitchens; do you suppose he would’ve nailed this guy with a throw-down condom?
“I’m MARvin Zindler, EYEwitness News!!!”
Tulsesays
of course nothing like this ever happens in public school
Of course it does, but then again those schools don’t claim to “utilize a program based on Christian character, morals, values, and integrity.” It’s the hypocrisy, stupid.
And speaking of stupid, here’s a fun game: count the number of grammatical and spelling errors on the main Parkway Christian School page. I make it seven.
MikeMsays
A few years ago, the Sacramento Bee ran an article about the university rate of remedation for local schools. The really large, really expensive Fundie Christian K-12 school had the highest remediation rate of them all.
Hmmm. Maybe I know why now.
My Christian friends refused to send their kids there because the science instructor didn’t have a college degree.
This is the same school that expelled its valedictorian a week before 8th grade graduation because he cut his hair too short. He went on to be a top student at Stanford (which is amazing, given that school’s reputation).
I’d never send a kid to that school, that’s for sure.
Sioux Larissays
Ignore this ‘angry night’ troll – he’s simply looking for hits on his own, very clearly and justifiably avoided, blog.
When you ain’t got nothing,
you got nothing to lose.
You’re invisible now;
you got no secrets to conceal.
How does it feel, ‘angry night’?
Stephen Couchmansays
Um. I kneejerk-hate Abrahamic theists like I’m getting paid for it, and I think Angrynight has a perfectly valid point, while probably being a little intentionally obtuse about the hypocrisy angle because you’ve collectively pissed him (?) off. Since when is arguing for dispassionate evaluation on a science blog “trolling?”
Autumnsays
@ angrynight,
Yes, hypocrisy and sexual. . . let us say, overexuberance, are common to all types, but as has been pointed out, the man invokes his spirituality as a reason he believes what he is doing to be wrong. The mitigation of “just playing around” is hypocrisy turned into hilarity. This man blatantly asks to “fuck” (I assume that the deleted word beginning with “f” is fuck) a woman, and later apologizes for perhaps making her uncomfortable, but still wats to “play around” behind a hotel!
This is simply funny (as the woman was not hurt, and was aware of what she was doing), the part about him being the founder of a Christian school is just a bonus!
It seems like shooting fish in a barrel, but the fundies continue to insist that, not only are they not fish, but there is no barrel!
Fire away.
James Fsays
Special Rush song dedication to all the religious fundamentalists out there:
Witch Hunt (Part III of Fear)
The night is black
Without a moon
The air is thick and still
The vigilantes gather on
The lonely torchlit hill.
Features distorted in the flickering light
Faces are twisted and grotesque
Silent and stern in the sweltering night
Mob moves like demons possessed
Quiet in conscience, calm in their right
Confident their ways are best
The righteous rise
With burning eyes
Of hatred and ill-will
Madmen fed on fear and lies
To beat and burn and kill
They say there are strangers who threaten us
Our immigrants and infidels
They say there is strangeness too dangerous
In our theaters and bookstore shelves
That those who know what’s best for us
Must rise and save us from ourselves
Quick to judge
Quick to anger
Slow to understand
Ignorance and prejudice
And fear walk hand in hand…
James Fsays
aaaand I posted it on the wrong thread.
HGsays
It’s the hypocrisy
Ah yes, the hypocrisy of this man trumps the statuatory rape of public school students by teachers. I forgot that hypocrisy is the unpardonable sin according to liberals.
brokenSoldiersays
When I say it’s not beyond an atheist to perform the same stunt, I mean precisely that. Religion doesn’t enter into it.
Posted by: angrynight | April 19, 2008 12:04 AM
The statement above is absolutely true, but does not address the main point of the post. Any human born on this earth is not beyond these sort of temptations, but to claim that religion doesn’t ever factor into these situations is false. The way that religion does factor into things like this is the fact that in a religious world-view, certain individuals are set up by their followers to be further from reproach than the members of their flock. While this also happens in secular environments (i.e., sexual harassment and propositioning in a private sector company), the fact remains that in a religious setting, these sexual offenders are very often protected from that reproach due to their standing as an authority figure supported by some form of divine doctrine, which – by the very definition of divine – is unassailable from a worldly standpoint. This is proven by the fact that we will NOT accept conduct of this nature by individuals in a secular setting, but will somehow still recognize the divine authority of a figure that does the exact same thing behind the protection of their faith. (And Catholic priests are not alone in these sorts of crimes – the current case in Texas is proof positive of that statement. And before someone states that these cases are always brought to justice, first realize that this fact does not help the victims that were abused prior to the legal system’s ability to reach them – their parents, through their religious beliefs, were confident in the view that nothing was wrong with such actions.) Just to be clear, I am fully aware that this individual case may have been an isolated individual abusing his power as an administrator, but it is a fact that prior religious prestige or position definitely does offer a modicum of protection for these same types of offenders in situations involving such crimes when they occur within the bounds of church authority.
Rick Tsays
The purpose of Camp Quest is to provide children of freethinking parents a residential summer camp dedicated to improving the human condition through rational inquiry, critical and creative thinking, scientific method, self-respect, ethics, competency, democracy, free speech, and the separation of religion and government guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States.
I stand corrected. There is one camp for children of Atheists but it’s not designed to convert anyone or promote unbelief but to promote what’s stated above. I was reacting to what I thought was a Christian projecting their way of thinking on an atheist; I may have missed your point.
When I say it’s not beyond an atheist to perform the same stunt, I mean precisely that. Religion doesn’t enter into it.
Of course people are people and we all behave foolishly at times, but I do believe religion enters into it. It teaches people to compartmentalize their thinking. The real and the ideal become disparate (the ideal being what they want to believe is true) and they behave in ways contradictory to their ideal without seeming to realize it. They lie, steal and cheat (as the Expelled fiasco shows) all the time seemingly unaware that they behave exactly in the manner that they otherwise condemn.
The rash of sexual offenses is just another example of this tendency to do exactly what they verbally oppose. I think religion could be part of the problem but I could be wrong.
Sexual offenses? What if you happen to have no problem with prostitution or sexual favors? After all, it is a private school.
That comment is just stupid. There is a time and a place for getting your freak on but not in a parking lot, not in exchange for school tuition, not without the knowledge and consent of his wife who no doubt doesn’t want to be exposed to a sexually transmitted disease.
You seem to be unwilling to concede the fact that there are certain acts that we in society deem immoral and are worthy of criticism. Why you feel the need to be critical of us for being critical is confusing to me. If it’s criticism in general then why do you engage in it? If it’s that the act itself is not worthy of being criticized then are you saying that sex for tuition is less a problem to you than having a critical nature? Are you concerned that the religious among us are offended by being criticized? Why are you concerned with what they think yet are bothered by what some of us think?
Or are you just a coarse concern troll?
AlanWCansays
Nice to know your news channels are covering all the important issues. Sure this is lowdown and sleezy and the guy needs to be busted, but in case you hadn’t noticed your economy is in the toilet, your president is a buffoon who (a) denied knowing anything about torturing people (b) denied that the US tortures people, (c) instructed people to torture people, and (d) pissed all over your constitution, you’re mired in a couple of worthless wars of aggression simply so a bunch of billionaires can siphon a few extra billion from your taxes (and those of your children and grandchildren), you haven’t had an honest election in a few cycles, and you’re living in a corporate/police state.
So, like I said, it’s good to see the news is all over this guy.
brokenSoldiersays
I’m being slightly facetious but my point is valid, this has nothing to do with religion.
Posted by: angrynight | April 19, 2008 12:42 AM
You MIGHT be able to make the argument that this man’s individual motives had nothing to do with his position in the religious community (you’d have to have first-hand interview information to prove that, and I doubt the words from that guy’s mouth deserve much credibility anyway), but to say that religion had NOTHING to do with the situation is false. The fact that he is the founder of that Christian school clearly shows that religion had SOMETHING to do with the situation. He used his position of authority at that Christian school, and the mother’s desire to send her daughter to his school, as leverage to illegally solicit sex. We can debate whether or not he believed that his position as an authority figure in a religious institution offered him insulation from reproach for his actions, but you cannot logically dismiss the possibility that he thought as much.
Elizabethsays
Sure, sure, our country is in the toilet, we know; that’s why we have such an emigration problem. People are just leaving here in droves! It’s really worrisome so we have to displace our anger and anxiety by picking on this poor Christian schmuck. Would you prefer that we kick the dog?
HGsays
Isn’t slightly hypocritical to warn parents: “Don’t send your kids to Christian School” when public school teachers are being intimate with parents students?
Talk about intellectual dishonesty.
brokenSoldiersays
Sure, sure, our country is in the toilet, we know; that’s why we have such an emigration problem. People are just leaving here in droves! It’s really worrisome so we have to displace our anger and anxiety by picking on this poor Christian schmuck. Would you prefer that we kick the dog?
Posted by: Elizabeth | April 19, 2008 2:01 AM
Well, except for this…
“The nation’s immigrant population (legal and illegal) reached a record of 37.9 million in 2007. ”
If you meant that JOBS are leaving here in droves, I’d agree. And in answer to your question about kicking the dog… If the dog in question propositioned my mother for sex in exchange for educating her child, then yes I would. (Would you let me put on some heavier boots first, though?)
Trolling is people who set things up so a comment section goes to hell (figuratively speaking). They distract from the subject matter of the post and get everyone emotional. Imay have done the latter by accident, but I am on topic. I’m disagreeing with the idea that every pervert is also a religious nut/ somehow tied to religion. I freely admit to being a little facetious (as in the prostitution remark, which was stupid on purpose), but that was my mistake.
I’m also astounded that there was such a knee-jerk reaction to my comments, I’m suddenly a blathering theistic scoundrel. I feel like I’m chasing my tail on this one Look, I’ll make my argument abundantly clear to everyone -sarcasm:
1.People screw up. It isn’t always pretty, and sometimes it’s downright criminal.
2.Religion may be a hundred different things, all or most of which are evil- or not. However, this incident can only identify the high profile hypocrisy in one man, while I remind you we all act against our ethics from time to time to various extents. If you want to make the argument that most religious people are hypocrites, the lot of them, the burden of proof is with you to demonstrate willful mass-mendacity on the part of the faithful.
3.
Of course people are people and we all behave foolishly at times, but I do believe religion enters into it. It teaches people to compartmentalize their thinking. The real and the ideal become disparate (the ideal being what they want to believe is true) and they behave in ways contradictory to their ideal without seeming to realize it.
That’s an interesting hypothesis, but I think this guy was just horny, it’s impossible to say whether he bothered to rationalize it at all. She agreed to get in the car with him (albeit for the hidden camera), and while it wasn’t the best thing anyone has ever done, he didn’t exactly leap on her. Neither of us can know his mental state at the time. This is what I mean by critical thinking, there is a lot left to the imagination, but the facts are quite simple. Being skeptical means not putting stuff in the gaps to fit your predispostions.
Finally, I sensed a bit of trollishness in my first few comments, though I’m not so sure I crossed the line, if I did, it was unintentional. Unfortunately jumping up and down saying I’m not a troll can only make me sound more like a troll, but look, we’re on topic having an argument. Not the worst of things I’ve done online.
Rey Foxsays
I’m gonna take a wild stab and guess that you have a problem with public schools, HG. You can always start a blog about it, you know.
HGsays
No problem with public schools, I attended and so do my children. Just pointing out the obvious.
(I’m taking too long writing comments, every time I finish responding to one, there are another three.)
The fact that he is the founder of that Christian school clearly shows that religion had SOMETHING to do with the situation. He used his position of authority at that Christian school, and the mother’s desire to send her daughter to his school, as leverage to illegally solicit sex.
Yes and if it were a snooty, exclusive, secular, private school attached to Harvard and the same thing happened, then Harvard would have SOMETHING to do with the situation. However, the link is still tenuous and contrived. I can draw a link between the number of ear-hairs George Bush has and the level of violence around the world. Sure, we can blame him for a lot of it, but his ear hairs have nothing to do with it, men just get more as they age.
Finally, I sensed a bit of trollishness in my first few comments, though I’m not so sure I crossed the line, if I did, it was unintentional. Unfortunately jumping up and down saying I’m not a troll can only make me sound more like a troll, but look, we’re on topic having an argument. Not the worst of things I’ve done online.
I have to agree with angrynight here. Not about the issue-I think (s)he’s totally out to lunch by apologising for this douche.
However, (s)he’s taken the time to explicate and defend a position. I don’t consider that trolling.
Niobesays
The real scandal is him thinking he can get SEVERAL sessions for $300,-. What a scrooge.
It seems that you don’t consider the fact that many of the religious claim that their religiousity is a necessary condition for morality. Your claim is that it obviously isn’t sufficient. However, like most actual phenomena, the relationship between religiousity and morality isn’t so simply ascertained.
For those of us who are constantly accused of being incapable of morality due to our (lack of) beliefs, this apparent relationship must be investigated. Further, the religious invite this investigation by claiming the moral high ground that they do.
Thus, your argument that this man’s actions shouldn’t be compared to the moral claims he and others sharing his belief system make is incorrect.
Ah yes, the hypocrisy of this man trumps the statuatory rape of public school students by teachers. I forgot that hypocrisy is the unpardonable sin according to liberals.
HG, if you could somehow suggest that statutory rape of christian school students by teachers didn’t occur, you might have a point. Since you can’t, I’ll spell it out in a way that even a conservative fuckwit like yourself might understand:
Public school teachers have raped kids.
Christian school teachers have raped kids.
Christian school teachers claim that their beliefs preclude them from doing such things.
See the difference between the two groups now, asshat?
Fucking trolling idiot. Now shut the fuck up, and let a non-fuckhead like angrynight talk instead. At least (s)he’s got a point to argue.
Man, you’re a fucking moron.
brokenSoldiersays
“Yes and if it were a snooty, exclusive, secular, private school attached to Harvard and the same thing happened, then Harvard would have SOMETHING to do with the situation. ”
Posted by: angrynight | April 19, 2008 2:37 AM
I agree with you – and by saying it had something to do with the situation, I meant that, and only that. I didn’t mean to imply that religion served – in this case – as a systemic cause of this man’s actions. I merely meant to point out that religion may have factored into this man’s belief that he could get away with it – I didn’t intend to insinuate that religion was a sufficient cause for what he did. (And for the record, I didn’t intend for my response to convey the opinion that I believed your comments were trolling. If I came across that way, I do sincerely apologize. I’m actually enjoying the exchanges and the discussion of the minutia of the situation. Believe me, today of all days, I have had my patience tested by some of the troll community’s finest…or worst, whichever way you look at it, I guess.)
P.S.: And if it WERE a snooty Harvard administrator that committed this act, I’d be inclined to shove a year’s worth of his school’s tuition cost (in silver change, of course) up his least comfortable point of bodily entry. Coming from a well-known (even infamously so) poor neighborhood in Memphis, TN, I have a special disregard for intellectual and financial snobbery – not to mention the combination of both…
brokenSoldiersays
Public school teachers have raped kids.
Christian school teachers have raped kids.
Christian school teachers claim that their beliefs preclude them from doing such things.
Posted by: Brownian, OM | April 19, 2008 3:03 AM
Very, Very nice – logic at its finest. I just hope it gets through to him/her. (A foolish hope, I know…but I can have my dreams, can’t I?)
Bill Dauphinsays
I think this thread has strayed a bit off point (that could never happen on teh intertoobz, right?):
I think there is a linkage between moralistic suppression of sexual desire (e.g., by conservative religious folks) and an increased risk of sexual misconduct, and I also think there is an extra dimension of culpability for sexual misconduct by those who preach conservative sexual mores to others (but note this doesn’t meant sexual misconduct isn’t still misconduct even when not accompanied by hypocrisy)… but there is, IMHO, something entirely different going on in this case.
If this were a real Christian school and its ostensibly chaste founder/headmaster were extracting sexual favors from parents in return for admission, that would be reprehensible for all the reasons stated in the thread above. But the evidence suggests that this is neither a real Christian school nor even a real school. It’s apparently an inherently fraudulent enterprise, trading on burdensome and wrongheaded public education policies that create a market for the sale of phony diplomas. I doubt Lavern Jordan’s “Christianity” is anything other than part of the role he’s playing for this particular con game, and if by some chance he is a sincere Christian, he already qualified as an FSM-damned hypocrite for being a fraud and a thief, long before he tried to crawl into this poor woman’s pants.
It’s probably a whole different discussion, but the economic “space” for this sort of scam is a perfectly predictable outcome of the conservative program to bankrupt and ultimately eliminate public education through draconian “reforms” like NCLB. But I digress….
I’m sure there are plenty of genuine religious schools in Texas, some of which are no doubt relatively inoffensive despite their church affiliations and some of which are no doubt horrifying fundie nightmares. I have no idea whether sexual misconduct by teachers or administrators is more common in these schools than in public schools — after all, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” eh? — but criticizing religious hypocrisy about sex in no way excuses sexual abuse in public schools. They’re just two separate issues.
In addition, liberal attitudes about sex and sex work don’t excuse this guy’s behavior. Personally, I don’t have a moral objection to prostitution per se (presuming that it’s truly consensual): If this woman were a prostitute by her own choice, and if this guy were her customer, and if she freely chose to spend her earnings on her son’s tuition, I wouldn’t have a problem with any of that. In this case, however, she’s not a prostitute, and he’s trying to get sex from her by holding something she values (her son’s phoney-baloney diploma) hostage, and that is sexual harrassment bordering on rape, regardless of what you think about the morality of prostitution in the abstract.
Got it?
Kseniyasays
Shorter angrynight: “What this religious guy ACTUALLY DID is excusable because a HYPOTHETICAL atheist guy is HYPOTHETICALLY CAPABLE of doing something similar.”
Ok then.
I’d go on, but Brownian (as he so often does) covered my point of view rather succinctly in #73.
(Ok now I’m really going to sleep!)
*poof*
Kseniyasays
Actually, ignore my “shorter angrynight” comment. I may have under-represented the commenter’s position. Move to strike. Thank you, your honor.
It seems that you don’t consider the fact that many of the religious claim that their religiousity is a necessary condition for morality.
You’re right about everything you’ve just said. I know I’ve said otherwise previously, but for whatever reason it didn’t click. I don’t know I suppose in my mind I was forgetting this is someone who is on the pulpit everyday screaming about moral decline (probably). Look I’m not saying the guy’s a saint or to give him a break. I still give most of the burden to the individual, and I still say this sort of argument is problematic. At this stage it is safe to say that there is a good number of atheists and freethinkers who now are saying that on the whole, they are more ethical than the religious, witness Moses at #38.
This is bad, because they are still susceptible to human foibles. As you have said, the claim of moral superiority has been made, though this time it is due to lack of a deity rather than belief in one. Suddenly it’s a double edged sword, a theist commits evil, we must show theists their hypocrisy, and on the other side of the street when an atheist screws up (assuming it’s not a matter of time is foolishly optimistic) then they are simply going to say that atheists are not as moral as they claim to be (i.e. more moral than us).
Don’t you see what I’m getting at? The argument doesn’t apply to theists in the same way it doesn’t apply to us. (sorry about the double negatives.)
I’m having a little trouble expressing this, but basically that argument cuts both ways, because in order to make that argument, you have to make a claim of moral superiority yourself. All of this is assuming morals aren’t relative in the first place (but seriously, that’s a whole other can of worms)
Screw the pastor, let him roast on a pit for all I care, it doesn’t make Christianity anything. The response by people defending him is what sets Christianity up for criticism. Not the behavior of the pastor. A criminal working at a bank doesn’t make the bank bad, it’s the bank’s response that would make me think twice about putting my money there.
He must have watched Forest Gump, ughughughughughughugh. hahahahaha
brokenSoldiersays
“Don’t you see what I’m getting at? The argument doesn’t apply to theists in the same way it doesn’t apply to us. (sorry about the double negatives.”
Posted by: Angrynight | April 19, 2008 3:31 AM
I think I get what you’re driving towards here, and (let me know if I am wrong) I think it speaks to a truth larger than this individual situation. In today’s adversarial society, two sides of any coin (theist vs. atheist, Republican vs. Democrat, etc…) both have an immediate proclivity to point to the other side’s ideology as a sufficient cause for their actions, whether that connection is valid or not. And once such a supposition has been made, the furor that erupts from both sides drowns out what rational debate could potentially be possible.
If this is an accurate summary of your idea, then we are of the same mind on this subject. In another post on an unrelated thread, I offered that the most inhibitive obstacle in our society’s attempt at rational discussion is this sort of knee-jerk, irrational attribution of individual flaws to universal ideals held by the offending individual. I don’t know how we can get around such a widespread perversion of discourse, but I think that if we’re ever going to do it, it is going to require both sides to metaphorically speaking ‘lay down the arms’ and come to the table mutually and without subversive intentions.
Bingo broken soldier, I am going to sleep now. It’s officially four o’clock in the morning, and I’m beyond true mental capacity (whatever that means). Thank goodness tomorrow is Saturday.
Anna Lennasays
Angrynight, I think that you are missing the point that Brownian is making. Like many here, I too, have been told by religious people that without religion, I’m “morally inferior” to them. When the Christians engage in immoral behavior, it simply demonstrates that they are as imperfect as the rest of us. Examples like this illustrate the point that religion does not make one morally superior to one without religion.
Bill Dauphinsays
Angrynight:
(FWIW, I don’t think you’re trolling, and I’ve appreciated the thoughtful thread)
At this stage it is safe to say that there is a good number of atheists and freethinkers who now are saying that on the whole, they are more ethical than the religious….
This is bad, because they are still susceptible to human foibles.
I don’t think it’s quite a symmetrical a situation as you suggest: If I’m reading it correctly, atheists (or rationalists/secularists generally) don’t pretend they’re not subject to human foibles, or that they’re inherently more capable of living by their own ethical codes than theists are. Rather, I think they claim that their ethical codes are better than theists’, because they’re based on reason and observable facts, rather than on the apparently arbitrary pronouncements of a mythical figure of absolute authority.
Further, I think the anger at theists’ “hypocrisy” comes not so much when they violate their own privately held codes, but when they violate codes they’re actively trying to force on others.
If (for instance) Rep. Larry Craig behaves in a way that he privately believes is immoral for himself, that’s nobody’s problem but his own; if, OTOH, he behaves in a way that’s immoral according to beliefs he’s trying to write into law for everyone, that’s everyone’s problem.
As you have said, the claim of moral superiority has been made, though this time it is due to lack of a deity rather than belief in one.
Yes, but I think many would say there’s a qualitative difference between claims of moral superiority that are based on rational, fact-based notions of morality and similar claims that are based on authoritarian mysticism… and they’d say that qualitative difference exists independently of folks’ ability (or lack thereof) to live up to their moral ideals.
brokenSoldier’s comment, to which you replied “Bingo,” implies that atheism and theism are two equivalent, albeit conflicting, ideologies:
In today’s adversarial society, two sides of any coin (theist vs. atheist, Republican vs. Democrat, etc…) both have an immediate proclivity to point to the other side’s ideology as a sufficient cause for their actions, [emphasis added]
..but I don’t buy that: Atheism isn’t a competing set of arbitrary absolutist moral rules; it’s a rejection of the notion of arbitrary absolutist moral rules. It’s not a matter of two sides of the same coin: The difference is one of kind rather than of content.
Of course, as I’ve said before, I don’t really think the problem with Lavern Jordan is that he’s a hypocrite; I think the problem is that he’s a swindler and a rapist.
DaveScotsays
Of course this never happens in public schools. The scene in Forrest Gump where his mother gives it up to the principle so he’ll bend the minimum IQ rule so that Forrest can attend the regular public school is pure incredible fiction. Everyone knows that only Christian men employed at Christian schools are interested in sex. Secular men in secular schools are all celebate.
AllanWsays
Hehe thanks DaveScot; using the fictional example of Forrest Gump sure balances the actual story in this thread. Yep, sure is the same thing.
This does not look like some random image of the mind.
It is way too detailed for that and there were witnesses of this as you will read.
Then again religious people are crazy right. They will believe anything.
Theism is sooooo 1497says
Yet another a$$hole who will contendedly drill sanctimonious iron-age drivel into defenceless children’s brains while clearly not believing a word of it himself.
At this stage it is safe to say that there is a good number of atheists and freethinkers who now are saying that on the whole, they are more ethical than the religious.
Then this “good number” err. The lack of a belief in a deity cannot be the source of ethics any more than the lack of a moustache. Atheists must look elsewhere for ethics. We are not an organisation with prescriptions and proscriptions for its membership. As regards ethics, the most one can legitimately say for atheism is that it removes the necessity to pretend that ethics are divinely ordained and leaves us free to derive our ethics other than from bronze-age myths.
Of course — the one night I don’t watch the local news.
I’m proud of this woman for doing what she did. I couldn’t have done it without throwing up, personally.
I give a lot of Christians more credit than some — I think fewer than you think hold this notion that only secular people are morally bankrupt. There’s enough evidence in the news to the contrary. That’s why it’s such an outrage.
angrynight is making a fairly typical leap: by highlighting despicable behavior by one Christian, we must be accusing all Christians of being like that. Nothing is further from the truth. I think most Christians are like most atheists — generally decent, with lapses. However, you have to see it from an atheist perspective: we are constantly told that we are amoral, that we have no foundation for ethical behavior, that we must be adrift since we have no absolute basis for morality. So it is quite satisfying to see so many examples from the Christian community that testify that they don’t seem to have an absolute morality, either.
And DaveScot is posting here? Amazing. Yet more hypocrisy. Dave is the kneejerk sleazebag at Uncommon Descent in charge of silencing dissenting opinions — it takes quite a bit of gall for him to abuse the hospitality of any other blog.
Junesays
PlanetKiller: If you look at the photos, you will see that each of them is quite different, which proves that the reflections we are seeing depend on many variables such as the camera, the angle, the lighting, and also on our brain’s interpretation of what we are seeing. If this were indeed Jesus, he would look the same from various angles, not like a melting mask or some waving curtains. We are just looking at some surface effects and interpreting them as a face.
You can easily create this effect with pencil and paper. Just draw 2 dots and a short dash near them, like this :| or like this :-) and then rotate the paper until you see a face. If you draw an oval or even a square around them, it’s impossible NOT to see a face!
Finally, if this is indeed Jesus, why would he be crying instead of curing the suffering patients? As Supreme Ruler of the Universe, he is in full control! He has the power to bring instant peace and happiness to the world. Why would he lurk in some obscure hospital corridor?
Nick Gottssays
Re #88. Planet Killer, you keep making me ask myself – can anyone really be that stupid and still be able to type? In the UK, it has become fashionable for Muslims to find the name of Allah, spelled out in Arabic, when cutting open aubergines (eggplants) and thus revealing the seeds. Happens several times a year – clearly a warning, and one that has been given repeatedly. I suggest you convert to Islam.
Kseniyasays
Then again religious people are crazy right. They will believe anything.
Hey I wasted 8.50 seeing Expelled tonight. I snuck some video and I think some people might be interested in seeing the cell animation they ripped off of XVIVO.
It’s here… for now.
ARGGGHH! That’s not how microtubules form! Expelled, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG — in exactly the same way that XVIVO “did it wrong” (intentionally oversimplifying). Sound familiar, anybody?
Oh, the guy at the end of the clip, the one who says, “The cell really is like nothing we’ve ever seen in the physical world,” is just priceless. Who is that?
That item is the first of some 2 million results from a google search against “teacher sex student.
It seems like a very creationist sort of logic to impugn all christian schools by pointing to a scam run by people posing as christians.
mister_robotosays
i’m not entirely sure why this should be seen as a problem. it is the religious groups that say sex should not be used as a bartering system. as someone on here already pointed out, having sex with the student would be the problem. but it would be pure hypocrisy to say that you think prostitution should be legal, but using it to barter? totally not allowed.
HGsays
Christian school teachers claim that their beliefs preclude them from doing such things.
So the point of the post is parents shouldn’t send thier kids to Christian school because thier might be a hypocrite there who wants to sleep with the parent. Yeah I didn’t get that from the short “Parents — don’t send your kids to Christian school” Myers wrote. I inferred that the threat was from the unethical conduct of Christian School staff rather than the hypocrisy of the same. Like a said earlier, I had forgotten the unpardonable sin of hyocrisy.
If I am right and the unethical conduct is why Myers would have Parents not send thier kids to Christian school, then it is he who is misrepresenting the facts that:
Public school teachers have raped kids.
Christian school teachers have raped kids.
The point I made, and went right over your head, was in response to comment #51. Put my comments into there context and you might get the point.
HGsays
Oh, and I see I broke the second unholy commandment — grammatical error. I’ll turn on my spellchecker and proofread in an effort to measure up to the righteousness of the liberal blogosphere.
UnalienableBytessays
I would like to point out that most public school teachers and administrators in the USA are christian. So the only point that HG and the others are making is in which context christian educators are most likely exhibit sexual misconduct.
brokenSoldiersays
Atheism isn’t a competing set of arbitrary absolutist moral rules; it’s a rejection of the notion of arbitrary absolutist moral rules. It’s not a matter of two sides of the same coin: The difference is one of kind rather than of content.
Of course, as I’ve said before, I don’t really think the problem with Lavern Jordan is that he’s a hypocrite; I think the problem is that he’s a swindler and a rapist.
Posted by: Bill Dauphin | April 19, 2008 4:59 AM
We agree wholly on Lavern Jordan, but I disagree with you on your conclusions concerning atheism. When we’re talking about theism, then atheism – to me – is most certainly the other side of the coin. Atheism isn’t the “rejection of the notion of arbitrary absolutist moral rules,” but rather it is the simple lack of belief in God – in the theistic, creator sense of the word.
** In an attempt to be visually as well as verbally descriptive, my view of it is that identifying yourself as an ATHEIST is simply affirming the (A)bsence of (THEIST) beliefs in your world-view. IMHO, this makes it the exact definition of “the other side of the coin.”**
So as it applied to what I was trying to describe (the arguments that erupt between atheists and religious believers on this board), I believe I was correct in using the coin metaphor to characterize the two diametrically opposed viewpoints – those being (1) belief that there is a God, and (2) belief that there is no God. I have been known to be wrong on many an occasion, however, and I’m interested to hear what the rest of you think.
Um. I kneejerk-hate Abrahamic theists like I’m getting paid for it, and I think Angrynight has a perfectly valid point, while probably being a little intentionally obtuse about the hypocrisy angle because you’ve collectively pissed him (?) off. Since when is arguing for dispassionate evaluation on a science blog “trolling?”
Posted by: Stephen Couchman | April 19, 2008 1:26 AM
Um, since he didn’t do it… Seriously. And the issue is old and dealt with and people who argue this issue need to get acquainted with the facts before they jumps in and try to “win friends and influence” people by defending the indefensible.
The DATA says The Greater the Relgiosity/Fundamentalism in the person, the Greater the Chance s/he will commit crimes. Like it or not. For example, in molestation of children, the incest-rate for this is very rare in atheists. Well under 2% if I remember my numbers correctly, and it’s usually “relationship incest” (Step-parent/Step-child) instead of biological incest (parent/offspring). OTOH, if I remember my numbers right, I believe the rates for fundamentalists 10% in the step-parent axis and 7% in the biological access.
And I can go down a list of hundreds of crimes, perversions, abnormal sexual fetishes (especially S&M), spousal rape, larceny, fraud, embezzlement, murder, etc. and the rule holds for all of them: the more fundamentalist the persons religion, the more likely they are to engage in these anti-social, immoral and illegal behaviors. There is lots of speculation why and I’m not going into it.
You can have your own opinion, but you don’t get your own facts. So, coming to a thread, and defending this group of people, when one of the hypocrites is caught red-handed, is incredibly stupid. Beyond-the-pale stupid. The facts are against you and within law enforcement and social service agencies, profiles on which to rely.
Rick Tsays
I think that this issue has been thoroughly discussed with the obvious point prevailing that we are all prone to error but most religious adherents believe that they are not susceptible to moral failings due to the miracle of their conversion. They have been changed. All things have become new and their sinful nature as been swapped for one with a spiritual bent. This is nothing more that wishful thinking on their part and when stories of sexual impropriety regularly pop up (pun not intended) it is fun to point out that their claims of moral superiority are false.
I would like to add that their belief that truth is absolute fogs their thinking process and is often projected onto those who don’t, wouldn’t and couldn’t think like they do about the world. Science is a good example. Since we all know that humans are imperfect we have developed a scientific method for examining the world that attempts to minimize the errors that invariable creep into our understanding of how things work. We think this is a positive and they see it as a failing. The fact that Darwin didn’t have it all completely right from the get go tells them that he is completely wrong and science in general can’t be trusted.
A scientist feels comfortable knowing that our understanding will improve over time and makes no claims that what we think today is as accurate as it will get. Likewise, I’m comfortable knowing that I will make mistakes and regret some of my actions at some point. The religious know that they have the truth on their side so this makes them immune to the problems that all humans share and I’m inclined to think that this attitude actually fosters a blindness that results in more than their share of screw-ups (no pun intended).
We all know that their world view is screwed up but it is not something that should be ignored. Some of us most affected by their nonsense feel the need to ridicule their silly beliefs when we hear news like this because it is not simply the shortcomings of a horny little man but a pervasive world view that also challenges science and education and reason in general.
Ah yes, the hypocrisy of this man trumps the statuatory rape of public school students by teachers. I forgot that hypocrisy is the unpardonable sin according to liberals.
Posted by: HG | April 19, 2008 1:38 AM
Hypocrisy is when you say one thing, and do another. I don’t recollect atheists and seculars holding themselves out as the paragons of virtue with all the answers. Unlike you, and your typical Christian zealots, who not only claim the morality, you tell us that we’re immoral.
Bill Dauphinsays
Sorry to “feed” DaveScot, but sometimes there’s accidental wisdom in error:
The scene in Forrest Gump where his mother gives it up to the principle…
Wouldn’t “giving it up” to the principle be a noble (but not necessarily Nobel) thing? It’s giving it up to the principal that’s tawdry.
But seriously, folks… I don’t understand why people keep saying that because sexual misconduct occurs in public schools, we’re wrong to criticize Jordan in this case. Since when does it make sense to say “Because people in Group B sometimes behave badly, it’s inappropriate to criticize Group A for vaguely related but actually dissimilar bad behavior”?
Also, to mister_roboto’s point (@98) about the supposed hypocrisy of criticizing sexual bartering, I’ll repeat an earlier paragraph of my own, which appears to have been lost in the fog (teach me to post at ~3:00 am!):
In addition, liberal attitudes about sex and sex work don’t excuse this guy’s behavior. Personally, I don’t have a moral objection to prostitution per se (presuming that it’s truly consensual): If this woman were a prostitute by her own choice, and if this guy were her customer, and if she freely chose to spend her earnings on her son’s tuition, I wouldn’t have a problem with any of that. In this case, however, she’s not a prostitute, and he’s trying to get sex from her by holding something she values (her son’s phoney-baloney diploma) hostage, and that is sexual harassment bordering on rape, regardless of what you think about the morality of prostitution in the abstract.
Finally, re the Planet Killer “Jebus wept” photos…. Is it just me, or isn’t there a classic TV-movie Roswell-style space alien looking over Jebus’ shoulder in one of those pix?
Of course this never happens in public schools. The scene in Forrest Gump where his mother gives it up to the principle so he’ll bend the minimum IQ rule so that Forrest can attend the regular public school is pure incredible fiction. Everyone knows that only Christian men employed at Christian schools are interested in sex. Secular men in secular schools are all celebate.
Posted by: DaveScot | April 19, 2008 5:35 AM
Ohhh… I get it. If it’s in a movie, it must be true…
So, where’s my damn ring, and where did the elves go? I think elf chicks are hot…
brokenSoldiersays
I inferred that the threat was from the unethical conduct of Christian School staff rather than the hypocrisy of the same.
Posted by: HG | April 19, 2008 11:00 AM
After following this thread (and, by proxy, your posts) I don’t think we’re in complete disagreement, but we do diverge in one way. Since Jordan is the founder and chief administrator of that (Christian) school, I’d say the case is pretty air-tight for his acting unethically. I’d also suggest that the whole argument about the hypocrisy inherent in the situation was a tangential concern that was raised when it was asked whether or not his Christianity was a driving factor for his actions. PZ’s original post was a warning – if I perceived it correctly – that addresses the possibility that his religion was such a factor, and considering the recent history of criminals hiding behind ideology I would say that his isn’t an unfair argument. But in fairness, I’m guessing that you’d be more satisfied with the warning if it were phrased as “Parents–don’t send you children to THIS Christian school,” and – though we differ in opinion – I can see where you’re coming from if that’s the case.
HGsays
Moses, nor do I. The point is simple. Hypocrisy is not the crime it is being made out to be. Everyone at some time or another is a hypocrite. That is not to diminish the horrible behavior of this school official in any way. Certainly hypocrisy is no reason not to send your kids to Christian school. Academics, now there is a reason. There are few Christian schools I would send my kids to given the low academic expectations, but not hypocrisy.
Now if it is argued, as I assume Myers intended, that the threat of unehtical behavior is reason enough to avoid Christian schools, then to be honest one would also advise parents to avoid public schools. To say on the one hand unethical behavior is a threat, then to accept the threat in a public school appears both dishonest and hypocritical.
HGsays
brokenSoldier,
Exactly. Thanks for listening.
Hapsays
HG- I don’t think it’s terribly accurate that most people are hypocrites at some point in their lives, though it’s probably true occasionally. Most people have standards, and lots of times they fail to live up to them, but that isn’t hypocrisy. People simply aren’t perfect, and sometimes though they try to do right they fail. In this case, the person running the school represents himself as a Christian in order to gain moral credence from the parents of prospective students and perhaps from others as well (if he’s a scam artist, for example, then he is probably using his appearance as a method of defending himself against the revelation of the nature of his acts). If he’s not a scam artist then he intends to teach his moral beliefs to children. Using his position to gain sexual favors is a conscious act and one contradictory to that which he intends to enforce on others or (at minimum) to profit from personally – it’s not a mistake or a failure to live up to the standards he claims to live by but a conscious subversion of them.
Liberals simply have different beliefs on the nature (or implementation) of moral behavior, not a lack of principles – you seem to be (either intentionally or unintentionally) assuming that liberals’ dislike of hypocrisy is advocacy of a lack of principles, which it is not. Conflict occurs where liberals’ moral principles are less restrictive than those of conservatives, so that liberals would allow behavior that conseratives would forbid. Liberals impugn hypocrisy where they would be more permissive than conservatives (thus less likely to criticize behavior in which they do not engage), and where those impugning others for their permissiveness act in the way that they criticize.
If you wish to compel others to adopt your morals, then you should be sure that they can actually be obeyed (that people trying to live up to them can do so). When those who promulgate strict standards (and thus people who should be trying hard to live buy them) cannot do so, the implication is that either the standards can’t be obeyed consistently or that the people advocating the standards are evil (they intend to use the standards as camoflage to destroy others). If the standards can’t be obeyed, then they probably need to be changed or better supported (by the people advocating them) so that they can be obeyed. If the people promulgating the standards are evil, one might wonder whether the standards they promulgate are a good idea.
Bill Dauphinsays
brokenSoldier:
Atheism isn’t the “rejection of the notion of arbitrary absolutist moral rules,” but rather it is the simple lack of belief in God – in the theistic, creator sense of the word.
** In an attempt to be visually as well as verbally descriptive, my view of it is that identifying yourself as an ATHEIST is simply affirming the (A)bsence of (THEIST) beliefs in your world-view. IMHO, this makes it the exact definition of “the other side of the coin.”**
You’re certainly correct in you definition of atheism, but I didn’t mean to be giving a definition in the abstract. Rather, I was talking about what atheism “means” in the context of this discussion, which has been about moral codes and claims of moral superiority.
I stand by my earlier disagreement with your characterization of atheism and theism as competing “ideologies,” though, because I think there’s a difference between, on the one hand, rejecting a worldview because you assert that it’s unfounded by evidence and, on the other hand, holding and promoting an equivalent but conflicting worldview.
Conservatism and liberalism are examples of competing ideologies, but liberalism is not simply aconservatism. In the strict definitional sensed, atheism and theism are, as you point out, “two sides of the same coin,” in that they represent “no” and “yes” answers to the God question… but Christian moral teaching and atheism are in no way two sides of any one ideological coin. To say they are is to make the same error theists do when they accuse atheism (or secularism) of being just another (presumably false) religion… or the same error evolution denialists make when they demand that schools teach “both sides of the issue.” They may be different “sides,” but they don’t belong to the same “coin.”
Planet Killersays
>Planet Killer, you keep making me ask myself – can anyone
>really be that stupid and still be able to type?
1) Calling someone stupid isn’t going to take any intelligence at all.
2) You have no worth comments to even bother responding to as they are all just insults.
3) You have no proven point except that you are not intelligent enough to understand religion.
Thanks for playing Nick. Next time get yourself educated okay. Thanks.
Planet Killersays
Public schools are worse. How many teachers have been having sex with children.
Public schools teach evolution, but they pass students when they can’t read and write. Worthless garbage.
So while this thread is bad and should not have happened. I have heard of much worse. Only that is not covered here for obvious reasons.
If he was an atheist it would not have been posted here either. Garbage in, Garbage out.
Planet Killersays
>You can easily create this effect with pencil and paper.
>Just draw 2 dots and a short dash near them, like this :|
>or like this :-) and then rotate the paper until you see a >face. If you draw an oval or even a square around them,
>it’s impossible NOT to see a face!
Only a few problems from what you said.
1) It was done in realtime and witnesses saw it and it disapeared in real time.
2) It wasn’t as simple as a :-). It was a very complex image almost like a photo.
I don’t know if it was jesus or not, but it looked a lot more of something than atheists are going to try to convince us that it was our mind. I normally will not post something like this because usually it is bogus like seeing a face in the sky, but this is way beyond that.
George Cauldronsays
This does not look like some random image of the mind.
It is way too detailed for that and there were witnesses of this as you will read.
“Yeah, and there’s all those tortillas in Mexico, too! How you gonna explain THAT, atheists???”
Tulsesays
Everyone at some time or another is a hypocrite.
Not to this degree. Fundamentalist Christians are constantly harping on sexual morality, such as fidelity in marriage (remember Monica Lewinski), homosexuality, pre-marital sex, etc. Sex is a core ethical concern for such folks, and to violate those ethics is profoundly hypocritical, far beyond the usual failure of people to live up to their own standards.
More to the point, it is not even so much the personal hypocrisy, it is the public hypocrisy which is at issue. This school alleges to teach “Christian character, morals, values, and integrity”, and the founder profoundly violated this principles. From my perspective, the issue is similar to Elliot Spitzer — if you campaign against prostitution, it is extremely hypocritical to frequent prostitutes, and much more hypocritical if he had done some other, similarly serious crime (such as drug use).
Failing to live up to your own ethical standards is human. Secretly violating principles that you loudly trumpet you adhere to, and that you demand everyone else adhere to, is gross hypocrisy.
Tulsesays
Only a few problems from what you said.
1) It was done in realtime and witnesses saw it and it disapeared in real time.
2) It wasn’t as simple as a :-). It was a very complex image almost like a photo.
I don’t know if it was jesus or not, but it looked a lot more of something than atheists are going to try to convince us that it was our mind. I normally will not post something like this because usually it is bogus like seeing a face in the sky, but this is way beyond that.
So let me get this straight: The omnipotent creator of the entire universe, who has strewn hundreds of billions of galaxies across trillions of cubic light years, who parted seas and caused the sun to stop its motion, who can do literally anything…decides to show up as a smudge on a window in Orlando?
And you think this incredibly localized, incredibly ambiguous smudge is a “warning”? Why not just spell out in burning letters across the sky “Shape up or else! Signed, God”? If the consequences of ignoring the warning are so potentially grave, wouldn’t God be a right bastard to be so coy and equivocal regarding the message? If your child was about to run out in the street in front of a truck, would you silently hold up a fuzzy photo of yourself three blocks away and hope he understands what you want?
Never mind the story and the video. PZ’s initial statement, “Parents, don’t send your children to a Christian school,” is really all that needs be said. The story/video are tangential at best to why his admonishment is sound.
Joe Blowsays
don’t send your children to a Christian school
Because, of course, as every good liberal knows, no administrator or teacher at a government school has ever been involved in an illicit relationship with a parent (or a student, for that matter).
longstreet63says
Am I shallow in that, on seeing this clip, I wondered about his prices? First, $300 bucks seems pretty cheap for any useful sort of tuition. Second, that’s not an uncommon price for your mid-range sort of hooker. And he’s expecting several times? Must be an economically depressed area.
And, from what I can see of her, my taste in women is not the same as his. Can’t he find a nice young stripper to trade with?
Perhaps he’s already run through that market.
Steve “Jesus loves you, but he doesn’t charge $300.” James
George Cauldronsays
Because, of course, as every good liberal knows, no administrator or teacher at a government school has ever been involved in an illicit relationship with a parent (or a student, for that matter).
You forgot to mention Al Gore.
Joe Blowsays
You forgot to mention Al Gore.
What? Global Warming Cult Leader Albertina had sex with students? Do tell, do tell!!! Not that it would surprise me. He probably figured there would be no controlling legal authority to stop him.
George Cauldronsays
Okay, next hoop: Hillary Clinton. Then Al Gore again.
Jump!
Carliesays
I don’t know if it was jesus or not, but it looked a lot more of something than atheists are going to try to convince us that it was our mind.
It was aliens. What about that alien question anyway, PK? Still running away from answering anything of substance, I see.
Langdon Algersays
PK, I was wondering something: the sort of religious visions you’re standing up for here are also extremely common among Hindus, though of course among Hindus their content is extremely different from what Christians see. Are you willing to ascribe Hindu religious visions the same validity that you ascribe to Christian visions? If not, why not?
brokenSoldiersays
Posted by: Bill Dauphin | April 19, 2008 2:33 PM
“You’re certainly correct in you definition of atheism, but I didn’t mean to be giving a definition in the abstract. Rather, I was talking about what atheism “means” in the context of this discussion, which has been about moral codes and claims of moral superiority.”
– That is all well and good, except for the fact that – where you interjected your disagreement with the “coin”metaphor – I was making that metaphor specifically to explain those two basic sides of the argument that takes place on this board. I was in no way referring to the “moral codes and claims of moral superiority” in that specific instance that you replied to. In the future, you could avoid this kind of misunderstanding by making sure you take in the whole point of a post before starting to cut and paste for a reply.
“I stand by my earlier disagreement with your characterization of atheism and theism as competing “ideologies,” though, because I think there’s a difference between, on the one hand, rejecting a worldview because you assert that it’s unfounded by evidence and, on the other hand, holding and promoting an equivalent but conflicting world-view.”
– I never said they were competing – I just said they were diametrically opposed to one another by definition. The word compete has progressive connotation, while opposition does not. Two things can stand in opposition and be static, but the same is not so for two things that are “competing,” as that word implies that the two sides are dynamic, and definitely NOT static. What I said that might have caused the confusion was the following:
– **”In today’s adversarial society, two sides of any coin (theist vs. atheist, Republican vs. Democrat, etc…) both have an immediate proclivity to point to the other side’s ideology as a sufficient cause for their actions…”**
– In using the term adversarial, I was not referring to the belief descriptions I placed in opposition within the parentheses, but rather the society in which we debate these things.
“Conservatism and liberalism are examples of competing ideologies, but liberalism is not simply aconservatism. In the strict definitional sensed, atheism and theism are, as you point out, “two sides of the same coin,” in that they represent “no” and “yes” answers to the God question… but Christian moral teaching and atheism are in no way two sides of any one ideological coin. To say they are is to make the same error theists do when they accuse atheism (or secularism) of being just another (presumably false) religion… or the same error evolution denialists make when they demand that schools teach “both sides of the issue.” They may be different “sides,” but they don’t belong to the same “coin.”
As for the conservatism vs. liberalism argument, I’ll agree that liberalism is NOT aconservatism…but that does not in the least change the fact that the definite opposite of theism IS, and always will be, atheism. The problem with your reasoning that I can see here is that you’ve falsely substituted Christianity and its ‘morality’ with theism in your argument. And the fact that Christian moral teaching and atheism are not of one ideological coin is true, but quite irrelevant. When I say theism, I mean exactly what the word says. My definition of theism is definitely NOT restricted to Christian, Jewish, Islamic, or even mere monotheistic faiths. It seems that yours is, and herein lies the problem. Theism fully contains Christianity, but Christianity does not sufficiently contain theism and cannot be used as a substitute for theism in an argument – that is, if you wish for the argument to be sound.
Eric Paulsensays
Wait a minute. He was soliciting a woman? an ADULT woman?
In the future, you could avoid this kind of misunderstanding by making sure you take in the whole point of a post before starting to cut and paste for a reply.
Nice! Patronize much?
My problem isn’t that I didn’t read your post carefully; my problem, it seems, is that I’ve been recklessly assuming that your comment was part of the ongoing conversation, and have been replying to it as such, rather than as a disconnected, stand-alone treatise.
The problem with your reasoning that I can see here is that you’ve falsely substituted Christianity and its ‘morality’ with theism in your argument.
No, the problem with my reasoning is that I’ve apparently failed to realize, until this point, that you have falsely substituted “theism” in your argument for “Christianity and its ‘morality’,” which is actually what the predicate conversation had been about.
I’ve already agreed that if you limit the examination to strict definitions, the words “theism” and “atheism” denote the “yes” and “no” answers to a single question: Does a god (or more than one) exist? In that limited sense, the two terms do, in fact, represent equivalent and opposing positions. (I think calling an answer to a yes/no question a “worldview” is stretching a point, but I suppose that’s just a quibble on my part.)
But that’s where the symmetry ends, because there really aren’t any theists in the sense you’re talking about. That is, there aren’t any people who believe generally in the existence a god or gods, but go no further. (OK, maybe you can find me a few individuals who believe that — somebody believes everything, I suppose — but there’s no such movement or body of thought.) Every “theist” believes not in a general concept of god, but in a specific god or gods, with a particular narrative and (and here’s the part that’s relevant to this conversation) a set of principles and rules that flow (at least in the believers’ minds) from that narrative. The word “theist” is generally used in these conversations as a kind of shorthand to talk about religionists without referring to their specifc religion… but every “theist” has one. Atheists, on the other hand, simply don’t believe in god or gods… full stop. As a logical consequence, atheists reject the notion of god-given moral codes (regardless of which fictional god allegedly gave them)… but there are no atheistic equal-but-opposite worldviews that parallel the Christian or Jewish or Islamic or Hindu worldviews, nevermind the denominations and subdenominations and sects within those religions.
To sum up: Atheism and theism are “two sides of the same coin” in a narrow, academic sense; in substantive, meaningful terms that are relevant to our discussion, not so much.
And the fact that Christian moral teaching and atheism are not of one ideological coin is true, but quite irrelevant.
It may well be irrelevant to what you meant to say — only you can judge that — but it is not irrelevant to the discussion in which I found your comment embedded. That discussion was about whether or not atheist criticism of Christian moral hypocrisy amounted to the “pot calling the kettle black” (even though I don’t think anyone used that precise idiom). In that conversation, the fact that atheists don’t promulgate arbitrary moral codes in the way Christians do is most certainly relevant. If that’s not the conversation you thought you were having… well, never mind [/EmilyLitella]
– **”In today’s adversarial society, two sides of any coin (theist vs. atheist, Republican vs. Democrat, etc…) both have an immediate proclivity to point to the other side’s ideology as a sufficient cause for their actions…”**
– In using the term adversarial, I was not referring to the belief descriptions I placed in opposition within the parentheses, but rather the society in which we debate these things.
Oddly enough, my reading comprehension is excellent; I understood precisely how you meant “adversarial.” I inferred “competing” not from “adversarial,” but from your use of the idiomatic phrase “the other side,” which in common English usage invariably indicates some sort of contest. I’m sorry, but “the other side’s ideology” really does suggest something more than a static contradiction between the words “yes” and “no.”
Look, the predicate argument to all this can be summed up as “You atheists better not criticize those Christians over their hypocrisy, because some of y’all screw up, too.” That argument assumes a false equivalence between Christians and atheists vis-a-vis moralistic pronouncements. Yes, everybody screws up, even atheists… but the difference is that atheists don’t pretend there’s an absolute set of moral rules that come from some invisible mystical being, nor that those rules must be applied invariably to all humans, nor that the same mystical being that gives the rules is the only source of the strength to actually follow them.
So what’s a simple, lamentable human weakness in one person can be hypocrisy in another, based on what the two of them have (or haven’t) preached about arbitrary moral rules.
brokenSoldiersays
“Nice! Patronize much?”
You can choose to take it as patronization if you want, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find an example of me acting in that manner to any other person on these boards, aside from one comment to one poster after repeated provocation and insults towards me on his part. The mere fact is, there was no condescension or patronization written into my words, and if you see differently, I would suggest that it is the result of projection.
“Look, the predicate argument to all this can be summed up as “You atheists better not criticize those Christians over their hypocrisy, because some of y’all screw up, too.”
Posted by: Bill Dauphin | April 20, 2008 2:02 AM
No, this is simply how YOU choose to characterize this argument, and you seem to insist upon putting your definitions in where common definitions should go. As a Christian, you ARE a theist – contrary to your suggestion that there somehow aren’t any theists. This word does not signify a belief in a generic god, but belief in a divine God, period. Within the category are pantheists, polytheists, monotheists, etc… Whether you choose to accept the fact or not, I was using a metaphor to simply classify two sides in obvious arguments that take place on this post. You can rant about what the predicate argument on the thread was, but that doesn’t change the fact that you took a portion of my post and assumed it meant something it did not, and ran with a reply without understanding its context.
J Blow, were you referring to my comment? If so, I’ll put it another way for you. As I see it, PZ doesn’t need a story about a creepy little Christian ass wipe trying to elicit sex for tuition to bolster his statement. It stands quite steady on its own because there are oh, so many more reasons why it is exellent advice.
Nick Gottssays
Re #114. Planet Killer, my first sentence in #95 was a genuine expression of wonderment rather than an insult, although if you care to take it as such, that’s fine by me; can you really have thought that the atheists who by and large populate this blog were going to fall on their knees and pray when confronted with a reflection in a window looking something like the Euro-American stereotype of Jesus the Nazarene? I mean, did you? I’m really curious to know. If “God” wanted to give us a warning, why not letters of fire across the entire sky saying “Repent, for the end of the world is at hand!”? Either he wants to give us a message, or he doesn’t. Why faff about?
The rest of my post pointed out that members of another religion (Islam), incompatible with your own, also find “signs” like your smudgy reflection. I see someone else has pointed out that the same is true of Hindus. It was most certainly true of the Greek and Roman pagans. You have not answered this point: why should anyone take seriously your Jesus image, while rejecting the Muslims’ holy-name aubergines? My current hypothesis is that you have no answer, which is why your post contains nothing substantive whatever.
extatyzomasays
not quite related but the most nauseating thing ive read all month, re the pope in NY:
quote: New York deputy fire chief James Riches, father of a fallen Sept. 11 firefighter, said the pope’s visit gave him consolation.
“We said ‘Where was God?’ on 9/11, but he’s come back here today and they’ve restored our faith,” Riches said. Unquote.
i think im gonna be sick.
brokenSoldiersays
“We said ‘Where was God?’ on 9/11, but he’s come back here today and they’ve restored our faith,” Riches said. Unquote.
i think im gonna be sick.
Posted by: extatyzoma | April 20, 2008 3:29 PM
Sick, indeed. Not only is this a slap in the face of his son, but also all the other brave souls under his command on that day. And before the trolls pounce, I realize that he has every right to say this — that still doesn’t change the fact that it is in deplorable taste to do so as a father, a leader, and as a public servant.
(And did he really mean to infer that God waited until the Pope wanted to visit NYC to come back to them and ‘restore their faith’? It seems so, and that’s even more absurd.)
peezeepeahedsays
So with all the sex teachers are having with students in public school, I guess there’s nowhere we can send our kids to school. Great. Just flipping great.
Bill Dauphinsays
brokenSoldier:
We may be in what my engineer friends would call “violent agreement”:
As a Christian, you ARE a theist – contrary to your suggestion that there somehow aren’t any theists. This word does not signify a belief in a generic god, but belief in a divine God, period. Within the category are pantheists, polytheists, monotheists, etc…
First, I assume you mean that “you ARE” in the indefinite sense of “one is”; you’re not calling me a Christian, right?
Next, of course there are people to whom the term “theist” applies; I never meant to say otherwise. But you (perhaps unintentionally) get right to the heart of my intended point when you refer to “theist” as naming a category.
I edit and publish books for a living, so I hope you’ll forgive a book metaphor: Imagine a book in which there were chapters called THEISM and ATHEISM. At first glance, they’re equivalent, in that they’re at the same level of the book’s outline… apparently “two sides of the same coin.”
But look a bit closer at the contents of those chapters. Under THEISM, you will find subheadings (e.g., Monotheism)… and under those subheadings, sub-subheadings (e.g., Christianity)… and sub-sub-subheadings (Baptist) and sub-sub-sub-subheadings (Southern Baptist). In this imagined chapter, aside from some definitions and generic introductions, all the detailed information would live at the sub-subheading level (Christianity, etc.) and below. The chapter title and subheadings are just containers for the lower levels of the outline, which contain all the substantive information.
Now look at the atheism chapter: There might be subheadings covering the difference between “strong” and “weak” forms of atheism, but basically the substantive information would be right up at the top level of the chapter, without all the deep structure of the other chapter.
In an earlier post you referred to theist as a “container,” and you were exactly right. The thing is, theist is a different kind of container than atheist, because the former contains other nested containers while the latter contains peoples’ self-identification.
When I said there were no theists, I meant there are no people for whom “theist” is their self-identity. OTOH, there are plenty of people (including a majority of posters here, I think) for whom “atheist” is their self-identity. That’s the asymmetry I’m trying to get at.
To put it another way, if you were collecting demographic data about folks’ religious identity, the list of choices would be something like [1] Christian, [2] Jewish, [3] Muslim, [4] Buddhist, [5] Hindu, [6] Agnostic, [7] Atheist, [8] Other. Your list would not be [1] Theist, [2] Agnostic, [3] Atheist, nor would it be [1] Pantheist, [2] Polytheist, [3] Monotheist, [4] Agnostic, [5] Atheist.
Or rather, if your list did look like one of those last two, you wouldn’t get any useful data, because nobody calls him/herself a “theist” or a “monotheist” in preference to identifying his/her more specific beliefs, anymore than people identify themselves as “primates” or “bipeds” (even though they are both) rather than by their race or national origin.
“Atheist” and “theist” are antonyms, yes; however, they are not “two sides of the same coin” when it comes to talking about actual people.
As I said at the beginning, I’m not sure we’re really in any fundamental disagreement; we’re just looking at things from slightly different angles.
Charles Sanesays
I’m a newcomer here – been reading a little. KInd of inspired to make a comment based on the “hello” entry of 4/21.
My thought with this blog entry’s video was that it was funny. Easy fodder. But in terms of an argument it’s a straw man. Even if you don’t like Christian schools, finding one bad apple and then saying ‘don’t send your children to a christian school’ isn’t a good argument.
I’m sure in the history of the world there has been a child molester in just about every social group formed. But one wouldn’t respond to that with ‘don’t allow your child to join social groups’.
The other thing that made me post a comment was the anger of many of the other comments on this post, most of which have very little to do with the original topic.
I cannot remember the last time I changed someone’s mind by being aggressively mad and condescending to their position. When this happens the brainstem says “shields up!” and that’s likely the end of useful dialog.
Anyway, that’s my first comment. Looking forward to more of PZ’s insights as well as the other commenters here at the blog.
brokenSoldiersays
When I said there were no theists, I meant there are no people for whom “theist” is their self-identity. OTOH, there are plenty of people (including a majority of posters here, I think) for whom “atheist” is their self-identity. That’s the asymmetry I’m trying to get at.
Posted by: Bill Dauphin | April 21, 2008 1:27 AM
I now see we were talking in two related, but definitely different directions. I’m glad you posted in that much detail – especially about the first sentence above concerning the fact that you were saying no one identified themselves as a theist – point taken, indeed!
At least he is soliciting sex from the mother instead of the students. This must be some progress for Christian morals.
I especially liked the “Breach of Faith” title, arranged like a cross. Made me laff.
But really…does this surprise ANYONE?
Quoth the spiritual leader:
“You know, it wouldn’t take me long”
Probably based on feedback from his wife.
Hilarious!
“We already know whose (sic) driving.” Ok, I was going to watch the video–but the grammar gods tainted it with that quote…
#1: Not only was she of age, it was also a heterosexual scandal.
Progress indeed.
I’ll bet that the “Spiritual Backbone” is sore from all that “chikka chikka boom boom”!
Check out the amazing exercise in CYA going on over at the Parkview Christian School website. As usual, they are portraying themselves as the victims, and, in a display of pure balls, are insisting they are the ones owed an apology. School director Barbara Jordan (what relation to would-be lothario Lavern, I wonder?) whines:
In other words, like the Catholic Church, keep it all hush-hush, fire the guy on the down low, but don’t let the public know what kind of scumbag he is, so that he’s free to go off and get another job and sexually harass women there.
Typical crybaby Christian persecution complex. The only person who might owe your school an apology is Lavern Jordan. He’s the one whose actions embarrassed you. All the reporter did was his job, alerting the public to a public menace, or, at the very least, an ethically dubious person who has no business working in a school setting, Christian or otherwise.
Do they all have an innate sense of victimhood over in Jebusland?
Thats Houston media for you. Back when I lived there, friends and I used to grab a copy of the Houston Chronicle and race each other to find the first mutilation of the English language.
Shortest. Game. Ever.
Yes, I just tripped the irony meter by including a grammatical mistake in my previous post. Blech.
Wow gang! It gets worse! It looks like Parkview Christian School is little more than a diploma mill for teens. Most of Parkview’s “graduates” are teens who could not graduate from public schools because they couldn’t pass the TAKS test, which is required for graduation in Texas. So over at Parkview, if you’ve got a failing kid, they’ll take your $250 and let him walk down the aisle…and you don’t even have to attend classes at Parkview to graduate, either!
Just wow.
And yes, Barbara Jordan is (was? about to be no longer?) Mrs. Lavern Jordan.
ROTFL!
syntyche: Not tripping the irony meter, just confirming Hartman’s Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation.
ya’ll sing now…. Ding dong your god is dead. your wicked god, your mean old god. ding dong your wicked god is dead.
You mean that‘s Houston media? ;^)
Seriously, keep in mind that the text on the website is probably a transcription of the reporter’s voiceover, no doubt done by some intern. As such, I wouldn’t be too hard on it for mixing up two homophones… a fairly easy mistake to make.
The generally cheesy character of the report, though — the “exploding” lead-in graphics, the hokey Hebrew-ish font on the story title, the reporter’s pruriently breathless tone — was more troubling. It’s been >20 years since I lived in Houston, but I remembered the media there as a bit more professional (other than Marvin Zindler, of course, who was always a cartoon character).
Nothing about the tone of the story, though, mitigates its pathetic, disgusting content. My outrage is mixed with a sort of perplexed sadness that this bozo, having had a moment of realization that his original proposal was immoral, still thought “playing around” with this woman in a parked truck was a reasonable thing to suggest.
He’s “guiding it in” by the power of the holy spirit.
Typical example of the pathetic, dishonest, hypocritical tactics of the self-righteous flim-flam artist.
My wife and I live in Houston, and we watched this story Wednesday night in drop-jawed amazement. It just doesn’t get any seamier. Unless, of course, you’re talking about the polygamists in San Marcos. Have we got the corner on religious nuts in Texas, or what?
I meant San Angelo, of course. I shouldn’t post while drinking.
More interesting stuff:
If you click on the “Meet the Staff” link at the PCS website, you see only three staff members (seems a bit thin to run a high school, eh?)… one of whom is “Ms. Tami Jordan. Daughter of and Mrs. Jordan, Tami is one of the teachers here at PCS.”
To my eye, the phrase “[d]aughter of and Mrs. Jordan” hints at the recent expungement of Mr. Jordan… and in fact Lavern is not included in the staff listing.
In addition, their OPERATION GRADUATION appears to be aimed at public school administrators, suggesting that they can “Help Seniors who have completed the required number of credits for graduation-but have not been successful in passing the TAKS test- to receive their High School DIPLOMA and OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT” and, more tellingly, “Reduce the number of students on your schools’ ‘Drop Out’ List.” CYA, in other words, for schools destined to be labeled as “failing” because of dropout rates (presumably “transfers” to PCS don’t count as dropouts) or low test scores.
It looks like this is just a scam, designed to capitalize on the niche “market” created by conservatives’ emphasis on “accountability” (which is to say, high-stakes testing) in public education. As much as we’d like to pin Lavern’s opportunistic lechery on Christianity, it looks more and more like he was just a crook acting like a crook. I’m guessing the school’s “Christian” affiliation is nothing more than part of its camouflage.
#12 genegalore – ding-it! Post a warning before you sing that. *middle aged women strap on the Depends*
So fuckin’ what? Really, who cares? It’s just some guy trying to take advantage of someone and failing. What happens when an atheist at a skepticism camp for children or something similar pulls the same stunt? Don’t tell me it wouldn’t ever happen either. I’m sure there’s plenty to criticize without having to stretch like this.
Hey I wasted 8.50 seeing Expelled tonight. I snuck some video and I think some people might be interested in seeing the cell animation they ripped off of XVIVO.
It’s here… for now.
#20 – Wow.
Very disappointing. I would have expected much higher academic standards from Houston, home of the “Texas miracle” that gave George W. Bush such tremendous education cred when he took office in 2001.
Yep. The wayback machine doesn’t seem to have anything, but on google cache they used to call the bio page “meet our family,” and now they changed it to “meet the staff.” Bye-bye Lavern.
#20 – You’re missing the point, namely, that hypocritical holier-than-thous constantly bleat how their belief system makes them morally better than everyone else, and that it’s a requirement to have any sort of morality at all.
Stories like this just show that they’re no better than anyone else, and in many cases, is being used as a cover for their depravity (do you need reminding of how many Catholic priests were convicted of raping and/or molesting children?)
angrynight,
Let me spell it out for you: H.Y.P.O.C.R.I.S.Y.
n
Abbie – that’s brilliant! Now all we need is to consult their lawyer to find out why you’re posting this to YouTube is perfectly okay under “Fair Use.” LOL.
Someone needs to point out to me the part in the Bible where it says “And if you breaketh My commandments, cover thine ass.” There’s got to be another part of that explaining that “Thou shalt cover thine ass thoroughly, and not leave telltale hints of thy covering, such as “daughter of and Mrs Jordan.” What spectacular morons.
He’s “guiding it in” by the power of the holy spirit.
i prefer the holy ghost. so midevil.
… (other than Marvin Zindler, of course, who was always a cartoon character).
Sure, but how much greater would this piece have been with Zindler on it?
Ah, yes, the wonders of fundie Texas.
Don’t be so sure the school is only a diploma mill. It’s unfortunate, but true, that more schools like this permeate Texas, under the guise of Christian education. We had more than one of these in the town where I lived. A girl I worked with attended one, K-12. There was only one problem: When it came time to go to the local jr. college, she was so woefully uneducated in anything besides readin’, writin’, rithmetic (sort of), and Jeebus that she had to go to the public high school for a year, just to get some basics to attend a community college. The worst of it was that her mother, who wasn’t all that well-off to begin with (widowed fundie, not much upstairs), had worked two jobs and sacrificed many, many niceties so that she could send her children to that school. All that money, down the drain. But she was still a “belieeeeeever!” Of course, not so much that she didn’t put her other kids in public school. But she still believed in her church and her pastor. And the word. Whatever the hell that meant.
The daughter was so mad about the waste of money and having to go to school another year like she was an idiot (she wasn’t) that she started questioning her faith. By the time she could graduate “again,” she was an atheist. Big time. She was so intense about it, that I used to call her a fire and brimstone atheist, which she loved.
As for the fundie principal’s nookie-chasing, I always think it’s funny that these guys are always caught with their pants down. Almost literally! Same thing happened to Garner Ted Armstrong–twice. And if I’d had less sense at 18, it would have happened with me. And my friend. After we met him at a bar. You can bet he didn’t preach about hitting on coeds for threesomes on his Rapture TV! Shit. Why didn’t I think of accepting the offer, then, er, exposing him?
Once again, so what? People by their very nature are hypocritical to some extent. I can’t honestly say this means anything in the larger context of religion. Worst case scenario it proves the necessity of the “Bless me father for I have sinned.” thingamajig.
All it means is people are imperfect. There is such a big broad world of criticisms to bring down upon religion, from the non-evidence of deities, to contradictions in text and transmission, to simple inconsistencies between separate moral tenets. Why focus on a handful of largely discredited idiot’s? It’s like criticizing modern day psychology over Freud, it’s fucking pointless. It’s not like psychologists will fall to their knees en masse and thank you for pulling the scales from their eyes. Then you wonder why the religious just refuse to listen: It’s because it’s a pile of nonsense they’ve either already repudiated, or never believed in the first place.
Also, what the Jolly Green Giant does the Pope have to do with any of this? Different sect of Christianity, different situation completely.
(And yes, I know psychology and religion are too very different things, it’s called an analogy, they all fall apart at some point)
I’ll expand on Carlie’s “Wow” which, no doubt, was prompted by reading so much crap in such a little bag.
First of all, atheism is nothing more that non-belief. There aren’t camps to proselytize this lack of belief unlike Christians who need to promote their myths by inflicting it on the young.
Second, I won’t tell you it wouldn’t happen but the fact that you use the word “wouldn’t” points out that you don’t know of it happening yet or else you would have given us all an example. That you can’t come up with an example reveals that the majority of this crap appears to be the domain of the self righteous, those who also find self deception both easily accomplished and commonly done.
Finally, it’s true that being critical of the Christian faith is easy on many counts but the shear volume of sexual offenses committed by these people make “stretching” completely unnecessary.
Hey, at least he’s not a paedophile…
Some things in life are bad
They can really make you mad
Other things just make you swear and curse.
When you’re chewing on life’s gristle
Don’t grumble, give a whistle
And this’ll help things turn out for the best…
And…always look on the bright side of life…
Always look on the light side of life…
If life seems jolly rotten
There’s something you’ve forgotten
And that’s to laugh and smile and dance and sing.
When you’re feeling in the dumps
Don’t be silly chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle – that’s the thing.
And…always look on the bright side of life…
Always look on the light side of life…
For life is quite absurd
And death’s the final word
You must always face the curtain with a bow.
Forget about your sin – give the audience a grin
Enjoy it – it’s your last chance anyhow.
So always look on the bright side of death
Just before you draw your terminal breath
Life’s a piece of shit
When you look at it
Life’s a laugh and death’s a joke, it’s true.
You’ll see it’s all a show
Keep ’em laughing as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you.
And always look on the bright side of life…
Always look on the right side of life…
(Come on guys, cheer up!)
Always look on the bright side of life…
Always look on the bright side of life…
(Worse things happen at sea, you know.)
Always look on the bright side of life…
(I mean – what have you got to lose?)
(You know, you come from nothing – you’re going back to nothing.
What have you lost? Nothing!)
Always look on the right side of life…
Sexual offenses? What if you happen to have no problem with prostitution or sexual favors? After all, it is a private school.
Wrong. Not that I have a problem with it. Second of all, where in Christianity does it say getting a little head from your kid’s principal is okay? That’s kind of my point. The various offshoots of the Protestant reformation do not render priests infallible either.
When I say it’s not beyond an atheist to perform the same stunt, I mean precisely that. Religion doesn’t enter into it. Not that Atheists are raving sex maniacs. Well not most of them. (Not that I want to offend any raving sex maniacs. To each his/her own)
I like how the ad at the beginning had Howie Long picking up a couple of guys in his truck under the banner “Sex offer caught on tape.”
more immaturity. spoiled little children.
Good story, but I hope you don’t seriously consider this a valid reason to stay away from all Christian schools. There are plenty of other good reasons. They teach kids that fairy tales are true, they provide poor training in critical thinking, and they stifle curiosity. They teach that their religion is right, and other religions and ideas are a threat. They distort science by forcing it into a God-shaped box. They deprive their students of exposure to diverse students and teachers. I attended respected Christian schools, but I wouldn’t send my kids there if they paid me.
Sex scandals and other bad behavior, however, can happen anywhere.
I don’t see any prosthelyzing there. What I see is a camp free from prosthelyzing and teaching children to think.
Dangerous stuff that thinking. Second leading cause of atheism. Leading cause being – actually reading the whole bible in depth and detail.
As for your two idiotic posts, you, like most religious defenders fail to realize you’re the ones out there doing the “holier than thou” shtick day-in, day-out. Yet you get divorced more, rape children more, commit more sex and general crimes, kill more people, start more wars, and generally treat people like buckets of shit.
All he wanted to do was show her his “spiritual bone”.
Rock me baby, rock me all night long
Rock me baby, honey, rock me all night long
I want you to rock me baby,
like my back ain’t got no bone
Roll me baby, like you roll a wagon wheel
I want you to roll me baby,
like you roll a wagon wheel
Want you to roll me baby,
you don’t know how it makes me feel
Rock me baby, honey, rock me slow
Yeah, rock me pretty baby, baby rock me slow
Want you to rock me baby, till I want no more
But… but… but… Christians are so moral! This can’t be! It’s trick photography! No! He was possessed…
Yeah.. That’s it. He was possessed.
Personally, I think we should point and laugh at these Christians more.
The whole point is that these people outright say that atheists are de facto immoral, while claiming that their faith makes them more moral. They even claim that, without a moral guide (i.e., the bible), atheists can NEVER have morality. Anybody who makes a claim of moral superiority over anyone else is vulnerable the very second ANY of them fall from grace. When they make a claim like that, they can’t whine when, by their own actions, they prove themselves not to be. They can’t try to move the goal posts and say, “Well, the faith/bible doesn’t permit it.” It’s not about what the faith permits. It’s not about what an atheist has or hasn’t done. It’s what that person has done, and it especially doesn’t change that they are hypocrites for claiming moral superiority, then demonstrating that they don’t have it after all.
Emphasis mine.
You are an ignorant nitwit who couldn’t use that “dangerous thought” to save a fish from drowning. I link to my blog to give people some idea of where I’m coming from, not to pretty up the comments section with a pretty blue iridescent link. You don’t have to read the boring thing, just look at my links and blogroll, and I assure you there is no superstition in it.
I’m being slightly facetious but my point is valid, this has nothing to do with religion. I happen to concur with Charley. People are capable of not being particularly enamored of religion and still not throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. It’s called thinking critically.
Agreed. But someone needs to talk to the webmaster of Michigan Camp Quest about the use of Comic Sans. Ugh!
Send your kids to a catholic school it turned me into a firm-nonbeliever
@Aquaria, since you were so nice not to call me a rapist, a divorcee, superstitious, a murderer, or an asshole, I’ll spare you the dullness of my wit.
My point is, it’s still just some guy, not the cornerstone cleric of Christianity. Also, you’re assuming the vast majority of believers are narcissistic assholes, which simply isn’t the case. You can be wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong again and still not be a jerk.
It’s called exposing hypocrisy.
Honestly, is this Angrynight guy a toll?
This guy is sick no doubt. And of course nothing like this ever happens in public school. It’s not like teacher’s solicit and actually follow through with innapropriate relations with the
parentsstudents.Too right! I recall the (only half-joking) rumor that Zindler carried a “throw-down roach” on his shock-inspections of restaurant kitchens; do you suppose he would’ve nailed this guy with a throw-down condom?
“I’m MARvin Zindler, EYEwitness News!!!”
Of course it does, but then again those schools don’t claim to “utilize a program based on Christian character, morals, values, and integrity.” It’s the hypocrisy, stupid.
And speaking of stupid, here’s a fun game: count the number of grammatical and spelling errors on the main Parkway Christian School page. I make it seven.
A few years ago, the Sacramento Bee ran an article about the university rate of remedation for local schools. The really large, really expensive Fundie Christian K-12 school had the highest remediation rate of them all.
Hmmm. Maybe I know why now.
My Christian friends refused to send their kids there because the science instructor didn’t have a college degree.
This is the same school that expelled its valedictorian a week before 8th grade graduation because he cut his hair too short. He went on to be a top student at Stanford (which is amazing, given that school’s reputation).
I’d never send a kid to that school, that’s for sure.
Ignore this ‘angry night’ troll – he’s simply looking for hits on his own, very clearly and justifiably avoided, blog.
When you ain’t got nothing,
you got nothing to lose.
You’re invisible now;
you got no secrets to conceal.
How does it feel, ‘angry night’?
Um. I kneejerk-hate Abrahamic theists like I’m getting paid for it, and I think Angrynight has a perfectly valid point, while probably being a little intentionally obtuse about the hypocrisy angle because you’ve collectively pissed him (?) off. Since when is arguing for dispassionate evaluation on a science blog “trolling?”
@ angrynight,
Yes, hypocrisy and sexual. . . let us say, overexuberance, are common to all types, but as has been pointed out, the man invokes his spirituality as a reason he believes what he is doing to be wrong. The mitigation of “just playing around” is hypocrisy turned into hilarity. This man blatantly asks to “fuck” (I assume that the deleted word beginning with “f” is fuck) a woman, and later apologizes for perhaps making her uncomfortable, but still wats to “play around” behind a hotel!
This is simply funny (as the woman was not hurt, and was aware of what she was doing), the part about him being the founder of a Christian school is just a bonus!
It seems like shooting fish in a barrel, but the fundies continue to insist that, not only are they not fish, but there is no barrel!
Fire away.
Special Rush song dedication to all the religious fundamentalists out there:
Witch Hunt (Part III of Fear)
The night is black
Without a moon
The air is thick and still
The vigilantes gather on
The lonely torchlit hill.
Features distorted in the flickering light
Faces are twisted and grotesque
Silent and stern in the sweltering night
Mob moves like demons possessed
Quiet in conscience, calm in their right
Confident their ways are best
The righteous rise
With burning eyes
Of hatred and ill-will
Madmen fed on fear and lies
To beat and burn and kill
They say there are strangers who threaten us
Our immigrants and infidels
They say there is strangeness too dangerous
In our theaters and bookstore shelves
That those who know what’s best for us
Must rise and save us from ourselves
Quick to judge
Quick to anger
Slow to understand
Ignorance and prejudice
And fear walk hand in hand…
aaaand I posted it on the wrong thread.
Ah yes, the hypocrisy of this man trumps the statuatory rape of public school students by teachers. I forgot that hypocrisy is the unpardonable sin according to liberals.
When I say it’s not beyond an atheist to perform the same stunt, I mean precisely that. Religion doesn’t enter into it.
Posted by: angrynight | April 19, 2008 12:04 AM
The statement above is absolutely true, but does not address the main point of the post. Any human born on this earth is not beyond these sort of temptations, but to claim that religion doesn’t ever factor into these situations is false. The way that religion does factor into things like this is the fact that in a religious world-view, certain individuals are set up by their followers to be further from reproach than the members of their flock. While this also happens in secular environments (i.e., sexual harassment and propositioning in a private sector company), the fact remains that in a religious setting, these sexual offenders are very often protected from that reproach due to their standing as an authority figure supported by some form of divine doctrine, which – by the very definition of divine – is unassailable from a worldly standpoint. This is proven by the fact that we will NOT accept conduct of this nature by individuals in a secular setting, but will somehow still recognize the divine authority of a figure that does the exact same thing behind the protection of their faith. (And Catholic priests are not alone in these sorts of crimes – the current case in Texas is proof positive of that statement. And before someone states that these cases are always brought to justice, first realize that this fact does not help the victims that were abused prior to the legal system’s ability to reach them – their parents, through their religious beliefs, were confident in the view that nothing was wrong with such actions.) Just to be clear, I am fully aware that this individual case may have been an isolated individual abusing his power as an administrator, but it is a fact that prior religious prestige or position definitely does offer a modicum of protection for these same types of offenders in situations involving such crimes when they occur within the bounds of church authority.
I stand corrected. There is one camp for children of Atheists but it’s not designed to convert anyone or promote unbelief but to promote what’s stated above. I was reacting to what I thought was a Christian projecting their way of thinking on an atheist; I may have missed your point.
Of course people are people and we all behave foolishly at times, but I do believe religion enters into it. It teaches people to compartmentalize their thinking. The real and the ideal become disparate (the ideal being what they want to believe is true) and they behave in ways contradictory to their ideal without seeming to realize it. They lie, steal and cheat (as the Expelled fiasco shows) all the time seemingly unaware that they behave exactly in the manner that they otherwise condemn.
The rash of sexual offenses is just another example of this tendency to do exactly what they verbally oppose. I think religion could be part of the problem but I could be wrong.
That comment is just stupid. There is a time and a place for getting your freak on but not in a parking lot, not in exchange for school tuition, not without the knowledge and consent of his wife who no doubt doesn’t want to be exposed to a sexually transmitted disease.
You seem to be unwilling to concede the fact that there are certain acts that we in society deem immoral and are worthy of criticism. Why you feel the need to be critical of us for being critical is confusing to me. If it’s criticism in general then why do you engage in it? If it’s that the act itself is not worthy of being criticized then are you saying that sex for tuition is less a problem to you than having a critical nature? Are you concerned that the religious among us are offended by being criticized? Why are you concerned with what they think yet are bothered by what some of us think?
Or are you just a coarse concern troll?
Nice to know your news channels are covering all the important issues. Sure this is lowdown and sleezy and the guy needs to be busted, but in case you hadn’t noticed your economy is in the toilet, your president is a buffoon who (a) denied knowing anything about torturing people (b) denied that the US tortures people, (c) instructed people to torture people, and (d) pissed all over your constitution, you’re mired in a couple of worthless wars of aggression simply so a bunch of billionaires can siphon a few extra billion from your taxes (and those of your children and grandchildren), you haven’t had an honest election in a few cycles, and you’re living in a corporate/police state.
So, like I said, it’s good to see the news is all over this guy.
I’m being slightly facetious but my point is valid, this has nothing to do with religion.
Posted by: angrynight | April 19, 2008 12:42 AM
You MIGHT be able to make the argument that this man’s individual motives had nothing to do with his position in the religious community (you’d have to have first-hand interview information to prove that, and I doubt the words from that guy’s mouth deserve much credibility anyway), but to say that religion had NOTHING to do with the situation is false. The fact that he is the founder of that Christian school clearly shows that religion had SOMETHING to do with the situation. He used his position of authority at that Christian school, and the mother’s desire to send her daughter to his school, as leverage to illegally solicit sex. We can debate whether or not he believed that his position as an authority figure in a religious institution offered him insulation from reproach for his actions, but you cannot logically dismiss the possibility that he thought as much.
Sure, sure, our country is in the toilet, we know; that’s why we have such an emigration problem. People are just leaving here in droves! It’s really worrisome so we have to displace our anger and anxiety by picking on this poor Christian schmuck. Would you prefer that we kick the dog?
Isn’t slightly hypocritical to warn parents: “Don’t send your kids to Christian School” when public school teachers are being intimate with
parentsstudents?Talk about intellectual dishonesty.
Sure, sure, our country is in the toilet, we know; that’s why we have such an emigration problem. People are just leaving here in droves! It’s really worrisome so we have to displace our anger and anxiety by picking on this poor Christian schmuck. Would you prefer that we kick the dog?
Posted by: Elizabeth | April 19, 2008 2:01 AM
Well, except for this…
“The nation’s immigrant population (legal and illegal) reached a record of 37.9 million in 2007. ”
http://www.cis.org/articles/2007/back1007.html
If you meant that JOBS are leaving here in droves, I’d agree. And in answer to your question about kicking the dog… If the dog in question propositioned my mother for sex in exchange for educating her child, then yes I would. (Would you let me put on some heavier boots first, though?)
yay for the local guy!
Trolling is people who set things up so a comment section goes to hell (figuratively speaking). They distract from the subject matter of the post and get everyone emotional. Imay have done the latter by accident, but I am on topic. I’m disagreeing with the idea that every pervert is also a religious nut/ somehow tied to religion. I freely admit to being a little facetious (as in the prostitution remark, which was stupid on purpose), but that was my mistake.
I’m also astounded that there was such a knee-jerk reaction to my comments, I’m suddenly a blathering theistic scoundrel. I feel like I’m chasing my tail on this one Look, I’ll make my argument abundantly clear to everyone -sarcasm:
1.People screw up. It isn’t always pretty, and sometimes it’s downright criminal.
2.Religion may be a hundred different things, all or most of which are evil- or not. However, this incident can only identify the high profile hypocrisy in one man, while I remind you we all act against our ethics from time to time to various extents. If you want to make the argument that most religious people are hypocrites, the lot of them, the burden of proof is with you to demonstrate willful mass-mendacity on the part of the faithful.
3.
That’s an interesting hypothesis, but I think this guy was just horny, it’s impossible to say whether he bothered to rationalize it at all. She agreed to get in the car with him (albeit for the hidden camera), and while it wasn’t the best thing anyone has ever done, he didn’t exactly leap on her. Neither of us can know his mental state at the time. This is what I mean by critical thinking, there is a lot left to the imagination, but the facts are quite simple. Being skeptical means not putting stuff in the gaps to fit your predispostions.
Finally, I sensed a bit of trollishness in my first few comments, though I’m not so sure I crossed the line, if I did, it was unintentional. Unfortunately jumping up and down saying I’m not a troll can only make me sound more like a troll, but look, we’re on topic having an argument. Not the worst of things I’ve done online.
I’m gonna take a wild stab and guess that you have a problem with public schools, HG. You can always start a blog about it, you know.
No problem with public schools, I attended and so do my children. Just pointing out the obvious.
(I’m taking too long writing comments, every time I finish responding to one, there are another three.)
The fact that he is the founder of that Christian school clearly shows that religion had SOMETHING to do with the situation. He used his position of authority at that Christian school, and the mother’s desire to send her daughter to his school, as leverage to illegally solicit sex.
Yes and if it were a snooty, exclusive, secular, private school attached to Harvard and the same thing happened, then Harvard would have SOMETHING to do with the situation. However, the link is still tenuous and contrived. I can draw a link between the number of ear-hairs George Bush has and the level of violence around the world. Sure, we can blame him for a lot of it, but his ear hairs have nothing to do with it, men just get more as they age.
This is post-hoc confirmation bias.
I have to agree with angrynight here. Not about the issue-I think (s)he’s totally out to lunch by apologising for this douche.
However, (s)he’s taken the time to explicate and defend a position. I don’t consider that trolling.
The real scandal is him thinking he can get SEVERAL sessions for $300,-. What a scrooge.
angrynight,
It seems that you don’t consider the fact that many of the religious claim that their religiousity is a necessary condition for morality. Your claim is that it obviously isn’t sufficient. However, like most actual phenomena, the relationship between religiousity and morality isn’t so simply ascertained.
For those of us who are constantly accused of being incapable of morality due to our (lack of) beliefs, this apparent relationship must be investigated. Further, the religious invite this investigation by claiming the moral high ground that they do.
Thus, your argument that this man’s actions shouldn’t be compared to the moral claims he and others sharing his belief system make is incorrect.
HG, if you could somehow suggest that statutory rape of christian school students by teachers didn’t occur, you might have a point. Since you can’t, I’ll spell it out in a way that even a conservative fuckwit like yourself might understand:
Public school teachers have raped kids.
Christian school teachers have raped kids.
Christian school teachers claim that their beliefs preclude them from doing such things.
See the difference between the two groups now, asshat?
Fucking trolling idiot. Now shut the fuck up, and let a non-fuckhead like angrynight talk instead. At least (s)he’s got a point to argue.
Man, you’re a fucking moron.
“Yes and if it were a snooty, exclusive, secular, private school attached to Harvard and the same thing happened, then Harvard would have SOMETHING to do with the situation. ”
Posted by: angrynight | April 19, 2008 2:37 AM
I agree with you – and by saying it had something to do with the situation, I meant that, and only that. I didn’t mean to imply that religion served – in this case – as a systemic cause of this man’s actions. I merely meant to point out that religion may have factored into this man’s belief that he could get away with it – I didn’t intend to insinuate that religion was a sufficient cause for what he did. (And for the record, I didn’t intend for my response to convey the opinion that I believed your comments were trolling. If I came across that way, I do sincerely apologize. I’m actually enjoying the exchanges and the discussion of the minutia of the situation. Believe me, today of all days, I have had my patience tested by some of the troll community’s finest…or worst, whichever way you look at it, I guess.)
P.S.: And if it WERE a snooty Harvard administrator that committed this act, I’d be inclined to shove a year’s worth of his school’s tuition cost (in silver change, of course) up his least comfortable point of bodily entry. Coming from a well-known (even infamously so) poor neighborhood in Memphis, TN, I have a special disregard for intellectual and financial snobbery – not to mention the combination of both…
Public school teachers have raped kids.
Christian school teachers have raped kids.
Christian school teachers claim that their beliefs preclude them from doing such things.
Posted by: Brownian, OM | April 19, 2008 3:03 AM
Very, Very nice – logic at its finest. I just hope it gets through to him/her. (A foolish hope, I know…but I can have my dreams, can’t I?)
I think this thread has strayed a bit off point (that could never happen on teh intertoobz, right?):
I think there is a linkage between moralistic suppression of sexual desire (e.g., by conservative religious folks) and an increased risk of sexual misconduct, and I also think there is an extra dimension of culpability for sexual misconduct by those who preach conservative sexual mores to others (but note this doesn’t meant sexual misconduct isn’t still misconduct even when not accompanied by hypocrisy)… but there is, IMHO, something entirely different going on in this case.
If this were a real Christian school and its ostensibly chaste founder/headmaster were extracting sexual favors from parents in return for admission, that would be reprehensible for all the reasons stated in the thread above. But the evidence suggests that this is neither a real Christian school nor even a real school. It’s apparently an inherently fraudulent enterprise, trading on burdensome and wrongheaded public education policies that create a market for the sale of phony diplomas. I doubt Lavern Jordan’s “Christianity” is anything other than part of the role he’s playing for this particular con game, and if by some chance he is a sincere Christian, he already qualified as an FSM-damned hypocrite for being a fraud and a thief, long before he tried to crawl into this poor woman’s pants.
It’s probably a whole different discussion, but the economic “space” for this sort of scam is a perfectly predictable outcome of the conservative program to bankrupt and ultimately eliminate public education through draconian “reforms” like NCLB. But I digress….
I’m sure there are plenty of genuine religious schools in Texas, some of which are no doubt relatively inoffensive despite their church affiliations and some of which are no doubt horrifying fundie nightmares. I have no idea whether sexual misconduct by teachers or administrators is more common in these schools than in public schools — after all, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” eh? — but criticizing religious hypocrisy about sex in no way excuses sexual abuse in public schools. They’re just two separate issues.
In addition, liberal attitudes about sex and sex work don’t excuse this guy’s behavior. Personally, I don’t have a moral objection to prostitution per se (presuming that it’s truly consensual): If this woman were a prostitute by her own choice, and if this guy were her customer, and if she freely chose to spend her earnings on her son’s tuition, I wouldn’t have a problem with any of that. In this case, however, she’s not a prostitute, and he’s trying to get sex from her by holding something she values (her son’s phoney-baloney diploma) hostage, and that is sexual harrassment bordering on rape, regardless of what you think about the morality of prostitution in the abstract.
Got it?
Shorter angrynight: “What this religious guy ACTUALLY DID is excusable because a HYPOTHETICAL atheist guy is HYPOTHETICALLY CAPABLE of doing something similar.”
Ok then.
I’d go on, but Brownian (as he so often does) covered my point of view rather succinctly in #73.
(Ok now I’m really going to sleep!)
*poof*
Actually, ignore my “shorter angrynight” comment. I may have under-represented the commenter’s position. Move to strike. Thank you, your honor.
I’ve gotta cut down on these 0300 OpEds… lol
I meant what I said about Brownian, though.
You’re right about everything you’ve just said. I know I’ve said otherwise previously, but for whatever reason it didn’t click. I don’t know I suppose in my mind I was forgetting this is someone who is on the pulpit everyday screaming about moral decline (probably). Look I’m not saying the guy’s a saint or to give him a break. I still give most of the burden to the individual, and I still say this sort of argument is problematic. At this stage it is safe to say that there is a good number of atheists and freethinkers who now are saying that on the whole, they are more ethical than the religious, witness Moses at #38.
This is bad, because they are still susceptible to human foibles. As you have said, the claim of moral superiority has been made, though this time it is due to lack of a deity rather than belief in one. Suddenly it’s a double edged sword, a theist commits evil, we must show theists their hypocrisy, and on the other side of the street when an atheist screws up (assuming it’s not a matter of time is foolishly optimistic) then they are simply going to say that atheists are not as moral as they claim to be (i.e. more moral than us).
Don’t you see what I’m getting at? The argument doesn’t apply to theists in the same way it doesn’t apply to us. (sorry about the double negatives.)
I’m having a little trouble expressing this, but basically that argument cuts both ways, because in order to make that argument, you have to make a claim of moral superiority yourself. All of this is assuming morals aren’t relative in the first place (but seriously, that’s a whole other can of worms)
Screw the pastor, let him roast on a pit for all I care, it doesn’t make Christianity anything. The response by people defending him is what sets Christianity up for criticism. Not the behavior of the pastor. A criminal working at a bank doesn’t make the bank bad, it’s the bank’s response that would make me think twice about putting my money there.
He must have watched Forest Gump, ughughughughughughugh. hahahahaha
“Don’t you see what I’m getting at? The argument doesn’t apply to theists in the same way it doesn’t apply to us. (sorry about the double negatives.”
Posted by: Angrynight | April 19, 2008 3:31 AM
I think I get what you’re driving towards here, and (let me know if I am wrong) I think it speaks to a truth larger than this individual situation. In today’s adversarial society, two sides of any coin (theist vs. atheist, Republican vs. Democrat, etc…) both have an immediate proclivity to point to the other side’s ideology as a sufficient cause for their actions, whether that connection is valid or not. And once such a supposition has been made, the furor that erupts from both sides drowns out what rational debate could potentially be possible.
If this is an accurate summary of your idea, then we are of the same mind on this subject. In another post on an unrelated thread, I offered that the most inhibitive obstacle in our society’s attempt at rational discussion is this sort of knee-jerk, irrational attribution of individual flaws to universal ideals held by the offending individual. I don’t know how we can get around such a widespread perversion of discourse, but I think that if we’re ever going to do it, it is going to require both sides to metaphorically speaking ‘lay down the arms’ and come to the table mutually and without subversive intentions.
Bingo broken soldier, I am going to sleep now. It’s officially four o’clock in the morning, and I’m beyond true mental capacity (whatever that means). Thank goodness tomorrow is Saturday.
Angrynight, I think that you are missing the point that Brownian is making. Like many here, I too, have been told by religious people that without religion, I’m “morally inferior” to them. When the Christians engage in immoral behavior, it simply demonstrates that they are as imperfect as the rest of us. Examples like this illustrate the point that religion does not make one morally superior to one without religion.
Angrynight:
(FWIW, I don’t think you’re trolling, and I’ve appreciated the thoughtful thread)
I don’t think it’s quite a symmetrical a situation as you suggest: If I’m reading it correctly, atheists (or rationalists/secularists generally) don’t pretend they’re not subject to human foibles, or that they’re inherently more capable of living by their own ethical codes than theists are. Rather, I think they claim that their ethical codes are better than theists’, because they’re based on reason and observable facts, rather than on the apparently arbitrary pronouncements of a mythical figure of absolute authority.
Further, I think the anger at theists’ “hypocrisy” comes not so much when they violate their own privately held codes, but when they violate codes they’re actively trying to force on others.
If (for instance) Rep. Larry Craig behaves in a way that he privately believes is immoral for himself, that’s nobody’s problem but his own; if, OTOH, he behaves in a way that’s immoral according to beliefs he’s trying to write into law for everyone, that’s everyone’s problem.
Yes, but I think many would say there’s a qualitative difference between claims of moral superiority that are based on rational, fact-based notions of morality and similar claims that are based on authoritarian mysticism… and they’d say that qualitative difference exists independently of folks’ ability (or lack thereof) to live up to their moral ideals.
brokenSoldier’s comment, to which you replied “Bingo,” implies that atheism and theism are two equivalent, albeit conflicting, ideologies:
..but I don’t buy that: Atheism isn’t a competing set of arbitrary absolutist moral rules; it’s a rejection of the notion of arbitrary absolutist moral rules. It’s not a matter of two sides of the same coin: The difference is one of kind rather than of content.
Of course, as I’ve said before, I don’t really think the problem with Lavern Jordan is that he’s a hypocrite; I think the problem is that he’s a swindler and a rapist.
Of course this never happens in public schools. The scene in Forrest Gump where his mother gives it up to the principle so he’ll bend the minimum IQ rule so that Forrest can attend the regular public school is pure incredible fiction. Everyone knows that only Christian men employed at Christian schools are interested in sex. Secular men in secular schools are all celebate.
Hehe thanks DaveScot; using the fictional example of Forrest Gump sure balances the actual story in this thread. Yep, sure is the same thing.
Thanks for playing. Byebye now.
I think this maybe a warning:
http://www.local6.com/news/15875360/detail.html
Click on the photos and read the entire story.
This does not look like some random image of the mind.
It is way too detailed for that and there were witnesses of this as you will read.
Then again religious people are crazy right. They will believe anything.
Yet another a$$hole who will contendedly drill sanctimonious iron-age drivel into defenceless children’s brains while clearly not believing a word of it himself.
Then this “good number” err. The lack of a belief in a deity cannot be the source of ethics any more than the lack of a moustache. Atheists must look elsewhere for ethics. We are not an organisation with prescriptions and proscriptions for its membership. As regards ethics, the most one can legitimately say for atheism is that it removes the necessity to pretend that ethics are divinely ordained and leaves us free to derive our ethics other than from bronze-age myths.
Of course — the one night I don’t watch the local news.
I’m proud of this woman for doing what she did. I couldn’t have done it without throwing up, personally.
I give a lot of Christians more credit than some — I think fewer than you think hold this notion that only secular people are morally bankrupt. There’s enough evidence in the news to the contrary. That’s why it’s such an outrage.
Planet Killer: meet pareidolia.
angrynight is making a fairly typical leap: by highlighting despicable behavior by one Christian, we must be accusing all Christians of being like that. Nothing is further from the truth. I think most Christians are like most atheists — generally decent, with lapses. However, you have to see it from an atheist perspective: we are constantly told that we are amoral, that we have no foundation for ethical behavior, that we must be adrift since we have no absolute basis for morality. So it is quite satisfying to see so many examples from the Christian community that testify that they don’t seem to have an absolute morality, either.
And DaveScot is posting here? Amazing. Yet more hypocrisy. Dave is the kneejerk sleazebag at Uncommon Descent in charge of silencing dissenting opinions — it takes quite a bit of gall for him to abuse the hospitality of any other blog.
PlanetKiller: If you look at the photos, you will see that each of them is quite different, which proves that the reflections we are seeing depend on many variables such as the camera, the angle, the lighting, and also on our brain’s interpretation of what we are seeing. If this were indeed Jesus, he would look the same from various angles, not like a melting mask or some waving curtains. We are just looking at some surface effects and interpreting them as a face.
You can easily create this effect with pencil and paper. Just draw 2 dots and a short dash near them, like this :| or like this :-) and then rotate the paper until you see a face. If you draw an oval or even a square around them, it’s impossible NOT to see a face!
Finally, if this is indeed Jesus, why would he be crying instead of curing the suffering patients? As Supreme Ruler of the Universe, he is in full control! He has the power to bring instant peace and happiness to the world. Why would he lurk in some obscure hospital corridor?
Re #88. Planet Killer, you keep making me ask myself – can anyone really be that stupid and still be able to type? In the UK, it has become fashionable for Muslims to find the name of Allah, spelled out in Arabic, when cutting open aubergines (eggplants) and thus revealing the seeds. Happens several times a year – clearly a warning, and one that has been given repeatedly. I suggest you convert to Islam.
*cough*
No, dear, you’re right. Whatever you say.
Abbie (#21):
ARGGGHH! That’s not how microtubules form! Expelled, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG — in exactly the same way that XVIVO “did it wrong” (intentionally oversimplifying). Sound familiar, anybody?
Oh, the guy at the end of the clip, the one who says, “The cell really is like nothing we’ve ever seen in the physical world,” is just priceless. Who is that?
Parents — don’t send your children to a non-christian school (http://www.tabloidcolumn.com/debbie-lafave.html).
So what’s left? Home schooling?
That item is the first of some 2 million results from a google search against “teacher sex student.
It seems like a very creationist sort of logic to impugn all christian schools by pointing to a scam run by people posing as christians.
i’m not entirely sure why this should be seen as a problem. it is the religious groups that say sex should not be used as a bartering system. as someone on here already pointed out, having sex with the student would be the problem. but it would be pure hypocrisy to say that you think prostitution should be legal, but using it to barter? totally not allowed.
So the point of the post is parents shouldn’t send thier kids to Christian school because thier might be a hypocrite there who wants to sleep with the parent. Yeah I didn’t get that from the short “Parents — don’t send your kids to Christian school” Myers wrote. I inferred that the threat was from the unethical conduct of Christian School staff rather than the hypocrisy of the same. Like a said earlier, I had forgotten the unpardonable sin of hyocrisy.
If I am right and the unethical conduct is why Myers would have Parents not send thier kids to Christian school, then it is he who is misrepresenting the facts that:
The point I made, and went right over your head, was in response to comment #51. Put my comments into there context and you might get the point.
Oh, and I see I broke the second unholy commandment — grammatical error. I’ll turn on my spellchecker and proofread in an effort to measure up to the righteousness of the liberal blogosphere.
I would like to point out that most public school teachers and administrators in the USA are christian. So the only point that HG and the others are making is in which context christian educators are most likely exhibit sexual misconduct.
Atheism isn’t a competing set of arbitrary absolutist moral rules; it’s a rejection of the notion of arbitrary absolutist moral rules. It’s not a matter of two sides of the same coin: The difference is one of kind rather than of content.
Of course, as I’ve said before, I don’t really think the problem with Lavern Jordan is that he’s a hypocrite; I think the problem is that he’s a swindler and a rapist.
Posted by: Bill Dauphin | April 19, 2008 4:59 AM
We agree wholly on Lavern Jordan, but I disagree with you on your conclusions concerning atheism. When we’re talking about theism, then atheism – to me – is most certainly the other side of the coin. Atheism isn’t the “rejection of the notion of arbitrary absolutist moral rules,” but rather it is the simple lack of belief in God – in the theistic, creator sense of the word.
** In an attempt to be visually as well as verbally descriptive, my view of it is that identifying yourself as an ATHEIST is simply affirming the (A)bsence of (THEIST) beliefs in your world-view. IMHO, this makes it the exact definition of “the other side of the coin.”**
So as it applied to what I was trying to describe (the arguments that erupt between atheists and religious believers on this board), I believe I was correct in using the coin metaphor to characterize the two diametrically opposed viewpoints – those being (1) belief that there is a God, and (2) belief that there is no God. I have been known to be wrong on many an occasion, however, and I’m interested to hear what the rest of you think.
Um, since he didn’t do it… Seriously. And the issue is old and dealt with and people who argue this issue need to get acquainted with the facts before they jumps in and try to “win friends and influence” people by defending the indefensible.
The DATA says The Greater the Relgiosity/Fundamentalism in the person, the Greater the Chance s/he will commit crimes. Like it or not. For example, in molestation of children, the incest-rate for this is very rare in atheists. Well under 2% if I remember my numbers correctly, and it’s usually “relationship incest” (Step-parent/Step-child) instead of biological incest (parent/offspring). OTOH, if I remember my numbers right, I believe the rates for fundamentalists 10% in the step-parent axis and 7% in the biological access.
And I can go down a list of hundreds of crimes, perversions, abnormal sexual fetishes (especially S&M), spousal rape, larceny, fraud, embezzlement, murder, etc. and the rule holds for all of them: the more fundamentalist the persons religion, the more likely they are to engage in these anti-social, immoral and illegal behaviors. There is lots of speculation why and I’m not going into it.
You can have your own opinion, but you don’t get your own facts. So, coming to a thread, and defending this group of people, when one of the hypocrites is caught red-handed, is incredibly stupid. Beyond-the-pale stupid. The facts are against you and within law enforcement and social service agencies, profiles on which to rely.
I think that this issue has been thoroughly discussed with the obvious point prevailing that we are all prone to error but most religious adherents believe that they are not susceptible to moral failings due to the miracle of their conversion. They have been changed. All things have become new and their sinful nature as been swapped for one with a spiritual bent. This is nothing more that wishful thinking on their part and when stories of sexual impropriety regularly pop up (pun not intended) it is fun to point out that their claims of moral superiority are false.
I would like to add that their belief that truth is absolute fogs their thinking process and is often projected onto those who don’t, wouldn’t and couldn’t think like they do about the world. Science is a good example. Since we all know that humans are imperfect we have developed a scientific method for examining the world that attempts to minimize the errors that invariable creep into our understanding of how things work. We think this is a positive and they see it as a failing. The fact that Darwin didn’t have it all completely right from the get go tells them that he is completely wrong and science in general can’t be trusted.
A scientist feels comfortable knowing that our understanding will improve over time and makes no claims that what we think today is as accurate as it will get. Likewise, I’m comfortable knowing that I will make mistakes and regret some of my actions at some point. The religious know that they have the truth on their side so this makes them immune to the problems that all humans share and I’m inclined to think that this attitude actually fosters a blindness that results in more than their share of screw-ups (no pun intended).
We all know that their world view is screwed up but it is not something that should be ignored. Some of us most affected by their nonsense feel the need to ridicule their silly beliefs when we hear news like this because it is not simply the shortcomings of a horny little man but a pervasive world view that also challenges science and education and reason in general.
Hypocrisy is when you say one thing, and do another. I don’t recollect atheists and seculars holding themselves out as the paragons of virtue with all the answers. Unlike you, and your typical Christian zealots, who not only claim the morality, you tell us that we’re immoral.
Sorry to “feed” DaveScot, but sometimes there’s accidental wisdom in error:
Wouldn’t “giving it up” to the principle be a noble (but not necessarily Nobel) thing? It’s giving it up to the principal that’s tawdry.
But seriously, folks… I don’t understand why people keep saying that because sexual misconduct occurs in public schools, we’re wrong to criticize Jordan in this case. Since when does it make sense to say “Because people in Group B sometimes behave badly, it’s inappropriate to criticize Group A for vaguely related but actually dissimilar bad behavior”?
Also, to mister_roboto’s point (@98) about the supposed hypocrisy of criticizing sexual bartering, I’ll repeat an earlier paragraph of my own, which appears to have been lost in the fog (teach me to post at ~3:00 am!):
Finally, re the Planet Killer “Jebus wept” photos…. Is it just me, or isn’t there a classic TV-movie Roswell-style space alien looking over Jebus’ shoulder in one of those pix?
Ohhh… I get it. If it’s in a movie, it must be true…
So, where’s my damn ring, and where did the elves go? I think elf chicks are hot…
I inferred that the threat was from the unethical conduct of Christian School staff rather than the hypocrisy of the same.
Posted by: HG | April 19, 2008 11:00 AM
After following this thread (and, by proxy, your posts) I don’t think we’re in complete disagreement, but we do diverge in one way. Since Jordan is the founder and chief administrator of that (Christian) school, I’d say the case is pretty air-tight for his acting unethically. I’d also suggest that the whole argument about the hypocrisy inherent in the situation was a tangential concern that was raised when it was asked whether or not his Christianity was a driving factor for his actions. PZ’s original post was a warning – if I perceived it correctly – that addresses the possibility that his religion was such a factor, and considering the recent history of criminals hiding behind ideology I would say that his isn’t an unfair argument. But in fairness, I’m guessing that you’d be more satisfied with the warning if it were phrased as “Parents–don’t send you children to THIS Christian school,” and – though we differ in opinion – I can see where you’re coming from if that’s the case.
Moses, nor do I. The point is simple. Hypocrisy is not the crime it is being made out to be. Everyone at some time or another is a hypocrite. That is not to diminish the horrible behavior of this school official in any way. Certainly hypocrisy is no reason not to send your kids to Christian school. Academics, now there is a reason. There are few Christian schools I would send my kids to given the low academic expectations, but not hypocrisy.
Now if it is argued, as I assume Myers intended, that the threat of unehtical behavior is reason enough to avoid Christian schools, then to be honest one would also advise parents to avoid public schools. To say on the one hand unethical behavior is a threat, then to accept the threat in a public school appears both dishonest and hypocritical.
brokenSoldier,
Exactly. Thanks for listening.
HG- I don’t think it’s terribly accurate that most people are hypocrites at some point in their lives, though it’s probably true occasionally. Most people have standards, and lots of times they fail to live up to them, but that isn’t hypocrisy. People simply aren’t perfect, and sometimes though they try to do right they fail. In this case, the person running the school represents himself as a Christian in order to gain moral credence from the parents of prospective students and perhaps from others as well (if he’s a scam artist, for example, then he is probably using his appearance as a method of defending himself against the revelation of the nature of his acts). If he’s not a scam artist then he intends to teach his moral beliefs to children. Using his position to gain sexual favors is a conscious act and one contradictory to that which he intends to enforce on others or (at minimum) to profit from personally – it’s not a mistake or a failure to live up to the standards he claims to live by but a conscious subversion of them.
Liberals simply have different beliefs on the nature (or implementation) of moral behavior, not a lack of principles – you seem to be (either intentionally or unintentionally) assuming that liberals’ dislike of hypocrisy is advocacy of a lack of principles, which it is not. Conflict occurs where liberals’ moral principles are less restrictive than those of conservatives, so that liberals would allow behavior that conseratives would forbid. Liberals impugn hypocrisy where they would be more permissive than conservatives (thus less likely to criticize behavior in which they do not engage), and where those impugning others for their permissiveness act in the way that they criticize.
If you wish to compel others to adopt your morals, then you should be sure that they can actually be obeyed (that people trying to live up to them can do so). When those who promulgate strict standards (and thus people who should be trying hard to live buy them) cannot do so, the implication is that either the standards can’t be obeyed consistently or that the people advocating the standards are evil (they intend to use the standards as camoflage to destroy others). If the standards can’t be obeyed, then they probably need to be changed or better supported (by the people advocating them) so that they can be obeyed. If the people promulgating the standards are evil, one might wonder whether the standards they promulgate are a good idea.
brokenSoldier:
You’re certainly correct in you definition of atheism, but I didn’t mean to be giving a definition in the abstract. Rather, I was talking about what atheism “means” in the context of this discussion, which has been about moral codes and claims of moral superiority.
I stand by my earlier disagreement with your characterization of atheism and theism as competing “ideologies,” though, because I think there’s a difference between, on the one hand, rejecting a worldview because you assert that it’s unfounded by evidence and, on the other hand, holding and promoting an equivalent but conflicting worldview.
Conservatism and liberalism are examples of competing ideologies, but liberalism is not simply aconservatism. In the strict definitional sensed, atheism and theism are, as you point out, “two sides of the same coin,” in that they represent “no” and “yes” answers to the God question… but Christian moral teaching and atheism are in no way two sides of any one ideological coin. To say they are is to make the same error theists do when they accuse atheism (or secularism) of being just another (presumably false) religion… or the same error evolution denialists make when they demand that schools teach “both sides of the issue.” They may be different “sides,” but they don’t belong to the same “coin.”
>Planet Killer, you keep making me ask myself – can anyone
>really be that stupid and still be able to type?
1) Calling someone stupid isn’t going to take any intelligence at all.
2) You have no worth comments to even bother responding to as they are all just insults.
3) You have no proven point except that you are not intelligent enough to understand religion.
Thanks for playing Nick. Next time get yourself educated okay. Thanks.
Public schools are worse. How many teachers have been having sex with children.
Public schools teach evolution, but they pass students when they can’t read and write. Worthless garbage.
So while this thread is bad and should not have happened. I have heard of much worse. Only that is not covered here for obvious reasons.
If he was an atheist it would not have been posted here either. Garbage in, Garbage out.
>You can easily create this effect with pencil and paper.
>Just draw 2 dots and a short dash near them, like this :|
>or like this :-) and then rotate the paper until you see a >face. If you draw an oval or even a square around them,
>it’s impossible NOT to see a face!
Only a few problems from what you said.
1) It was done in realtime and witnesses saw it and it disapeared in real time.
2) It wasn’t as simple as a :-). It was a very complex image almost like a photo.
I don’t know if it was jesus or not, but it looked a lot more of something than atheists are going to try to convince us that it was our mind. I normally will not post something like this because usually it is bogus like seeing a face in the sky, but this is way beyond that.
This does not look like some random image of the mind.
It is way too detailed for that and there were witnesses of this as you will read.
“Yeah, and there’s all those tortillas in Mexico, too! How you gonna explain THAT, atheists???”
Not to this degree. Fundamentalist Christians are constantly harping on sexual morality, such as fidelity in marriage (remember Monica Lewinski), homosexuality, pre-marital sex, etc. Sex is a core ethical concern for such folks, and to violate those ethics is profoundly hypocritical, far beyond the usual failure of people to live up to their own standards.
More to the point, it is not even so much the personal hypocrisy, it is the public hypocrisy which is at issue. This school alleges to teach “Christian character, morals, values, and integrity”, and the founder profoundly violated this principles. From my perspective, the issue is similar to Elliot Spitzer — if you campaign against prostitution, it is extremely hypocritical to frequent prostitutes, and much more hypocritical if he had done some other, similarly serious crime (such as drug use).
Failing to live up to your own ethical standards is human. Secretly violating principles that you loudly trumpet you adhere to, and that you demand everyone else adhere to, is gross hypocrisy.
So let me get this straight: The omnipotent creator of the entire universe, who has strewn hundreds of billions of galaxies across trillions of cubic light years, who parted seas and caused the sun to stop its motion, who can do literally anything…decides to show up as a smudge on a window in Orlando?
And you think this incredibly localized, incredibly ambiguous smudge is a “warning”? Why not just spell out in burning letters across the sky “Shape up or else! Signed, God”? If the consequences of ignoring the warning are so potentially grave, wouldn’t God be a right bastard to be so coy and equivocal regarding the message? If your child was about to run out in the street in front of a truck, would you silently hold up a fuzzy photo of yourself three blocks away and hope he understands what you want?
Never mind the story and the video. PZ’s initial statement, “Parents, don’t send your children to a Christian school,” is really all that needs be said. The story/video are tangential at best to why his admonishment is sound.
don’t send your children to a Christian school
Because, of course, as every good liberal knows, no administrator or teacher at a government school has ever been involved in an illicit relationship with a parent (or a student, for that matter).
Am I shallow in that, on seeing this clip, I wondered about his prices? First, $300 bucks seems pretty cheap for any useful sort of tuition. Second, that’s not an uncommon price for your mid-range sort of hooker. And he’s expecting several times? Must be an economically depressed area.
And, from what I can see of her, my taste in women is not the same as his. Can’t he find a nice young stripper to trade with?
Perhaps he’s already run through that market.
Steve “Jesus loves you, but he doesn’t charge $300.” James
Because, of course, as every good liberal knows, no administrator or teacher at a government school has ever been involved in an illicit relationship with a parent (or a student, for that matter).
You forgot to mention Al Gore.
You forgot to mention Al Gore.
What? Global Warming Cult Leader Albertina had sex with students? Do tell, do tell!!! Not that it would surprise me. He probably figured there would be no controlling legal authority to stop him.
Okay, next hoop: Hillary Clinton. Then Al Gore again.
Jump!
I don’t know if it was jesus or not, but it looked a lot more of something than atheists are going to try to convince us that it was our mind.
It was aliens. What about that alien question anyway, PK? Still running away from answering anything of substance, I see.
PK, I was wondering something: the sort of religious visions you’re standing up for here are also extremely common among Hindus, though of course among Hindus their content is extremely different from what Christians see. Are you willing to ascribe Hindu religious visions the same validity that you ascribe to Christian visions? If not, why not?
Posted by: Bill Dauphin | April 19, 2008 2:33 PM
“You’re certainly correct in you definition of atheism, but I didn’t mean to be giving a definition in the abstract. Rather, I was talking about what atheism “means” in the context of this discussion, which has been about moral codes and claims of moral superiority.”
– That is all well and good, except for the fact that – where you interjected your disagreement with the “coin”metaphor – I was making that metaphor specifically to explain those two basic sides of the argument that takes place on this board. I was in no way referring to the “moral codes and claims of moral superiority” in that specific instance that you replied to. In the future, you could avoid this kind of misunderstanding by making sure you take in the whole point of a post before starting to cut and paste for a reply.
“I stand by my earlier disagreement with your characterization of atheism and theism as competing “ideologies,” though, because I think there’s a difference between, on the one hand, rejecting a worldview because you assert that it’s unfounded by evidence and, on the other hand, holding and promoting an equivalent but conflicting world-view.”
– I never said they were competing – I just said they were diametrically opposed to one another by definition. The word compete has progressive connotation, while opposition does not. Two things can stand in opposition and be static, but the same is not so for two things that are “competing,” as that word implies that the two sides are dynamic, and definitely NOT static. What I said that might have caused the confusion was the following:
– **”In today’s adversarial society, two sides of any coin (theist vs. atheist, Republican vs. Democrat, etc…) both have an immediate proclivity to point to the other side’s ideology as a sufficient cause for their actions…”**
– In using the term adversarial, I was not referring to the belief descriptions I placed in opposition within the parentheses, but rather the society in which we debate these things.
“Conservatism and liberalism are examples of competing ideologies, but liberalism is not simply aconservatism. In the strict definitional sensed, atheism and theism are, as you point out, “two sides of the same coin,” in that they represent “no” and “yes” answers to the God question… but Christian moral teaching and atheism are in no way two sides of any one ideological coin. To say they are is to make the same error theists do when they accuse atheism (or secularism) of being just another (presumably false) religion… or the same error evolution denialists make when they demand that schools teach “both sides of the issue.” They may be different “sides,” but they don’t belong to the same “coin.”
As for the conservatism vs. liberalism argument, I’ll agree that liberalism is NOT aconservatism…but that does not in the least change the fact that the definite opposite of theism IS, and always will be, atheism. The problem with your reasoning that I can see here is that you’ve falsely substituted Christianity and its ‘morality’ with theism in your argument. And the fact that Christian moral teaching and atheism are not of one ideological coin is true, but quite irrelevant. When I say theism, I mean exactly what the word says. My definition of theism is definitely NOT restricted to Christian, Jewish, Islamic, or even mere monotheistic faiths. It seems that yours is, and herein lies the problem. Theism fully contains Christianity, but Christianity does not sufficiently contain theism and cannot be used as a substitute for theism in an argument – that is, if you wish for the argument to be sound.
Wait a minute. He was soliciting a woman? an ADULT woman?
Now that IS surprising!
brokenSoldier:
Nice! Patronize much?
My problem isn’t that I didn’t read your post carefully; my problem, it seems, is that I’ve been recklessly assuming that your comment was part of the ongoing conversation, and have been replying to it as such, rather than as a disconnected, stand-alone treatise.
No, the problem with my reasoning is that I’ve apparently failed to realize, until this point, that you have falsely substituted “theism” in your argument for “Christianity and its ‘morality’,” which is actually what the predicate conversation had been about.
I’ve already agreed that if you limit the examination to strict definitions, the words “theism” and “atheism” denote the “yes” and “no” answers to a single question: Does a god (or more than one) exist? In that limited sense, the two terms do, in fact, represent equivalent and opposing positions. (I think calling an answer to a yes/no question a “worldview” is stretching a point, but I suppose that’s just a quibble on my part.)
But that’s where the symmetry ends, because there really aren’t any theists in the sense you’re talking about. That is, there aren’t any people who believe generally in the existence a god or gods, but go no further. (OK, maybe you can find me a few individuals who believe that — somebody believes everything, I suppose — but there’s no such movement or body of thought.) Every “theist” believes not in a general concept of god, but in a specific god or gods, with a particular narrative and (and here’s the part that’s relevant to this conversation) a set of principles and rules that flow (at least in the believers’ minds) from that narrative. The word “theist” is generally used in these conversations as a kind of shorthand to talk about religionists without referring to their specifc religion… but every “theist” has one. Atheists, on the other hand, simply don’t believe in god or gods… full stop. As a logical consequence, atheists reject the notion of god-given moral codes (regardless of which fictional god allegedly gave them)… but there are no atheistic equal-but-opposite worldviews that parallel the Christian or Jewish or Islamic or Hindu worldviews, nevermind the denominations and subdenominations and sects within those religions.
To sum up: Atheism and theism are “two sides of the same coin” in a narrow, academic sense; in substantive, meaningful terms that are relevant to our discussion, not so much.
It may well be irrelevant to what you meant to say — only you can judge that — but it is not irrelevant to the discussion in which I found your comment embedded. That discussion was about whether or not atheist criticism of Christian moral hypocrisy amounted to the “pot calling the kettle black” (even though I don’t think anyone used that precise idiom). In that conversation, the fact that atheists don’t promulgate arbitrary moral codes in the way Christians do is most certainly relevant. If that’s not the conversation you thought you were having… well, never mind [/EmilyLitella]
Oddly enough, my reading comprehension is excellent; I understood precisely how you meant “adversarial.” I inferred “competing” not from “adversarial,” but from your use of the idiomatic phrase “the other side,” which in common English usage invariably indicates some sort of contest. I’m sorry, but “the other side’s ideology” really does suggest something more than a static contradiction between the words “yes” and “no.”
Look, the predicate argument to all this can be summed up as “You atheists better not criticize those Christians over their hypocrisy, because some of y’all screw up, too.” That argument assumes a false equivalence between Christians and atheists vis-a-vis moralistic pronouncements. Yes, everybody screws up, even atheists… but the difference is that atheists don’t pretend there’s an absolute set of moral rules that come from some invisible mystical being, nor that those rules must be applied invariably to all humans, nor that the same mystical being that gives the rules is the only source of the strength to actually follow them.
So what’s a simple, lamentable human weakness in one person can be hypocrisy in another, based on what the two of them have (or haven’t) preached about arbitrary moral rules.
“Nice! Patronize much?”
You can choose to take it as patronization if you want, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find an example of me acting in that manner to any other person on these boards, aside from one comment to one poster after repeated provocation and insults towards me on his part. The mere fact is, there was no condescension or patronization written into my words, and if you see differently, I would suggest that it is the result of projection.
“Look, the predicate argument to all this can be summed up as “You atheists better not criticize those Christians over their hypocrisy, because some of y’all screw up, too.”
Posted by: Bill Dauphin | April 20, 2008 2:02 AM
No, this is simply how YOU choose to characterize this argument, and you seem to insist upon putting your definitions in where common definitions should go. As a Christian, you ARE a theist – contrary to your suggestion that there somehow aren’t any theists. This word does not signify a belief in a generic god, but belief in a divine God, period. Within the category are pantheists, polytheists, monotheists, etc… Whether you choose to accept the fact or not, I was using a metaphor to simply classify two sides in obvious arguments that take place on this post. You can rant about what the predicate argument on the thread was, but that doesn’t change the fact that you took a portion of my post and assumed it meant something it did not, and ran with a reply without understanding its context.
J Blow, were you referring to my comment? If so, I’ll put it another way for you. As I see it, PZ doesn’t need a story about a creepy little Christian ass wipe trying to elicit sex for tuition to bolster his statement. It stands quite steady on its own because there are oh, so many more reasons why it is exellent advice.
Re #114. Planet Killer, my first sentence in #95 was a genuine expression of wonderment rather than an insult, although if you care to take it as such, that’s fine by me; can you really have thought that the atheists who by and large populate this blog were going to fall on their knees and pray when confronted with a reflection in a window looking something like the Euro-American stereotype of Jesus the Nazarene? I mean, did you? I’m really curious to know. If “God” wanted to give us a warning, why not letters of fire across the entire sky saying “Repent, for the end of the world is at hand!”? Either he wants to give us a message, or he doesn’t. Why faff about?
The rest of my post pointed out that members of another religion (Islam), incompatible with your own, also find “signs” like your smudgy reflection. I see someone else has pointed out that the same is true of Hindus. It was most certainly true of the Greek and Roman pagans. You have not answered this point: why should anyone take seriously your Jesus image, while rejecting the Muslims’ holy-name aubergines? My current hypothesis is that you have no answer, which is why your post contains nothing substantive whatever.
not quite related but the most nauseating thing ive read all month, re the pope in NY:
quote: New York deputy fire chief James Riches, father of a fallen Sept. 11 firefighter, said the pope’s visit gave him consolation.
“We said ‘Where was God?’ on 9/11, but he’s come back here today and they’ve restored our faith,” Riches said. Unquote.
i think im gonna be sick.
Posted by: extatyzoma | April 20, 2008 3:29 PM
Sick, indeed. Not only is this a slap in the face of his son, but also all the other brave souls under his command on that day. And before the trolls pounce, I realize that he has every right to say this — that still doesn’t change the fact that it is in deplorable taste to do so as a father, a leader, and as a public servant.
(And did he really mean to infer that God waited until the Pope wanted to visit NYC to come back to them and ‘restore their faith’? It seems so, and that’s even more absurd.)
So with all the sex teachers are having with students in public school, I guess there’s nowhere we can send our kids to school. Great. Just flipping great.
brokenSoldier:
We may be in what my engineer friends would call “violent agreement”:
First, I assume you mean that “you ARE” in the indefinite sense of “one is”; you’re not calling me a Christian, right?
Next, of course there are people to whom the term “theist” applies; I never meant to say otherwise. But you (perhaps unintentionally) get right to the heart of my intended point when you refer to “theist” as naming a category.
I edit and publish books for a living, so I hope you’ll forgive a book metaphor: Imagine a book in which there were chapters called THEISM and ATHEISM. At first glance, they’re equivalent, in that they’re at the same level of the book’s outline… apparently “two sides of the same coin.”
But look a bit closer at the contents of those chapters. Under THEISM, you will find subheadings (e.g., Monotheism)… and under those subheadings, sub-subheadings (e.g., Christianity)… and sub-sub-subheadings (Baptist) and sub-sub-sub-subheadings (Southern Baptist). In this imagined chapter, aside from some definitions and generic introductions, all the detailed information would live at the sub-subheading level (Christianity, etc.) and below. The chapter title and subheadings are just containers for the lower levels of the outline, which contain all the substantive information.
Now look at the atheism chapter: There might be subheadings covering the difference between “strong” and “weak” forms of atheism, but basically the substantive information would be right up at the top level of the chapter, without all the deep structure of the other chapter.
In an earlier post you referred to theist as a “container,” and you were exactly right. The thing is, theist is a different kind of container than atheist, because the former contains other nested containers while the latter contains peoples’ self-identification.
When I said there were no theists, I meant there are no people for whom “theist” is their self-identity. OTOH, there are plenty of people (including a majority of posters here, I think) for whom “atheist” is their self-identity. That’s the asymmetry I’m trying to get at.
To put it another way, if you were collecting demographic data about folks’ religious identity, the list of choices would be something like [1] Christian, [2] Jewish, [3] Muslim, [4] Buddhist, [5] Hindu, [6] Agnostic, [7] Atheist, [8] Other. Your list would not be [1] Theist, [2] Agnostic, [3] Atheist, nor would it be [1] Pantheist, [2] Polytheist, [3] Monotheist, [4] Agnostic, [5] Atheist.
Or rather, if your list did look like one of those last two, you wouldn’t get any useful data, because nobody calls him/herself a “theist” or a “monotheist” in preference to identifying his/her more specific beliefs, anymore than people identify themselves as “primates” or “bipeds” (even though they are both) rather than by their race or national origin.
“Atheist” and “theist” are antonyms, yes; however, they are not “two sides of the same coin” when it comes to talking about actual people.
As I said at the beginning, I’m not sure we’re really in any fundamental disagreement; we’re just looking at things from slightly different angles.
I’m a newcomer here – been reading a little. KInd of inspired to make a comment based on the “hello” entry of 4/21.
My thought with this blog entry’s video was that it was funny. Easy fodder. But in terms of an argument it’s a straw man. Even if you don’t like Christian schools, finding one bad apple and then saying ‘don’t send your children to a christian school’ isn’t a good argument.
I’m sure in the history of the world there has been a child molester in just about every social group formed. But one wouldn’t respond to that with ‘don’t allow your child to join social groups’.
The other thing that made me post a comment was the anger of many of the other comments on this post, most of which have very little to do with the original topic.
I cannot remember the last time I changed someone’s mind by being aggressively mad and condescending to their position. When this happens the brainstem says “shields up!” and that’s likely the end of useful dialog.
Anyway, that’s my first comment. Looking forward to more of PZ’s insights as well as the other commenters here at the blog.
Posted by: Bill Dauphin | April 21, 2008 1:27 AM
I now see we were talking in two related, but definitely different directions. I’m glad you posted in that much detail – especially about the first sentence above concerning the fact that you were saying no one identified themselves as a theist – point taken, indeed!