Hovind Uncaged™

taxes

The goofy ol’ creationist is being released from prison next week, on 8 July. He’s on home confinement for a month, so he won’t be jetting about spewing nonsense to the world at large for a little longer, and then he’s on probation for five more years, during which he has to ask the court’s permission to travel out of state. I can’t imagine any judge being so spiteful as to deny him travel (what would be the purpose), so expect fresh bullshit from a gleeful lecture tour later this summer.

Come on up Minnesota way, Kent! We need your tried and true gobbledygook to laugh at!

In case you were wondering what Ken Ham thinks of marriage equality…

He doesn’t like it, not one bit, no sir.

This ruling by the Supreme Court in regard to gay “marriage” is actually going to fundamentally change the culture in America and apart from a miracle of God—a special movement of God—this is going to be basically an irreversible situation. And I really believe that to understand what is happening to America now, read Romans chapter 1. That is really a picture of what is going on. We’re going to see increased persecution against Christians; we’re going to see increased antagonism toward Christianity. We’re going to see the restriction of the free exercise of religion, freedom of religion, and free speech in this nation, particularly in regard to Christianity. I believe we’re going to see the government move against Christian churches, colleges, institutions, and organizations that take a stand on biblical marriage as God commands us to in the Bible going back to the book of Genesis.

As Jesus stated in Matthew, “Have ye not read, that He that made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this cause shall a man leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh’? Therefore they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Matthew 19:4–7).

You know, the only thing that’s going to get restricted is intolerance and oppression. If you want to equate those with Christianity, fine with me!

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We fish need to hang together

Somebody calling themselves “True Free Thinker” is irate that anyone would teach kids about evolution. As you might guess from the moniker, this person is actually anti-atheist and anti-science; what you might not immediately realize is that he’s a terrible thinker, terrible writer, and even worse video editor. He’s assembled a very strange video which is like a slow, bad ad for the book, Grandmother Fish.

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Rally for Raif

Skip lunch, Los Angelinos, you have something more important to do today.

Raif Badawi, a Saudi blogger, was arrested in 2012 and later sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes; the lashes to be administered each Friday, 50 at a time.

Raif’s crime? Founding a website, Free Saudi Liberals, that “insulted Islam through electronic channels.”

Free Saudi Liberals championed free speech and human rights.

Raif received 50 lashes on January 9, 2015. The lashings were suspended for a time, but the Saudi Supreme Court upheld Raif’s sentence on June 7, 2015, and the lashings could resume any time. Raif is reportedly in poor health.

On Friday, June 26, The Center for Inquiry-Los Angeles, in conjunction with Amnesty International, Muslims for Progressive Values, PEN Center USA, and the Los Angeles Press Club, will be protesting Raif’s sentence in front of the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles.

We ask the Saudi Government to FREE RAIF BADAWI and allow him to join his wife, Ensaf Haidar, and their three young children in Canada.

Please join us.

FRIDAY, JUNE 26, 2015
12:00 pm – 3:00 pm

WHERE:
Consulate General of Saudi Arabia in Los Angeles
2045 Sawtelle Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90025

For FURTHER INFORMATION, contact
Stacy Kennedy
[email protected]
(323) 385-1812
OR
CFI|Los Angeles
(323) 666-9797

http://www.centerforinquiry.net/la/events/free_raif_rally_june_26_2015/

Is the Pope Catholic?

badpope

This is my regular reminder: don’t fall for the traps and snares of the wily Pope. He’s been getting a lot of praise lately for his rejection of climate change denialism (and even I have felt faint twinges of affection for a Pope who can get Bill Donohue to puff out his lower lip and pout), but it’s not good enough. I didn’t find his Papal Encyclical to be that good — it’s great that it acknowledges the scientific evidence in the first chapter, but it’s theme is fundamentally anti-science, and he’s more than willing to abandon evidence if it contradicts his dogma.

Instead of resolving the problems of the poor and thinking of how the world can be different, some can only propose a reduction in the birth rate. At times, developing countries face forms of international pressure which make economic assistance contingent on certain policies of “reproductive health”. Yet “while it is true that an unequal distribution of the population and of available resources creates obstacles to development and a sustainable use of the environment, it must nonetheless be recognized that demographic growth is fully compatible with an integral and shared development”.

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Zack Kopplin is not a troll!

jindal

Mother Jones has a good overview of Zack Kopplin’s work against the terrible Bobby Jindal, but I object to them characterizing him as a troll: he’s a good investigator who honestly exposes Jindal’s views. And they’re pretty terrible views:

Jindal, who studied biology at Brown and was considering Harvard Medical School before attending Oxford, has left a bit of a paper trail as to where he really stands. In 1995, while still a student in England, he published an essay in a small Catholic journal, This Rock, attacking atheism. He asserted that there was “much controversy over the fossil evidence for evolution,” and he put himself squarely in the camp of intelligent design. “No evolutionary biologist has produced or ever will produce a conclusion with any relevance to the necessity of God,” he argued. “At best he can push the location of the supernatural assumption from the origin of life to the origin of matter, energy, and order.”

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We’ve been sussed! Quick, hide!

indoctrination

They’re on to us. A conservative organization called Turning Point USA is distributing a pamphlet titled 10 Ways College Professors Indoctrinate America’s Youth and How to Prevent It (that’s a link to Jezebel’s deconstruction: if you want to read it in its full unedited glory, here’s a PDF). I learned many surprising things.

The # 1 goal of a leftist professor is to change the way their students view the world. Progressive professors want to make you question your beliefs and then hope that you will abandon them altogether. They want to make you think like they do. They want to brainwash you.

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In which I fail to be confused

ha-im-not-real

Have you ever wondered How to Confuse an Atheist? Apparently, theists do, and they even think they have a surefire recipe for doing it. I started reading this expecting a Big Daddy style gotcha that wouldn’t leave any atheists even slightly disturbed (except that eye rolling that hard can make you dizzy), and I was not disappointed.

Let’s take a look at the six steps to confuse an atheist. I’m going to stop at three because that’s enough to see that it’s going nowhere, but I’ll leave the last half as an amusing exercise for the reader.

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Cal Thomas fails the Bible test

I really don’t understand how these sanctimonious pious types can tell us to live by Biblical standards when they haven’t even read the damned thing.

Fox News contributor Cal Thomas argued over the weekend that polygamy and “adult-child marriage” could become legal in the United States unless the Supreme Court bases its same-sex marriage ruling on “scripture.”

King David? Numbers 31? How old was Rebecca when she was married off to Isaac?

How can you argue that making your laws Biblically based would prohibit polygamy and adult-child marriage?