You have got to be kidding me

Come February, we are going to be privileged to see a brand new movie that stars Ben Stein and portrays Intelligent Design creationism as the cool rebel oppressed by the stodgy old Darwinist bullies. Did you know that “scientists are not allowed to even think thoughts that involve an intelligent creator”? I didn’t either. I think a lot of scientists have thought about it and noticed that there is no evidence for such a hypothesis, and have therefore rejected it.

This movie fits with the intelligent design strategy of declaring itself the victim of an unfair exclusion (which isn’t true, of course: they haven’t ponied up the science that would legitimize them), but interestingly, its central theme seems to be that Big Science has excluded god from the classroom and the lab … it’s a raw demand for a violation of the separation of church and state and for the inclusion of superstitious dogma in science. That’s very convenient. It’ll make it easier to use the courts to keep their religious propaganda out of the classroom.

Oh, and putting Ben Stein in short pants and playing “Bad to the Bone” does not make him a rebel. He’s a Republican apologist, and he’s not “cool” at all.

Do not take internet quizzes at all seriously

People. You cannot use a very silly, poorly defined, done-for-a-hoot internet quiz to make sweeping conclusions about schools of thought. You also can’t just raise up your prejudices and point to them as evidence, as in this case:

Based on Wired Magazine’s observation that atheists tend to be quarrelsome, socially challenged men, to say nothing of the unpleasant personalities of leading public atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Michel Onfray, one could reasonably hypothesize that there is likely to be a strong correlation between Asperger’s and atheism.

Right. So Dawkins has an unpleasant personality, by definition (because of course the kook making this judgment has never actually met Dawkins), and because Dawkins is an atheist, we can therefore conclude that atheism is a pathological personality disorder that afflicts unpleasant men.

You will not be surprised to learn that the clueless twit making this chain of illogic is Vox Day. He’s probably going to argue that ERV has testicles, next.

Lightning bolts? Boils? Sour beer? We must know the details!

Uh-oh. Americans United for Separation of Church and State is in trouble now: some wrathful priest is cursing them in the name of God and has used the power of imprecatory prayer to ask the Lord to smite them.

Oooooh. There hasn’t been any detectable lordly smiting in millennia, or even longer. This could be impressive. You can catch Pastor Wiley Drake on streaming Christian radio tomorrow morning at 9am PST — I’m sure he’ll be calling down hellfire in a most entertaining way. I’ll be traveling, unfortunately, so someone will have to tune in and report back.

Heh. “Imprecatory prayer.” These guys are so old-school medieval, aren’t they?

The apologists will now explain to us that these people don’t actually exist

The wingnuts are still outraged that there is a Muslim in congress and that a Hindu delivered an opening prayer (which was pretty dang lame, anyway). Now look at this silly little man (R-Idaho) ranting about the death of America:

Last month, the U.S. Senate was opened for the first time ever with a Hindu prayer. Although the event generated little outrage on Capitol Hill, Representative Bill Sali (R-Idaho) is one member of Congress who believes the prayer should have never been allowed.

“We have not only a Hindu prayer being offered in the Senate, we have a Muslim member of the House of Representatives now, Keith Ellison from Minnesota. Those are changes — and they are not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers,” asserts Sali.

Sali says America was built on Christian principles that were derived from scripture. He also says the only way the United States has been allowed to exist in a world that is so hostile to Christian principles is through “the protective hand of God.”

“You know, the Lord can cause the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike,” says the Idaho Republican.

According to Congressman Sali, the only way the U.S. can continue to survive is under that protective hand of God. He states when a Hindu prayer is offered, “that’s a different god” and that it “creates problems for the longevity of this country.”

We’ve been having a little discussion in the comments here about the insensibility of satire and parody in this age of Christian lunacy. Take a look at the comments on that article — they are almost all effusive in their praise for Sali and are howling about how America must be ruled by the One True God™. These recent parodies of various Republican presidential candidates are amusing, but there’s a reality out there that’s far crazier and far scarier.

But these people don’t exist, I have often been told. The religious are thoughtful, progressive, inoffensive types.

Paglia? I don’t think so…

This has been the week that the whiny little twits have risen up to complain about atheism. The latest entry is from Camille Paglia, and many have written to me about it. I’m not going to bother. I’ve never cared much for Paglia, and Salon’s infatuation with her as a columnist is incomprehensible to me — her specialty is haughty pseudo-intellectual blurts of pretension, strung together on the one common thread of her febrile narcissism.

So, sorry, no evisceration of her babblings — there have just been too many of them lately, so all she gets is a curt dismissal.

I get email

Here’s an odd correlation for you: whenever I take a swipe at the foolishness of Scott Adams, I get a major uptick in the usual trickle of Christian email. I don’t quite see Adams as a friend to Christianity, although he does seem to foster the kind of shallow thinking on which religiosity thrives. Anyway, for your delectation, I’ve put a couple of samples below.

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Land of the Sodomite damned!

Fred Phelps is coming to Minnesota to protest the funerals of those killed in the 35W bridge collapse. This is more than a little ridiculous, besides being hateful. Apparently, any death for any cause is actually the result of a vengeful act of God, and is a message against gays.

I wonder what happens on the day a blood clot stops Phelps’ black and shriveled lump of cardiac muscle. Will his followers stand around at his funeral, howling about damned fags and fag enablers?

Dysfunctional family circus

And I do mean dys. What a horrible scene to come upon, and even worse, what evil chaos to have lived it:

A bed had been pushed up against the door; the officers pushed it open a few inches and saw Marquez choking his bloodied [three year old] granddaughter, who was crying in pain and gasping, Tranter said.

A bloody, naked 19-year-old woman who police later determined to be Marquez’s daughter and the girl’s mother was in the room, chanting “something that was religious in nature,” Tranter said.

The elder Marquez was tasered to stop him from strangling the child, and later died of unknown causes (although tasers are dangerous, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the cause of death).

And what, exactly, were these people trying to do to the kid? It was an exorcism. They were trying to purge the poor little girl of nonexistent malign spirits, when what she was probably afflicted with is an insane family.

What’s saddest about this story isn’t that the lunatic grandfather died; it’s that the bloody, naked fanatic who had the privilege to have this child was not arrested, and may still have custody. If she had anything to do with this crazy ritual, I hope someone gets the kid away from her soon.