How about waterproof, buoyant pizza?

Having read Mooney’s Storm World last week, I can’t be too disturbed by this bit of news: the pizza man who is fanatically devoted to the pope, Tom Monaghan, is opening his new planned town dedicated to Catholic values next Saturday. There will be no porn or contraceptives available in town, but I hear there will be a whole clinic dedicated to pediatric proctology on Main Street.

Anyway, the town is Ave Maria, Florida. Mooney’s book points out that one of the looming problems from catastrophic storms and global warming is man-made, the growing investment in valuable infrastructure and population in precisely those areas at risk from natural disaster. This gives me an idea: I think the southern coastal states ought to give incentives to religious organizations to build along the shores. Pull back all those merely material and economic developed resources farther inland, and construct wall-to-wall religious enclaves everywhere that we worry about hurricanes instead, as a bulwark against acts of god.

We can’t lose. If they’re right, their prayers and purity will stave off disaster. If they’re wrong, well, no loss to the country if ten thousand churches get inundated.

It also puts a nefarious twist on the closing quote in the story.

Monaghan has said his goal is to help as many people as possible get to Heaven. And he hopes these homeowners will have a head start.

Hide the guillotines, they’re on to us!

We should be quaking in our jackboots: a media counterattack is being launched against us wicked atheists. They have a website!

American Vision is launching a relentless and systematic response to militant atheism. We’ve produced a brilliant 2-minute commercial that we plan to broadcast globally via the Internet and Television. Atheists present themselves as enlightened and civil. But this new commercial will reveal the shocking truth to viewers. The French Revolution, Communism, Nazism, etc. have taught us that the atheistic worldview will inevitably lead to the persecution of Christians and the killing of anyone who gets in the way. What’s worse is that atheism is paving a wide road for Islam to advance in our nation and around the world.

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A general predilection for delusion

The first review of my talk yesterday is in! Too bad it is from somebody who wasn’t there and who is a world-class fool. Yes, it’s Michael Egnor again, and he’s got a lengthy post up with the pretext of giving me advice on future talks, but is really an attempt to preempt my arguments and chide me for my crazy materialist position. He doesn’t even come close to any of my arguments, and he makes false assumptions all over the place about what I and the audience think. I’m used to straw men from creationists, but this is ridiculous.

Here’s what I actually said at the talk.

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All the mistakes of the godly are merely metaphor

Imagine you found a population in the US where the majority of the people believed that 2+2=5, and that attempts to correct them with the actual, correct result of adding two numbers were regarded as insults to their revered traditions. I think we’d all agree that they a) they were wrong; b) they were misled, misinformed, and miseducated; c) that they were ignorant of arithmetic; or d) might very well have been maliciously deceived by someone in their midst. Somehow, though, if the ridiculous error involves God, some people take a big step backwards and are appalled that anyone might criticize them. Those “revered traditions” become more than mere excuses, they are inviolate.

You guessed it, once again someone was aggravated that I have dared to call adherence to religious belief a case of being “ignorant, deluded, wicked, foolish, or oppressed.” This time our indignant contestant is Mark A. R. Kleiman, who considers it atheistic bigotry to enumerate the reasons why people might come to absurd and erroneous conclusions. That 80-90% of this population, which is not hypothetical at all but is the entire US, believes that chanting their wishes into the sky might get them granted by a magic being, or that over half use the excuse of their religious dogma to reject the basic facts of modern biology, is something we must not question and especially must not criticize. Because it is religion, it must be respected.

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Spontaneous religion — that’s our test

The new burned-over district lies in the wreckage of Russia — take a look at the new weird cults flowering in Siberia. Jesus is hanging out on a hilltop there, even.

There’s something strange in the human brain that, when people are uncertain and stripped of security and bewildered by too much change, they try to find refuge in any nonsense, no matter how ridiculous, as long as it’s said confidently and is reinforced by social pressures. This is a real phenomenon that’s cropped up again and again in human history, and it’s sad to see it rising again.

People have been talking a lot about these “New Atheists” lately, and I haven’t liked the term at all. I don’t think we can call anyone a “New Atheist” yet, until they actually come up with something new…and I think the new thing, the Holy Grail of godlessness, ought to be the articulation of a framework for rational thought, ethics, and social organization that excludes reliance on divinity or revelation, and yet is strong enough to anchor human minds in the face of desolation. Not another cult like the brew fermenting in Russia, but a defense against cultish thinking that inoculates the mind against that kind of susceptibility.

Somebody figure that one out for me, willya?

Oops, someone needs a lesson in “framing”

Sheril seems like a well-intentioned person, but when she decides to step into the science/religion wars, it’s a horrendous mistake to label atheists as “fundamentalists” (a term I despise) and compare me to Rush Limbaugh. Without even saying a word about her position on the issue, it’s quite clear where she stands.

While giving us that great big clue, though, she also fails to explain anything about how religion and science are supposed to interact — she just calls for a “discussion”. You cannot get a productive discussion if one side hides their point of view.

Shorter me: Sheril violated Blake’s Law.

Open season on gay men, apparently

Religion can be used to justify anything. Even the virtues of killing the innocent. It’s amazing how the combination of needing to control sexual behavior and the presence of an accommodating religious impulse can lead to deeply deranged behavior.

A Cypress man charged in the death of a Southwest Airlines flight attendant said Saturday that he was doing God’s work when he went to a Montrose-area bar last month, hunting for a gay man to kill.

“I believe I’m Elijah, called by God to be a prophet,” said 26-year-old Terry Mark Mangum, charged with murder June 11. ” … I believe with all my heart that I was doing the right thing.”

Interviewed in the Brazoria County Jail Saturday morning, Mangum said he feels no remorse for killing 46-year-old Kenneth Cummings Jr., whom relatives described as a “loving” son who never forgot a holiday and a devoted uncle who had set up college funds for his niece and nephew. He worked at Southwest for 24 years.

Mangum, who described himself as “definitely not a homosexual,” said God called on him to “carry out a code of retribution” by killing a gay man because “sexual perversion” is the “worst sin.”

Think for a moment for a few words to describe yourself. Would “definitely not a homosexual” be one of the first phrases to come to mind? Somebody is a little obsessed.

And if sexual perversion is the worst sin, how come it didn’t make it into the ten commandments? “Murder” is in there, though. This fellow who studied the Bible for “thousands of hours” seems to have missed that.

The great parasite and liar in the sky

There is a little girl dying of cancer in Seattle (there are, of course, little girls dying of cancer everywhere). There’s a positive aspect to the story, of a community pulling together and providing support for her family, but there is also a poisonous taint to it all—most of the support isn’t actually for a suffering young girl, but for a communal fantasy.

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Good ol’ Christian tolerance

This is amusing in so many ways to an atheist. Christian activists tried to disrupt a Hindu prayer in the Senate.

It’s absurd but so typical of Christian extremists that they would freak out at the imposition of a prayer that does not reflect their beliefs — welcome to my world, guys. We learn from an early age that the appropriate response is just to wait it out and not participate … and that any protests have to be made at an appropriate opportunity.

I’ll also point out that while everyone is pissed at the crazy Christians, the Hindu prayer is a rather vapid bit of meaningless nonsense, too…something about a transcendental glory living in the soul of the heavens, bla bla bla. The only part I liked was the request to lead us from the unreal to the real, which is exactly what I say all the time. Only I don’t address it to an unreal superman living in hearts.

Anyway, the only fair response to all this is simply to stop the magic incantations to any deity in our government. Let the senators who feel a need say a quiet prayer on their own, without dragging everyone into their personal superstition. And let’s chide any senators who complain about that for the weakness of their faith, that they can’t even pray without someone at the front of the room to help them out.