It’s embarrassing. Not only do we have Michele Bachmann, but the last election swept in a gang of know-nothing Rethuglican scum who’ve been trying to turn our state into Texas. Now they’ve invited the notorious evangelical crank Bradlee Dean to give an opening prayer. Dean, for those who don’t know of him, is a kind of Vox Day impersonator—he’s a raving homophobe with a parasitic ministry that targets public school. He puts on school assemblies that are nominally about fighting drugs and promiscuity, but are actually come-to-Jesus sessions. We see his vans tooling about on the highways now and then: “you can run but you can’t hide”, they proclaim.

Dean delivered his prayer, and it was a doozy.

I know this is a non-denominational prayer in this Chamber and it’s not about the Baptists and it’s not about the Catholics alone or the Lutherans or the Wesleyans. Or the Presbyterians the evangelicals or any other denomination but rather the head of the denomination and his name is Jesus. As every President up until 2008 has acknowledged. And we pray it. In Jesus’ name.

It was so offensive that one of the legislators vowed to never let him give a prayer in chambers ever again. How about going one step further and excluding all prayers from the legislature?

The CDC has issued a preparedness warning for the Zombie Apocalypse. I’m stockpiling water and shotgun shells now. Remember, AIM FOR THE HEAD.

He came to Minneapolis to whimper about gay marriage, and he got glittered.

Although the guy at the end who menacingly claims that they [Republicans?] don’t disturb their [gay?] events is rather creepy. I think the fact that they want to police what goes on in the bedroom goes beyond disturbing.

The Endless Thread is showing signs of stress and fatigue. I know, it wants to keep working, and it would probably willingly continue to sit there at its desk, scribbling madly, until it had a heart attack and keeled over, but as a kindly taskmasker hoping to wring a few more years of cheap labor out of it, I had to do something.

So I cashed in my frequent flyer miles and am sending the Thread to an exotic tropical island for a month.

Just imagine the Thread lying contentedly in a hammock on a sunny beach, with beautiful bikini-clad women and topless buff men bringing it sweet drinks in a coconut (with an umbrella!) all day long. It’s under orders to not say a word, to not even write a postcard back. Then, after days of languorous idleness beneath blue skies and nights of sweet romance and heedless dreams, it will come back refreshed and cheerful, ready to talk about nothing but fun and joy, and to embrace old friends once again.

I wish I were going now.

Perhaps you want to say goodbye and get in a few last words before departure, but no…I know how these prolonged farewells can drag on and on, so I’ve whisked the thread away under cover of night. You’ll have to content yourself with many alohas when it returns in June.

Bon voyage!

Everyone go say Happy Birthday to Larry Moran!

As you know by now, we’re in a fierce competition between myself, the mega-behemoth of godless blogging, against a ragtag flock of motley pee-wee bloggers, all to raise money for Camp Quest.

I am privy to certain emails that have been flying, I should mention, and they reveal that my opposition are scoundrels and rapscallions. They see defeat staring them in the face, and they have a desperate plan: they hope to recruit more atheists to their team, to try and outnumber me even further…not that it will help.

In the face of this threat, I have no choice: I sought out allies of my own. And once again, I have accomplished my plan with rapidity, stealing a march on the confused forces that think they can defeat me.

Yes. Team PZ has received the Official Endorsement of…Richard Dawkins. Contribute now. Or a pair of 900-pound godless gorillas will crush you.

Coral Ridge Ministries, that awful fundagelical organization founded by D. James Kennedy, has “discovered” a couple of former workers willing to testify about the evil practices of Planned Parenthood.

“They have an abortion budget and they have a certain number of patients that you have to perform abortions on every month, and there’s a dollar amount attached to each woman.”

Everett’s business plan included outreach in schools with talks given to break down children’s natural modesty and promote Everett and her clinic associates as trusted authorities for all things sexual.

Everett wanted students to “come to us with their sexual questions so we could put them on a low dose birth control pill we knew they’d get pregnant on. Of course we passed out condoms but we never passed out high quality condoms; we always used seconds or defective condoms. Our goal was to get the kids pregnant.”

The target, Everett says, was “three to five abortions between the ages of 13 and 18 from every girl we could find.”

I know, when you’re dealing with this brand of Christian, no lie is too low. But you’d think they’d at least care about plausibility.

Oh, wait…they believe that Jesus nonsense. I take it back, neither sleazy lies nor unbelievable absurdities are barriers to these guys.

That open letter to the NCSE by Jerry Coyne really seems to have set the cat among the pigeons — it’s an amazing flurry of ruffled feathers. I don’t see how there’s any hope of reconciliation, either, as long as the apologists for religion continue to be as obtuse as they have been. Roger Stanyard of the BCSE is unloading furiously on Richard Dawkins right now:

We don’t entirely know Peter but this is very definetly an attack on both the BCSE and the NCSE by the “New Atheists” including Richard Dawkins. It’s very personal and nasty as well. Basically they want the NCSE and the BCSE to back “New Atheism” and many of the people signing the letter are very hostile to us including and working with people who are religious.

The highlighting is mine, but the stupidity is Stanyard’s. How often do we have to repeat ourselves? There is no goal of turning the NCSE or the BCSE into an atheist organization; we think having an organization that is honestly neutral on the religious issue is extremely useful in advancing the cause of good science education for all. We want the NCSE/BCSE to support neither atheism nor religion.

You know what? The atheists in this argument have a crystal-clear understanding of the difference between atheism and secularism, and are saying that the science education organizations should be secular. It’s these sloppy accommodationists who have allowed liberal christianity to become their default position who have violated the distinction.

Where’s my rusty porcupine? If you want to understand why I despise the Templeton Foundation, just read the BS from their latest hero, Martin Rees, who advocates silence in the face of absurdity.

“Campaigning against religion can be socially counter-productive. If teachers take the uncompromising line that God and Darwinism are irreconcilable, many young people raised in a faith-based culture will stick with their religion and be lost to science. Moreover, we need all the allies we can muster against fundamentalism – a palpable, perhaps growing concern,” he wrote.

So…when someone says their god (an invisible, intangible being) infused a soul (an invisible, intangible imaginary vapor) into a human ancestor at some unspecifiable date by an indescribable mechanism, hold your tongue — don’t you dare point out that that is credulous unscientific garbage.

So…when someone claims their imaginary god works miracles by diddling subatomic particles at the quantum level, and there’s no way to detect this, but he knows this is how his magic man works, you’d better not mention that he’s illogical and promoting unscientific nonsense.

So…when our politicians and bureaucrats begin their meetings by asking everyone present to beg a nonexistent ghost to sprinkle magic illusions over the participants so that they’ll do their work better, we ought to close our eyes along with everyone else—presumably so we don’t see them making idiots of themselves.

I was just listening to Lawrence Krauss talk about his new book on Richard Feynman, and he closed the lecture with a fabulously appropriate quote.

Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

Richard Feynman

At least Feynman could see the centrality of honesty in science. Too bad Martin Rees lacks that much integrity —but then, if he had it, it would have disqualified him from the Templeton Prize.

Christopher Hitchens was scheduled to appear at the American Atheist convention, but had to cancel because of his illness. He sent this letter instead.

Dear fellow-unbelievers,

    Nothing would have kept me from joining you except the loss of my voice (at least my speaking voice) which in turn is due to a long argument I am currently having with the specter of death. Nobody ever wins this argument, though there are some solid points to be made while the discussion goes on. I have found, as the enemy becomes more familiar, that all the special pleading for salvation, redemption and supernatural deliverance appears even more hollow and artificial to me than it did before. I hope to help defend and pass on the lessons of this for many years to come, but for now I have found my trust better placed in two things: the skill and principle of advanced medical science, and the comradeship of innumerable friends and family, all of them immune to the false consolations of religion. It is these forces among others which will speed the day when humanity emancipates itself from the mind-forged manacles of servility and superstitition. It is our innate solidarity, and not some despotism of the sky, which is the source of our morality and our sense of decency. 

      That essential sense of decency is outraged every day. Our theocratic enemy is in plain view. Protean in form, it extends from the overt menace of nuclear-armed mullahs to the insidious campaigns to have stultifying pseudo-science taught in American schools. But in the past few years, there have been heartening signs of a genuine and spontaneous resistance to this sinister nonsense: a resistance which repudiates the right of bullies and tyrants to make the absurd claim that they have god on their side. To have had a small part in this resistance has been the greatest honor of my lifetime: the pattern and original of all dictatorship is the surrender of reason to absolutism and the abandonment of critical, objective inquiry. The cheap name for this lethal delusion is religion, and we must learn new ways of combating it in the public sphere, just as we have learned to free ourselves of it in private. 

    Our weapons are the ironic mind against the literal: the open mind against the credulous; the courageous pursuit of truth against the fearful and abject forces who would set limits to investigation (and who stupidly claim that we already have all the truth we need). Perhaps above all, we affirm life over the cults of death and human sacrifice and are afraid, not of inevitable death, but rather of a human life that is cramped and distorted by the pathetic need to offer mindless adulation, or the dismal belief that the laws of nature respond to wailings and incantations. 

       As the heirs of a secular revolution, American atheists have a special responsibility to defend and uphold the Constitution that patrols the boundary between Church and State. This, too, is an honor and a privilege. Believe me when I say that I am present with you, even if not corporeally (and only metaphorically in spirit…) Resolve to build up Mr Jefferson’s wall of separation. And don’t keep the faith.

    Sincerely

Christopher Hitchens