Our job is done, atheists!

trumpxian

Pat yourselves on the back. God is dead and has been removed from American politics. And we owe this victory to an unexpected hero, Donald Trump.

You see, the crass, vulgar narcissist who hasn’t shown a hint of piety ever in his entire life has assembled a religious advisory board, and some of the most prominent names in conservative Christianity have stampeded to be on it. Richard Land is on board to to give spiritual counsel and advice and to speak Biblical truth. Trump has Robert Jeffress, Jerry Falwell Jr., and Ralph Reed. He’s got Michele Bachmann and James Dobson. Tony Perkins and Mike Huckabee are cheering him on. And don’t forget, he’s also got the majority of the conservative electorate.

Mr. Trump has received widespread support from Evangelical leaders, communities and voters, winning the majority of the Evangelical vote throughout the primaries.

It is absolutely clear that none of this support is thanks to Trump’s lifelong service to their god, and some long-standing, activist evangelical Christians do see right through him.

Today, a candidate whose worldview is greed and whose god is his appetites (Philippians 3) is being tacitly endorsed by this throng.

They are saying we are Republicans no matter what the candidate believes and no matter how vile and unrepentant his character.

They are not a phalanx of God’s prophets confronting a wicked leader, this is a parade of elephants.

In 1980 I believed that Christians could dramatically influence politics. Today, we see politics fully influencing a thousand Christian leaders.

This is a day of mourning.

God beliefs don’t matter any more. The Christian Right has surrendered. We won without really trying!

Of course, then we have to ask, if it isn’t a god that’s uniting these people, what is it?

That’s also clear. Hatred of others — the LGBTQ community is still in their sights. Controlling everyone’s personal life — they need to tell everyone what they’re allowed to do in the bedroom. Keeping women shackled and oppressed — that women dare to control their own reproduction is an abomination to them. Immigrants, brown people with strange accents who don’t sound like their grandparents, are the enemy. Hell, if you don’t say “Merry Christmas” with sufficient fervor, you’re in need of scourging. The Christians who don’t share these repressive views are not lining up behind Trump.

I’ll also disagree with Michael Farris, who is mourning the end of the Christian Right: this is no surprise and no change. The Christian Right, the Moral “Majority”, have always been about a kind of social tyranny. All that’s happened now is that the godly mask has fallen off, and we see their faces clearly. These are the witch-hunters and parasites and con artists and prudes and puritans who have plagued us forever — not the shining champions of a benign deity, but narrow-minded, frightened zealots.

Thanks, Donald, for helping.

Of course, now that the mask has slipped, atheists aren’t actually done — we have to wake up to the fact that fighting an illusion isn’t particularly useful. Maybe, just maybe, we should change our targets to the reality of the oppression of women, minorities, sexual minorities, and all the things that the god-botherers were actually doing, and still are doing, while they pretended to be doing God’s Work.

You’re not really going to go on imagining that Donald Trump is a sincere Man of Faith, are you?

Always listen to the Glib Sociopath

glibsociopath

But, you ask, how do I recognize a Glib Sociopath, the better to obey their authority? That’s easy. They usually put an “R” after their name.

Almost Every GOP Senator Just Voted to Keep Letting Terror Suspects Buy Guns

I agree that that bill is problematic: when being put on the terrorist watch list seems to be a matter of whims by conservative law enforcement officers, being a “suspect” is a damned poor excuse for suspending a privilege. But I also have no doubt that the same people are against closing the gun show loophole, or requiring reasonable background checks or waiting periods, and think a history of domestic violence is not grounds to deny someone a gun.

Cui bono?

The Trump campaign is flaming out spectacularly. His campaign financials have been released, and, much as I hate the way politics is priced out of reach for most people, he’s a loser.

Donald Trump’s campaign is almost broke, and is paying an unusual amount of money to Trump-owned businesses. That’s according to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s FEC filing, details of which were released Monday night.

The report provided a number of rather shocking facts, including that his campaign raised just $3.1 million in May compared to Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s $27 million.

Even worse, you might wonder where that small sum of money is going. It’s going to Donald Trump, of course.

He’s also paying himself a salary, which is really weird for a billionaire running for president, and one of his biggest outlays is $208,000…for hats.

This is a joke candidate, right? Either that, or it’s the ultimate end game of capitalism: a guy paying himself to promote himself to become president of the US.

At least I’m becoming less worried that an inflamed orange hemorrhoid will be elected president.

Get out of our way, Elon Musk

We at UMM are having our yearly HHMI-sponsored summer research program. In addition to having undergraduates working away in our labs, we also have some more social activities — and yesterday we joined with the science students at the Morris public schools for a bottle rocket launch.

No, not that kind of bottle rocket. In this case, they using two liter plastic bottles, filling them up with some water, and then pumping them up with air pressure. Then…whoosh, off they go. The rockets were also assembled with fins and nose cones and those traditional bits. The elementary and middle school kids had to deal with various constraints — they had “budgets”, and had to “pay” for every bit of cardboard and duct tape they stuck on their bottles, and also for the water fuel and the amount of pressure they put in the bottles. They also had specific goals: distance traveled, time aloft, that sort of thing. Our HHMI students had no constraints, so it was a little unfair. They weren’t part of the competition, though, and the kids whose rockets outperformed the college students’ got extra points on their victory, so it was OK.

The UMM rockets did pretty well, but yeah, some of the kids’ rockets with their minimal approach did do better.

[Read more…]

Richard Carrier’s blog

One of our writers, Richard Carrier, has been banned from Skepticon for “his repeated boundary-pushing behavior”. This is, obviously, a serious accusation, and we’ve been investigating further. We now have several first-hand reports of persistent, obnoxious sexual behavior in defiance of specific requests that he cease. We believe his accusers.

Here at Freethoughtblogs, we are sex-positive, but we are also committed to the principle of consensual sexual behavior. We go further, and beyond demanding that there always be consent, we also insist on respect for your partners. No means no, not just because it’s held as a dogmatic rule, but because it reflects a sincere appreciation of the autonomy of other people. We cannot tolerate violations of this essential principle.

While Dr Carrier has been a valued contributor to this network, we have to demand support of that principle in actions as well as words. After a review of the evidence so far, Richard Carrier’s posting privileges have been suspended, pending further evaluation, and all comments on his blog have been closed.

If you wish to make a testimonial, pro or con, about Dr Carrier, you can send them to me in confidence. We will consider all the evidence before making a final decision on his case.

We also support Skepticon and their commitment to equality and justice. If you do too, donate.

Tell me again that it’s a Muslim problem

It’s a homophobia problem. It’s a problem of conservative theology that uses gods as an excuse for heinous crimes.

This particular news program goes out of its way to get liberal ministers to oppose the hatemongers, but they’re just as bad: rationalizing your behavior as “this is what my god wants me to do” is just as fallacious when it’s supporting humanist views as when it’s supporting murderous views. How about suggesting that we not kill, because they are fellow human beings, or that we should be tolerant, because human beings have diverse views, and behavior that does not harm others ought to be accepted?

Most useful paper I’ve read this week

I’m teaching our science writing course in the Fall, and I’m also one of the instructors in our teachers’ workshop next month (we still have room for more participants!). And now I’ve found a useful, general, basic paper that I have to hand out.

Motulsky, HJ (2014) Common Misconceptions about Data Analysis and Statistics. JPET 351(1):200-205.

What it’s got is clear, plain English; brevity; covers some ubiquitous errors; will be incredibly useful for our introductory biology students. You should read it, too, for background in basic statistical literacy. Here’s the abstract.

Ideally, any experienced investigator with the right tools should be able to reproduce a finding published in a peer-reviewed biomedical science journal. In fact, however, the reproducibility of a large percentage of published findings has been questioned. Undoubtedly, there are many reasons for this, but one reason may be that investigators fool themselves due to a poor understanding of statistical concepts. In particular, investigators often make these mistakes: 1) P-hacking, which is when you reanalyze a data set in many different ways, or perhaps reanalyze with additional replicates, until you get the result you want; 2) overemphasis on P values rather than on the actual size of the observed effect; 3) overuse of statistical hypothesis testing, and being seduced by the word “significant”; and 4) over-reliance on standard errors, which are often misunderstood.

I can probably open any biomedical journal and find papers that commit all four of those errors.