Frank Schaeffer throws the ‘atheist fundamentalist’ bomb

Frank Schaeffer really detests most of the New Atheists (except for Dan Dennett; he loves Dennett to pieces). He thinks they’re just like the Christian fundamentalists, and he should know, since his father was one of the most fanatical evangelicals around, and he was part of that radical Christianity himself. He starts off with a damning assertion.

The most aggressive members of the “New Atheism” movement have quite a bit in common with religious extremists like Pat Robertson and Ted Haggard.

Whoa. That’s a strong accusation. I wonder what these points of commonality are?

I read his whole long complaint, and it boils down to precisely one point of similarity, and even that doesn’t hold up: the Richard Dawkins website has an online store, where you can buy his books and a scarlet A pin and t-shirts. That’s it. It doesn’t even hold up to casual criticism: I don’t think a defining characteristic of the money-grubbing fundagelicals like Roberts and Falwell and Robertson and Hagee and so forth is that they give their fans a chance to buy their books…it’s that they harangue them for donations, expect that true believers will tithe, and promise magical healing for money or hellfire for apostates. If you’ve attended any of Dawkins’ lectures, you know that he doesn’t throw up ads and say “buy my book”, and he certainly doesn’t bluster out veiled threats if you fail to support the Richard Dawkins Foundation.

All I can say about Schaeffer’s definition of a fundamentalist is that under it, if you’ve opened a Cafe Press store, that makes you the Pope of a money-gouging cult.

There are more gripes. The God Delusion includes a few citations to web sites; Frank is shocked and appalled, and is also really upset about the kids on his lawn. You can buy videos of his interviews on his website store, and in them, he doesn’t profess to absolute certainty about the non-existence of gods; he talks with people who like him, with enthusiastic audiences. He doesn’t like religion, and he’s unconvinced by the anthropic principle. Unfortunately for Schaeffer’s premise, these don’t necessarily make him a fundamentalist.

It’s very peculiar. To get into Frank Schaeffer’s good graces, Dawkins apparently must stop selling his books (I wonder…does Schaeffer give his books away for free?), abandon the web (a point Schaeffer is making in an article on the web), take a vow of silence, and be despised by people. He should also look kindly on religion and reject scientific explanations of our origins. In other words, Dawkins must become some kind of medieval anchorite, and only then will Frank Schaeffer respect his sincerity and be his friend.

It’s a small price to pay to be pals with such a pleasant person, I’m sure.

Our secret power…EXPOSED!

Professor Thomas Tang of Middle Tennessee State University has broken the code of silence and revealed one of the vast powers which are conferred upon us when we land an academic job. It’s true, professors can send you to hell.

Frustrated over cheating allegations, one professor at Middle Tennessee State University took the idea of a traditional honor code in a controversial direction.

Suspecting that one of his MBA candidates had just cheated on an exam, Professor Thomas Tang had each of them sign a pledge that said if they had cheated, they’d be condemned to an eternity in Hell.

The pledge went on to say if the student cheated they will “be sorry for the rest of [their] life and go to Hell.”

Don’t worry, though, I only use it sparingly — on students whose cell phones go off in class, on the ones who raise their hands and ask, “Will this be on the test,” and on the ones who write “YAY JESUS” on the class evaluation forms at the end of the term.

Oh, and just a hint: don’t cut off college professors in traffic.

Deep Rifts in Seattle

This is fast becoming the theme of news stories about atheists this year: that there are differences in tactics in the atheist community, with some people being more in-your-face about it (yours truly takes a bow), and others wanting to be more conciliatory towards religion. Well, how surprising that a movement of diverse freethinkers who value critical thinking, skepticism, and open argument, and which lacks either a charismatic central leader or a hierarchy of control, might have members with diverse views…

Here’s another example of journalists jumping on the bandwagon: a story about the Freedom From Religion Foundation meeting in Seattle, in which different people have different tactics.

Ho hum. Let me know when the atheists appoint a pope and start erecting monuments listing dogma and doctrine. That will be news-worthy. The revelation that atheists are a fractious bunch? Not so much.

There’s logic, and then there’s creationist logic

This argument is a new one on me.

i-58d257a10578172b1dca2f09c7338304-middlefinger.jpeg

If you can’t read it, click on it to see a larger original. I can try to summarize it, though. The middle finger is the longest finger on the human hand, and da Vinci drew it in his famous figure of Vitruvian Man, which illustrates ideal proportions…therefore, the Big Bang didn’t happen.

I think that if you do a lot of drugs, that will make sense.

I like Jerry Coyne’s explanation better.

Charlene Werner wants to go hide

You all laughed at this video of Charlene Werner explaining the physics of homeopathy.

But did you know that videos like this, where kooks are caught in the act, are endangered? It turns out that kooks don’t like it when their words are made public, especially when those words are so loony that they invite universal derision. The person who put that video on youtube has been sent an odd letter:

Dr Charlene Werner

I thought you would like to know that you will be contacted by Dr Werner’s Attorney shortly regarding her video. The posting of this video is in violation of copyright laws. We are aware that you have had this video up since March of ’08 however I suggest you delete it immediately.

Jayson Patrick

(This was sent to XanSimpson, not Charlene Werner, so the salutation is a bit confusing.)

Anyway, XanSimpson wants to know what to do. As is common practice in these cases, the answer is obvious: everyone who can should make a copy of the video. More people should link to it. Spread the word and share the information — let her threat of a takedown lead to greater dissemination of her words.

Welcome to the internet, Charlene.

No surprise at all

The copy-&-paste creationist is a familiar figure in internet debates — they don’t have an original idea in their head, but they know how to copy some long screed off the internet and paste it into a comment box, almost always without attribution, or even a link back to their source. I am completely unsurprised by the fact that Ray Comfort is a plagiarist who ripped off a brief biography of Darwin.

He stole the one piece of his introductory essay to the Origin that wasn’t awful. I suspect the rest, though, is of similarly dubious provenance.

The remainder of the pamphlet is as expected. DNA is too improbable to arise by chance, there are no transitional fossils, Hitler was a “Darwinist”, evolution and atheism share joint ideology, the eye is irreducibly complex, et cetera et cetera. He even trots out old nonsense about evolution and thermodynamics.

Anyone want to bet that if you take pieces of the creationist part of Comfort’s essay and plug them into google, you’ll find he’s parroting lots of familiar creationist sources?

Frustrated by Maine? Vent on a Canadian poll

It looks like justice was defeated in Maine, but we got a glimmer of success in Washington (Hooray for my home state!). I think everyone who is unhappy with Maine voters should go tromp on this Canadian poll just to get it out of your system.

Do you support same-sex marriage?

Absolutely, yes

21%
Sure, why not?

19%
Not really

11%
Absolutely, no

35%
I don’t care either way

14%

What counts next, of course, is for activists in Maine to get back to work. Same for everyone in every state…like Minnesota.

The law loves American Christianity

At first glance, I thought this story was good news: Oklahoma is going to build a Christian prison! About time, I thought, I can think of a few Christians who deserve a few years for faith-abuse. But no…it’s a prison to be administered by Christians to give Christian criminals special privileges. Not quite as appropriate, but more in line with what we’ve gotten used to from our dominant faith tradition.

We’re getting more of the same from Congress, too. Religion is being given permission to intrude on science once again, with the sanctimonious Orrin Hatch (abetted by a pair of Democrats, Kerry and Kennedy) sponsoring a provision in the mangled health care football to allow prayer to count as medicine. It’s specifically a sop to Christian Science, that nonsensical superstition that believes that medicine is a betrayal of faith and that wants to charge sick people money to pray over them…and also get reimbursement from the government. Let the Christian Scientists get a foot in the door and official recognition of mumbling to Jesus as a billable service, and you know the Scientologists and Jehovah’s Witnesses and Amish and Mormons and, of course, the Catholics will be surging through to take advantage of the opportunities.

I may just have to convert to Catholicism under this bill so I can charge the US and my insurance provider to cover my near-sightedness treatments at Lourdes. And the French Riviera.

You laugh. But look at the absurdity of existing loopholes.

The Internal Revenue Service, for example, allows the cost of Christian Science prayer sessions to be counted among itemized medical expenses for income tax purposes — one of the only religious treatments explicitly identified as deductible by the IRS.

Moreover, some federal medical insurance programs, including those for military families now reimburse for prayer treatment.

…

The Christian Science religious tradition has always emphasized the role of trained prayer practitioners. Their job, as outlined by the church’s founder, Mary Baker Eddy, is to pray for healing and charge for treatment at rates similar to those charged by doctors.

Practitioners are not regulated by the government, but many buy advertisements in a leading Christian Science publication. The publication requires an application process for the ads that includes the submission of patient testimonials, a practice that church leaders say is tantamount to a vetting process.

Davis has been trained as a practitioner and still occasionally treats the sick. “We’ll talk to them about their relationship to God,” he said. “We’ll talk to them about citations or biblical passages they might study. We refer to it as treatment.”

During the day, Davis may see multiple patients and pray for them at different moments. He charges them $20 to $40 for the day, saying, “I think that it would be considered modest by any standard.”

Modest in absolute terms, but relative to the quality of the “treatment”, that counts as a major ripoff.

We can at least hope that the bad publicity this provision is getting will lead to its removal…and even more optimistically, that it will lead to scrutiny of the unethical fraud of a secular government legitimizing any of these superstitious practices.

I hope the Oklahoma prison for pampered Christians is also found unconstitutional.

CFI is having an essay contest

It’s for college students only, and first prize is $2000. Come on, students, you’re used to churning out term papers, and that prize is substantial.

The topic of the essay is free expression.

The Campaign for Free Expression is a CFI initiative to focus efforts and attention on one of the most crucial components of freethought: the right of individuals to express their viewpoints, opinions, and beliefs about all subjects—especially religion.  To encourage free expression and to emphasize the importance of this fundamental right, CFI and its sister organization, The Council for Secular Humanism, are sponsoring this contest.

Given recent events in Chicago, that topic is ironic and rich in potential for discussion.