I guess I haven’t made it to the big time yet

Liberty University has this new program to adopt a liberal…and then pray really hard for them. It’s a good idea, since if nothing else, it keeps the rapscallions off the street doing something entirely unproductive. Unfortunately, looking at their list of liberals, most of ’em ain’t. Olympia Snowe? Arnold Schwarzenegger? Hilary Clinton? Barack Obama? They’re moderate to conservative. I’ll give them Barney Frank and Barry Lynn, but even there, they aren’t exactly bomb-throwing radicals out to overthrow the government and replace it with communism, free love, and LSD in the water supply.

And Barry Lynn is a minister. I think that means that hostile prayers are repelled with +5 on his saving throw, so it’s a wasted effort already.

I think they should pray for me. I’m much more deserving, and in their theology, actually need prayer much more. I’m so awful, they’re going to have to gang together a team of a thousand devout Christians, arms locked in prayer, 24 hours a day. I sure hope they get on it soon, because I’m feeling a total absence of the Lord right now.

I hate you, New Jersey

One flaw with a small school in a remote location is that we only occasionally get great speakers to come all the way out here to give lectures. Now look here: Rutgers has Alan Leshner coming out to speak on Evolution’s Impact on Science and Society, while Princeton has Sean Carroll speaking on Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species.

On the same day and time.

This is no fair. I want them to release one of them and ship them out to Morris, Minnesota. I promise, there won’t be much competition.

An evening in Minot

The Minot meeting this evening was lots of fun; what made it especially entertaining was that it was attended by a few fervently deluded creationists who boldly asked questions at the end. I got a few variants of “you’re uncivil, so I think you’re wrong” (tough — peddle bullshit arguments, I’ll call you a bullshitter), the “you just have different presuppositions than I do” argument (which works wonderfully in arguments for the existence of Santa Claus), and the claim that “creationists and scientists look at the same facts and just interpret them differently” (not true, creationists selectively ignore most of the facts). I also got a few specific questions outside my field, like the one about the shrinking sun. Too bad I didn’t have my counter-creationism handbook with me, because this is a stunt they always pull: I talk about genetics and molecular biology, so they pepper me with misconceptions about physics and geology.

Anyway, I did show one amusing video at the end of my talk to illustrate creationist theology. Here it is:

Sometime, I have to get some sleep, though. And sometime, I have to drive all the way back to Morris. Oy, this has been a long week. What day is it?

Monday?

Oh, crap.

Why not Minot?

I have to finish writing up all the interesting stuff I heard at the AAI convention, but once again, I’m on the road — I’m driving up to Minot, ND to give a talk tonight at 7pm in the Aleshire Theater on the MSU campus. I’m going to be spending most of my day driving, I think, and then talking, and sleeping, and driving back, and then getting a whole two days of relaxation at home.

I have then crazily agreed to appear in a Canadian prime-time documentary by a Christian film company (I must have delusions of being the reincarnation of Daniel) which will be in part filmed at the Creation “Museum”…so a little more travel. This could be interesting. At least they were a bit more honest in their invitation than the wankers who made Expelled.

Conservapædia has a new project

The far right wing has long rested their authority on Biblical truth — how can you possibly question them if they speak for God, after all? There is one little problem, however.

The Bible is suffused with liberal bias. A lot of the Old Testament isn’t bad, but the New Testament, when Jesus makes the scene, suddenly takes a turn into commie-land, with it’s talk of helping the poor and camels and needles and so forth. Jesus was obviously misquoted all over the place.

So what to do? When your claim of godly authority rests on your interpretation of God’s holy word, but God’s holy words contradict your desired ends, you’re in a bit of a pickle. There is a solution, though: rewrite the Bible and change the liberal bits! For this reason some of the deranged editors at Conservapædia have launched The Conservative Bible Project, which will purge the wimpy stuff and return it to it’s authentic roots, as a book that could have been written by a dumb-as-a-stick American Republican NRA member who wants to kill communists and A-rabs.

I’m not joking. They cite as reasons for a rewrite the fact that the Bible uses the term “comrade” three times, and acknowledges the existence of laborers thirteen times. It’s practically a Marxist/Leninist tract.

They conveniently give an example of the kind of thing that needs to be fixed.

The earliest, most authentic manuscripts lack this verse set forth at Luke 23:34:

Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Is this a liberal corruption of the original? This does not appear in any other Gospel, and the simple fact is that some of the persecutors of Jesus did know what they were doing. This quotation is a favorite of liberals but should not appear in a conservative Bible.

As we all know, after all, Jesus really wasn’t into that “forgiveness” thing.

There will be some little problems with commenting on this article (besides the usual boneheaded glitches in the Sb commenting system). A while back, we had some serious problems with spamming by the Conservapædia cretins, and I had to put the word “conservapedia” into the filter file. You can’t use that word or your comment will get blocked! That means you won’t be able to link directly to Conservapædia, and that you’ll need to use the Pharyngula-approved spelling of their name, which includes that foreign, European ligature — just type Conservapædia. It also infuriates them, making the little work-around well worth doing.

AAI: Atheists are very nice people

They also enjoy a little something to drink.

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I was pleasantly surprised to discover a bottle of OriginAle: Darwinian IPA and an imperial stout, Gudeløs, waiting for me when I checked in. The Danish contingent wants me to come out to their big meeting in June in Copenhagen…I am so there. Bribes were completely redundant.

The RDF is also giving the speakers bottles of merlot, nicely personalized with etching. Now I have to decide whether to drink it or save it…ah, I think I’ll drink it and save the bottle.

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In the non-drinkable category (really! That’s not what we’re all about, and I haven’t seen a single drunk atheist this whole weekend!), the pleasantly surly people at Surly-Ramics gave me this lovely necklace with a familiar motif.

Thanks everyone!

AAI: I am an ACTOR!

Just not a very good one, but you’ll see for yourselves. I spent the morning in heaven, which consists of a well-lit white screen in Southern California, trying to master my lines for a future Mr Deity episode. That stuff is harder than it looks. We went through many takes while my brain was freezing up at inopportune moments — there’s a reason not everyone is a movie star, that’s for sure.

Anyway, “Lucy” and “Mr Deity” are actually Amy and Bryan, and they have a nice house with a couple of kids, two dogs, and a cat, and the episodes are filmed in the family room. I hope I haven’t shattered any of your illusions. Amy made me pancakes, I think because she’s very nice, but it might also have been to load up the klutzy professor’s sputtering brain with carbohydrates so that maybe he’d remember his lines.

I made it through it all, though, and I’m hoping that Mr Deity will be able to work a miracle and make me look good with some creative editing. You’ll probably see the results next week. It can’t possibly be worse than Expelled!

By the way, he mentioned that they’re hoping to build up the budget to make a half-hour pilot, which would be awesome — Mr Deity as weekly dose of broadcast irreverence for American living rooms would be an excellent and entertaining corrective. Support them if you can!