A quick update

I’ve been neglecting you, O Readers! It’s been a busy couple of days out here in sunny Arizona — they keep telling me it is a surprisingly cool weekend, which I take to mean it is a blazing hellhole most of the time — and I’ve been having a grand time attending talks and deferring any worries about what I’m going to say tonight. Here are a few of the highlights:

  • I had a very nice dinner with some weirdos from ASU, and also had a well attended meetup at Rúla Búla. The Trophy Wife and daughter attended for the first time, and they were clearly baffled by all those strange people who wanted their photograph taken with me.

  • I very much enjoyed a talk by William Lobdell, author of the book Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America-and Found Unexpected Peace(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). It was one of those very humanist talks — lots of empathy for the religious, but pulling no punches at denouncing their problems.

  • Barbara Forrest gave an excellent talk on a familiar subject: how intelligent design creationism really is built on a purely religious foundation. It was very tightly argued — you can see why the creationists fear her. (Buy her book(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)!)

  • They had musical entertainment for Friday night: Roy Zimmerman. I coulda swooned. Too bad he didn’t play this one for Lynch’s benefit.

  • John Lynch asked “Was there a Darwinian revolution?” Like a typical history/philosophy science nerd, his answer was yes and no, but mostly no. It’s very annoying that I’ve been finding myself progressively more sympathetic to historical and philosophical questions that I had to agree with him. Darn it. Anyway, you can see his presentation slides, or even watch a podcast of Lynch in action. I think he’s trying to become King of All Media.

  • Norma Ramos gave a powerful speech on women’s rights and the trafficking in women. This was not comfortable or cheerful, but it was important stuff that needed to be said.

  • The Rev. Barry Lynn gave one of his usual great talks — how to tell if you might be a right-wing fundamentalist. Seriously, if you ever have a chance to attend one of his lectures, don’t miss it…he can find the humor in the most horrific excesses of the religious right, and he’s hated by them even more than we atheists are.

OK, now I have to get back to meeting stuff and thinking about what I should say tonight. It’s been a very good conference, so there is some pressure not to be a let-down here!

A heartbreaking absence of empathy

Cheyenne Cherry has a very pretty name. It’s too bad that the person isn’t quite so pretty a human being.

She and an unidentified juvenile allegedly broke into Valerie Hernandez’s Tinton Ave. apartment on May 6 and trashed the place.
Then in a shocking act of animal abuse, they tossed the woman’s kitten, Tiger Lily, into the stove and cranked up the temperature, ASPCA assistant director Joe Pentangelo said.

Cherry told authorities that she and her accomplice “thought we would play a joke on Valerie and mess up her apartment.”
The duo bolted from the apartment with DVDs and packages of noodles, Pentangelo said.

“She didn’t want to hear the cat crying and scratching at the oven door,” Pentangelo said.
Firefighters found the female cat’s remains smoldering in the oven after neighbors complained of smoke coming from Hernandez’s apartment.

I simply do not understand that kind of behavior at all. Why would anyone commit such a random act of unmitigated cruelty? A kitten is a small thing in the world…but it seems to me that how we treat the small and helpless is a measure of how we see ourselves.

It’s another review of the Creation “Museum”

I know, they’re getting a little old. It’s just that we have this glaringly obvious monument to ignorance in our midst, one that is hard to just ignore, so everyone has to take a crack at it. This one does make a few interesting points, at least. For instance…

Of course, the Bible in no place says that it is to be interpreted literally. What is the “literalism” manifesto, then, if not interpretive? Here’s an example of how the literalism plays out, from the Museum literature. Ham’s children’s book, Dinosaurs of Eden, raises the specter of the “day-age theory”–the theory that each biblical “day” in Genesis actually represents an “age.” The advantage of this view for some believers is that it might fit rather well with evolutionary theory–better, at least, than the seven-day alternative. This is not the Museum’s view, although it has a long history within U.S. Christian fundamentalism (including a defense by fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan at the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial). Here’s what Ham’s book says about the theory: “God worked for six days and then rested for one. This is where our seven-day week comes from! If God created everything in six long periods (or millions of years), our week would be millions of years long! That wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever.”

“That wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever.” Isn’t that just the perfect phrase for most of Ken Ham’s turns of twisted logic?

Unfortunately, the article also ends with a tiresome cliche, considering how much like religion science is. At least the author says he thinks science is more than just another faith, but he still waffles over the idea of science as a kind of authoritarian tradition. Sorry, guy…if you don’t see science as a process that empowers questioning and change, you aren’t doing it right.

Another travel day

What a strange experience…I’m actually leaving Morris, Minnesota for a weekend and I’m bringing the Trophy Wife with me. She’s usually left behind (no doubt sighing with relief), but this time she’s coming along with me to Tempe, Arizona. It’s probably only because our daughter is there this summer, but I’ll take it.

Anyway, behave yourselves while I’m away. I should be able to check in and clean up after the trolls, but my net access may be a bit infrequent for a while.

Oh, and I’ll see some of you at Rúla Búla tonight!