Gimme my iPod Touch!

While I’m off at meetings, you could be voting to help me win Eric Hovind’s iPod Touch. All you have to do is CLICK ON THIS LINK. Note that it has to be that link — it’s got an imbedded code in it to let the tabulators know that the incoming click comes from me, PZ Myers, so that the Hovind crew will know that they owe me a new toy.

This is the fourth creation minute video, and I think it’s the last one you should have to watch. Sometime after this they’ll tally up all the page views, and somebody will win.

This one, by the way, has Hovind defining science — “knowledge derived from observation and study” — and then giving six uses of the word evolution: cosmic, chemical, stellar, organic, macroevolution, and microevolution. Then he says that only microevolution is scientific. Wow. The cosmologists are going to be surprised that all that physics they’ve been doing is not science; the nuclear chemists are going to learn to their disappointment that all that work on fusion is unobserved and unstudied; the astronomers are going to have to remove the Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams from their textbooks; the biochemists have merely been imagining their work on metabolism and molecular biology; and the paleontologists, biogeographers, systematists, molecular geneticists, and bioinformaticians haven’t been observing and studying anything.

Only the population geneticists get to be called scientists. They’re going to be a bit surprised, too, because as a discipline you’ll be hard-pressed to find a group more unanimous in their support of evolution.

I know, it hurts so bad to be exposed to so much stupid, but it will be worth it when I get to show off my fancy gadget from Creation Science Evangelism. I’m going to especially enjoy all the creationist videos on it, and I hope they even have it engraved or slap a CSE sticker on the back of it.

I hope this isn’t like that Father Ted episode where they were going to lottery off a car, and had arranged ahead of time that Father Dougal would have the winning ticket number of 11. (They almost lost that one because Dougal confused himself by holding his ticket upside down…).

Scientology on trial

The French demonstrate their bravery by putting Scientology on trial:

The case centres on a complaint made in 1998 by a woman who said she was enrolled into Scientology after members approached her in the street and persuaded her to do a personality test.

In the following months, she paid more than €21,000 for books, “purification packs” of vitamins, sauna sessions and an “e-meter” to measure her spiritual progress, she said.

Other complaints then surfaced. The five original plaintiffs – three of whom withdrew after reaching a financial settlement with the Church of Scientology – said they spent up to hundreds of thousands of euros on similar tests and cures.

It’s a promising start, and I wish the lawyers trying to shut down the frauds of scientology good luck.

It’s only a start, though. Scientology is small fry; I think the next target ought to be Lourdes, which also racks up big money for the Catholic church and the various remoras of bunco artists pushing religion with false promises of cures and spiritual purification. I don’t see any difference at all between the papacy and L. Ron Hubbard’s empire of lies…why not hit them all?

Open thread

I am mired in meetings today (yes, it’s summer, I’m on a 9 month appointment, and I’m also on sabbatical…but necessity has roped me in yet again). I’m going to be wrestling with academic obligations almost all day, so you’re going to have to entertain yourselves for a bit. Here’s an open thread, say what you think!

For a little ferocious inflammatory commentary to prime the pump, here’s Pat Condell.

The Link

I got home late, and have just tuned in to The Link, the grossly overyhyped History Channel documentary on Darwinius masillae. I haven’t seen much of it so far, but there is good and bad. The good: lots of long closeups of the fossil itself. The bad: it’s kind of slow and talky. Fortunately, I haven’t seen any grand pronouncements that it’s going to change the universe, although the title is a bit annoying.

Those of you who have seen more of it can leave your comments and opinions here.

War is no place for the deluded

A good column by James Carroll in the Boston Globe criticizes the absurd piety being peddled in the military, especially the discovery of Iraq war briefings laced with militant Christianity. He lists 7 reasons why it is a bad idea that the military has become wrapped up in religious jingo.

  • Single-minded religious zealotry bedevils critical thinking, and not just about religion. Military and political thinking suffers when the righteousness of born-again faith leads to self-righteousness. Critical thinking includes a self-criticism of which the “saved” know little.

  • Military proselytizers use Jesus to build up “unit cohesion” by eradicating doubt about the mission, the command, and the self. But doubt – the capacity for second thought – is a military leader’s best friend. Commanders, especially, need the skill of skepticism – the opposite of true belief.

  • Otherworldly religion defining the afterlife as ultimate can undervalue the present life. Religion that looks forward to apocalypse, God’s kingdom established by cosmic violence, can help ignite such violence. Armageddon, no mere metaphor now, is the nuclear arsenal.

  • Religious fundamentalism affirms ideas apart from the context that produced them, reading the Bible literally or dogma ahistorically. Such a mindset can sponsor military fundamentalism, denying the context from which threats arise – refusing to ask, for example, what prompts so many insurgents to become willing suicides? Missing this, we keep producing more.

  • A military that sees itself as divinely commissioned can all too readily act like God in battle – using mortal force from afar, without personal involvement. An Olympian aloofness makes America’s new drone weapon the perfect slayer of civilians.

  • A bifurcated religious imagination, dividing the world between good and evil, can misread the real character of an “enemy” population, many of whom want no part of war with us.

  • The Middle East is the worst place in which to set loose a military force even partly informed by Christian Zionism, seeing the state of Israel as God’s instrument for ushering in the Messianic Age – damning Muslims, while defending Jews for the sake of their eventual destruction.

I read that and agreed with it all…except for one thing. Those criticisms don’t just apply to the military, they also apply to our civilian population. Maybe #5 is a bit of a stretch — most of us don’t have military drones at our disposal — but scale it down a bit, and picture a religious fanatic with a rifle aimed at an abortion doctor. It’s the same principle.

Strip away the specific references to the US military, and that whole thing is an argument that could have come straight from the keyboard of a New Atheist criticizing American culture in general.

A first hint of decency from the Irish Catholic church

The Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, has written what Catholics should have said from the very beginning of this Irish scandal. It really didn’t take much, just the recognition of failure.

The church has failed people. The church has failed children. There is no denying that. This can only be regretted and it must be regretted. Yet “sorry” can be an easy word to say. When it has to be said so often, then “sorry” is no longer enough.

He goes on to say that the church needs to get out of its state of denial, that they have to admit that they’ve done wrong, and that they have to make restitution. It’s a 180° reversal from what Bill Donohue was doing: blame the victims, blame the investigators, try to downplay the results of the investigation.

What Martin is saying is what I would have expected to hear from an organization with good intentions; Donohue was confirming what I expected to hear from an inherently unscrupulous institution. It will be interesting to see which approach ultimately wins out.

Unfortunately, Martin still seems to think his religion is a force dedicated to doing good for humanity. It’s sweet that he still thinks so, but then, he’s an archbishop, and well-schooled in the art of self-delusion.