Oooh, this has got to sting. The NRCC has pulled all of its advertising budget from the Michele Bachmann campaign. I’m shocked that even Republicans have limits to what they will support.
We were just talking about Al, and now I learn that he’ll be making a campaign stop on my campus on Monday, 27 October, at 10:30am in Oyate Hall in the student center. I don’t even have classes at that time, so I’ll be able to stop by and join the cheering crowds — if you’re somewhere nearby, come on around.
Greg Lloyd attended the Northern Kentucky University mock trial of evolution/creation, and sent back a report. The scenario was that a teacher tried to advocate creationist theories in a public high school classroom, was fired for it, and is trying to sue for reinstatement. Here’s Greg’s account of the event.
Several Pharyngulites and I (ggab and his friend) attended last evenings mock trial at NKU. You can see pictures of the event here:
http://gallery.me.com/gllopc#100069
The pictures include the question the audience/jury was asked, and the results.
36% Believe she should remain fired
2% Believe she should remain fired, but for other reasons
31% Should be given her job back unconditionally (that is, she should be permitted to continue presenting research by young earth scientists that challenges evolution)
4% Believed should she keep her job, providing she stop including young earth science research as part of her teaching
28% Believed she should keep her job, if she agrees to make it clear when teaching young earth research that most scientists reject that research and accept evolution as the explanation for the origins of the Earth and its plant and animal lifeSome rounding up was obviously done, as this equals 101%.
The mock trial itself was a bit confusing, as it was unclear what was being argued: the wrongful termination of the teacher, or creation science versus evolution. Ggab believed that there may have been some confusion between the mock attorneys and witnesses in that the school board’s attorney argued that the teacher was given a warning to cease the teaching of “creation science”, where the teacher’s attorney argued that no warning was ever given. Ggab believed that it was settled ahead of time that warning was given, and perhaps the teacher’s attorney conveniently forgot, or veered off script. They then introduced witnesses that argued for or against creation science, which seemed non-sequitur.
The teacher’s expert, Dr. Scripture, played a video, as seen in the pics, which showed the inner workings of a cell. His argument was for irreducible complexity. Dr. Scripture made sure to get in a plug for his website, as well as the Expelled DVD.
The school boards expert, Ed Kagin, was both entertaining and informative. He was twice accused of filibustering by the fired teachers attorney. The audience enjoyed him. He called the teacher a “liar” for teaching creation science in class, and yet calling herself science teacher.
The evening ended with a Q&A. Dr. Scripture appeared to have a plant in the audience (he was reading from a sheet of paper) who brought up microevolution versus macroevolution. Dr. Scripture gave his explanation, saying that there is no proof of macroevolution since it can’t be observed, only inferred via the fossil record. Immediately after a biology professor at NKU stood and gave examples of macroevolution, citing the evolution of batwings, as well as Cortez’ army’s immunity to small pocks during the invasion of the Aztecs – noting that over 90% of the Aztecs perished to the disease. She was the only person to be applauded the entire evening.
When exiting the auditorium a table was setup with creation science materials, including a DVD on creation science. No pro-evolution material was on the table (that I noticed).
It was an interesting evening to say the least.
Someone has been targeting politician’s homes for vandalism: it includes both Democrats and Republicans, including Michele Bachmann and Norm Coleman and John Kline and Amy Klobuchar. Despite their different political affiliations, all of the spray painted messages on the homes have the same message: they call them “traitor” or “scum”, demand resignation, and reference the same bible verse. So all we know at this point is that they have one deranged source, and whoever it is is almost certainly not an atheist. The verse in question is Psalm 2, which is typical biblical noise about demanding that defiant kings must serve the lord.
By the way, this has been a vicious campaign season here in Minnesota, not that that excuses such behavior. Norm Coleman in particular has been awful: he’s running an ad all the time right now that outright calls Al Franken a “pornographer” and throws sleaze like it was confetti. I haven’t been able to find a copy of it on youtube yet, but here’s a critique of Coleman’s negative campaigning that shows one example.
I’ll be relieved when this election cycle is finally over…I just hope the Rovian slimebeasts don’t win, again.
Bill Dembski gave a talk at Baylor recently, and we have a rather thorough account of his lecture. Basically, it’s the usual creationist rope-a-dope: ask for the impossible (give me every single step in the evolution of a process) and garbled distortion of useful concepts (in this case, of information), then declare that evolution has failed.
And already the War on Christmas nonsense is starting up. Why, I remember they used to wait until after Thanksgiving before they’d put up the Christmas lights and install Santa in the shopping malls and start complaining about how the atheists were out to destroy Christmas, and every year it came earlier and earlier.
I’m a traditionalist. I’m going to wait until mid-December to put up my Christmas tree and subvert the holiday.
Some people like to claim that religion is here to stay and we can never hope to change it.
Yes, we can.
I am well aware that lately there have been several horrifying blog posts here, of a nature that might make a rational liberal want to hide under her bed or move to Scandinavia or something. So how about this for a change: Rudy Rucker has an article on the portrayal of sex in science fiction which will either titillate or weird you out. I suspect the difference will be on whether you like sex as the excitement of the exotic, or the comfort of the familiar (recognizing, of course, that everyone wobbles about a bit between those extremes). SF’s versions of sex can be awesomely weird, and sometimes very disquieting and unerotic — Delaney and Tiptree and Farmer didn’t always make it sound like fun and games.
Well, this certainly sounds like a fun experiment.
n a bizarre experiment, academics at The Oxford Centre For Science Of The Mind ‘tortured’ 12 Roman Catholics and 12 atheists with electric shocks as they studied a painting of the Virgin Mary.
They found that the Catholics seemed to be able to block out much of the pain.
Except, of course, for a few problems with the experiment. First, an atheist like me would find being afflicted with Catholic iconography would be a compounding of the torture. They did try to control for that by also having subjects contemplate a Renaissance portrait of a woman with no overt religious connection (although, as we know from stories of Catholics around the world, they will call a grease stain blob a portrait of the Virgin Mary, so this seems ineffectual) — it had the same effects, making the Catholics more resistant while leaving the atheists unchanged.
If we’re talking about some kind of placebo effect, though, it is not surprising that atheists would not find a picture floating before their face to be a palliative — they would not expect an image to have any effect, so the placebo effect would not kick in. Big deal.
A more significant flaw, though, is that the results of the experiment are entirely drawn from subjective self-reporting of pain. The Catholics may be saying they feel less pain while feeling the same amount simply because they are accustomed to lying while surrounded by Christian paraphernalia. The less gullible atheists were trying to accurately report their sensations.
Of course some religious leaders see this as an affirmation.
The findings were welcomed by the Anglican Bishop of Durham, the Rt Rev Tom Wright, who said: ‘The practice of faith should, and in many cases does, alter the person you are.
‘It can affect the patterns of your brain and your emotions. So it comes as no surprise to me that this experiment has reached such conclusions.’
Another interpretation would be that belonging to a faith means you have already been selected for a weakness to being impressed by the superficial and trivial. And sure, beliefs and imagination and thoughts will change the activity of your brain — because that’s all they are, is products of the brain. Bishops probably shouldn’t welcome this conclusion, because it suggests that the mind is a product of material causes, and the absence of supernatural phenomena should put them out of a job.
In case anyone would like to argue that the suggestibility demonstrated in this experiment is an advantage to Catholics, allowing them to better resist pain, I suggest a variation: hang a picture of Satan in front of them and see if it makes them more susceptible to report enhanced sensitivity to pain.
We are so scary. Now the fact that godless Americans exist and that people actually talk to us is the subject of a political ad by the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Watch this: it’s got ominous music, it’s got atheists saying there is no god, and Daylight Atheism gets another shout out…and that’s about it. And it will effectively motivate the fundie base, I’m sure.
It also has various right wing blowhards huffing and puffing over the fact that atheists would like to remove god from the pledge of allegiance and our money. These guys have no imagination. Those are trivial, superficial issues. We want to change the culture as a whole so people make rational decisions about government and education, rather than relying on superstition and ignorant authority, and that’s what ought to scare them more. We have the goal of making people think, something these trembling wahoos are ill-prepared to do.
