Brunswick school board may be OK…for now

The Brunswick school district in North Carolina was hurtling towards a lot of pain…and it’s all thanks to the intransigent arrogance of the ignorant. There are some signs that they’re going to see the light of reason, but there are holdouts, and as is usual in these cases, it’s a few uninformed individuals possessing only a furious conviction and the certitude of religion who are causing the problems. Joel Fanti seems to be one of the instigators of this stupidity, and he’s surprised that so many have been opposing him.

“It just amazes me some of those responses, how venomous they have been,” said Fanti, who sparked the debate by proposing at the board’s Sept. 16 meeting that the teaching of creationism share classroom time with evolution. “I don’t even know what their definition of religion is. I can argue their views on evolution are a religion, too, because it can’t be proven.”

The Rev. Brad Ferguson, Fanti’s pastor at New Beginnings Community Church in Shallotte, said he supports Fanti’s views.

“There is some scientific evidence supporting creationism,” the Southern Baptist minister said. “Kids should be presented both sides. … You can’t isolate disciplines. Science and faith – they go together.”

Fanti is clueless. Then everything is a religion: I can’t prove right this instant that my cats are at my house, but because I saw them there this morning and closed the door so they can’t get out, they almost certainly are…and if I saw one prowling around outside my office window, I’d quickly revise my opinion. But to Fanti’s mind, my expert, empirical, well-supported ideas about my cats ought to be considered a religion, obviously. Similarly, I’ve got some expert, empirical, well-supported ideas about evolution that I can back up with evidence — it is not a view held in the same way as a religion.

Ferguson is equally inane. There is no scientific evidence for creationism — go ahead, show me some. If he really believed that kids should see “both” sides of an issue, no matter how weak or fringy or patently absurd they are, then I hope his Baptist church sunday school is being taught by a cadre of Muslims, Scientologists, and Wiccans.

Science and faith are in opposition. Somehow, his faith is supporting the idea that the earth is 6000 years old, against all the scientific evidence that it is 4.5 billion years old — I think that renders his claim inoperative.

But here’s the good news. These two nitwits seem to be losing, and the school board is backing down, despite the sympathies of a few. And of course, the new strategem is to throw around the Discovery Institute’s favorite empty slogan, “strengths and weaknesses”. What weaknesses? Let’s hear specifics. If they’re willing to teach the strengths, how come they don’t seem to understand them?

After reading e-mails by people disgruntled about the idea of teaching creationism, hearing about the state’s point of view and consulting with attorney Kathleen Tanner, Babson said she thinks the board will not try to go against the law to teach creationism, although she would like to see it in the classroom one day.

Fanti said he learned about the court cases after addressing the board and now thinks the idea of teaching creationism as part of the curriculum will be crushed. But he plans to ask the school board to encourage “evolutionists” in the schools to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of their theory.

“Instead of making it a religious issue, let’s make it a scientific issue,” said Fanti, who identifies himself as a chemical engineer.

A religious engineer…somehow, I am not surprised at all.

Cafe Scientifique tonight!

Tuesdays are not relaxing days for me; this is the day of the week when I sink into long class sessions for hours at a time. Somehow, I also decided that the last Tuesday of every month was also going to be the day for Cafe Scientifique, which I host here in town, and which I’m also giving today.

So come on out to the Common Cup Coffeehouse on Atlantic Avenue in Morris tonight, at 6:30pm, and watch a tired PZ give a talk. Don’t worry, though — I’m going to present a little travelogue on my cruise to the Galápagos Islands, with a little science sneakily snuck in here and there, which is going to be fun…so I’ll perk right up. I’ll just crash right after the talk.

What must it be like to live in New Zealand?

A recent survey in New Zealand reveals that only 40% of the people believe in a god, and 10% do but have doubts. Only 52% believe in an immortal soul, and 80% accept evolution. I marvel at that — a country where I would not be a member of a rare minority, where I could start a conversation with a stranger and reliably encounter someone who wasn’t barking mad, where the populace doesn’t believe in angels? Next you’ll be telling me the streets are paved with gold.

It’s not perfect. There are still lots of conspiracy theorists and UFO buffs and lucky number innumerates, but man, it’s just that the background looks so much less cluttered with nonsense (they also found a positive correlation between god-belief and belief in the paranormal, unlike a recent deeply flawed survey in the US, which tried to get around this problem by redefining belief in angels and miracles as not paranormal.) You must take a look at the full summary to believe it.

And then…they have a museum where they carry out public dissections of giant squid.

I’m having a hard time imagining such a place. Paradise doesn’t really exist, you know.

Terror attack on US soil

Only, of course, it won’t be called an act of terrorism because the victims were Muslim, and the perpetrators were conservative white Americans. They sprayed gas into a mosque filled with kids.

On Friday, September 26, the end of a week in which thousands of copies of Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West — the fear-mongering, anti-Muslim documentary being distributed by the millions in swing states via DVDs inserted in major newspapers and through the U.S. mail — were distributed by mail in Ohio, a “chemical irritant” was sprayed through a window of the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton, where 300 people were gathered for a Ramadan prayer service. The room that the chemical was sprayed into was the room where babies and children were being kept while their mothers were engaged in prayers. This, apparently, is what the scare tactic political campaigning of John McCain’s supporters has led to — Americans perpetrating a terrorist attack against innocent children on American soil.

Common decency would suggest that babies should not be targeted. These are people who lack decency, I’m afraid.

Presents for moi!

I just received a big ol’ mailing tube in the division office. The office staff made a little joke about how they’d rather I didn’t open it there, just in case (the Catholics will be so happy — they’ve managed to instill fear in uninvolved innocents), so they missed out — it was a beautiful print, all for me.

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Thank you!

I also received another present, a wonderfully warm hoodie with an exceptionally cute bit of art on the front. He’s squinking hearts! And aren’t I adorable in it?

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No name was on the package, and there was just a note that revealed that the source was from France. C’est magnifique! Un grand merci!

Do Republicans think at all?

The mayor of Fort Mill, South Carolina forwarded one of those stupid chain emails that throws around absurd accusations — in this case, the Bible predicted that the anti-christ would be a Muslim in his 40s, and that Barack Obama was therefore the anti-christ. There is so much wrong there; Obama is not a Muslim, the Bible doesn’t say such a thing (especially since it was written before Islam), and you would expect such a devout Christian to know this. But he sent it on anyway.

Now if he were somebody of normal intelligence, at this point he’d be saying, “oops, hit the wrong button, I meant to hit delete…”. But no. He’s making excuses.

Fort Mill Mayor Danny Funderburk says he was “just curious” when he forwarded a chain e-mail suggesting Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama is the biblical antichrist. “I was just curious if there was any validity to it,” Funderburk said in a telephone interview. “I was trying to get documentation if there was any scripture to back it up.”

Well. Think that one through. So Funderburk’s way to get to the truth of a scurrilous claim is to simply repeat it to a bunch of other people? And the kind of evidence he’d accept to debunk it is scriptural?

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My human lineage

This is a very simple, lucid video of Spencer Wells talking about his work on the Genographic Project, the effort to accumulate lots of individual genetic data to map out where we all came from.

I’ve also submitted a test tube full of cheek epithelial cells to this project, and Lynn Fellman is going to be doing a DNA portrait of me. I had my Y chromosome analyzed just because my paternal ancestry was a bit murky and messy and potentially more surprising, and my mother’s family was many generations of stay-at-home Scandinavian peasantry, so I knew what to expect there. Dad turned out to be not such a great surprise, either. I have the single nucleotide polymorphism M343, which puts me in the R1b haplogroup, which is just the most common Y haplogroup in western Europe. I share a Y chromosome with a great many other fellows from England, France, the Netherlands, etc., which is where the anecdotal family history suggested we were from (family legend has it that the first American Myers in my line was a 17th or 18th century immigrant from the Netherlands). Here’s a map of where the older members of my lineage have been from: Africa (of course!) by way of a long detour through central Asia.

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Hello, many-times-great-grandpa! That’s quite the long walk your family has taken. Howdy, great big extended family! We’ll have to get together sometime and keep in touch.

If you’re interested in finding out what clump of humanity you belong to, it’s easy: you can order a $100 kit, swab out a few cheek cells (just like they do on CSI or Law & Order!), mail it back, and a few weeks later, they send you your results. It’s not very detailed — they only analyze a small number of markers — but it’s enough to get a rough picture of where your branch of the family tree lies. And for a bit more, Lynn can turn it into something lovely for your wall.

By the way, Lynn and I will be talking about the science and art of human genetics in a Cafe Scientifique session in Minneapolis in February.

I am a very naughty boy

I’ve barred the doors — I’m sure that any moment now, a squadron of goose-stepping nuns will come marching up the street to wag their fingers at me and rebuke me for what I’ve started. It seems the Youth of Today are going on YouTube and…flaunting their disrespect for crackers!

People can find a video of almost anything on YouTube: babies’ first steps, Saturday Night Live skits, news clips, concerts and now – to the shock of Catholics everywhere – desecration of the Eucharist.

YouTube has long been a destination for Catholics seeking video clips of Masses, apologetics lectures or devotions, but now Catholic outrage is growing as the site has become home to a string of videos depicting acts of Eucharistic desecration, including flushing a host down the toilet, putting one in a blender, feeding one to animals, shooting one with a nail gun and more.

They don’t provide links, perhaps fearing that this could become even more popular. Here you go, somebody is having lots of fun with his crackers. Gosh, maybe more people will be publicly committing heresy now!

You can guess what the response is.

“I don’t know what to say,” said a stunned Msgr. C. Eugene Morris, professor of sacramental theology at Kenrick Glennon Seminary in St. Louis, when told about the videos. “I am outraged that YouTube is tacitly supporting this and giving this behavior an audience.”

Hey, Eugene! It’s just a cracker! Get over it — as long as people aren’t disrupting your services or pilfering chalices, there has been no interference with your religious freedom, and no harm done.

Thomas Serafin is president of the International Crusade for Holy Relics, an internet watchdog group of Catholic laymen. His group has been fighting online affronts to the Catholic Church, including the sale of the Eucharist and of relics of the saints online, for more than a decade.

“YouTube has to be held accountable and stopped,” Serafin said from Los Angeles. “If Catholics don’t take a stand right now, they can expect such outrages to continue.”

Serafin added: “The internet is, in many ways, a new world, and it is our duty to evangelize this world, but we have to speak up and be heard to do that.”

Thomas and his organization are more than a little creepy — death cultists oblivious to their own bizarrely morbid obsessions. They have a right to evangelize if they want, but others have a right to mock and laugh at them, too. These wackos are organizing now, though, to get YouTube to censor and blacklist anyone who visibly makes fun of religious beliefs. YouTube has not cave in yet, though, and I hope they hold out — it is absurd to say that Catholic videos of blood and bones are not offensive, while videos of demolished bits of bread are outrages that must be yanked.

Serafin said people should call or write YouTube to demand that the videos be taken down. YouTube’s public relations email address is [email protected]

People who think YouTube should not be in the business of prosecuting blasphemy should also write and let them know that you are pleased they are not the religion police.

Now whose fault is all this? Mine. I am so proud.

One name still making the rounds in YouTube and bloggers’ discussions on Eucharistic desecration is Paul Z. Myers, the University of Minnesota professor who asked his blog readers in July to “score” him “some consecrated communion wafers.”

“If any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I’ll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare,” Myers wrote in response to the case of a University of Central Florida student who stole a consecrated host the previous month.

Myers later posted a picture of a host – which he claimed was consecrated and sent to him via mail – as well as pages from the Koran and atheist Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion” in a trash can, underneath coffee grounds and a banana peel.

As for the current YouTube videos, Dominique cited Myers as inspiration for the video series.

This is great! Everyone should join in! It makes me so pleased to see growing, vocal opposition to the fundamental absurdity of religion, do keep it up.

Of course, the price we pay is a lot of complaints back at us, which is fine — annoying, but it’s their right. Since I just got back from a long weekend, I thought I’d peek into the eucharist auto-trash folder and see what’s dribbled into my email lately, and you’ll find a sample below the fold. I just grabbed the top 15, so it’s also fairly representative of the content.

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You are all godless heathens…

…and this site is fertile ground for those seeking to spread the word of Jesus Christ. The readership here is far more in need of the word than Egypt, Colombia, Iraq, Solomon Islands, Malaysia, Zambia, Togo, Austria, Pakistan or Iran. So, please, get a bible. They’re free, and if you don’t take them, they’ll be sent off to some poor innocent in some nice country like Egypt, Colombia, Iraq, Solomon Islands, Malaysia, Zambia, Togo, Austria, Pakistan or Iran, where they aren’t needed as much.