I had no idea that schools were now hiring security guards to enforce anti-crumb-spilling laws. The floors must really shine in Palmdale high schools — get a little sloppy with lunch, and the guards will break your arm and arrest you. And your mother. And the kid with the cell phone who catches it all on video.
Well, lookee here … an announcement in the local Morris paper.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 7
TOM DEROSA will be at Morris Evangelical Free Church at 6:30 p.m., to present a creationist’s perspective about evolution. DeRosa’s presentation is free and open to the public.
I don’t think I have any plans for Sunday night. Wouldn’t an evening with an old pal of D. James Kennedy and the founder of the Creation Studies Institute be buckets of fun?
You should listen to his testimonial. He claims to be an atheist who was teaching evolution in the public schools (he was teaching physics and chemistry, though — what was he doing teaching biology?), and got upset because they cut back the science curriculum from a year to half a year. So he’s talking to someone at D. James Kennedy’s private Christian school (why?), and offers to apply for a position opening up there (what?), and his wife organizes a prayer chain so that the interview will go well (what? what?), and at the interview he learns that salvation is not a consequence of works as he previously thought (what? what? what?) but faith, and takes the job and becomes a Christian. Why, He sounds just like a real atheist.
Oh, and they have a “museum”, too.
If you’d rather not come out to Morris, DeRosa is going to be scuttling about this part of the state for a whole week, so you might find him closer to home, poisoning your community’s children’s minds. Of course, the Morris event will have the advantage of a more interesting audience. Heh.
If you’ve got a high tolerance for nonsense, you might want to check out 50 religious insights from George W. Bush. The man is a regular mullah, full of deep insights. I rather like juxtaposing these two:
I’m also mindful that man should never try to put words in God’s mouth. I mean, we should never ascribe natural disasters or anything else to God. We are in no way, shape, or form should a human being, play God. Washington, D.C., Jan. 14, 2005
I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, ‘George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan’. And I did. And then God would tell me ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq’. And I did. Sharm el-Sheikh August 2003
There are 48 more. Also useful as an emetic.
I might believe god is actually talking to George, but he’s been looking in all the wrong places and getting all the wrong messages. Look to the skies, W, look to the skies! God has something to say to you!
(Hat tip to the irregulars at After the Bar Closes, and to Denis for the appropriate photo)
This might be one of those “framing” exercises: Science Creative Quarterly wants your science questions. The catch is that they’ll be answered by Bill Hick the Science Prick (Ooo-eee, late-night Pharyngula is on an off-color roll, isn’t it?). There’s a prize, though! The humiliation and abuse might be worth it when you give the children’s book you win for it to some little boy or girl.
Just don’t tell them how you won it. You want them to look up to you, you know.
That last creationist email I posted was agonizing in its longwindedness…how about something short and illustrated?
(Mild warning: this sketch might be considered obscene if it weren’t so crude and talentless that any relationship to real anatomy is a scurrilous rumor.)
I tried. I really, honestly, sincerely tried. I’ve been struggling with this book, The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mario Beauregard and Denyse O’Leary, for the past week and a half, and I’ve finally decided it’s not worth the effort. It’s just about completely unreadable.
Attila takes a tour of Nature headquarters — it looks like they’re doing some cool, progressive, net-friendly innovation there. I was jealous of one thing: they’re using an internal corporate blog instead of email. It’s an easy and obvious solution, and I wish there were a way to implement that kind of thing at my university — we use godawful mailing lists for everything, which means notices about campus assembly meetings and student issues get all clogged up in my inbox with staff putting lawn furniture up for sale or disposable nonsense about football games.
We really should have a discussion about the future of intra-campus communication here sometime…or maybe about the ten-years ago of communication.
I don’t even know what Wilkins is complaining about anymore, but he’s got some kind of objection (or agreement? I don’t know) to things I’ve said before or didn’t say. This is the danger of getting into discussions with philosophers — they’re saying something with great erudition, but sometimes you don’t quite see the point, except that they must say something.
Anyway, it’s something about the conflict between science and religion this time. At least I can try to say what I mean. I’m not going to worry about whether it answers what he asks, whatever it is.
After his recent rampage against the Baylor administration, Bill Dembski now claims to be offering an apology to Baylor…only not really. I don’t think he knows what ‘apology’ means — a statement loaded with reservations like “I mean in no way to mitigate the gravity of Baylor’s wrong in censoring the research of Robert Marks and his Evolutionary Informatics Lab” and “I hurt my family and lost about three weeks of productive work by being consumed with anger about the injustice against Robert Marks” is not an apology — it’s an opportunity to reiterate your grievances. And closing with the injunction to “leave justice in the hands of a God” is just a standard Christian passive-aggressive threat.
This wasn’t an apology. It was an opportunity for Dembski to flush several embarrassing posts down the UD Memory Hole™.
Omnibrain provides the proof. We live in a universe ruled by chance, the product of chaos, where reason simply does not matter.
Now that that has been established, I find myself with the sad thought…is this a world I want to live in?
