Great moments in sermonizing

A baptist preacher is on leave and in ‘professional counseling’ after a video surfaced of his Sunday sermon in which he told women that they had better always look hot in order to prevent their husbands from being attracted to other women.

He tells churchgoers that it is “really important” for men to have a beautiful woman on their arm, asking the crowd: “Why is it so many times that women, after they get married, let themselves go?”

“Now look, I’m not saying every woman can be the epic trophy wife of all time like Melania Trump, I’m not saying that at all,” he says, as an image of the former First Lady appears on screen behind him.

“Most women can’t be trophy wives, but you know… maybe you’re a participation trophy.

Pastor Clark then criticises women for wearing casual clothes like jogger bottoms and pyjamas, before turning to “weight control” and referring to one woman as “a sumo wrestler”.

“Don’t ever forget this, God made them to look and you want them to look at you – not some hottie out there or someone on a computer screen,” he is seen telling parishioners.

Here’s a clip.

I’m not sure his ‘participation trophy’ metaphor works. Don’t you get a participation trophy just for showing up, irrespective of how well you look or perform?

Using gods to support bigotry

People who are homophobic and transphobic do not hesitate to say that their stance is what their god wants, as if they have a hotline to their deity who keeps them informed. Republican congressperson Greg Staube said on the floor of the House of Representatives that his god opposes transgender rights. Congressperson Al Green, who is Black and gay, had no hesitation about putting such people in their place during the debate on provide protections against discrimination to the LGBTQ community by pointing out how people had invoked their god in support of slavery and other abominations.

Snake handling as a sign of faith

In general, the things that Jesus is reported to have said are fairly benign. (I do not want to get into the question of whether Jesus actually existed or said these things, which is something over which there is heated debate). But there is one thing that is highly problematic and that is found in the verses Mark 16:17-18 where, after his resurrection, he told his disciples the following:

“And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”

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The Skepticamp talks are now online

The Monterey Skepticamp conference on January 2, 2021 where I gave a talk was enjoyable and informative, covering quite a range of topics. All the talks have been posted online. The full program is can be seen here.

The full video for the day’s program is 7 hours 27 minutes long. I give below the starting times for each talk which we were asked to limit to 20 minutes to allow for 10 minutes of Q/A . After the opening welcome remarks by organizer Susan Gerbic and a small quiz by Arlen Grossman, the rest of the talks were as follows:

35 minutes: András Gábor Pintér – Building Bridges – Why we need to organize to bring skepticism forward

1 hour 14 minutes: Janyce Boynton – Facilitated Communication – I Thought That Died in the 1990s!

1 hour 56 minutes: Stuart Vyse – Do Superstitions Work?

2 hours 27minutes: Kelly Burke – Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia

2 hours 54 minutes: Monica Ashly – Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia

4 hours 12 minutes: Richard Saunders (host of Skeptic Zone) –  So you want to do a Skeptical Podcast?

4 hours 53 minutes: Adrienne Hill – Tourette Syndrome: Stereotypes and CAM treatments

5 hours 29 minutes: Kyle Polich – Data Skeptic: “I don’t know anyone who has COVID-19”

5 hours 59 minutes: Mano Singham – The Copernican Myths

6 hours 30 minutes: Rob Palmer – Belief in Psychics: What’s the Harm and Who’s to Blame?

God is punking Pat Robertson again

Pat says he has received word from his god that the Holy Spirit is going to do something dramatic before January 6th to change the results of the election so as to keep Trump as president.

This is the latest in a long, long list of predictions that never come true. I wonder how long it will take for Pat to cotton on the fact that his god is a prankster who likes making him look like a fool by feeding him nonsensical predictions.

Or perhaps the question should be how long it will be before Robertson’s viewers cotton on the fact that he is just stringing them along so that they will send him money.

My talk on the Copernican myths

I will be giving a short talk on the myths surrounding the Copernican revolution from 3:45pm-4:15pm (Pacific Time in the US) on Saturday, January 2, 2021. The talk is part of the annual one-day Skepticamp conference held in Monterey, though this year it will be virtual on Zoom and free and open to anyone. To see the full program and the link to join, go here.

There are a lot of false beliefs surrounding the response to Copernicus’s ideas about the universe being heliocentric rather than geocentric, one of the most prominent being that his ideas were strongly opposed by the church because they demoted the Earth and human beings from the privileged position of being at the center of the universe.

My talk on the myths surrounding Copernicus

There are a lot of false beliefs surrounding the response to Copernicus’s ideas about the universe being heliocentric rather than geocentric, one of the most prominent being that his ideas were strongly opposed because they demoted the Earth and human beings from the privileged position of being at the center of the universe.

I have written on this topic before, including in my book The Great Paradox of Science, and will be giving a short talk on this from 3:45pm-4:15pm (Pacific Time in the US) on Saturday, January 2, 2021.

The talk is part of the annual one-day Skepticamp conference held in Monterey, though this year it will be virtual on Zoom and free and open to anyone. To see the full program and the link to join, go here.

Ignorance of statistics can kill you

An evangelical pastor in Fort Worth, Texas mocked and dismissed the covid-19 safety guidelines and said that he was going to celebrate Thanksgiving with his family with no restrictions.

Pastor Todd Dunn had been urging “Faith over fear!” since the COVID-19 pandemic started in March. Just before Thanksgiving, he posted a message on Facebook dismissing precautionary measures advised by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to keep wearing masks and avoid gatherings with family members who don’t live in the same house.

“I’m not wearing a mask when around my family like the CDC requests and we are traveling so we’ll take our chances,” Dunn’s Facebook post read. “And to top it off we are huggers so there you go! There will be no social distancing CDC. Faith over fear!!”

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Et tu, Pat?

It looks like Jesus has let Pat Robertson down. After promising his viewers that Jesus would ride in to save the day before the Electoral College meets, saying “this fraud will not stand and it will be exposed and that the lord himself will intervene before this country turns into something socialist”, he now says that it is all over and that Trump should concede the election. Worse, he says that Trump “lives in an alternate reality”, is “very erratic”, and that he has had his day and that it is time to “move on”. Being told by Pat Robertson of all people that you are living in an alternate reality has got to hurt.
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The covid-19 vaccines and prisoners

As I expected, there has been some controversy about how to prioritize the order of who gets the vaccines. For example, health guidelines suggest that those who are for whatever reason forced to be in very confined spaces or have to deal with large numbers of people should get it even before older people like me who are low risk because we have little contact with people and have no complicating risk factors. That sounds reasonable enough but that list of people who should have higher priority includes prisoners because, for obvious reasons, prisons have been the source of some of the biggest outbreaks of covid-19 and those outbreaks have not stayed within their walls but have also spread to the nearby communities because prison employees and visitors go in and out of the place all the time, thus aiding the spread.
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