Well, a few days ago I saw a report that Slovakia, with its far right government, were going to take in a couple of hundred Syrian refugees. But they would only accept Christians. At the time I thought, what sort of warped, bigoted sense of humanity allows them to think that’s somehow OK? Today I got my answer… I heard Tony Abbott’s colleagues, Eric Abetz, George Christensen and Cory Bernardi say that Christians are the most persecuted people in the world and so Australia would take in 12,000 Syrian Christian refugees. I think these comments reveal the dark entrenched prejudice that exists within the Liberal Party against those who are not pious Christians like themselves. To deflect the obvious howls of derision that this announcement would surely deserve, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop added the fig leaf, saying we’d take in a few other ‘persecuted minorities’, such as Yazidis and Druze as well.
Every ethnic and religious group in Syria is persecuted by another group; no group is safe in that bombed out ruin of a country. So what Abetz and co are effectively saying is that they’d offer non-Muslim Syrians a lifeboat and basically let the rest drown.
So, even when Tony Abbott thinks he’s revealing his compassionate side by doing something good for humanity (apart from exporting the dirty little black rock, that is), he still somehow manages to turn it to his radical right wing Christian ideological agenda and cover his gesture in a big steaming turd.
A few days ago, the Louisiana legislature rejected Senate Bill 26 which sought to repeal the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act which allows for creationism to be taught as valid science in schools. Two previous attempts at repeal in 2011 and 2012 also failed.
As a high school student in 2011, Zack Kopplin started the repeal campaign with the support of 78 Nobel laureate scientists. He said at the time that he kept hoping that either an adult or an organisation would take up the issue. Dismayed that no one did, he took up the cause himself, even testifying before the state Senate. He is now a Rice University student and is still pushing ahead with this campaign.
Zack Kopplin (image: billmoyers.com)
In his most recent testimony, Kopplin was quoted by the Associated Press (May 1, 2013) saying, “This law is about going back into the Dark Ages, not moving forward into the 21st Century.” He added, “Louisiana students deserve to be taught sound science and that means the theory of evolution, not creationism.”
For me, one of the disturbing aspects of this issue is the support of likely Republican presidential hopeful, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal for the creationist cause.
Last month, in an interview with NBC, Jindal said,
“I’ve got no problem if a school board, a local school board, says we want to teach our kids about creationism, that people, some people, have these beliefs as well, let’s teach them about ‘intelligent design’…What are we scared of?”
What we are scared of, is that the USA still exercises a critical influence in the world, so to have a person like Jindal as a potential leader of that country is frightening for the future of science and education.
For about half the last century, the USA led the world in academic excellence and scientific discovery. Then along came the religious nutters in the form of creationists who support the teaching of intelligent design as science, to help Americans find their way back to the 15th century. When I ask myself why news like Louisiana’s rejection of SB 26, makes me seethe with anger, I answer… It’s because the hubris of these closed minded politicians and the nutters they represent, causes millions of kids to be taught lies. They are sanctimonious bloody child abusers. These kids who don’t know better, rely on their teachers to safeguard their future and help them become fully functioning adults. Instead, by allowing the teaching of creationism and intelligent design as legitimate science, they’re raising a generation of kids who wont have the choice to become geologists, paleontologists, physicists, cosmologists, astronomers, anthropologists or biologists. You can’t teach the scientific method alongside creationism or intelligent design because they are incompatible. Creationism and intelligent design which is supernatural pseudo-science, cannot survive the scrutiny of the scientific method which requires that theory withstand all evidence. Creationism and intelligent design requires only that selective evidence support theory, while ignoring all evidence to the contrary. In other words, Creationists make the evidence fit the theory, not the other way round.
All natural science disciplines have provided us with overwhelming evidence that the world and the universe are billions of years old, so again they are incompatible with creationism and intelligent design which posits that dinosaurs co-existed with humans less than 10,000 years ago. All these scientific disciplines also require an understanding of the interwoven and independently verifiable history of our planet and universe not the untestable supernatural pseudo-science of creationism and intelligent design.
When you’re looking for oil, it helps if you have an understanding about the process that transforms dead organisms into liquid oil over millions of years. It helps if you know how tectonic plates have moved over millions of years so you’ve got an idea where to look. It also helps if you can identify rock stratification that has occurred over millions of years. So, if you’re a creationist who wants a job in Petroleum geology, forget it because there’s nothing in creationism or Intelligent design that will help you find oil, you need real science for that. If you’re developing new medicines, it helps if you have an understanding about how pathogens evolve and for that you need real science like evolution not creationism or intelligent design.
Louisiana is not isolated in its support of creationist pseudo-science. The rise of secular rationalism has seen Christian fundamentalists fight back with a strategy designed to circumvent the ‘separation of church and state’ by insidiously introducing this intelligent design crap-science into schools. This program is backed by the cleverly named Discovery Institute (remind you of anything? perhaps the Discovery Channel), a Seattle based right-wing Christian, Creationist lobby group, thinly disguised as a ‘think tank’. This pernicious organisation’s stated goal is to Teach the Controversy and create an aura of doubt around evolution. Its purpose seems to be to undermine the long established scientific method, which requires science theory be based on measurable and verifiable evidence, unlike the supernatural intelligent design pseudo-science which is not empirical science.
Indoctrinating kids with creationism disguised as legitimate science is the kind of blatant distortion of truth, dressed up as fact that was a hallmark of Hitler’s Nazi Germany. That’s why it makes me so f***ing angry.
More:
• Here is an excerpt from Kopplin’s 2013 Louisiana Senate testimony: Claude Bouchard, the former Director of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, calls the LSEA “anti-science” legislation whose intent is to diminish the role of science in elementary and secondary schools when teachers discuss with their students such hot topics as evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning.”
Dr. Bouchard says that the LSEA has economic consequences. “If you are an employer in a high tech industry, in the biotechnology sector or in a business that depends heavily on science, would you prefer to hire a graduate from a state where the legislature has in a sense declared that the laws of chemistry, physics or biology can be suspended?”
Because The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology pulled a prescheduled convention from New Orleans in response to the passage of the LSEA, the repeal of this law is important to our state’s tourism industry.
According to Steve Perry, the President of the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau, the LSEA “is a poor symbol of our state’s actual commitment to being on the cutting edge of modern science. And, it has a damaging impact on our bringing hundreds of millions of dollars of major international meetings and conventions in medical and basic sciences.”
Perry says “It is such an embarrassing, antiquated law to have on the books when we are making such transformational new investments in biotechnology, gene therapy, and neurosciences. With our entire country voicing the need for more investments in the teaching of science and mathematics, here we are re-living the kind of discussion the Catholic Church must have had with Galileo.”
• Creationist Science Committee Chair seeks to sideline Peer Review:
U.S. Congressman Lamar Smith (image : U.S. House of Representatives)
The creationist agenda has been boosted by the appointment of creationist, Texas Republican Congressman Rep. Lamar Smith, as chairman of the House Science Committee (truly ironic, given his anti-science agenda). Smith has proposed legislation, the High Quality Research Act, which implicitly provides for political judgments on research merit and could allow climate change deniers and creationists to weigh in on possible applications of research projects. Chairman Smith is pushing for the stripping of the peer-review requirement from the National Science Foundation (NSF) grant process and substituting a new set of politically motivated funding criteria that is significantly less transparent and not reviewed by independent experts (ie. scientists). The funding criteria also seeks to diminish the role of research that independently verifies experimental results, a result that wouldn’t displease climate change skeptics and the scrutiny averse creationists.
More links:
See Bill Moyers’ excellent April 2013 interview with Zack Kopplin (who knew that 46% of Americans believe God created the Universe and the Earth less than 10,000 years ago… scary):
Check out Kopplin’s 2011 testimony in support of repeal of the Creationist Law here:
Also see the complete Louisiana Senate 2013 hearings here (Kopplin’s testimony begins after about 80% has elapsed – look for SB 26 on screen):
• Louisiana Senate SB 26 hearings.
I think allowing creationism to be taught as legitimate science in schools is dangerous, because it doesn’t require the application of the scientific method and it therefore undermines and devalues rigorous science. Am I right?
Ted Cruz, the 42 year old Texas Senator and a likely 2016 GOP candidate for president, recently addressed the Republican Party’s Silver Elephant Dinner in South Carolina. According to Politico, “He brought the crowd to its feet by denouncing the administration for cracking down on proselytizing in the armed forces.”
Cruz was quoted saying, "The United States government has no authority to tell any American, in the military or not, that he or she cannot share their faith with others,” Cruz said, exclaiming: “You know, there comes a point where you just can’t make this stuff up!"
What The Pentagon is cracking down on is not people who pray but people who aggressively proselytize, particularly in sensitive zones like Afghanistan. Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen said in a statement. “The Department makes reasonable accommodations for all religions and celebrates the religious diversity of our service members.”
“Service members can share their faith (evangelize), but must not force unwanted, intrusive attempts to convert others of any faith or no faith to one’s beliefs (proselytization),” Christensen added.
Cultural sensitivity would suggest against a unit of the US military, headed for Afghanistan, changing its nickname from the “Werewolves” to the “Crusaders”, complete with the medieval red cross, crusader shield insignia and a crusader knight as its mascot. But the VMFA-122 USMC fighter squadron’s new commander, Lt. Col. Wade Wiegel, was determined to do just that. Equally, going into battle in Afghanistan with your “Jesus rifle” complete with the Biblical references: John 8:12 and Second Corinthians 4:6, etched into its scope, would seem arrogant and just plain stupid. But, there are Christian soldiers who were incensed by The Pentagon’s directive to scrape them off. There are many in the military who welcome the comparison with the holy wars of the past that pitted 11th century Christian Crusader Knights against Muslim warriors in almost two centuries of merciless bloodthirsty conflict in Palestine. That The Pentagon is attempting to wipe out this influence seems only sensible in a region where ‘death from the sky’ drone strikes make the locals hypersensitive and where self-righteous, Bible carrying, western Christian soldiers are not particularly welcome.
Deep within the military, though, there is also the pernicious impact of unit commanders and other senior ranks, pointedly inviting their subordinates to attend Bible classes and prayer groups. When such Bible study and prayer groups grow from small informal gatherings into large, exclusive and influential cliques then The Pentagon is right to worry about unit cohesion and freedom from religious exclusion and conflict. It’s easy to see why a minority of non religious or non Christian lower ranks might liken this type of ‘invitation’ to a subtle form of intimidation, coercion or bullying.
So when a likely GOP candidate for president decides it’s important to make a stand against The Pentagon crackdown on aggressive Christian proselytizing, he’s also making a stand for intimidation of non-religious and non-Christian minorities while also holding up the standard of the murderous medieval Christian Crusaders for the US Military.
It beggars belief that Americans just don’t get why they are so despised in the middle-east, but someone like Senator Ted Cruz goes a long way to illustrating why.
If you’re a Christian from a majority Christian country put yourself in a different space for a moment and imagine you’re a Christian from a Muslim majority country and you’re being constantly harangued by Muslims urging you to abandon your infidel ways and worship the one true god, Allah.
So, how do you feel about the possibility of aggressive Muslim proselytizing then… Not so comfortable is it?
So, why do Christians do it to non-believers and non-Christians?
Trinity Episcopal Church
Cnr. Wall Street and Broadway, Lower Manhattan, New York.
If anyone ever wondered just how rich churches are in this age of rising disbelief… Check this out. The financial books at New York’s Trinity Church have been revealed in court documents arising from a bitter parish legal dispute over, you guessed it, money. This Episcopal church (a member of the US Episcopal branch of the Anglican Church or Church of England as you might know it) holds property valued at a whopping $2 billion within its parish, including some of the most prized real estate in Manhattan, near SoHo and Greenwich Village.
Michael Nagle for The New York Times Most of Trinity Church’s Manhattan real estate holdings are in the Hudson Square area, including a vacant lot at Duarte Square.
Also revealed, was the compensation package paid to the Trinity Church rector, the Rev. James H. Cooper who gets an annual salary of $US475,000 which rises to $US1.3 million when pension contributions and the imputed value of his opulent $5.5 million, church owned town house, are included.
So next time you look up at the pious face of your priest, ask yourself if his/her calling was inspired by the man in the simple cloth who owned nothing, Jesus, or was it just a canny career choice.
My previous post, The Last Civil Right? Same Sex Marriage:, has generated a bit of heat on Facebook with comments suggesting that in 1967, when the bulk of churches stood against interracial marriage, they were simply reflecting a society with similar attitudes. The argument follows that the churches are doing the same now.
In my previous post I did mention that some churches, including the United Church of Christ support marriage equality. The Anglican’s progressive American Episcopalian branch is another wonderful exception. With same-sex marriage now legal in Washington DC, Rt. Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington DC, recently announced that The Washington National Cathedral (an Episcopalian church), where the nation gathers to mourn tragedies and presidents, will soon begin performing same-sex marriages. Unfortunately, the main body of that church, the Anglican church in England continues to stand alongside the Roman Catholics, as one of the main churches vocally opposed to marriage equality. Jeffrey John, the Anglican dean of St Albans in the UK, recently accused the church of pursuing a “morally contemptible” policy on same-sex marriage. He writes that, by setting themselves against same-sex marriage, the bishops of the Church have prioritised the union of the Anglican Communion over the rights of gay Christians. “Worst of all, by appeasing their persecutors it betrays the truly heroic gay Christians of Africa who stand up for justice and truth at risk of their lives. For the mission of the Church of England the present policy is a disaster.” See the whole Guardian Newspaper report here:
• Anglican stance on same-sex marriage ‘morally contemptible’
There’s a reason why the churches have emptied in the most religious country in Europe, Roman Catholic Ireland. I know the Anglican Church is experiencing the same sort of ‘West vs. the Rest’ crisis that’s decimating the Catholic Church in Europe but they both need to decide whether they prioritise expedience over principle.
If the churches were purely political organisations, then it might be reasonable for them to simply reflect or lag behind community consensus or act expediently. But the churches set themselves as moral and social arbiters and as such they should bravely and with principle, lead the community by advocating for tolerance, social inclusion and progressive social policy. Alternatively, they can continue to choose, as they did in 1967, to identify themselves with intolerance, prejudice and exclusion. If the churches continue in that direction, they’ll accelerate their irrelevance to the West and soon exist only in the third world.
I’m almost afraid to ask for comments on this hotly debated issue.
For those old enough to remember, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), was a challenging and controversial film. At that time (only 46 years ago) interracial marriage was unthinkable and strongly opposed by the church as well as being illegal in 16 states in the USA and opposed by 72% of the American public. Running against the tide in 1967, the US Supreme Court ruled against interracial marriage prohibition in Loving v. Virginia. Chief Justice Earl Warren, who penned the unanimous decision, wrote in words that echo strongly for same-sex marriage: “Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival… To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.” Today, such relationships are barely noticed let alone condemned (except by a small minority in the deep south).
Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in two landmark cases related to same-sex marriage. The Court is being asked to rule on the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage, and the federal Defense of Marriage Act (1996), which defined marriage as between a male and female and also required the US federal government to deny benefits to same-sex couples, married in states that allow same-sex unions.
It seems that the last great Civil Rights issue is in the balance and once again, just like they did with interracial marriage in 1967, the churches stand on the side of prejudice (with a very few exceptions like the 1 million strong, United Church of Christ).
So while great strides have been made in recent decades to recognize the civil rights of the LGBT communities, there still exists one glaring inequality that defines them and their life partnerships as inferior and somehow frivolous: Marriage inequality.
Marriage today, particularly in the West, has moved away from being an exclusively religious institution and is now celebrated in many ways: in churches; synagogues; court houses; city halls; parks; and sometimes, in less solemn, perhaps even frivolous settings.
Some are religious ceremonies while many are very secular. Generally though, they have one thing in common: they celebrate the love, joy and commitment of two people to each other in the company of friends and family. For most, this is one of life’s highlights but it is one that is wholly denied to gay people and relegates gay relationships to being somehow less worthy and legitimate than those of straight people.
I have no problem with religious people defining for themselves the nature of their creation, their relation to a deity and dogmatically ordained relationships between people within their faith. I similarly have no objection to religious celebrants, declining to marry same-sex partners. I do however, object strongly when those same people seek to impose their definitions on the rest of society. The religious might believe that their deity created marriage to foster procreation but the reality is that marriage was a device developed thousands of years ago, long before Christianity, Islam or Judaism, to ensure property ownership and inheritance. Whatever the view, the decline in formalised religiosity in the West has paralleled an increasing view that marriage is not a necessary precursor to procreation. At the same time, I believe there is a growing identification with the notion of marriage as a desirable way of publicly demonstrating and celebrating the commitment of two people, including mothers and fathers already in a family, to each other. As well, I think many people now see the legal responsibilities inherent in marriage as somehow affirming their willingness to more permanently commit to each other.
Many countries have approved or are in the process of legislating marriage equality, including: Andora, Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Columbia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Nepal, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and Uruguay, although I’m ashamed to say, not my own (Australia). In the traditionally conservative United States, same-sex marriage has been legalised in Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont, Washington, D.C., the state of Washington and the largest state, California (barring the success of Prop 8, currently before the Supreme Court). Even in the UK which is currently ruled by a right-wing coalition government, the Conservative Party are pushing ahead with marriage equality. British Prime Minister, David Cameron, In a speech to his Conservative Party in 2011 said: “I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I’m a Conservative.”
The conservative fall-back position for those opposed to same-sex marriage, seems to be: that some form of civil union might be possible. While civil unions do legally cement a gay partnership contract in much the same way as a marriage, they do so without the equality of status and celebration conferred by a straight marriage. And worse, such a confirmed legal status further entrenches the inferiority of gay relationships by only recognising their legal but not societal status. Allowing civil unions but not marriage, is akin to legally granting an African American the right to travel at the front of the bus but with a big sign fixed to his seat patronisingly proclaiming “We whites have to let you ride but you’re still BLACK!!!”, thus perpetuating the myth that being white (or in this case, straight) is still somehow superior.
At a time when family and society’s bonds are being increasingly challenged, why would we not take the opportunity to help place family and relationship commitment more firmly at the core of our communities by affirming the role of marriage as a desirable and cherished family institution not just as something religious people do before they procreate.
It’s time to remove one of the last signposts of gay inferiority, reach out the hand of inclusiveness to all people and support the affirmation of family and committed relationships intrinsic to marriage equality for all.
Has this issue reached a tipping point or are the forces of prejudice like the leader of the conservative Liberal Party in Australia, going to be able to hold back what seems like the inevitable tide of history?
On this birthday of the greatest scientist of the 20th Century, Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955), it’s amazing to watch as the mechanics behind the Universe are slowly revealed. CERN Physicists working at the $US10 billion Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, believe they have confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson particle, greatly solidifying our knowledge of the fundamentals of the universe.
Unfortunately, the intellectual chasm between the guys revealing the origins and mysterious underpinnings of our universe, Einstein and his successors, and the rest of us, is still so massive that ‘creator’ and ‘interventionist’ gods can still profitably fill the gap. It was only a little under 400 years ago that the Catholic Church and its inquisitors, locked up Galileo and threatened him with torture, for the heresy of suggesting that the Bible was wrong in that the Earth was not the centre of the Universe. Those fearful and blinkered churchmen must have trembled at the thought of the consequence of his heresy. For, if a book of absolute truths, written as the word of God, could be disproved in only one part, then that would call into question the whole. Now the heresy is a largely accepted theory and a settled consensus of fact for humanity.
Likewise, the widely accepted Theory of Evolution, will one day soon achieve the same settled status and Creationists will be relegated as an embarrassing joke in history.
Science has now largely abrogated the notion of a god as an omnipotent being who can miraculously disrupt the laws of physics and chemistry on our behalf. These magical beings will soon be archived alongside Norse gods of an earlier age when simple but incomprehensible things like storms, rain, lightning, life, the sun and the moon, needed supernatural explanation: Odin (the ruler of the gods), Thor (the god of thunder) and Hel (queen of the underworld). As famed cosmologist, Carl Sagan put it when dismissing the existence of a sentient interventionist god, “it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.” What will become of all those magnets of greed and wealth, the televangelists, when the core message of their wealth ministries, that God showers money on followers, is finally confirmed as the folly it is.
So with the ‘interventionist gods’ on very shaky ground, that leaves just the ‘creator gods’.
The Higgs boson particle is key to current understanding of the Big Bang. First theorized in 1964 by British physicist Peter Higgs, as part of the Standard Model of Physics, the Higgs boson was until very recently, the only Standard Model particle yet to be discovered. The model explains how the constituent particles of matter interact.
CERN scientist, Professor William Trischuk explains, “The Higgs field is everywhere around us, and all particles are moving in the presence of this field,” All these particles “interact more or less strongly with it, and they are either slowed down or not slowed down so much and that’s what gives them mass. The heavier ones interact strongly with this field and the light ones interact very weakly with this field.”, he said.
Now with the confirmation of the Higgs boson Particle’, one of the last pieces of the puzzle needed to explain the origin of our universe, has been confirmed, and the Big Bang is also a little closer to being settled (if they could just figure out that pesky ‘dark matter’). With this significant step, the ultimate fate of the creator gods is also closer.
In his 2010 book, The Grand Design, the world’s most famous living scientist and Big Bang pioneer, Professor Stephen Hawking argues that, “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing,” he writes. “Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.” Hawking added that, “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”
And, if a universe can be created spontaneously, there’s no need for a ‘creator god’ to explain why we’re here.
In time, humans may look back on our time in much the same way as we look back on those arrogant and misguided men of God who imprisoned Galileo in 1633; as a time when people who, frightened for the existential consequence should their god prove not to exist, desperately clung to a vision of life on Earth as a court room for sentient, judgmental gods who held humans in special regard and rewarded the deeds of followers and burned the rest.
I predict that it’ll be less than 50 years before a final consensus is reached when all the interventionist and creator gods and their blood-soaked history, can finally be retired.
Will the deity religions be able to hang on for another 50 years? Will a religion fueled war emanating from the Middle East, devastate the world in the meantime? Will fusion propulsion open up exploration of our solar system? will we solve the mystery of ‘dark matter’ any time soon? What do you reckon?
A recent photo of Richard Dawkins stirring up some of his speciality: Catholic Saint stew. Bon Appetit!!!
Dawkins appeared in a Ned Flanders nightmare in The Simpsons episode: Black-Eyed, Please; which aired on Fox (USA) on Sunday, 10 March.
In Uganda, it’s already illegal to be gay. But some government officials — with support from American evangelicals — want to take government sanctioned homophobia a step further. They’ve proposed the Anti-Homosexuality Bill that would, among other things, institute the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” for repeat offenders. This bill was forced off the agenda in 2011 following an international outcry against Uganda but this year it’s back.
If Uganda passes this disgusting legislation, it will represent an irredeemable stain on the beautiful country of my birth and confirm it as one of the ugliest places on Earth, deserving of pariah status.
Is there hope for real progress on human rights in much of Africa while regimes can hide behind religious dogma and repressive culture?
The only thing I’d gripe about this chart is that Buddhists don’t need to believe in gods to be practitioners but they are free to do so if they wish. And yes, many Mormons do wear magical underwear.
I can see you laughing at the Mormons and their magical underwear but can you see them laughing at a chalice containing wine that magically turns into the blood of Jesus?
Zak From Downunder 