Wednesday, April 8th, 2009
President Obama has not attended an atheist meetup, drinking skepchickally, skeptics in the pub, or other nonbeliever event since he took office, despite his inaugural address pledge to acknowledge nonbelievers, and his continued insistence on “reaching across the aisle” to acknowledge and respect those with different beliefs.
“We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace,” Obama stated in his inaugural address.
Within his first few months in office, Obama has already reached that hand of respect out to all corners of the earth, from offers to speak with leaders of Muslim nations to actually visiting heavily Islamic countries , bringing offerings of peace, and an explicit assurance that the United States is not at war with Islam.
Domestically, Obama has reinvigorated the controversial faith-based initiative, favoring religious discrimination in organizations that receive federal funding, and stocking his advisory panel with a heavy majority of theists.
Despite this overt and frequent outreach to religious organizations domestic and foreign, Obama has made no effort to connect with the non-believers he pledged to treat with the same respect and attention as believers. His reference to non-believers seems, in hindsight, to have been nothing other than a hat-tip to the often left-leaning fifteen percent of the nation, most of whom helped him get elected.
Obama has also pledged to seek a new church for himself and his family, subjecting his minor daughters to indoctrination in dogma almost universally rejected by the scientists of the world, with details disagreed upon by nearly every other religious denomination or sect. He has yet to choose one, indicating that he must take into consideration the interference he would cause with church attendance of fellow church members. Why has he not taken into consideration the idea that by choosing to be an active practitioner of an ancient superstitious ritual, he interferes with the ability of both non-believers and those who believe in different superstitions to be treated with respect and equality in a nation founded with an explicit separation of church and state?
President Obama, pick yourself a church along with your wife. Let your children play in the White House playground, or have them tutored by someone who respects reality and can encourage them to be skeptical instead of dogmatic. And then make a surprise visit to a Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, or Sam Harris lecture/debate, or an atheist meetup. You might get some shit from the fundamentalists, but didn’t you say something about reaching out to everyone, despite their beliefs? You reached out to one of the most hated homophobes, Rick Warren, for your invocation. What’s stopping you from reaching out to people who don’t happen to share your monotheistic point of view?
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This article is a rebuttal to the Fox News Blog comment “BILL SAMMON: When Will Obama Go to Church?” by Bill Sammon, Managing Editor, Washington Bureau, FOX News Channel, which, out of all the things that someone could find fault about Obama over, chooses to attack Obama’s lack of church attendance since his swearing-in.
Tags: advisor, America, ancient, atheist, belief, bureau, Catholic, children, Christ, church, CNN, Dawkins, dogma, faith, family, fundamental, Hindu, human, humanity, Invocation, islam, Islamic, journalism, Muslim, Obama, president, Religion, Rick Warren, skeptic, theist, United States, war, Washington
Posted in Atheism, Government, Religion | 8 Comments »
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009
Book Review- Monkey Girl, by Edward Humes
Book review by L.Grey, with permission.
In the time of Galileo it was argued that the texts, ‘And the sun stood still … and hasted not to go down about a whole day’ (Joshua x. 13) and ‘He laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not move at any time’ (Psalm cv. 5) were an adequate refutation of the Copernican theory.
Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Mind 59 (1950), 443.
Monkey Girl by Edward Humes ISBN: 9780060885489, ISBN10: 0060885483 Ecco (imprint of Harper Collins) Hardcover 400 pages, $25.95
What does it mean when proponents of Intelligent Design say “teach the controversy”?
You may think you know what the controversy is about, but you’ll never get a more thorough and up-to-date analysis of the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District trial than Edward Humes’ book Monkey Girl. The 2005 trial was one of the latest episodes of the seemingly never-ending struggle for the hearts and minds of public school students. This is a fight between those who feel that Science describes nature pretty well, and those who believe that anything other than a strict literal interpretation of the Bible deserves a trip to hell and excommunication from polite society. The trial itself was a gripping account of small-town drama unfolding over the course of a year, of parents and children enduring intimidation and humiliation. Witnesses from both sides turned the courtroom into a fascinating arena of scientific evidence versus faith dressed in science’s clothing. At least three books have come out of the case (see further reading below for details), and Ed Humes’ Pulitzer Prize-winning writing style and even-handed coverage make Monkey Girl a compelling choice. Humes not only covers the case, he describes the town as the trial transforms it:
Dover sits firmly astride the front lines of America’s culture war, occupying the uneasy space between America’s religious faith and its longstanding fondness for scientific progress, between an idealized past and an uncertain future, between education and indoctrination, between the natural and the supernatural. For the next several months, the ninth floor courtroom in the Ronald Reagan Federal Building will belong to Kitzmiller et al versus Dover Area School District, an unintentionally epic lawsuit filed by a group of parents against their evolution-doubting school board. The case does indeed have much in common with the 1925 Scopes Monkey trial, a public spectacle in which Clarence Darrow and the American Civil Liberties Union unsuccessfully challenged a Tennessee law banning the teaching of evolution. But unlike its illustrious predecessor (which, popular imagination and classic films notwithstanding, had exactly no impact on the law or educational practice at the time), the Dover case is positioned to define (or redefine) for decades just what children are taught about where we come from. [prologue, Monkey Girl]
The controversy has shifted a bit since the famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, which first questioned the legality of teaching Darwin’s theory of Evolution in public schools. World War II and the Cold War demanded that the United States produce competent scientists. This demand seemed to effectively muzzle fundamentalists for a few decades. High School Biology classes approaching the Theory of Evolution would often involve an uneasy truce involving the words “changes over time” and neatly sidestepping the origins of life. Until reading this book, I assumed that all but the most extreme religious fundamentalists were fine with this truce. Humes’ book shows precisely how much this has changed.
While the book mostly focuses on the Dover trial, Humes also takes us to a similar trial in Kansas, the controversy involving the gift shop at the Grand Canyon, where Creationists have had some success in censoring information about the geological age of the national monument. Most importantly, Humes follows the trail of intellectual and legal deception to the pseudo-scientific think-tank called The Discovery Institute, a group of scientists who exclude any scientific evidence in conflict with Christian Scripture.
The Dover Trial is full of drama and bad debate, A Scopes Monkey Trial for the 21st century, or Inherit the Wind, Redux. Humes shows in the Dover case how Creationism in public schools, having been defeated in courts during the late 20th century under the Separation of Church and State clause of the First Amendment, evolved (pun intended) into the virtually identical Intelligent Design movement, to Dover, Pennsylvania among other places. Some of the most shocking moments of the trial feature the ironic displays of dishonesty which ultimately brought down the school board members who were trying to bring religion into the local biology classrooms. Humes covers the scope of the grand scheme of religious activists, who plan on infusing not only science classes with Christian dogma and bias, but History, Government, and other classes as well.
This very book elicits criticism from those whose definition of “Fair and Balanced” have been warped to Orwellian proportions by Fox News and today’s most hyperbolic propagandists. Humes compassionately portrays how the plaintiffs’ religious beliefs in this case, were attacked and their children mocked at school out of ignorance. The Dover case pitted one kind of Christians against another. Those who favored the separation of Church and State were attacked as “not Christian enough”, in a great example of how the separation of these two functions protects freedom of religion. Another surprising turn of events showed how the presiding judge, a Bush-supporting Republican was branded as a liberal judicial activist for defending the constitution.
While it is clear on which side Humes’ sympathies lie, the reader is necessarily confronted with the heart of the so-called controversy: regarding extreme religious views which by definition do not tolerate any opposing views, what are the limits of tolerance in society? How can a democracy defend pluralism from those whose religious beliefs clash so vehemently with the definition of reality itself by the rest of the world, both secular and religious? The Framers of the Constitution were historically not far away from centuries of religious wars in Europe which constantly threw governments into turmoil. They saw the value of the separation of church and state to both church and state. Back in those days religious persecution meant death or incarceration because of one’s beliefs, not what passes for persecution these days in the minds of some.
One gets the strong impression reading Humes’ insightful analysis, that this latest version of the old Darwin-vs.-God controversy is the product of the removal of Critical Thinking skills from the mainstream public school curriculum, and the lack of a Cold War Era push towards developments in Math & Science, supported by all but the most outspoken of Bible literalists, who constantly attempt to couch the debate as “God vs. Darwin”, when in fact, most religions don’t require people to choose between the two. In my opinion, this is a clear case of the old adage, “Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it”. Young-Earth Creationists might benefit from not ignoring the history of the Catholic Church’s censorship of Copernicus and Galileo hundreds of years ago, and ask themselves why the Pope doesn’t have a big problem with Darwin’s theories today.
-Philadelphic
Further reading on the Dover Trial: (after the break…)
(more…)
Tags: activists, Amendment, America, ban, banning, belief, bible, bio, biology, Bush, California, Canyon, Casey, Catholic, censor, censorship, children, Christ, church, Civil liberties, Columbia, Constitution, Copernican, Copernicus, Cornel, Cornelius, creationism, creationist, Darwin, death, Democracy, discovery, dogma, Dover, Dover trial, Enterprise, Europe, Evolution, faith, First Amendment, foundation, freedom, fundamental, Galileo, god, Government, history, Hume, Kansas, Kitzmiller, Law, lawsuit, legal, liberal, Logic, Matthew, monkey, movie, Orwell, Oxford, pagan, Pennsylvania, political, Pope, Psalm, Pulitzer, Reagan, Religion, republican, Review, school, school board, Science, Scopes, scripture, secular, Tennessee, theory, tolerance, United States, war
Posted in Review | 1 Comment »
Monday, February 9th, 2009
Book Review — Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson
On the surface, Cryptonomicon is a straightforward historical fiction about how the key to winning a war is having better technology than one’s enemy. A deeper look, however, reveals that it is a moral and practical guide for those who are willing and able to fight oppressive regimes by eschewing brute force in favor of cunning.
Sometimes labeled as science fiction, Cryptonomicon is a detailed excerpt from the lives of a handful of men and women spanning two distinct, but related periods of time — World War II and the tech boom of the 1980s. Stephenson tells the tale of the oft-overlooked underground intelligence aspect of war while he creates a parallel of covert modern-day corporate manipulations, and he slowly fills in the blanks of the chronology of the characters who are intricately connected by blood and causality.
Stephenson peppers his lengthy novel with anecdotes that reveal his extensive knowledge of the technology and battles of World War II as well as modern computing and corporate etiquette. The comprehensive detailed technical explanations of cryptography, security, and other technology might distract a casual reader, but should entrance any technophile who is captivated by the amazing amount of knowledge at Stephenson’s fingertips and the way it’s presented by the book’s characters.
The main character of the novel is Randall “Randy” Lawrence Waterhouse, the 1980s descendant of his covertly influential veteran grandfather. Throughout the novel, Randy embodies an uncommon intellect coupled with a common pursuit — love and happiness. Although Stephenson’s scattered but thorough focus on anecdotes and technical details detracts somewhat from Randy’s potential lovability, after some conversations with the mysterious Enoch Root, Randy gains some enlightenment that may clue the reader into why connecting to one of the overtly selfish characters isn’t easy — it’s all about the bigger picture. Root’s apparent agelessness, as well as the fact that the rest of the characters, including Randy, seem but cogs in a great machine, lends credence to the idea that it takes such individual sacrifice to create a greater good. Arguably the most interesting characters are embodied in Grandfather Lawrence Waterhouse and Goto Dengo, who, in the WWII era, started technological frameworks upon which others relied to further the greater good — winning the war and generally defeating that which is, at least according to Root, evil.
Enoch Root explains to Randy the difference between people who “worship” Ares (the Greek god of war) and people who “worship” Athena (the Greek god of what Root describes as something like cunning). The former are the bellicose oppressors, like the Nazis, and the latter are, like the intelligence agencies of the Allied forces, the technological cunning that is required to overcome the oppressors. Randy’s gradual realization is that he has been tasked with carrying the torch of Athena, along with his fellow associates.
Despite what I’ve heard about Stephenson’s writing style being loquacious and too tangential without having a satisfactory end, Cryptonomicon was entertaining enough to keep me interested and complete enough for me to be satisfied and wanting to read more of Stephenson’s work. Although I interrupted the novel halfway to read the entire Old Man’s War series (plus The Android’s Dream, all of which I highly recommend) by John Scalzi, I easily returned to Cryptonomicon, anxious to see how the characters were faring. I believe that I merely needed a brief hiatus from the thickness.
I recommend Cryptonomicon for anyone who likes covert intelligence ops (especially related to World War II), cryptography, technology, hacking, information technology governance, or just about everyone who reads Boing Boing or the like. Others might get sidetracked, bored, or entirely lost. The next Stephenson book on my list is Snow Crash. I’m currently reading His Dark Materials series.
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Notes:
Can atheists “worship” an ideal? In other words, can we hold something other than atheism in such high regard that we essentially praise it, follow it quasi-dogmatically? Enoch Root suggests implicitly that those who blindly worship Ares, or war for war itself, are destructive and need to be stopped, and can only be stopped with cunning, and, again implicitly, by those who either knowingly or by action worship metis (the Greek “cunning”).
Although Cryptonomicon didn’t delve too deeply into religious belief, it sets the tone for a reflection of our current world situation — a few prominent and dogmatic religious organizations currently effectively run the planet. Root’s warning about worshippers of Ares seems to point directly to believers as those who fight to fight, and indicates that the counter is embodied in those who favor Athena (cunning) — the rationalists. Does this mean that even atheists might need to hold something other than nature to a near-divine degree?
Tags: Atheism, atheist, belief, Catholic, Comic, dogma, dragon, foundation, god, Greek, LDS, Nazi, plane, rational, Science, theist, universe, war
Posted in Review | No Comments »
Monday, December 22nd, 2008
I was going to do a best blog posts, taking from other blogs, but after churning through a single month archive of a single blog, I realized that it would take me about a year to accomplish such a feat. So, I’m just going to pick stuff from this blog. It’s not wholly narcissistic, since some of the posts will have been written by people who are not me.
In mostly chronological order:
JNTB debunks the Significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls
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Philadelphic challenges the idea that there can be “fundy atheists.” in Readings… The Hilariously Bad, The Good, and the WTF
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Laura analyzes the impact of pro-abstinence laws on public school sex education, in Sexual Education and the Implications of Senate Bill 155
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Velkyn doesn’t like living within A Culture of Lies
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Procrustes rants about the meaninglessness of prayer in Mourning Cards and Tornadoes
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Laura dissects the Watchtower and puts it on display in Jehovah’s Witnesses Unearthed
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Velkyn debunks Dr. Brandon Carter’s “God did it” claims with regard to those nasty gaps in the universe, in Secrets: God: the Evidence, part of the Unearthed series (which is really very good!)
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Procrustes addresses Roger Severino’s arguments against gay marriage in Regarding Roger Severino’s “Legalizing Gay Marriage Will Spark Lawsuits…”
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Procrustes’ early criticism of Obama’s fierce loyalty to Christianity, in Thank God Obama Worships the “Right” God (follow up with The Trend of Obama Doubt)
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FormerFundy argues that Personal Responsibility is Paramount Especially in the Political Realm
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Spider details and then skillfully criticizes Catholic World Youth Day 2008
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Procrustes agrees that we should be teaching creationism in schools, but Why Stop at Creationism?
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In light of the inability of certain groups to protest outside the Democratic National Convention, Laura questions limits to the right of free speech in Run DNC
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Procrustes, with help from Velkyn, explores what it means versus what it should mean to be tolerant today in Intolerable Tolerance
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Apropos, JNTB asks, Would a Christian Bail You Out?
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As the Bush era is finally ending, many of us acknowledge the fact that it’s not really ending. It’ll take decades, if ever, to undue all the harm he’s caused. Procrustes gives us a reminder of all that harm (if you can stomach it) in More U.S. Anti-Contraception in Africa, Plus a Look Back on Bush’s Anti-Choice Legacy (You can follow up on this by reading Laura’s article: Bush Administration Makes Last Ditch Effort to Diminish Women’s Rights)
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Laura identifies the Mormons as having a terrible amount of power and coercion in the Proposition 8 debacle, in Proposition 8, the Mormons, and the New “Separate But Equal” (Also see the follow-up: Erasing Decades of Moral Progress with Proposition 8)
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JNTB questions the American ideological pursuit of spreading democracy in Spreading Democracy?
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Shar’iah Law Rocks (Unfortunately, literally)
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JNTB examines the perception of what life is, and what human life is, with reference to Motl Brody, in Life and Death
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Mutha (rearing her head, finally) discusses what real patriotism is (or should be) in Waiter! There’s Dogma in My Primordial Soup!
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What’s really the State of Christmas?
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Procrustes asks, Why is there a Legal Provision Allowing a Lighter Sentence Based on Religious Beliefs?
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If you hadn’t already heard, Being Religious is Like Eating Sand
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Laura and Absinthium for their amazing Comics (and I’ll take partial blame for most of them, as I was the idea person, they were the artists — were it not for them, all StOP comics would look like a take-off on xkcd or Stick Figure Death Theater)
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Finally, and out of order, but appropriate for the time of year, Procrustes asks, Is Banning the Words “Christmas” and “Easter” an Appropriate Secular Goal?
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There’s so much more that I really enjoy, but I can’t rightly put them all on an end-of-the-year list. If anything, be sure to check out the Unearthed series, which really sheds some light on a variety of religious beliefs. For easy access to all StOP’s articles, see the Archives in easy-to-open/read format in the sidebar. Thanks for reading State of Protest!
(Oh, and if you have a favorite StOP post that’s not on the list, let me know in the comments!)
(man, that’s ugly — My fault!)
Tags: abstinence, administration, Africa, America, archives, atheist, ban, banning, belief, Brody, Bush, Carter, Catholic, Christ, Christianity, coercion, Comic, creationism, Dead Sea, death, Democracy, Democrat, dogma, free speech, fundy, gay, god, human, Jehovah, Law, lawsuit, legal, Logic, moral, Mormon, Motl, Motl Brody, mourning, Obama, political, prayer, Procrustes, rights, school, scroll, scrolls, secular, sex, sexual education, theist, tolerance, Unearthed, universe, World Youth Day
Posted in Religion | 1 Comment »
Monday, November 17th, 2008
“I Give Evolution Two Opposable Thumbs Up” reads the bright blue rear window decal on my car. I have been given much positive feedback on it from strangers. Their feedback gives me a sense of hope that science is valued in Texas in spite of recent discussions by the Texas School Board regarding the watering-down of the science curricula regarding biological evolution .
Why do I need hope? I need hope because our nation, once a place to grow one budding scientist after another is failing. We don’t make scientists, we import them. If it were not for overseas engineers and scientists, the US would be trailing behind other nations in the fields of technology and science . What kind of future will the children of the U.S. have if the nation is poorly educated in science? Without proper education in the sciences, how can we properly overcome economic, energy, and environmental crises? The United States of America has a short but rich history of innovation and advancement.
What happened? We can point fingers at the quality of our educational system or at the parents who are not involved in their child’s schoolwork. Well, we can point fingers anywhere, really.
However, today I would like to point my finger at the unpatriotic U.S. citizens who oppose a proper education in the sciences. These folks want to teach science in a manner that will not conflict with a book that is a few thousand years old because of their faith. Religious faith should not be mixed with science. Fear and competition led us to achieve scientific greatness when we conquered outer space. It is now ignorance and religious dogma that has led us to our decline in scientific advancement.
We provide an ugly disservice to our nation’s heritage of innovation- one that has made us a great nation, when we place the obstacle of religious dogma in the way of scientific progress.
Tags: America, bio, bright, children, citizen, dogma, Evolution, faith, history, LDS, Logic, Religion, school, school board, Science, United States
Posted in Logic, Religion, Science, Video | 2 Comments »
