Mugshot #1

Take a good look at the grinning face at right. It belongs to a pompous, whiney lawyer who works at the Discovery Institute, named Casey Luskin. To demonstrate the pompous and whiney bit: he claims that he owns copyright to that photograph, and can forbid people from posting it on their websites.

However, as Tim Sandefur -- also a lawyer -- explains:

Luskin is, of course, a public figure who has voluntarily injected himself into a matter of national public dispute, and people using his photograph are not profiting in any way from doing so....

I don't know how well the legalisms translate across the USA-Canadian border, but I'm happy to join the small but growing chorus of bloggers posting his image -- just to prove we can.

My attempt at starting a Google Bomb follows:

Casey Luskin Casey Luskin Casey Luskin

If you post Luskin's picture, drop me a line so I can add the link.....
(Hey, it worked great on Michael Egnor)

Ideologues: Don't they read their own history?

In a thread about theocracy and theocrats over at Dispatches From the Culture Wars, a prize specimen, one Angela Wittman, showed up to ask just what was so bad about theocracy:

Are you afraid that Christians will encourage honesty, fidelity and truth? Just think... We might even obey Christ's command to love our neighbor as ourself and bless others with goodness.

Admittedly that doesn't sound like such a bad thing, on the face of it. But what, concretely, does it actually mean? Well, Angela has a most interesting website that tells you all you really want to know about her. For example, on the page "A True Christian Woman", we learn about several gals whom Angela considers heroines of the Faith. Among them is Jenny Geddes, an Edinburgh lass who in 1637 had a bit of a temper tantrum in church, which included throwing her stool at the minister. What terrible thing had the minister done? It seemed he had attempted to "introduce a different style of Worship than Presbyterian".

Geez Louise. About 15 years back, I was on the Worship Committee of our church, which was responsible for setting the order of service, choosing hymns etc. And when we changed something, occasionally people would complain. But I don't think we ever had anyone throw the furniture at us. Is this Angela's idea of "blessing others with goodness"?

Of course, I'm leaving out a bit of context here. The liturgical crime the minister committed was, apparently, to read from an Anglican-flavoured Prayer Book introduced by Charles I and his Archbishop -- a slap in the face to Scottish nationalist feeling (I get the impression that, as so often happens, the religious fight is just the visible proxy for the real issues). And in fact, the stool-throwing lead to bigger things:

Jenny Geddes has been credited with sounding the alarm which led to the Scottish National Covenant, English Civil War, the execution of Charles I and Cromwell's conquest of Scotland.

Civil War. Great. If it's all the same to you, Angela, I'm not sure I can handle being blessed with that much goodness.

But the irony is that Angela seems to be missing a crucial point: the entanglement of government power with the affairs of the church is central to the Jenny Geddes incident and its sequelae. First, the English state church tried -- with the backing of the monarchy -- to impose itself on the Scottish Church. And few years later (as the end result of the larger incompetence of Charles I), Cromwell imposed his Puritan vision on the whole of Great Britain -- which was great for the Presbyterians, but if you were High Church Anglican (or worse, Catholic) your life was likely to suck rather badly.

The take-home lesson is that theocrats don't stop with persecuting the damned atheists and the sexual perverts: even the "wrong" variety of their own sect eventually winds up in trouble with the Powers That Be. Which is why the modern separation of church and state (whether expressed de jure as in the American Constitution, or observed de facto as in much of the rest of the West) is such a marvelous invention, and a precious gift to be defended. What the Angela Wittmans of the world don't see is that we are all safer because of that.

Apparently, I'm blasphemous (but only a little)

TimeOnline brings us this list of 20 incidents of blasphemy, rated according to various impact criteria (including body count). The ones that strike me are:

17. Ecce Homo
Photographs showing Jesus eating with homosexuals and transsexuals in an exhibition in Sweden, raised eyebrows in Europe between 1998 and 2000. The vivid images caused Pope John Paul II to cancel a meeting with the Swedish Lutheran Archbishop Karl Gustav Hammar who supported their exhibition.
Vulgarity: 3 Criminality: 0 Religious impact: 7 Political impact: 0 Deaths: 0

I don't see what JP2's problem was -- wasn't Jesus known for hanging with the outcasts of society?

But this one is just amusing (especially the text highlighted in red):

14. The Life of Brian
Arguably, Monty Python’s finest hour the Life of Brian is a comic biopic of Brian Cohen, born at the same time as Jesus and mistaken for the Messiah. A satire on excessive religiosity the film was banned in many towns in the UK for its alleged blasphemous content. Particular offence was taken at the crucifixion scene where those being executed burst into song with the theme tune “Always look on the bright side of life”. In New York Nuns and Rabbis picketed screenings of the film, which was completely banned in some states. In Ireland Life of Brian wasn’t shown for eight years after it was made and not for 11 years in Italy. Just this year, a screening of the film in a church in Newcastle Upon Tyne caused uproar from conservative Christian group Christian Voice.
Vulgarity: 4 Criminality: 0 Religious impact: 5 Political Impact: 2 Deaths: 0

To me, the funny part is: a few years ago, my wife and I showed this video, in the church, to the youth group during the Easter sleepover, including the presence of a minister and the pastoral intern, with nary a protest heard. Who knew we were being so daring? The intern related how the seminarians she knew all loved Life of Brian.

Of course, this was the United Church of Canada, where just about anything goes.....

(Hat tip to Pharyngula)

Religious Wars!

Last night at dinner, a religious argument broke out across the table. It was between my younger (21yo) son on one side, and my older (23yo) son + GF on the other.

They were arguing passionately about which was better: Ubuntu or Fedora.

Friggin' fanatics.

Merry Newton-mass!

God rest ye merry, physicists
Let nothing you dismay.
Remember Isaac Newton
was born on Christmas Day!
His gravity and calculus and eff equals em-ay!
Oh, pillars of physics and math, physics and math,
Oh, pillars of physics and math!

Baptist declares War on (Dawkins') Christmas

I'm way behind the curve on this one -- PZ and Greg Laden already got in their licks -- but I think I finally figured out just why Albert Mohler has a bug up his butt about Dawkins' celebration of Christmas as a cultural tradition. It's not that Mohler is a "bible-thumping Grinch"(Greg) or has a "smug, ignorant heart"(PZ) (well, not only that).

Basically, it's projection, and an ex-fundy like Your Humble Narrator should remember this. There's a prevalent attitude among fundamentalist Christians that all one's diversions and entertainments should be theologically-correct: they must support (or at least, not contradict) your Christian faith. It comes in varying degrees of course, and not every devout Christian is terminally anal-retentive, but this is where you get the banning and boycotting of Harry Potter (for sorcery) or Pullman (for anti-theism), or any number of other books, movies and TV shows. Ditto Dungeons & Dragons, certain (arbitrarily-chosen) musical genres, and so on. It's also the source of a lot of Christian-themed kitsch -- ordinary knick-knacks sanctified by slapping on a Jesus decal.

Where Mohler, I think, has a problem is in conceiving that there are people in this world who don't feel that way -- we just don't take ourselves and everything we do that neurotically seriously. We can sing songs whose lyrics we don't agree with, but whose melody and harmony we find beautiful (and speaking as a former chorister, I say that anyone -- atheist or Christian -- who tells me my unbelief means I'm forbidden to sing my favorite Christmas carols if I like, is hereby cordially invited to get stuffed), or put up a decorated tree (though we're all too lazy at my house), or observe any number of other little rituals (many of extra-Christian origin anyway) that have syncreted onto this time of year. My agnostic parents -- who, like Dawkins, were "culturally Christian" Brits -- did all that kind of stuff, and I learned my secular Christmas traditions from them, long before I first darkened the door of a church. (Come to think of it, I might even take in a Christmas church service if I damn well feel like it).

But Mohler, apparently, doesn't see any of that. Fine, screw 'im. While he's busy holding his theologically-correct festival, the rest of us are just going have some fun -- in whatever way, and aided by whatever spirit(s), seem best to us.

So: Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays or Really Super-Spiffy Solstice or....ah, hell: have a blast this coming week, with those you love most.

Bits from a CORE dump

Years ago, I signed up to receive the newsletter of Citizens for Origins Research and Education -- or as I like to refer to this missive, the Kwarterly Kreationist Komix, since they never fail to amuse. Noteworthy tidbits from the latest issue:

A Creation Museum Fun House for Ottawa?
Inspired no doubt by the success of their hero Ken Ham, the CORE board wants to build the largest creation museum in Canada. Since our only other known creation museum appears to be a modest-sized bungalow, this is perhaps not too ambitious a goal -- certainly we're not necessarily talking anything approaching the magnitude of Ham's Folly. However, CORE president Ian Juby does promise animatronic dinosaurs, while acknowledging it will take many years and millions of dollars to pull this off.

Too bad the money won't be getting spent on real science education.

Coming soon, to an obscure cable TV spot near you:
Juby is also producing a TV show called Genesis Week, which sounds like it will air in some low-rent religious cable slot. From the website, it appears they get a lot of their material from Carl Baugh and Don Patton. If you've been involved in the C vs. E circus long enough to be familiar with the Rogues' Gallery of creationism, you will know this means bottom-of-the-barrel stuff -- the most fact-free, pulled-from-the-anal-orifice version of creation "science". Baugh (like Kent Hovind) is the kind of creationist who embarasses other creationists.

But hey, the show is shot in High-Def, so it's gotta be good, right? I may or may not get around to watching (and having some fun with) the YouTube versions.

Abiogenetic Irrelevance
Under the title"The Mathematical Impossibility of Life by natural processes", someone (presumably also Juby -- in the absence of other attributions, I assume the whole newsletter is written by him) writes:

Many evolutionists attempt to cop a plea by claiming that evolution does not attempt to explain the origin of life. This is nonsense -- the entire point and principle of evolutionary theory is to remove the need for a Creator.

No: the above is nonsense. I'm sure Francis Collins and Ken Miller (not to mention Charles Darwin himself) would be surprised to learn that "the entire point and principle" of their work is to "remove the need for a Creator". The purpose of evolutionary theory is to explain terrestrial biology by the methods of science. Historically, it had the effect of knocking the props out from under a particular class of religious apologetics -- the Argument From Design -- but that is a philosophical by-product, not its intent. By Juby's logic, one might as well claim that the purpose of gravitational theory is to explain the solar system without the need for God to personally push the planets around (which was actually a live argument -- about 300 years ago!).

Juby continues:

But when one looks at the impossibility of life by natural processes, it quickly becomes evident why anti-creationists are avoiding this subject like the plague!

It's very convenient to just be able to make up claims about your opponents' behaviour, isn't it? Yeah, we avoid talking about abiogenesis, except when we don't. We then get Juby's attempt to prove that abiogenesis is impossible, which consists of a calculation of the chance of randomly assembling a particular chain of amino acids 200 units long (ie, a small protein). He correctly points out that the chance of getting this right on the first try is 20²⁰⁰, and that you would have to try some 10²⁴² combinations every second for the entire 20 billion-year history of the universe to "produce one protein".

Basically, it's the Argument From Frighteningly Large Numbers. It's also a case of GIGO: what does forming some particular random short protein from an amino soup have to do with abiogenesis? Pretty much nothing. It's not even an argument. Does any serious scientist postulate that the way to start off life is to assemble some "magic" protein? Over the years, I've noticed that a lot of creationists don't seem to even understand what an argument looks like. For a discussion of abiogenesis probability calculations that deals with the real world (as opposed to creationist straw men), see the t.o FAQ.

Of course, Juby's "solution" to his invented problem is the usual GodDidIt. That's another common characteristic of creationist "argument" -- probably the single central fallacy at the core of all the others: they think "It happened by magic" is a respectable and scientific(!) answer.

Until the next CORE dump.....