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The Post ran a piece about senator-elect Scott Brown:
His prior visits to Washington, he explained, were mostly to watch his daughter Ayla, a college basketball player, play against American University, or to visit the monuments “as a tourist.”
“I’m a history buff,” he said. “I love the Museum of Natural History.“
*facepalm*
They should have asked him if he thinks a liberal arts college is where students are indoctrinated into the vast left-wing conspiracy.
Or whether he goes shopping on the Mall.
Every so often, sophisticated theists will say that Dawkins, Hitchens, etc. misrepresent religion, that God is not an invisible sky-daddy who grants wishes, but some ineffable essence working within the laws of nature, or some such (see here, here, here).
And then something like this comes along:
That would be Gov. Sonny Perdue, who has asked Georgians to pray for rain today, and at lunchtime will convene with various religious and political leaders on the steps of the state Capitol to seek divine intervention in the state’s months-long drought.
There’s probably a polite way to say this, but I won’t (maybe I’m just cranky because it’s raining in Maryland, rather than in Georgia where they could use it): these people believe in magic. Primitive, superstitious magic, where if you say the right words and make the right gestures, the great sky spirit will grant you your wish.
Right here, in the United States, at the dawn of the 21st century. In the sixties, people thought we’d have flying cars. Instead, we have rain dances.
And this isn’t some fringe group. Not only does Governor Perdue believe that rain dances work, enough of his constituents do that he hasn’t been laughed out of office.
So, all you sensible theists out there, why aren’t you policing your own? Why aren’t you pointing out to these superstitious fools that what they’re doing is no different from spreading mistletoe on the ground and chanting? Pastors, why aren’t you educating your congregations and telling them that no, God doesn’t work that way?
In a recent speech, Daniel Dennett suggested referring to non-brights as “supers”, because they believe in the supernatural. But perhaps “super” is short for “superstitious” as well.
dlighe pointed me at an article in Christianity Today by Alvin Plantinga, The Dawkins Confusion. He seemed to find it interesting, and there are a lot of links to it from the blogosphere, and they seem to agree that it’s a good, solid refutation of Dawkins’s The God Delusion.
To which I can only say, WTF?