Conservapedia Now Slightly Less Fun
Readers of talk.origins may remember Ray Martinez, a particularly dense and combative young-earth creationist. I’d been having fun this past week or so reading his antics at Conservapedia.
Freedom Of Religion and Freedom From Religion
This particularly hateful letter,
published in the Kenai, AK Peninsula Clarion (registration required; see also here), promulgates a popular misconception:
The United States is based on having freedom of religion, speech, etc., which means you can believe in God any way you want (Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, etc.), but you must believe.
Let’s consider a scenario: the government in your state allocates X million dollars to buy rosaries to be handed out in public schools, to hire priests to lead the school in reciting “Hail Mary, full of grace” over the PA system each morning, to bus students to mass on Sunday mornings, and so forth.
Most Americans, I suspect, will think, “Wait a sec! How come the school is pushing Catholicism on my kids? That can’t be right!” Then they’ll look up the bit in the first amendment that says, “Congress shall make no law regarding an establishment of religion” and see that no indeed, that can’t be right.
So what the first amendment says is that the government can’t push Catholicism on you. You have freedom from Catholicism.
Except that the constitution doesn’t explicitly mention Catholicism. It covers all religions. So the first amendment says that the government can’t push any religion. You have freedom from religion.
Yeah, it really is that simple. Why don’t people get it?
(HT My Confined Space, via Pharyngula.)
Hovind Figures Out the Whole “Defense” Thing
Kent and Jo Hovind were back in the news last week:
Kent and Jo Hovind were back in federal court this week seeking acquittal on charges of bank structuring.
The couple’s attorneys argued there was no intent to defraud the government by making large deposits just under the $10,000 threshold that triggers bank-reporting requirements.
I can’t help wondering why they didn’t make these arguments the last time they were in court. It could have saved everyone a world of bother.
Frankly, Hovind comes across as a child who’s finally learned out that mommy really means it this time.
The article also notes:
He remains in the Escambia County Jail awaiting transfer.
Hurm. I’d’ve thought the state of Florida would’ve managed to transfer him by now.
A date for Jo Hovind’s sentencing has been delayed pending a ruling by U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers on the request for acquittal on the bank structuring conviction.
No date has been set for her ruling.
This was originally set for this coming Thursday, but I guess it’s been postponed.
One of These Things Is Just Like the Other
This story
(from Captain’s Quarters)
was posted at Free Republic last month:
Muslim Taxi Showdown In The Twin Cities (Muslim cabbies to transport people with alcohol in luggage)
The refusal of a large number of Islamic cabbies to transport passengers with alcohol in their luggage or service dogs for the blind and handicapped, and the local fatwa on which they rely for their position, has led to a showdown with the Metropolitan Airport Commission
Even excluding the “All Muslims are terrorists” lunatic fringe, the general consensus in the comments seems to be, “Tough. Taxis are a public service, and if a customer is doing something legal but repugnant to you, suck it up, that’s too bad. Deal with it.”
Next, there’s this story from last year:
Pharmacists Don’t Want to Sell Morning After Pill Despite FDA Approval
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — The Food and Drug Administration may have approved sales of the morning after pill over the counter, but some pharmacists are reluctant to sell the drug. The agency’s move to sell Plan B without a prescription may expand the nationwide debate about a conscience clause for pharmacists to allow them to opt out of dispensing the drug.
Here, the reaction is a bit more mixed: there are those complaining about government interfering with private business, the ones confusing Plan B with RU-486 and spreading misinformation about both, and the ones imagining the ACLU, NARAL, and NOW having a cow over this. But the majority opinion seems to be that pharmacists shouldn’t have to sell a pill that personally offends them.
So which is it, Freepers? Is it okay for someone to refuse service to customers who offend their moral or cultural values, or isn’t it? Is it okay for an atheist cabbie to refuse to drive people to church? Is it okay for a vegan cashier to refuse to ring up your steak? Is it okay for a nurse to refuse to take care of a woman who’s having her period?
And This Is Why the First Amendment Is a Good Thing ™
One more thing to be grateful for
if you live in a country with freedom of speech:
CAIRO, Egypt (Reuters) — An Alexandria court convicted an Egyptian blogger on Thursday for insulting both Islam and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and sentenced him to four years in jail over his writings on the Internet.
…One of Suleiman’s articles said that al-Azhar in Cairo, one of the most prominent seats of Sunni Muslim learning, was promoting extreme ideas. Another article, headlined “The Naked Truth of Islam as I Saw it”, accused Muslims of savagery during clashes between Muslims and Christians in Alexandria in 2005.
He has also described some of the companions of the Muslim prophet Mohammad as “terrorists”, and has likened Mubarak to dictatorial pharaohs who ruled ancient Egypt.
“I was hoping that he would get a harsher sentence because he presented to the world a bad image of Egypt. There are things that one should not talk about, like religion and politics. He should have got a 10-year sentence,” said lawyer Nizar Habib, who attended the trial as a member of the public.
Point duh-one: freedom of speech is not there to protect popular speech. It’s for unpopular speech.
Point duh-two: an idea that needs legislative protection from criticism is one that can’t stand on its own. I’m sorry Mr. Habib doesn’t like the fact that Suleiman aired Egypt’s dirty laundry in public (any more than I like it when an American makes the US look bad in the eyes of the world), but frankly, the way to deal with this is to fix the problem, not shoot the messenger.
And if there needs to be a law against criticism of Islam, doesn’t that pretty much mean that there’s no rational reason to believe in Islam? What kind of god needs to be protected, like an endangered species?
Flock of Dodos Meme
I went to see Flock of Dodos for its Darwin Day showing on Thursday.
At one point, Randy Olson, the filmmaker, points out that the Intelligent Design movement has lots of points that fit on a bumper sticker, such as “no transitionals” (or “not enough transitional fossils”), “teach the controversy”, and so forth, while proponents of evolution, especially scientists, can’t seem to express any point in less than a paragraph. And while this may indicate that scientists are careful to make well-thought-out, nuanced statements and avoid oversimplification, it makes for bad PR.
Later on, perhaps unintentionally, Olson does present an anti-ID slogan of his own: ID never rises above the level of intuition. For instance, as IDists like to point out, it’s obvious that Mt. Rushmore wasn’t carved by erosion and tectonic forces. Okay, fair enough. But that’s just the first step. Now they need to quantify this intuitive feeling, and come up with an objective metric of “designedness” or something, so that two people in different parts of the world, with different backgrounds can look at the same phenomenon and independently arrive at the same “designedness” number.
Likewise, creationists of all stripes are fond of saying that certain structures are too complex to have arisen by chance. Setting aside the obvious fact that natural selection is the very opposite of chance, one can still easily imagine a person to whom it’s intuitively obvious that human eyes are too complex to have arisen through the action of natural laws, without an intelligent guiding hand.
But again, that’s just a first step. How do you turn this intuition into something objective and quantifiable? I would expect someone to write a paper showing that natural laws can produce X amount of complexity in such-and-such amount of time, but that human eyes have X+100 complexity. X+100 > X, ergo human eyes are too complex to have arisen naturally.
The first step toward this would be to come up with a definition of complexity in biological systems, and a way of measuring it (and people like Bill Dembski do refer to the work of Shannon, Kolmogorov, and Chaitin in this area). The next would be to estimate the upper limit of complexity that natural processes can generate (which creationists have never done competently and honestly) and measure the amount of complexity in a biological structure (which, again, they’ve never done. Dembski has been asked several times to produce such a calculation, but has never done so, to my knowledge).
So when the Discovery Institute, trying to avoid getting sucked into the Dover trial, said that ID wasn’t ready to be taught in classrooms, they were right. ID has yet to rise above the level of intuition and gut feeling. And until it does, it has no right to be taken seriously as science.
Addendum: Another bumper-sticker-sized slogan for evolution I’ve run across is that we are risen apes, not fallen angels.
PZ Steals My Thunder
Looking through my httpd logs, I ran across this post over at Teleological Blog:
Our friends at The Panda’s Thumb are planning a re-enactment podcast of the
Dover trial and are looking for voice talent. Imagine my surprise when I
received this e-mail today from someone named Lee Bowman:Are you a voice talent? Andrew Arensburger is looking for volunteers!
http://www.ooblick.com/pandas/Casting director is PZ Myers (self appointed).
PZ is the “self-appointed” director. You gotta give PZ points for Chuzpah!!
I suspect that’s this Lee Bowman, simply because a person by that name is listed as a contributor to Bill Dembski’s little circle jerk.
So let’s see. I asked PZ to advertise this little project, since he has a large audience and I don’t. Bowman sees it at either Pharyngula or the Panda’s Thumb. He follows the links and looks around and finds my name, but manages to miss the fact that PZ isn’t mentioned anywhere and has nothing to do with this project. But hey, he first read about it in a post by PZ, so PZ is clearly in charge!
And then DonaldM at Teleological Blog gets mail “from someone named Lee Bowman”, doesn’t check a goddamn thing in it for himself, and proceeds to chide PZ for his chutzpah. So maybe this should really be entitled “Creationists Steal My Thunder, Drop It On PZ’s Porch”. Or maybe “ID researchers announce absence of word `gullible’ in dictionary, according to sources.” Psst! Donald! Wanna buy a bridge in Manhattan? How ’bout some Iraqi WMDs?
Anyway, just to bring this back on topic for the Pandas podcast: if you’re playing a creationist, please don’t try to play them as idiots. The script does quite a good job of that on its own.
Secondly, just to make things clear for the copro- and lithocephalics: PZ Myers has nothing to do with this project. It’d be cool if he did, but he doesn’t.
Thirdly, Lee Bowman and DonaldM are clearly asshats (drink!) who need to learn some critical thinking (not to mention reading for comprehension) skills. Seriously, guys. If you want to be taken seriously, why don’t you act like it? I hate to think ill of anyone, but you leave me no choice.
Pandas Podcast: Casting Call!
I’m putting together an audio dramatization of the Dover Panda trial, to be podcasted, and I need actors. If you’re interested in helping, go to the
project page and sign up!
Here’s how it works: pick some parts you’d like to play (preferably more than one in case your first choice isn’t available) and send me the list, along with a demo (because I’d like to know that you know how to record stuff on your computer). Once roles are handed out, you’ll record yourself reading your part in the
Dover
transcript
and send it to me. I’ll collect all of the recordings and splice them together into something like a radio drama or dramatic reading, and put them on the net.
Porn in Afghanistan
According to
the Scotsman,
people in Afghanistan have developed quite a taste for teh pr0n:
The heaviest fighting in five years has slowed reconstruction to a crawl in the deserts and oases of Kandahar, where the strict Taleban movement began in 1994, but pornography, opium and illegal alcohol are flourishing, officials say.
…“Pornography is a problem,” admits new provincial police chief General Asmatullah Alizai. “According to our Islamic rules and beliefs, people cannot accept this kind of thing. I don’t want people to see this kind of film.”
Can you say “forbidden fruit, boys and girls? I knew you could.
Also, from the comments:
If they are going to be issued with a bevy of virgins
in their next life, I see nothing wrong with them veiwing a few training manuals. You wouldn’t want to look stupid on the big night if it was you.
More on Hovind
Jennifer Epstein has a sympathetic account of Kent Hovind’s sentencing. Interesting if you want to know more about what happened aside from the actual sentencing.
And the Pensacola News Journal has a delightfully snarky editorial entitled “Earth to ‘Dr. Dino’: Please pay your taxes and start facing reality”:
In court, Hovind offers the judge a deal: Release him and he will stop suing the government.
Hovind blames his problems on lawyers, another pastor, the Internal Revenue Service. His own sins are minor.
“I forgot to dot some i’s and cross some t’s,” he said.
And apparently he really is as stupid as all that:
He talked tough in telephone conversations from Escambia County Jail, where he was held while waiting to be sentenced Friday on 58 charges.
Although phones include warnings that conversations are recorded, he didn’t mince words as he ran up eight hours of calls per week.
He vowed to “make life miserable” for the IRS, keep suing the government and promote his cockamamie theory that he’s tax-exempt.
This call will be monitored, and not just for quality assurance purposes. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say may be used against you.