Gratuitous Common Sense

I have deemed Gratuitous Common Sense (along with Zaius Nation) worthy of being blogrolled, owing to this fantastic piece asking which of the two sets of Ten Commandments mentioned in Exodus Christians are supposed to follow.

(via Light Remembered)

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Archie does fundies

Zaius Nation presents: "Archie and friends--with special guest star Test Tube Jesus."

Gold. Absolute gold.

(Via Light Remembered)

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The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XIII

The week in fundie:

• Jim Crow in Jerusalem: on Israel's "modesty buses"--public buses which service Orthodox Jewish neigbourhoods--men sit up the front while women passengers are forced to sit in the back. (via Pharyngula)
• Rosa Parks in Jerusalem: a woman who dared to challenge the bus policy last November was beaten up by the local Israeli chapter of the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. (via Pharyngula)
• Utah Republican: "Immigration is a Satanic plot!" (Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
• Illinois student arrested for handing in a "violent" writing assignment to his teacher. (Just like Cho Seng-Hui!!!) He's Asian. (Just like Cho Seng-Hui!!!) (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
• Another own-goal for the Right in the debate over the VT shootings: Judith Reisman blames the massacre on the killer's "erototoxins." (Erototoxins, as Ed Brayton explains, "are hypothetical chemicals released in the brain when one views dirty pictures that, Reisman claims, actually 'change the structure' of the brain. They're the biochemical equivalent of Mr. Snuffleupogus on Sesame Street; only Judith Reisman can see them.") (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
• Dutch creationist "re"-builds Noah's Ark. (via Pharyngula)
• Arkansas man sues public library after he claims his sons saw a book about lesbian sex there. (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
  

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Egg on my face

Way back in mid-February I expressed my doubts about Australia's ability to win a third successive Cricket World Cup. At that time, they had just lost a tri-series to England and were in the middle of a shocker of a tour of New Zealand. Yes, the side was missing key players like Adam Gilchrist, Ricky Ponting and Andrew Symonds; but next-generation players including Phil Jacques, Cameron White, Shaun Tait and Nathan Bracken also failed to rise to the occasion. Moreover, that tour saw the career of last year's international number one one-day cricketer Mike Hussey--often touted as a successor to Ponting--come crashing down to earth. (What is it about sport that causes one to write in horrible cliches?)

Since that tour--and all matches since that tour have either been practice or official World Cup matches--Australia has won 13 successive encounters, including last night's World Cup final:

Australia v Zimbabwe at Kingstown - Mar 6, 2007
Australia won by 106 runs. Australia 290/7 (50 ov); Zimbabwe 184/7 (50 ov)

Australia v England at Kingstown - Mar 9, 2007
Australia won by 5 wickets (with 55 balls remaining). England 197 (48.3 ov); Australia 200/5 (40.5 ov)

2nd Match, Group A: Australia v Scotland at Basseterre - Mar 14, 2007
Australia won by 203 runs. Australia 334/6 (50 ov); Scotland 131 (40.1 ov)

10th Match, Group A: Australia v Netherlands at Basseterre - Mar 18, 2007
Australia won by 229 runs. Australia 358/5 (50 ov); Netherlands 129 (26.5 ov)

22nd Match, Group A: Australia v South Africa at Basseterre - Mar 24, 2007
Australia won by 83 runs. Australia 377/6 (50 ov); South Africa 294 (48 ov)

25th Match, Super Eights: West Indies v Australia at North Sound - Mar 27-28, 2007
Australia won by 103 runs. Australia 322/6 (50 ov); West Indies 219 (45.3 ov)

29th Match, Super Eights: Australia v Bangladesh at North Sound - Mar 31, 2007
Australia won by 10 wickets (with 49 balls remaining). Bangladesh 104/6 (22/22 ov); Australia 106/0 (13.5/22 ov)

35th Match, Super Eights: Australia v England at North Sound - Apr 8, 2007
Australia won by 7 wickets (with 16 balls remaining). England 247 (49.5 ov); Australia 248/3 (47.2 ov)

40th Match, Super Eights: Australia v Ireland at Bridgetown - Apr 13, 2007
Australia won by 9 wickets (with 226 balls remaining). Ireland 91 (30 ov); Australia 92/1 (12.2 ov)

43rd Match, Super Eights: Australia v Sri Lanka at St George's - Apr 16, 2007
Australia won by 7 wickets (with 44 balls remaining). Sri Lanka 226 (49.4 ov); Australia 232/3 (42.4 ov)

47th Match, Super Eights: Australia v New Zealand at St George's - Apr 20, 2007
Australia won by 215 runs. Australia 348/6 (50 ov); New Zealand 133 (25.5 ov)

2nd Semi-Final: Australia v South Africa at Gros Islet - Apr 25, 2007
Australia won by 7 wickets (with 111 balls remaining). South Africa 149 (43.5 ov); Australia 153/3 (31.3 ov)

Final: Australia v Sri Lanka at Bridgetown - Apr 28, 2007
Australia won by 53 runs (D/L method). Australia 281/4 (38/38 ov); Sri Lanka 215/8 (36/36 ov)

As you can see, not only have Australia won every encounter--in each match they have either beaten their opponents comprehensively, or thrashed them soundly. Along the way, Glenn McGrath has broken the record for most wickets taken during a World Cup with his 25, with next-generation player Shaun Tait close behind him on 23 (equal with Muttiah Muralitharan's haul). New-guard batsmen Shane Watson, Michael Clarke and Brad Hodge all finished with higher averages than players like Ponting and Hayden and Gilchrist, though each of the latter scored more runs. And all of this has been achieved with a key player, the once-seemingly untouchable Hussey, woefully out of form. (Though to be fair to Hussey, those higher up the order didn't give him a lot of time at the crease.)

So there it is: an embarrassingly easy tournament for Australia, a fairytale ending to McGrath's career, and egg well-and-truly on my face.

STATISTICS

Man of the match (final): Adam Gilchrist
Player of the series: Glenn McGrath
Best bowling averages: Glenn McGrath (13.04; 25 wickets), Muttiah Muralitharan (13.34; 23 wickets)
Best batting strike rates: Mark Boucher (137.20; 177 runs), Brad Hodge (129.91; 152 runs)
Best bowling in an innings: Andrew Hall, South Africa (5/18 vs. England); Charl Langeveldt, South Africa (5/39 vs. Sri Lanka)
Highest score (batting): Imran Nazir, Pakistan (160 vs. Zimbabwe); Matthew Hayden, Australia (158 vs. West Indies)

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Five Public Opinions is banned in China

China: free market good;
political freedom bad:
Bush USA?

Sorry--a commenter named Uspace who blogs in Senryu and Tanka inspired me to blog in haiku about the fact that Five Public Opinions is banned in China.

Milton Friedman once said that "the free market is the only mechanism that has ever been discovered for achieving participatory democracy." Milton Friedman was wrong, as the free-market-loving yet participatory-democracy-hating China demonstrates.

Anyway, you can test whether your own site is blocked at Great Firewall of China.

Oh, yeah--the point of my haiku? China's combination of capitalism and authoritarianism makes it seem (ironically) very right-wing--in a Bush/Howard conservative kind of way.

(Via Basil's Blog)

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Blog of the day: The VT Blame Game

Cynical-C Blog has a running list of everyone and everything that has been blamed for the VT shootings. So far, the list stands at 72.

One pundit, from the undeservedly-titled blog American Thinker, blames the VT English department for "teaching hate" (don't bother looking for any supporting evidence, however: this guy likes to argue by assertion too):

I wonder if Cho took the senior seminar by Professor Knapp, on "The self-justifying criminal in literature." Because he certainly learned to be a self-justifying criminal. Or whether he sat in courses with Nikki Giovanni, using her famous self-glorifying book, "The Prosaic Soul of Nikki Giovanni (2003)". Maybe he read Professor Bernice Hausman's "Changing Sex: Transsexualism, technology, and the idea of gender" --- just the thing for a disoriented young male suffering from massive culture shock on the hypersexual American campus. [Emphasis added]

So university English departments should censor their curricula and their research so as not to offend disoriented young men suffering from culture shock on "hypersexual" university campuses? I don't know who is the bigger appeaser: this guy, or Dinesh D'Souza.

Via Dispatches From the Culture Wars.

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Virginia Tech: it's all the fault of English teachers

Virginia Tech: the blame game continues. Debbie Schlussel blamed Muslims foreigners. Dinesh D'Souza pointed the finger at atheism and secularism. Ken Ham blamed Charles Darwin.

Now Townhall's Mary Grabar, herself a Temporary Assistant Professor of English at Clayton State University, Georgia, is blaming English teachers and professors.

If you were a student at Virginia Tech last fall and had a propensity for the gruesome and violent you could have satisfied your thirst for the bloody and course requirements by enrolling in Professor Brent Stevens’s English 3984 class, “Special Studies: Contemporary Horror.” And, as a plus, you wouldn’t have to read many books because some of the “texts”--as they increasingly are in English classes today--would be movies. [gasp! shock!!]

Guess who took that class that watched The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and explored in papers and a “fear journal” how “horror has become a masochistic pleasure,” according to the course description? Guess who read a graphic novel (a book with pictures, i.e., a comic book) titled From Hell by Alan Moore [Smelling salts! Stat!!!], presented by Professor Stevens as “one of the most popular and accomplished writers in the medium,” as well as the work of scholarly “criticism,” Men, Women and Chainsaws? [Argument from scare quotes. If Grabar wants us to convince us that the work in question is indeed of questionable scholarly value, she needs to demonstrate how. Just placing "scare quotes" around the word "criticism" is no subtitute for an actual argument. One hopes she doesn't model such poor reasoning in her own classes.] Guess who was drawn to the course described by the professor with these words: “We are consuming horror on an unprecedented scale. But the rules have changed. Until recent years, lead characters could be counted on to survive the invasion of zombies/homicidal maniacs/vampires. But this margin of safety no longer exists; horror has become a masochistic pleasure”? Guess who said to himself, “Bingo! That’s the course I want!” to a course description that ended with the words, ‘WARNING: Not for the faint of heart.”

Cho Seung-Hui proved, indeed, that he was not “faint of heart.” His own massacre of 32 fellow students and professors on April 16 demonstrated that if he did have a heart it was filled with evil. Cho outdid Freddy Krueger.

Minor quibble: Didn't one of the victims in Texas Chainsaw Massacre escape the killers? Never mind. In effect, Grabar is laying the blame for the VT shootings on Brent Stevens and his "Contemporary Horror" course.

In a feature story on his class last year, Stevens commented that "The goal of the class was to get students to think analytically about the books and films they reviewed." This would be stating the bleeding obvious to anyone who has taken or taught an English or cultural studies unit at university, be it a general film studies unit or, say, a unit on Utopian Fiction or Postmodern Gothic (the latter of which might find one encountering Anne Rice novels or The Crow). In such courses students are encouraged to think critically about the texts they study: in terms of how they privilege or marginalise certain values or social groups, perhaps, or how they engage with prevailing or obscure ideas and philosophical currents--both contemporary as well as those which prevailed at the time the film or book in question was first produced. (I can already hear the STRAIGHT FROM CHAIRMAN MAO!!!!!!!!! tripwires being set off in certain brains.) The point is, thinking analytically about a book of film--regardless of whether a Leavisite or poststructuralist methodology is applied--requires on the part of the reader an ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy.

In my experience, many students hate this. I taught a cultural studies unit at a local university a few years ago, and I remember students complaining to me that they were no longer able to enjoy the latest megaplex blockbusters because they had become so accustomed to reading films through the lens of semiotic analysis. They still had to learn, I responded, the art of knowing when and when not to suspend disbelief. Being able to suspend disbelief willingly, of course, is itself dependent upon the capacity to tell the difference between reality and fantasy. Given the aims of his class, it would not have been unreasonable for Stevens to expect that each of his students--being university students and not five-year-olds--possessed this capacity when they signed up for his class: indeed, it is difficult to see how one could have passed his course without the ability to suspend disbelief and attend to horror films and fiction critically and analytically.

All of which escapes Grabar, who is apoplectic at the very notion of [cue fainting spell] horror films being used as objects of study in university English courses:

The showing of the videos and writings left by Cho has stirred up much debate by commentators. But what about the videos and books that were considered “texts” in an English class in an institution of supposedly “higher learning”? Would NBC and other stations be criticized for airing footage from one of the required class texts, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, on prime time? But this is what Cho and his classmates were writing term papers on.

Of course, Grabar fails to offer any sound reasons why texts like Texas Chainsaw Massacre should be considered unsuitable for use in a university English course. She just asserts that it is, and proceeds to assert a post hoc ergo propter hoc link between Cho Seng-Hui's enrolment in Stevens's class, and his subsequent killing spree. Again I ask, would she accept this rubbish from her own students?

But it's not all Stevens's fault, Grabar is careful to point out. There is also the fact that public schools and universities are secular institutions, owing to some document called "the Constitution" and some quaint notion of "the separation of church and state."

In our schizophrenic universities students are taught that Christianity is evil and that heroism is a passé idea of old fools; at the same they are trained in pacifism and sensitivity. College classes extend from high school the training in respect and appreciation for the practices of every other culture, while disparaging our own. Students, steeped in relativism, scoff at the notion of original sin, insisting that it is our culture, especially its religion, that corrupts the heart and mind of the inherently innocent child.

When most college freshmen are presented with Alexis de Tocqueville’s notion that government should encourage religious belief and that atheists should be “marked as the natural foes of the whole people,” they gaze with horror. How dare he state that an atheist’s ideas are less valid than a Christian’s! How judgmental and intolerant! Why atheists, they insist (sometimes pointing to themselves), can be “good people.”

You see, events like VT happen not just because Gawud and Jeebus have been expunged from the classroom, but because the evil English professors teach kids to hate God! I mean, they actually teach kids that Christianity is evil!! And even worse than that, they even have the temerity to insist that atheists can be "good people" and should not be considered the natural enemies of the nation. (Even Daddy Bush insisted that atheists weren't really citizens.) And--and in the nation's kindergartens, they show kids videos of donkeys fellating elephants!!!

I mean, come on. It's one thing to make unsupported and fallacious assertions about the link between screening horror movies in English class and students shooting up the entire campus, but it's entirely another thing to just make shit up like the notion that students are taught that Christianity is evil. Please, Grabar, please provide the evidence that this endemic--if it occurs at all--across the "schizophrenic" (exactly what makes them schizophrenic Grabar doesn't say--I guess if Grabar says it, we're supposed to believe it) universities of America. While you're at it, you might like to demonstrate exactly why it is impossible for atheists to be good people. Don't worry about the donkeys fellating elephants thing--I made it up--but it's no less credible than anything Grabar is selling.

So how does this "godless-education-leads-straight-to-school-shooting-massacre" thesis work? I'm not really sure, but apparently after 13 years of secular indoctrination you get students who are:

only eighteen years old, but they are firmly set in their beliefs in gay marriage, unrestricted abortion, the prohibition of prayer in the public arena—and in cynicism about previously cherished values like heroism, nobility, and honor.

And as we all know, it's but a hop, skip and a jump from advocacy of gay marriage to mass murder.

To aid and abet this moral leveling we have a curriculum made up of titillating ephemera. Among the panoply of trivia are grievance tracts by “overlooked” writers, cave paintings, scalp dances, performance art, pornography—and horror flicks--that professors think will draw student-customers. It’s not that the great writers did not depict evil and horror; just read Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, and Flannery O’Connor. Pious literature is no more great literature than slash-and-burn movies are great cinema. But great literature, while providing the cathartic experience of tragedy, engages us in moral questions.

Two points. First, on what grounds has it been decided that you can't use horror films to explore moral questions? Yet another unsubstantiated claim. And second--leaving aside the unsubstantiated claim that professors select course texts based on what they think will attract enrolments--what's a Republican doing bandying about a term like "student-customers" in such a derisive fashion? This is the party that embraces the very neoliberalist business models that universities have been forced to adopt in order to maintain their funding levels. Newsflash: the business model that Grabar, as a Republican, has such a hard-on for couldn't give a flying fuck about Shakespeare or morality.

Bottom line: Cho Seng-Hui did what he did because he was mentally ill--if this made him more susceptible to the so-called deleterious influences of exposure to violent images (as some suggest), it is because he suffered an inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality.

Interestingly, by advocating that English classrooms be transformed into sites of Christian indoctrination, Grabar is advocating that students be indoctinated into a mindset marked by a similar inability to distinguish between reality and fantasy. Rather than being sites where critical thinking is nurtured, Grabar wants to transform English classrooms into places where magical, dogmatic thinking is privileged. Therefore, I read Grabar's attempt to blame the Virginia Tech shootings on Stevens's horror film and fiction course as a classic case of projection. She subscribes to a religious ideology that values credulity, dogmatism and literalism over higher-order cognitive, critical and interpretive skills; hence she assumes that anyone who takes Stevens's class will be as credulous, dogmatic and literal-minded as she is.

Grabar seems to be the kind of Christian who would maintain that the only thing preventing her from perpetrating her own VT massacre is that God told her not to. This makes her far more dangerous than any evilatheistevilutionistabortionisthomosexualistleftwingprofessor with a scholarly interest in horror.

Thanks to Sammy Jankis for bringing this to my attention (at Bruce's). Cross-posted at Punditocracy Watch.

UPDATE: More thoughts on Texas Chainsaw Massacre at But Don't Try To Touch Me.

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Does religion = child abuse?

According to RichardDawkins.net, an Oregon man and recent convert to Judaism wants his 12-year old son, of whom he has sole custody, to undergo non-therapeutic circumcision against the wishes of the child and his mother.

Sadly, a physician, a fellow congregant of the father, has already been found willing to ignore the child's wishes. The father claims a rabbi has insisted on the child's circumcision. The father's motives might even be sheer spite toward Misha's mother; we can't know.

The case is now heading to the Oregon Supreme Court, after lower court judges deemed that the genital mutilation of children in the name of religion is within the discretion of custodial parents.

(Via Morons.org)

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Kelly Tripplehorn versus atheism

Kelly Tripplehorn, president of the i53 Network (which describes itself as an evangelical (though not Christian) network whose mission is "to produce quality media content, all to the glory of God’s Word"), has thrown down the gauntlet to us heathens. His organisation will pay $1000 to anyone who can offer a non-theistic justification for their belief that the Sun will rise tomorrow.

All you need to do in order to collect your $1,000 is get your non-theistic answer published (concerning your epistemological warrant for your inductive inference) in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, under its heading The Problem of Induction.

The point I am interested in is to show that all the knowledge non-Christians have, whether as simple folk by common sense, or as scientists exploring the hidden depths of the created universe- they have because Christianity is true. It is because the world is not what the non-Christians assume that it is, a world of Chance, and is what the Christian says that it is, a world run by the council of God, that even non-Christians have knowledge… Now the question is not whether the non-Christian can weigh, measure, or do a thousand other things. No one denies that he can. But the question is whether on his principle the non-Christian can account for his own or any knowledge.

Tripplehorn elaborates in the video below:




Tripplehorn maintains that the problem of induction is not a problem for Christians like him, because "the first two passages of Genesis inform me that God created the world with order and uniformity, and I as a Christian can assume that the past laws of nature will be the same as the future laws of nature, because God has implicitly told me so, in his Word." This, my friends, is your standard Argument from Biblical Authority, with a twist of Argument from Design.

Bottom line: insofar as the problem of induction is a problem for non-theists, it is a problem for theists like Tripplehorn also. The only difference is that Tripplehorn has given his non-solution to the problem of induction a label: "God." As PZ Myers points out, in the process of tearing Tripplehorn a new one:

It's a cheat. He has absolutely no logical, philosophical justification for this divine precondition he has pulled out of his butt, but then he turns around and thinks that he's got atheists over a barrel and demands that they justify the use of induction without Jesus. What? Why can't I just invent an accidentally linear seam in the fabric of the 18th dimension that imposes regularity in our dimension by subspace resonance? It's total nonsense, but it's a justification that's on a par with waving your hands over an ancient Hebrew sky-god. How about if I pretend there is a subatomic particle (or maybe a sub-quantum force; does it matter?) called the Regulon that compels lawful behavior in other particles/forces. Again, it's pseudoscientific magical BS, but it's as good as Snottypunk's excuse.

Another YouTuber, responding to Snottypunk's--erm--I mean Tripplehorn's video, suggests that miracles pose a whole other set of problems for his supposedly neat Christian solution to the problem of induction.

As the gang at Fundies Say the Darndest Things would say:

As an aside, PZ Myers links to some more interesting info on Mr Tripplehorn. More info at Babygorilla.

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Lord or Lunatic?

(From Fundies Say the Darndest Things)

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I did it!

I used the expression "the sword of Damocles" in a student's progress report.

I can now die happy.

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The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XII

The week in fundie:

*RSL slams an ad for a gay Anzac Day party as--get this--"an abuse of liberty." (NEWS.com.au)

*Mordechai Eliyahu: the Pat Robertson/Jerry Falwell/Dinesh D'Souza of Judaism. (Jewish Telegraphic Agency)

*The Festival of Magical Thinking: Among the speakers at this year's "Reclaiming America for Christ" conference, Ann Coulter repeated her "faggot" remark (admittedly to stunned silence), called for the leaders of Muslim countries to be forcibly converted to Christianity, and sought to justify the murders of abortion clinic workers; while Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, who once paid former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke over $80,000 for his mailing list, recounted a Bible story vindicating the criminalisation of miscegenation. In that story, Moses' great-nephew Phineas "was rewarded by God with an 'everlasting priesthood' for killing an Israelite and his Midian lover because God had forbidden the mixing of the men of Israel with the women of that tribe." Not that Perkins was suggesting that Christians take up their pitchforks and barge into their neighbours' houses, of course: "Phineas, the Bible tells us, used a javelin." Meanwhile, Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission warned that in an America run by secularists, "there would be clone farms and polygamy." (Alternet)

*From the archives of the bleeding obvious: abstinence-only sex education doesn't stop kids having sex. (via Morons.org)

*Don't fuck with the Jesus. The Anti-Christ is currently touring Central America. (HT: Joe)

UPDATE: The Iranian Supreme Court has exonerated six militiamen who killed five people they deemed to be "morally corrupt." Two of the victims were a young couple engaged to be married, who were claimed to have been engaged in the unpardonable sin of walking together in public. All of the victims were either stoned to death, or the killers "drowned them in a pond by sitting on their chests." Another victory for theofascism! (via Amal A)

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Honour killings

The 7.30 Report has a story about Arab women in a small city in Israel who are speaking out against honour killings in their community. One woman turned her own son in to the police after he killed his sister:

INSPECTOR LIMOR YEHUDA: It is terrible to know that in the era of 2007 and such terrible murders happen. Women that get murdered for the way they dressed or the way they talked, maybe because they talked on the phone with someone or looked at some guy or even didn't look at some guy, for stupid, stupid reasons or for no reason.

DAVID HARDAKER: Last year, 19‑year‑old Reem Abu Ghanem was murdered. Her crime was to turn her back on the man that her family had picked for her to marry and fall for another. Her killer turned out to be her older brother, a respected paediatrician who Reem had trusted for protection. He smothered Reem in a cloth soaked with anaesthetic drugs from his hospital. He believed he'd killed her. His four brothers threw her body into the boot of a car. They drove to a field on the outskirts of town to a deserted and derelict house, where they would dispose of her down an old well, but when they arrived, it turned out that Reem was not dead after all.

So she was still alive. Do you know, did they do anything at that point before throwing her in?

INSPECTOR LIMOR YEHUDA: Yeah, yeah. After she cried, after she begged for her life, they used a stone to hit her on the head. And then she was still alive, she didn't die from the injury. And she was then thrown out into the well like this. Alive, semi‑injured, bleeding, I guess. It's terrible. It's so cruel, so vicious. But to throw someone alive when is your relatives, your own flesh and blood, right? It's, it's very, very difficult to bear.

[. . .]

Reem's older brother was arrested after a tip‑off from a prison informant. Despite the crime, the women of Joh Arish remained silent until the killing this year of another of their number. Hamda Abu Ghanem, also 19, was shot in the head nine times, as she lay in her bed upstairs alone in her house. Her killer was her own brother. This time, the women broke their silence. For the Ramle police, it was extraordinary.

INSPECTOR LIMOR YEHUDA: Wow - huge, huge step. When we are talking about this murder case, it's like a big step because we learned that among the years, there were like eight murders in the same family, Abu Ghanem family. The women are getting murdered one by one. All of a sudden, we're all like in shock - they decided to talk.

DAVID HARDAKER: The woman that went to the police was Imama Abu Ghanem, the mother of Hamda. She gave police the evidence to charge her own son.

IMAMA ABU GHANEM (translation): In the Koran, there is no order, murder your sister, and I've asked my son, “Why didn't you put the rest of your bullets in your own head?”

Honour killings in the Arab world are perpetrated by Muslims and Christians alike, having originated in Hammurabi and Assyrian legal codes that predate Islam and Christianity. This might upset a few people, but no society that tolerates such crimes against humanity can reasonably be described as rational or civilised.

UPDATE: For more background on honour killings in Israel and Palestine, see this Haaretz piece. (via Amal A)

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The Bill Muehlenberg Trophy: Debbie Schlussel and the Virginia Tech Shootings

Just when you think the wingnut Right can't possibly get more insane or logic-deprived than it already is, along comes Debbie Schlussel, writing on the Virginia Tech university shootings.

First, she blamed the Muzzies without a shred of evidence. Then, updating her blog entry after reports emerged that the suspect was a Chinese national, she wrote:

The shooter has now been identified as a Chinese national here on a student visa. Lovely. Yet another reason to stop letting in so many foreign students.

When the suspect was later more vaguely described as "Asian," Schlussel saw this as a golden opportunity to revive her "it-was-a-Muzzie-wot-done-it" thesis. (This will take your breath away)

Why am I speculating that the "Asian" gunman is a Pakistani Muslim? Because law enforcement and the media strangely won't tell us more specifically who the gunman is. Why?

Even if it does not turn out that the shooter is Muslim, this is a demonstration to Muslim jihadists all over that it is extremely easy to shoot and kill multiple American college students.

Got that? (Once you've stopped bashing yourself senseless against the keyboard.) Regardless of who is actually responsible for the massacre, it's yet another reason to hate Muslims. Holy dogshit! How are we expected to take that side of politics seriously when it keeps churning out half-wits like Schlussel?

(Via Pharyngula)

P.S. Compare Schlussel's Islamophobic dribbling to Scott Poynting's thoughtful Perspective piece on Islamophobia and moral panic.

UPDATE: It turns out that the gunman was a 23-year old Korean student, acting alone. Not that it makes a lick of difference to Schlussel. Maybe he's a Korean Muslim. Or maybe the Muslim centre of his brain was overstimulated. In any case, he's a foreigner. Foreigner bad. Muslim bad. Rinse. Repeat.

UPDATE II: Guess who the creationists are blaming . . .

UPDATE III: Guess who's planning to show up at the funerals of the slain students (via Pharyngula)

UPDATE IV: Dinesh D'Souza claims that atheists don't care about the shootings. Why? Because Richard Dawkins "has not been invited to speak to the grieving Virginia Tech community." Shame on us atheists! Even Fred Phelps and his WBC mourning committee have the decency to pay their respects to the victims. (Pharyngula)

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You criticised Bush. That makes you a terrorist.

A conservative legal scholar from Princeton has been added to the Transportation Security Administration's terrorist watch list after delivering a televised speech attacking Bush's executive overreach.

Walter F. Murphy, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Emeritus, at Princeton University, attempted to check his luggage at the curbside in Albuquerque before boarding a plane to Newark, New Jersey. Murphy was told he could not use the service.

"I was denied a boarding pass because I was on the Terrorist Watch list," he said.

When inquiring with a clerk why he was on the list, Murphy was asked if he had participated in any peace marches.

"We ban a lot of people from flying because of that," a clerk said.

Murphy then explained that he had not marched, but had "in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution."

The clerk responded, "That'll do it."

Murphy was allowed to board the plane, but was warned that his luggage would be "ransacked." On his return trip, his luggage was lost.

Murphy blogs about his experience here. Normally this kind of thing only happens to peace activists. Perhaps someone could explain to me how punishing dissent in this fashion aids the "War on Terror," because I couldn't be more confused.

(Via Morons.org)

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South Park Me

Via Today's Apathetic Youth. Create your own South Park self here.

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The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XI

The week in fundie:

*Homophobic activist quack Paul Cameron again claims that homosexuals have a shorter life expectancy than heterosexuals. And then lies about it. (Via Ex-Gay Watch and Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

*Canadian wingnuts apologise to the world for legalised gay marriage. (Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

*It turns out that Perth Catholic Archbishop Barry Hickey has articulated his support for teaching ID in schools on a previous occasion. In October 2005 he declared: "Intelligent design is a far more elegant description of historical changes than an entirely evolutionary approach, and it therefore should not be ignored in the classroom. "Intelligent design, while it does not demand belief in a creator, sits very comfortably with Catholics who believe that whatever came first came from God who has a clear design for the universe and for each human being in it." (AD2000)

*Interesting article on B. A. Santamaria in The Australian.

Santamaria's attitude to so many of these issues was perhaps summed up in his statement in 1952 that one of the great evils of modern history was the birth of the "modern, liberal, democratic, secular state" in Europe in the years between 1750 and 1848. Think of the notions that are rejected in this statement: modern, liberal, democratic, secular.

Santamaria, who in his time was a hero of the Labor Right, is now a hero of the ultraconservative wing of the Liberal Party. (He also founded the aforementioned AD2000). UPDATE: See Bruce's post on Santamaria protege Tony Abbott and the abortion debate.

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Not that I like to blow my own trumpet . . .

. . . but, according to Dipping into the Blogpond, Five Public Opinions has made the Top 100 Aussie Blogs.

Admittedly, at #90 I'm in the lower echelons of said rankings, but then again, never look a gift horse, etc. In any case, I'm both humbled and ashamed--there are many Australian bloggers, including those listed in my sidebar, who deserve more attention.

Congratulations also to Larvatus Prodeo (#25), Deltoid (#27) and Mr Lefty (#39).

UPDATE: On the subject of great Aussie blogs, Grods has a wonderful post up about teaching.

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Bishops call for the teaching of intelligent design in WA public schools: follow-up

Courtesy of Perth old-earth creationist blogger Stephen Jones, here is the full text of the original Sunday Times article:

Paul Lampathakis. (April 8, 2007). "New role call for religion in schools." The Sunday Times. p 12.

MORE religion, including the intelligent design theory, should be taught in public and private schools, church leaders say.

Perth's Catholic and Anglican archbishops said during Easter, that children needed more focus on things like the meaning of life in school subjects as well as religion. Otherwise schools risked producing children who were "robots" suffering from a "deep emptiness". Catholic Archbishop Barry Hickey said intelligent design theory would give students a chance to question the mysteries of life that science couldn't explain.

The theory, which suggests some parts of the universe and nature are so complex they must have been designed by a higher intelligence, has sparked debate and court battles in the US. "I would like the notion of intelligent design to be examined, also in government schools, without necessarily becoming a proof of the existence of God," Archbishop Hickey said.

"Because I think that if it is not (examined), then science is not being entirely honest. I think science has to show us what is there. And if it comes up with a very intricate marvellous design, let's call it intelligent design." Under such teaching, children with faith would say, "yes that's the result of the creator", and those without would say, "it's there by chance and we have no explanation", Archbishop Hickey said. "(those) with faith will make the next step to God," he said. "The school can't do that. But it can say, `yes, look at the human eye, look at all the things we find in nature. There seems to be an ... intelligent design in what we discover'."

Anglican Archbishop Roger Herft said children did think about "deeper questions". "If our classrooms do not allow for the exploration of the spirit, the exploration of the questions of meaning, then we're going to produce, ultimately, human beings who have deep emptiness in them," he said. "They will seek to fill that emptiness in a number of ways, whether it's drugs, or violence, or gang life or other groups that ultimately tend to be antisocial."

WA Education Minister Mark McGowan said he would not introduce intelligent design into the school curriculum and it was not part of school science programs because it was not evidence-based. He said questions like "where do we come from?" and "who made us?" were often discussed in class and children were able to make their own decisions.

Unfortunately, it doesn't clear up the question of whether Herft actually supports the teaching of ID in schools, and perhaps is misrepresenting him. (However, what he is quoted as saying--that without religion, our kids will turn to crime/drugs/gangs--is silly enough.) Hickey, however, is clearly in the ID camp, placing him at odds with his own church, including Pope John Paul II.

P. S. The current pope's views on evolution are more equivocal, though he apparently does not endorse ID/creationism and defends the "theistic evolution" position maintained by the Catholic Church (and other mainline churches).

P. P. S. Herft has been described elsewhere as "Australia's leading liberal Anglican."

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You don't believe in God? No soup for you!

I think my parents know by now about my atheism--but its always been sort of unspoken. I can't bring myself to break the news to my Italian relatives, though.

Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars

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Invade Rage

Bruce has tagged me, so here's a list of 20 songs I would submit to Rage's be-a-guest-programmer-for-a-night competition if I were so inclined:

Metallica: One
Faith No More: Epic
Prodigy: Smack My Bitch Up
Ministry: Jesus Built My Hotrod
Depeche Mode: Enjoy the Silence
Verve: Bittersweet Symphony
Beastie Boys: Intergalactic Planetary
Massive Attack: Unfinished Sympathy
Nirvana: In Bloom
Snoop Dogg feat. Dr Dre: Who am I? (What's My Name?)
Jeff Buckley: Grace
Anthrax and Public Enemy: Bring tha Noise
Smashing Pumpkins: Today
You Am I: Berlin Chair
Bjork: Human Behaviour
Weezer: Buddy Holly
Rage Against the Machine: Killing in the Name
Rammstein: Sonne
Aphex Twin: Come to Daddy
The Cure: Lullaby

The rules specify that I have to justify at least five of these choices. Here goes:

Metallica: One
This is One of the main reasons I stayed up til the wee hours of the morning watching Rage of a Friday or Saturday evening in my high school years. (That, and the promise of Madonna's "Justify My Love" or Massive Attack's "Thank You"--those of you who know what I'm talking about know what I'm talking about.) Best. Music. Video. Ever.

Anthrax and Public Enemy: Bring Tha Noise
I have mixed feelings about this one: it's fucking brilliant, but on the other hand without this seminal thrash metal/hip hop crossover single, would we have had to endure the likes of Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park? In any case: have you ever seen a white rapper more ill-at-ease with the genre than Scott Ian?

Beastie Boys: Intergalactic Planetary
Unlike Scott Ian, these boys totally get the white-boy hip-hop thing. Most people would probably choose "Sabotage" as their favourite Beasties video, but I just can't go past three thirtysomething men busting out in yellow space suits, nor the lyric "I'll stir fry you in my wok!"

Ministry: Jesus Built My Hotrod
As soon as I discovered that this "rock" thing was true, I often found myself in the small hours watching this delightful music video featuring the vocal stylings of a reputedly inebriated Gibby Haynes (lead singer of the Butthole Surfers). Rim-a-ding-dang my dang-a-long-ling-long!

You Am I: Berlin Chair
I don't get the little dude in the sparkly jumpsuit. But this song, and this band, restored my faith in Aussie music after long and tortuous years of John Farnham, Jimmy Barnes, Wendy Matthews and Johnny Diesel dominating the airwaves. (Perhaps it's just that I started listening to JJJ about the time this song was released.)

And now, I pass the baton on to Sammy Jankis, Simmo, Null, Lucy and YepThat'sGold.

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Is there a postive correlation between geekdom and atheism?

Shuzak.com asks: Why are geeks often atheist?

(Plus--is it geeky to use expressions like "positive correlation?")

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Bishops, tabloid endorse ID in WA public schools

Catholic Archbishop of Perth Barry Hickey, Anglican Archbishop Roger Herft and The Sunday Times have all endorsed the teaching of intelligent design in WA public schools:

Catholic Archbishop Barry Hickey says that intelligent design would give students an opportunity to question the mysteries of life that science can't explain.

And Anglican Archbishop Roger Herft said: "I think if our classrooms do not allow for the exploration of the spirit, the exploration of the questions of meaning, then we're going to produce ultimately, human beings who have deep emptiness in them"

Herft's remark is stock-standard theistic pablum, with the imputation that if public school students aren't force-fed religion they'll become "empty" atheists uninterested in "questions of meaning," thrown in for extra measure. The same kind of nonsense underscores the Howard Government's rhetoric on "values in schools."

Hickey, who hails from the medieval wing of the Catholic Church, seems to be making a classical argument from ignorance in favour of teaching ID. However his reported choice of words is interesting: "intelligent design would give students an opportunity to question mysteries of life that science can't explain" (emphasis added). Proponents of ID usually present it as a scientific theory; Hickey appears to accept it as non-scientific. The editorial doesn't indicate whether Hickey or Herft believe this non-scientific theory should be presented to public school children in the science classroom or elsewhere. (Though, if not in the science classroom, where else in the public school would it be taught?)

The silliest contribution comes from the editorial itself, which maintains that on one side of the ID/creationism debate are its proponents, and on the other side are "atheists, including many scientists, who believe in the theory of evolution." Yes, you read that correctly: if you're not a proponent of ID, you're an atheist, and evolution = atheism. It gets better:

What logically follows is that religious teaching at all levels and at all ages, but particularly among the young, should be questioned to reach a considered judgment between ID/creationism and evolutionism. After all, there are those who form beliefs somewhere between these extremes. [. . .] And if the teaching of intelligent design was introduced in schools and it resulted in more young people questioning the basis for traditional religious beliefs so that they can make informed judgments, then it would be an effective innovation. We want more than religious dogma for our children.

The term evolutionism is a creationist pejorative--intended to suggest that evolution is just as much of a belief system or ideology as ID/creationism. Hence The Sunday Times' call for ID to be taught in schools: students need to be able to make "informed judgements" between two "beliefs." In other words: teach the controversy. Far better, I think, to give students the wherewithal to discern the difference between science and religion--between the acceptance of ideas and theories grounded in evidence and those grounded in presupposition and faith alone.

And far more important, in a liberal democracy, for religion not to be forced on students in public schools. Not even in the guise of intelligent design.

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Brethren to take on the Whore of Babylon in Bennelong

The Exclusive Brethren are a fundamentalist Christian religious sect that eschews politics, so much so that, while its members are forbidden to vote, they did campaign on behalf of the Howard Government in the 2004 Federal Election, and on behalf of NZ conservative parties in 2005. The reason? "Satan infiltrates government and legislation seeking to weaken man’s sense of what is due to God. No enlightened Christian would stand by and do nothing while ignorant persons call good evil, and evil good."

In 2004, Satan preselected one of his minions, Andrew Wilkie, to run as a Greens candidate against the God-ordained incumbent PM John Howard in the seat of Bennelong. Fortunately, the Exclusive Brethren were on hand to heckle the demon, taunting him about his marriage and about the homosexuality of Greens leader Bob Brown. In the end, Jeebus won the day and Howard was re-elected.

But now, in 2007, Satan's having another crack at the seat of God's ordained leader. This time the Evil One is being represented by Maxine McKew, whose former career as an ABC journalist simply underlines the threat she poses to our Christian democracy. And so, it's time for the Knights of the Exclusive Brethren to saddle up and confront the new demon McKew in the name of Jesus H. Howard.

Enlightened Christians across the country are depending on them.

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So there is an Atheist Bible

(PDF here)

Well now, don't we all feel a little sheepish? Courtesy of Nullifidian.

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The Wonderful Weekend of Magical Thinking (Blog Against Theocracy)

Well, it's Easter, and the time has come to Blog Against Theocracy. And contrary to expectations, I've been a little remiss: the rules are that participants blog on something in support of church-state separation on each day of the Easter weekend--the 6th, 7th and 8th--and I, well, plum forgot to do so yesterday. (Damn you, Scrubs!) Still, we soldier on . . .

*UK schools drop the Holocaust and the Crusades from history lessons for fear of offending Muslim students. (HT: SB)

*Meanwhile, many schools in the US eschew reality-based sex education for fear of offending Christians.

*Pope Benedict declares: "Hell exists and there is eternal punishment for those who sin and do not repent." The Pope proceeded to defend his assertion with solid evidence of Hell's existence, at which point Satan was heard to remark to one of his henchmen: "Did it just get cold in here?"

*Florida teacher suspended and facing jail after not fitting in with the fundie teachers and administrators at her school. (via Morons.org)

*Patrick Henry College defines a good science education thusly: "PHC in particular expects its biology faculty to provide a full exposition of the claims of the theory of Darwinian evolution, intelligent design, and other major theories while, in the end, teach creation as both biblically true and as the best fit to observed data." Patrick Henry is a feeder school into the Bush White House. (Pharyngula)

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Perth, WA

I was discussing today, with one of the teachers I work with, a new survey ranking 215 cities worldwide according to their Quality of Living, and the conversation came round to Perth. We concluded:

"Perth is nothing but a dormitory town for mines employees."

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The "Thinking Blogger Award"

A big cheerio to Mikey for tagging me with a Thinking Blogger award. The rules are as follows:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn't fit your blog).

And my nominees are:

New Lines From a Floating Life: Possibly the most erudite blogger in the country. Like a one-man Larvatus Prodeo.

Smogblot: Perth blogger with very similar blogging interests to mine. (We're also friends from way back.) Blogs intermittently nowadays, on account of a small case of travelling through Europe.

Super Simmo: English teacher from Perth who blogs with passion on politics, education, and Terry Pratchett.

Philaletheia: The benchmark for atheist-Christian dialogue on the internet.

Unsane and Safe: An intellectually intimidating Perth blogger (And no--it's not just the boxing gloves!) writing a PhD in African literature. Jen's posts aren't really posts--they're aphorisms.

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