The Easter Bunny Hates You

Further to yesterday's story about the Atlanta woman who was trying to get Harry Potter banned from the school library, and who said the following:

“They don’t want the Easter Bunny’s power,” Mallory said. “The children in our generation want Harry’s power, and they’re getting it.”

. . . there's something she ought to know.



Via Fundies Say the Darndest Things

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Right Wing Death Beast

Someone named "matt" left the following comment at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, in response to a post about Laura Schlessinger's son, currently serving in Iraq, and a website he has created featuring (amongst other choice items) "cartoon depictions of rape, murder, torture and child molestation."

you are full of shit you fat liberal fuck if it was not for people like dr.laura's son your fat stupid ass would be killed by the islamofacist you fat ugly peice of shit you peacenicks are destroying this nation but trust me you liberal cowards are gonna get your punishment you stupid fucks we are gunnin' for you and we are gonna get you just wait after the next big terrorist attack all you liberal fuckheads will be fair game you and the islamofacist just wait bitch soon it will be open season

And Ed Brayton's not even a leftie (he's a libertarian). The scary thought is that this individual could have access to firearms.

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Fundie PC: the War On Harry Potter

Image via Cox and Forkum

Harry Potter has again been accused of corrupting the youth of America.

A suburban Atlanta mother who believes the best-selling Harry Potter books promote witchcraft said Tuesday she may take her quest to ban the writings from her county schools to federal court after a state judge rejected her latest effort.

[. . .]

Mallory has tried to ban the books from county school library shelves since August 2005, arguing that the popular fiction series is an attempt to indoctrinate children in witchcraft.

Ban Harry Potter? Doesn't she realise that Voldemort and his Death Eaters are still out there?

And how about this for a textbook case of fundamentalist Christian cognitive dissonance (or is it just blatant hypocrisy?):

At Tuesday’s hearing, Mallory argued in part that witchcraft is a religion practiced by some people and, therefore, the books should be banned because reading them in school violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

“I have a dream that God will be welcomed back in our schools again,” Mallory said. “I think we need him."

Emphases added. I think Mallory needs a better lawyer--one quick enough to advise her that her case might have a better chance of success if she keeps her mouth closed. Meanwhile, I'm off to watch the quidditch.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be released on July 21.

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TEH BIG WORDS

Some blogger (see this post at Bruce's for more details) has accused me--out of the clear blue sky--of suffering "delusions of grandeur," just because I used TEH BIG WORDS in a sentence. Here's the offending sentence:

Presuppositionalist apriorism also rears its ugly head in debates about whether atheists can be moral, whether evolutionists can be moral, etc.

Granted: it's not the kind of language you're likely to hear at the footy, but the idea that it demonstrates my having delusions of grandeur is completely nonsequitous (oops! Another big word). The only explanation I can come up with is that whenever this individual sees someone using TEH BIG WORDS, he concludes that it's all part of a conspiracy to make him feel stupid. Bruce and I only used TEH BIG WORDS, you see, because we think we're betterer than him.

Well, my friend, I've got another big word for you: projection.

Image courtesy of Dinosaur Comics. Click to enlarge.

P.S. I'm actually something of an advocate for plainer English. When I was teaching essay writing earlier in the year, I was amazed at how difficult it was to disabuse my students of the myth that they would get bad marks if they didn't use unnecessarily big words (many of which they plainly misunderstood anyway) and convoluted prose. They were convinced that to adopt a simpler approach would be to appear "unprofessional"--as if maintaining an image of professionalism is more important than getting a message across.

On the other hand, it is possible to be too zealous about the push for simplified prose. The basic presupposition of the Plain English movement is that anything and everything can and should be expressed in terms accessible to "the man in the street." I say, however, that plain English is good only when it clarifies a message; plain English is bad when it dilutes or dumbs down a message. (I'm thinking here of those plain English versions of Shakespeare they're using (not exclusively, I hasten to add) in high schools these days.) As Einstein said: "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."

In any case, whatever my friend's agenda, I really don't think it's as innocuous as a call for plainer English.

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Beating up gays: it's what Jesus would do

The man in the photo above about to throw a punch at gay rights activist Peter Tatchell is, like those in crowd around him, an Orthodox Christian. He has turned up to protest against a small demonstration by gay rights activists--who are themselves peacefully protesting against the refusal of the Mayor of Moscow to allow a gay rights march--and he chooses to express his faith by beating up a man who has not threatened him in any way, and whose only crime appears to be that he is gay. Tatchell's assailant is motivated by faith-based hatred. And what I would like to know is this--what does he hate more: the "sin," or the "sinner?" Because it's really difficult to tell from the picture.

Regarding the bashings, it is only fair to point out that Orthodox Christians were not alone among the perpetrators--neo-Nazis and nationalists were also involved. Mindless homophobia makes for some interesting alliances. (And the Moscow police never lifted a finger against the homophobes, and instead threw their victims into jail. State-sponsored Christofascism.)

It is also only fair to point out that homosexuals have never really fared well in Russia: pre-revolutionary socialists saw them as symbols of capitalist decadence; and in the Soviet Union, homosexuals faced five years hard labour and mandatory "reparative therapy" (a technique favoured, incidentally, by many a god-fearing, bible-believing Christian in America). The post-Soviet era merely witnessed the replacement of one state church, Communism, with another: Orthodoxy; consequently, it has witnessed the replacement of an ideological justification for homophobia with a theological justification.

Unfortunately, as Tatchell himself notes in a recent Guardian piece, these events are not unique to Moscow:

Across much of the former Soviet empire, gay rights are one of the main battlegrounds of the struggle between liberty and authoritarianism. Hungary and the Czech Republic are two rare examples of ex-communist states that have made the transition from tyranny to democracy and, in large measure, embraced gay human rights. In Russia, Latvia, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania and Moldova, however, the situation is very different. Freedom of expression and the rights of sexual minorities are still hedged with restrictions.

In these countries, unreconstructed puritan communists have joined forces with ultra-nationalists, neo-Nazis and religious fundamentalists to orchestrate a homophobic backlash against the claims of their lesbian and gay citizens for equal rights and non-discrimination. The issue that has ignited this backlash is the refusal of gay people to remain in the shadows, invisible and ashamed. Their out and proud claim on public space and for the right to protest has prompted the banning of Gay Pride marches, from Riga in the west to Moscow in the east.

These bans are much more than an attack on gay and lesbian people. They are a full-scale resistance to moves towards modernity, tolerance, progress and human rights. Gay people are the target and symbol. But it is freedom of expression itself, and the right to dissent, that is being quashed.

Poland, for instance, is led by a coalition of rabidly homophobic conservative parties. A senior member of one of them, The League of Polish Families' Wojciech Wierzejski, was quoted as saying, in response to the 2006 gay rights parade in Warsaw, that "if deviants begin to demonstrate, they should be hit with batons." At other gay rights parades in the country marchers have been pelted with eggs and beaten by the good citizenry. A government-appointed children's television watchdog is currently investigating whether the Teletubby Tinky Winky is homosexual. Recently, Education Minister Roman Giertych, also a member of the The League of Polish Families, called for a ban on "the propagation of homosexuality" in Poland's schools. Giertych is affiliated with the neo-Nazi All-Polish Youth, whose members at counter-demonstrations in 2005 declared: "We’ll do to you what Hitler did with Jews."

All this nastiness, of course, has to be seen in the context of the war on secularism being waged by Europe's religious leaders, particularly Pope Benedict. According to an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune,

Benedict's religious alternative is not some form of theocratic absolutism. On the contrary, the Pope is a staunch defender of secularity — the separation of church and state. Benedict wants to disentangle the church from the state, but without divorcing religion from politics, because only a religion freed from subservience to the state can save modern culture from itself.

Evidently, "saving modern culture from itself" involves re-asserting Bronze Age views on sexuality and fostering a society in which people have to live in fear because of their sexual orientation.

See also: Dispatches from the Culture Wars and Lines from a Floating Life.

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Red-letter day for women's reproductive rights in Australia?

National Day of Secularism

May the 26th

Anti-abortionist Rosanna Capolingua has been appointed president of the national Australian Medical Association.

(Just sayin'.)

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The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XVII

The week in fundie:

1. US military discharges 58 Arab linguists for being gay. What's that line from Apocalypse Now? "The war's being run by four-star clowns who are going to wind up giving the whole circus away." (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
2. Eighth-grade student proves creationism with Epsom salts and wins Christian school science fair. It need not be pointed out to my intelligent readers, surely, that the real idiot in this tale is not the kid but the "science teacher" who bestowed the award. (via Pharyngula)
3. "Dinosaurs were on Noah's Ark"--introducing Ken Ham's Creation Museum. (Found this in the "Offbeat" section of ABC News Online--further evidence of Aunty's leftist Darwinist bias)
4. How to smack down Scientologists (and other purveyors of woo) (Richard Dawkins.net)
   

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The Myth of church-state separation in Australia

National Day of Secularism
May the 26th

“The Myth of church-state separation.” Google that phrase, and you invariably come up with historical revisionist articles claiming that America’s Founding Fathers were strict Biblical literalists who intended the US to be a Christian Nation ™. That’s because, however devoutly the American Christian Taliban wish it to be otherwise, the First Amendment has repeatedly been interpreted to have established a “wall of separation” between church and state. Probably the most significant legal ruling to be based on such an interpretation was Kitzmiller v. Dover.

In Australia, many of us take it for granted that a similar wall of separation exists in our democracy. Well, perhaps we shouldn’t.

In a 2005 issue of Australian Humanist, Max Wallace points out that there are only two places in the Australian Constitution in which religion is mentioned—in the Preamble and in section 116:

The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.

As Wallace’s article demonstrates, High Court judges and constitutional law experts alike have been unanimous in insisting that a notion of church-state separation cannot be inferred from the wording of section 116, much less from anywhere else in the Constitution. This interpretation was crucial in the 1981 Defence of Government Schools case, in which the Federal Government’s funding of church schools was challenged.

Justice Sir Ninian Stephen said s.116:

... cannot readily be viewed as a repository of some broad statement of principle concerning the separation of church and state, from which may be distilled the detailed consequences of such separation.

That is pretty unequivocal. The day after the case, none of the newspapers reporting the case published what the judges had said. Also, in many histories of Australia, these words, and the subject of church and state, do not appear. Textbooks on politics in Australia do not discuss it. We have an Australian Republican Movement that is arguing for a republic with no mention of church and state on their website. This is despite the fact that separation of church and state is the foundation stone of two of the leading republics in the world: the American and the French.

It is, in other words, the elephant in the room of Australian democracy. It places us, Wallace suggests,

somewhere between democracy and theocracy. I suggest that is an unacceptable state of affairs for a modern liberal democracy. We can hardly criticise regimes that refuse the distinction when we have not formalised it ourselves.

Indeed. On this National Day of Secularism, it is truly sobering to consider that the separation of church and state in Australia is even more tenuous than it is in the maniacally-religious US. You can just imagine what might transpire if the Religious Right (whether it’s the Opus Dei Liberals or the Pentecostal megachurch Liberals leading the parade) ever attains the same level of influence here that it has attained over there.

Other resources on this topic:
"Separation of church and state?" (Michael Hogan, University of Sydney)
"Church and state in Australia" (also by Max Wallace)
"Church and state" (Anglican bishop Tom Frame, who has also written a book on the subject)

UPDATE: May 26th also marks the tenth annual National Sorry Day, and it has been remiss of us not to have mentioned it earlier.

So the Australian Prayer Network just happened to select this date for their National Day of Thanksgiving? How interesting. I wonder who they think the members of the Stolen Generations should be thanking. See Simmo's post.

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"Plants do not have eyes to see with, so why do they make themselves pretty to look at?"

Irrefutable evidence for Intelligent Designr.

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What kind of atheist am I?

You know how I love doing these meme things . . .

You scored as Scientific Atheist, These guys rule. I'm not one of them myself, although I play one online. They know the rules of debate, the Laws of Thermodynamics, and can explain evolution in fifty words or less. More concerned with how things ARE than how they should be, these are the people who will bring us into the future. Scientific Atheist 100% Agnostic 75% Militant Atheist 42% Apathetic Atheist 42% Spiritual Atheist 25% Theist 25% Angry Atheist 25% What kind of atheist are you? created with QuizFarm.com

My background is in English, not science, so I'd probably struggle to explain evolution in fifty words or less (though I did try this once with a Catholic aunt who takes the Adam and Eve story literally--I ended up lending her Carl Zimmer's Evolution: the Triumph of an Idea and I really must get it back), much less the Laws of Thermodynamics.

I'm not going to tag anyone, given that the paint has barely dried on the Blog Against Theocracy meme, but feel free to participate.

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As far as teachers who are passionate about their discipline go, Simmo puts me to shame

Good post.

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Today's Religion Report: Falwell the racist

Today's Religion Report (Radio National) features an interview with John Shelby Spong on the late Jerry Falwell's roots as a racist and segregationist in Lynchburg, Virginia.

So of course FOX's Sean Hannity and guest Ralph Reed were justified in calling Christopher Hitchens a big meanie for not joining the rest of conservative America in paying due tribute to the recently departed bigoted hatemonger.

I'll be teaching when the show is broadcast in Perth, so I'll have to download the podcast later.

UPDATE: Falwell's even inspired Christian terrorism (only we're probably not allowed to call it that, since the perpetrators are--you know--Christian):

Even in death, the Rev. Jerry Falwell rouses the most volatile of emotions.
A small group of protesters gathered near the funeral services to criticize the man who mobilized Christian evangelicals and made them a major force in American politics -- often by playing on social prejudices.
A group of students from Falwell's Liberty University staged a counterprotest.
And Campbell County authorities arrested a Liberty University student for having
several homemade bombs in his car.
The student, 19-year-old Mark D. Uhl of Amissville, Va., reportedly told authorities that he was making the bombs to stop protesters from disrupting the funeral service. The devices were made of a combination of gasoline and detergent, a law enforcement official told ABC News' Pierre Thomas. They were "slow burn," according to the official, and would not have been very destructive.

But Rachael Kohn told me that people in prayer singing "Praise Jesus" wouldn't do this kind of thing.

Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

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Blog Against Theocracy: National Day of Secularism May 26th

The National Day of Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and in an election year you just know the pious frauds on both sides of politics (but let's face it, mainly the Right) will be screaming more loudly than ever about religion, values (which, as we all know, only the religious possess) and the "spiritual emptiness" that is the hallmark of a secular democracy (apparently).

Well, as Bruce has declared, enough's enough.

Bye-bye, ta-ta, theocrats take your disingenuous political stunt with you. You
haven’t fooled me or anyone else with a functioning brain.

That's right, fundies--the evil secularist babykilling hordes are fighting back. Let May 26th henceforth be known as The National Day of Secularism!

National Day of Secularism
May 26th

This is a tagging meme, so I'll let Bruce tell you the rest:

How the “meme” works
This “meme” works in two steps; first the “Tagging stage” and then the “Blog against theocracy stage”.

Tagging stage
If you are tagged by the meme, then it’s the same old format; mention this entry so
people can see the rules and then tag five other bloggers (preferably Australian given the nature of the NDoT.) You can link back to these rules and display the above (rather modest) banner by inserting this code at the end of your entry

(Check Bruce's post for the code--Blogger won't let me post it here)

Feel free to copy the PNG file to your own host and alter the code accordingly, and remember when entering the code to enter it into the “code” window of your blog editor (blogger and wordpress users, I know there is a tab for this above your editing window)!

This meme does however have somewhat of a difference; an additional stage…

Blog against theocracy stage
If you have been tagged (heck, even if you haven’t, it doesn’t bother me) then in addition to tagging others, it is also hoped that you will write a blog entry about the separation of Church and State in Australia. It could be a critique of Pell’s “normative democracy”, the historic anti-democracy sermonizing of Archbishop Daniel Mannix, inevitable discrimination by the funding of (approved) chaplains in public schools, the state backed imposition of bans on forbidden women’s dress or whatever Church-State issue you find important.

Preferably, such a blog entry would be published on the 26th, but I’ve been lazy in getting around to this and I’ve left people little time so there is no deadline as such.
Just a couple of caveats; 1) the church-state anti-theocracy blog entry should mention the phrase “National Day of Thanksgiving”, possibly mentioning that the entry is a response to the NDoT, and 2) feel free to add the (again admittedly modest) banner.

I, in turn, tag the following: A Churchless Faith, BeepBeepIt'sMe, Smogblot, Super Simmo and The Dog's Bollocks.

UPDATE: We haven't spoken too soon, evidently. John Howard courted uber-fundies Catch the Fire in January; now Kevin Rudd's at it. Now let me get this straight. They umm and aahh and fiddle with their diaries when it comes to meeting the Dalai Lama, but they're falling over themselves to court an organisation whose leader claims to have personally met Jesus "face to face on 21st July 1997 at 3.40am (He spoke to me for 2 hrs. 20 minutes.);" who in the run-up to the 2004 election called on his followers to pull down "Satan's strongholds," including brothels, gambling places, mosques and temples; and who in 2005 addressed a meeting of the Australian League of Rights.

What's going on here? First the Exclusive Brethren, and now Catch the Fire? Has the batshit insane fundie vote really become that significant?

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The Bill Muehlenberg Trophy: Rachael Kohn's war on "atheistic scientists"

This morning my girlfriend, who teaches in an Anglican high school, received an email being passed around the offices of several religious schools in the Perth metro area entitled "Antidote to Root of All Evil."

The antidote in question is a critique of Richard Dawkins' Root of All Evil by Rachael Kohn in the SMH, which very quickly (and very disappointingly) descends into an anti-atheist, anti-science rant.

Kohn takes issue with the comparison Dawkins apparently draws between Ted Haggard's Pentecostal megachurch brand of worship and Nazi rallies.

To the scientist Dawkins, a room full of people waving their hands and singing "Praise Jesus" is evil because it is irrational. By definition, believers obedient to a God which cannot be proved to exist, and whose dictums are based on mythical stories that have no basis in fact, are as dangerous as the Brownshirts.

Dawkins is not accusing Haggard and his followers of being Brownshirts, of course. What he is doing is pointing out what megachurch Christianity and Nazi rallies have in common: unquestioning dogmatism--the sheer absence of critical and reflective thinking that is the hallmark of every kind of fundamentalism--be it religious or ideological.

So when Kohn argues that "what Dawkins failed to acknowledge in his encounter with Haggard is that the Nazi program of eugenics and extermination was not dictated by an unseen god," she is missing Dawkins' point entirely.

But there is more in this that should put the scientist masquerading as a moral philosopher on guard. Nazism's propaganda was written with the help of a legion of scholars from the hard and soft sciences, from anthropologists, philologists, psychologists and economists to biologists, zoologists and doctors.

So what? No-one is claiming that scientists are incapable of folly, ignorance or despicable behaviour; nor is anyone suggesting that the fruits of scientific research cannot be put to heinous uses. Certainly Dawkins is advancing neither proposition in Root of All Evil. The important distinction for him is not between scientists and believers (how could it be--many scientists are believers), but rather between science and faith. He is pitting the fallibilism and skepticism of science against the parochialism and dogmatism of faith, and what he's suggesting is that Nazism and megachurch fundamentalism both exhibit the latter characteristics. Hence, the comparison holds.

The Nazi example is not unique but was repeated elsewhere, such as in Stalinist Eastern Europe and Mao's China. It is no doubt occurring in Iran, where dissidence is virtually impossible. The point is not the political ideology, but the readiness of "rational" scientific types to help mad regimes to deliver untold suffering to millions.

Kohn is contradicting herself here. If dissidence is virtually impossible in these regimes--it will be as impossible for "rational scientific types" as for anyone else--whether we're talking about China, Eastern Europe or Iran. In any case, the point is the political ideology--and the fact that the Stalinism and Maoism that held sway in Eastern Europe and China respectively have far more in common with religious fundamentalism (of both the Islamic and the Christian kind) than they do with the tradition of freethinking and skepticism embraced by many atheists.

But no rant is complete without a strawman argument:

The trouble with the present flight from religion to the welcoming embrace of atheistic scientists and philosophers is that they offer precious little more than a new conviction that religion is the cause of evil in the world. In other words, these scientists deliver a message akin to that of the fire-and-brimstone preachers who bellowed about the dangers of sin, only they warn from their secular pulpits of the dangers of religion.

No, Rachael: if atheists and scientists (who may or may not be atheists, but don't let that stop Kohn throwing us all into the same box) have a message to deliver, it is that the benefits to humankind of reason and critical-reflective (as opposed to dogmatic and parochial) thinking are manifold and demonstrable. Every advance we have made towards liberty and democracy--be it racial equality, gay rights, women's rights, etc.--has been made in spite of the vehement opposition religious traditionalists. It is the latter, and not freethinkers, who have held us back every time--and Kohn may want to take a few minutes out from her thoughtless science-bashing to give that some thought.

Kohn closes with an attack on Michael Onfray's The Atheist Manifesto. I haven't read the book myself, but apparently it entails a Marxist critique of religion. Why this should in and of itself be a problem Kohn doesn't deign to inform us--I guess the sheer mention of Marx is supposed to set off a big red flashing light in our heads and send our critical faculties into meltdown as we search under our beds with a flashlight. (Lazy argument being another hallmark of the rant.) She complains that Onfray presents a "comic-book" view of religion--in a piece that itself presents a comic-book view of science and nonbelief. She complains that "Onfray does not accept the sociological truth that religion has not only accommodated the laws and ethos of a democratic state but in a pervasive way supports it." Supports it? In what sense? It is the religious who oppose the full enfranchisement of the gay and lesbian community. It is the religious who want to dictate to women what they should do with their own bodies. It is the religious who (as this article demonstrates) regularly attack science when its discoveries come into conflict with theological presuppositions. It is the religious who want tear down the wall of separation between church and state--even though, ironically, it is the existence of such a wall that guarantees religious freedom. How exactly does any of this support democracy?

Kohn's closing line is priceless:

If Germany in 1933 had been invaded by people in prayer singing "Praise Jesus" instead of Nazis in jackboots it would not have presided over the worst mass killing in history.

Bullshit. People in prayer singing "Praise Jesus" lynched African-Americans in their thousands in the Deep South. People in prayer singing "Praise Jesus" have blown up abortion clinics and murdered their staff. People in prayer singing "Praise Jesus" abused children under their power while other people in prayer singing "Praise Jesus" covered for them. And Rachael: people in prayer singing "Praise Jesus" were complicit in the Nazi extermination of millions of undesirables.

Cross-posted at Punditocracy Watch

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The Anonymous Christian Complaint Box

More at Something Awful. Via FriendlyAtheist.

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The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XVI

The week in fundie:

1. First up, I'm hoping this shill for geocentrism is just taking the piss, because if he isn't, he may well be the dumbererest person on the Interwebs. Dumberer even than Idiot Pete. Bag-of-hammers-for-brains dumb. Look-ma-I-can-Interweb-all-by-my-selfs dumb.
2. Pope Benedict: American Indians had "silently longed" to become Christians prior to Columbus' arrival. (Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
3. It's like Smith meeting Wesson: Fred Phelps & co. plan to picket Jerry Falwell's funeral.
4. Not smart: Republican Presidential candidate Sam Brownback's campaign denies the Holocaust and declares Galileo and Einstein to be "vile Wiccans and that anyone who believes the universe does not revolve around the Earth is a 'Witch Doctor.'"
5. Poland hosts the World Congress of Families, a homophobic hate-in hosted by skinhead leader and Education Minister Roman Giertych, and bringing together fundies from across the nations to discuss "ways to counteract what has been called the 'demographics winter.'" (Translation: if the Muzzies don't outbreed us, the gays will.) Delegates maintained that the demographic crisis was being exacerbated by evil women attending university and postponing having children until it is too late. (Bartholomew's Notes on Religion)

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Another wonderful week of Howard sookery

The Howard Government is dominated by:

(a) Sooks
(b) Control freaks
(c) Theocrats
(d) All of the above

The correct answer, of course, is (d), judging by the Government's reaction to negative portrayals of its industrial relations policies on television this week, and by the news that its "citizenship test" will require aspiring citizens to affirm the notion that Australian values are based on the Judeo-Christian tradition.

As I noted briefly in an earlier post, the conservative side of politics has been screaming hysterically about "bias" at the ABC all week, in response to the station's screening of Bastard Boys, a dramatisation of the 1998 Australian waterfront dispute. Later, Howard chimed in, pronouncing the miniseries "One of the most lopsided pieces of political propaganda I've seen on the national broadcaster in years." What he wouldn't have seen coming was the scene in this week's episode of McLeod's Daughters, in which a character is fired and then immediately offered reinstatement on a workplace agreement with lower pay. This prompted several government ministers to condemn the show, claiming that the scenario would be illegal under the Industrial-Relations-Legislation-Formerly-Known-As-Workchoices laws, although the scene is apparently based on an actual event involving an employee at a BP service station in Adelaide. In any case, the Government is evidently coming to the realisation that Howard's battlers just aren't embracing the thought of signing away their hard-earned rights and entitlements in the workplace with the enthusiasm one might normally expect. (I know, we're all scratching our heads on that one, Johnny.)

But it is the knee-jerk nature of the Government's response to both programmes that is disturbing, and fits a pattern of control-freakery that has been a hallmark of Howard's tenure from its beginning, as books like the excellent Silencing Dissent clearly demonstrate.

What is even more disturbing is the new "citizenship test" and its flagrant flouting of the principle of the separation of church and state (very much an Aussie tradition, arguably) in the following question:

15. Australia's values are based on the ...

a. Teachings of the Koran

b. The Judaeo-Christian tradition

c. Catholicism

d. Secularism

As EvilWombatQueen points out in her fisking of the citizenship test, there is a disconnect between this question and the previous one asking examinees to identify Australian values:

Now, remember that the previous question actually stated the main Australian values. Remember them boys and girls? Men and women are equal. 'A fair go'. Mateship. Now, which option listed above can genuinely say it believes all of those things? If you said d, Secularism, you are right! However, sadly, you are also wrong. According to the government the answer is b, the Judeo-Christian tradition.

She's right: according to Kevin Andrews, immigrants must acknowledge that Australia's values--which include the equality of the sexes, fairness and mateship--are based on the Judeo-Christian tradition. Well let's explore this notion by looking at the track record of the Judeo-Christian tradition regarding just one of these values--that men and women are equal.

• In the Old Testament, women's inferiority to men is axiomatic, and manifests itself in a variety of ways: Eve's submission to Adam, the polygamy of David and Solomon (among many others), the original "handmaid's tale" (Abraham, Sarah and Hagar), Lot's offering of his daughters to the crowd besieging his house in Sodom, concubinage, the treatment of women as property in the Ten Commandments, mandatory pre-marital virginity for women (on pain of death by stoning), the requirement of women rape victims to marry their rapists, etc.
• Jesus' attitude to women was very different, of course. But his views didn't seem to have caught on. (Perhaps Nietzsche was right: "In truth, there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross.") By the time we get to Paul, women are again being told to submit to their husbands and their inferiority to men is reaffirmed.
• The church fathers were unanimous in their disparagement of women. Augustine remarked, "I fail to see what use woman can be to man, if one excludes the function of bearing children." Martin Luther suggested, "Let them die in childbirth, that's why they are there."
• Another great moment in the history of Christianity's treatment of women was the lynching of Hypatia in 415 CE. She was guilty of the terrible sin of being a pagan and a woman teacher of mathematics and philosophy. The good Christians of Alexandria dragged her into the church, tore her flesh from her bones with oyster shells, and burned her. This episode was but a precursor to the long and grand Judeo-Christian tradition of witch-burning.

Yes, yes, I know. It's not like that anymore--Bill Heffernan's "barren" comments aside . That's not the point. If equality between the sexes is indeed an Australian value, it is not a product of the Judeo-Christian tradition--it is a significant departure from it. Every advance women have made towards being treated as equals has been resisted by defenders of the Judeo-Christian tradition--the same kind of people who today resist moves to grant gays and lesbians equality with heterosexuals under the law. It is logically contradictory, therefore, to hold that sexual equality is an Australian value and at the same time hold that Australian values are based on the Judeo-Christian tradition. Any citizenship test which requires aspiring citizens to believe these two impossible things before breakfast is not only privileging one religious tradition unconstitutionally: it is also perpetuating unreason.

UPDATE: See Ninglun and Legal Eagle for more commentary on the citizenship test.

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Sammy Jankis fisks Muehlenberg on Jerry Falwell

Falwell: a born again Christian and a failure as a human being

Sammy Jankis, who has one of the best excuses for not posting more regularly--he's out seeing the world, brilliantly fisks Bill Muehlenberg's drooling obit to the televangelist who put the "nut" in "wingnut," Jerry Falwell. Muehlenberg whines that Falwell was "simply someone trying to stand up for biblical values in an increasingly hostile culture," and that he's being unfairly caricatured as a "thundering theocrat" by TEH SECULAR LEFT; Sammy is able to deftly juxtapose these complaints with multiple instances of a Fundy Saying The Darndest Things. And Sammy has barely scratched the surface, as The Republic of T's post on Falwell demonstrates.

(Muehlenberg wrote the piece after being interviewed about Falwell on "a secular radio station." They have secular radio stations in Australia? OH NOES!!!!!)

UPDATE: Do yourself a favour and watch Christopher Hitchens' Falwell eulogy at Pharyngula.

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One for Bruce

Operation Yellow Elephant presents . . .

The Battle Hymn of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders
(Sung to the tune of the Marine Corps Hymn)

'tween the walls of mommy's basement
On the floors our spunk has stained
We fight our fights through proxy
With a mouse, keyboard, and brain
First to call for wars of freedom
Policies that kill the poor
We'll do the least that we can do
And fight with our keyboard.

Our George was safe - he made the Guard
And Rush had a sore ass;
Deferments saved Dick's butt five times
But not the working class;
In the dorms of far-off college quads
A light year from the war
You will find us cursin' Democrats
One Hundred-One Keyboards.

There's beer for us and guns for them
And each one has a role;
We're many so glib, we'll flame a Lib,
As warfare takes its toll;
If the Army and the Navy
Are understaffed in war;
Go find another place to turn
We're the One Oh One Keyboards.

Via Pharyngula. If you want to see one of these morons in full flight, check out the comments link on this post at the (now defunct) Bruce's Rave and Rant.

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Root of All Evil

Richard Dawkins' documentary on religious belief, Root of All Evil?, will finally be seen on Australian television screens.

COMPASS: ROOT OF ALL EVIL? Part One "The God Delusion"
Sunday 20 May at 21:30
Channel 4

In this strongly authored two-part series, Professor Richard Dawkins accuses the three main religions--Christianity, Islam and Judaism--of beliefs that defy science, and of stunting the mind's capacity for understanding. He embarks on a personal, controversial and, at times, humorous journey to prove that religion is the root of all evil.

In the first episode Professor Dawkins challenges what he describes as 'a process of non-thinking called faith'. He ranges from the political influence of rich and powerful Christian fundamentalist institutions in America to the deadly clash of Judaism, Christianity and Islam in the Middle East. He describes the Holy Land as the least enlightened place in the world, a microcosm of the threat to rational values and civilisation posed by religion, whose irrational roots, he says, are nourishing intolerance and murder.

On his journey he takes a humorous look at the more bizarre expressions of religious fervour, such as the vision of the Virgin Mary in a grilled-cheese sandwich.

COMPASS: ROOT OF ALL EVIL? Part Two "The Virus of Faith"
Sunday 27 May at 21:30
Channel 4

[. . .]

In the second episode Professor Dawkins argues that religion can lead to a warped and inflexible morality, and the indoctrination of children. How is it, he asks, that despite science having exposed old religious myths, militant faith is back on the march? Dawkins believes that imposing religion on children who are too inexperienced to judge it for themselves is a mechanism for perpetuating beliefs that lead to murderous intolerance.

I can hear Michael Duffy sharpening his pencil already. Anti-Jeebus bias at the ABC. Why does the ABC hate God?

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The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XV

The week in fundie:

1. Christian students cry "persecution!" because they're not allowed to abuse homosexuals at their high school. (via Pharyngula)
2. Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort claim that they can prove God's existence without the Bible . . . by referring to the Ten Commandments. Kirk and Ray: YOU FAIL. (See the unedited Nightline debate between Cameron/Comfort and the Rational Response Squad here, and see also the recap by FriendlyAtheist)
3. Pope Benedict threatens to excommunicate Catholic politicians who don't force their religious beliefs regarding abortion on the populace. (Austin Cline)
4. Meet Jesus' favourite Congresswoman. (via Pharyngula)
5. School bus driver fired for gay personal ad. (Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
6. Pakistan's legislature considers a bill to execute people for leaving Islam. (Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
7. WorldNetDaily: "STARBUCKS HATES GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
8. UPDATE: Hundreds of thousands of homophobes attend gay hate rally in Rome.
   

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Seinfeld parody--Jim Carrey

This is from an old sketch comedy show called In Living Colour. I remember seeing this way back in the early 90s, before I had heard of Jim Carrey and well before I became addicted to Seinfeld.



But wait. There's more. National Lampoon have unearthed a lost episode of Seinfeld.



Genius.

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A question for Julie Bishop and Kevin Donnelly

I just marked one of my students down for using the word "Abo" in a class debate on the films Rabbit-Proof Fence and Australian Rules. Does that make me a Maoist, anti-American, left-wing, Trojan Horse brainwashing thug?

Me

My student

P.S. My justification for penalising the student was that the use of such a pejorative term was inappropriate in the context of a formal debate, and that it might distract or alienate the audience--something that public speakers (and debate participants in particular) should generally try to avoid.

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What to do with the "marching morons"

As a teacher, and as someone who from time to time has said unkind things about "bogans," I feel chastened by PZ Myers' latest post--a response to an editorial by SF writer Ben Bova extolling the virtues of a 50s SF tale called "The Marching Morons," predicting a world overrun by "dummies."

Myers takes issue with the obvious elitism of the story, as well as its attempt to ground the intellectual class distinction in biology. He retorts: "People, they are us."

That's where the Kornbluth story fails. It assumes the morons are unchangeably moronic, and treats the elite as unchangeably special. The only solution to their problem is to get rid of the morons, launching them into space to die. Bova's editorial, while not as cynically eliminationist, still pretends that the only answer is perpetuation of a distinction that doesn't exist biologically.

Here's the real solution to the "marching moron" problem: teach them. Give them fair opportunities. Open the door to education for all. They have just as much potential as you do. Bova complains that people aren't willing to work for change, but this is exactly where we can work to improve minds — but we won't if we assume the mob is hopeless.

Read the rest--it's one of the best Pharyngula posts I've seen in a long time.

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A Humanist school chaplain?

On the subject of threats to the separation of church and state in Australia, you might recall that last year the Howard Government announced the National School Chaplaincy Programme, which "will provide annual support of up to $20,000 for government and non-government school communities seeking to establish school chaplains or to further enhance services already being provided," commencing in the 2007 school year.

The National School Chaplaincy Programme aims to support school communities that wish to access the services of a school chaplain. School chaplains are already making valuable contributions to the spiritual and emotional wellbeing of school communities across Australia and the Australian Government has responded to the call that their services be made more broadly available.

The government website doesn't spell out exactly what "spiritual wellbeing" is, nor how it might be measured, but perhaps a more keen-eyed reader than myself can locate this information for me. The programme sponsors chaplains across the spectrum of belief in Australia--Anglicans, Baptists, Buddhists, Catholics, Church of Christ, Hindus, Muslims, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews, Lutherans, Orthodox, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Salvos, Uniting Church and "Others"--but it is unclear whether the "Other" category includes atheists and humanists (or Pastafarians). According to Education Minister Julie Bishop, it's all part of the drive to get "values" into Australian public schools--"values" being the sole province of the religious, you see.

It might surprise you to learn, therefore, that humanist chaplains do exist--though whether they would qualify for funding under the Howard Government programme is another matter. In an interview with the Institute for Humanist Studies, the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University, Greg Epstein, described what his job entails:

It is certainly a unique job, and most people really don't know that there has been a humanist chaplain here at Harvard for over 30 years now. A lot of people are curious: what exactly does a Humanist chaplain do? We like to say that the Humanist chaplaincy is dedicated to building, educating and nurturing a diverse community of humanists, agnostics, atheists and the non religious at Harvard and beyond.Nurturing is a very important aspect of chaplaincy work. People have real emotional needs around issues of birth, death, struggles in life, depression, anxiety, but also the joys of life having somebody to share those with, having a community of people to share those with. So I do a lot of counseling for people around both the happy and the sad times in life.

[. . .]

"Is humanism a religion?" is certainly a question that comes up a lot. I think that humanism is a life stance. A life stance is something that functions sociologically like a religion it's role in people's lives, the way that people draw on humanism as an inspiring life stance meaning that it is not just a philosophy. Humanism is not just what we think, it is not just our abstract ideas about the nature of the universe. It is also the way that we live on a day to day basis.The reason we have a chaplaincy here at Harvard, is to acknowledge that this is a broad and diverse community where people have real, everyday, day to day needs beyond simply answering academic questions in the laboratory or in the classroom. Whether you happen to believe in God or not, you still have those kinds of needs, and there needs to be an institution that is dedicated to serving people in their struggles with those needs, in their dealing with those needs.

The rest of the interview can be found here. Epstein has a bit of a dig at the "New Atheists" (i.e. Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris), asking "don't you think human life is about more than just science?" (Do they really suggest otherwise, though?) He sees humanist chaplains as part of a larger project to build a humanist community and institutions, and he also thinks humanists should get together and sing.

We also need to sing. We need to make the experience of being part of the humanist community sing, on a metaphorical level, to be able to read poetry together, and to sort of see the emotional side of life. But we also need to sing literally. Like you said, with Julia, to have those choruses. A song like John Lennon's "Imagine," great example.

In short, Epstein seems like a really, really annoying person. But perhaps he serves as a model for the kind of chaplain that those "values neutral" humanist and atheist students in high schools should, by rights, be granted access to under the Howard Government's chaplaincy programme.

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Does Australia need a National Day of Reason?

In response to President George W. Bush's declaration of a National Day of Prayer in 2002, atheist, humanist and secularist organisations in the US have endorsed May 3rd as a National Day of Reason.

Many who value the separation of religion and government have sought an appropriate response to the federally-supported National Day of Prayer, an annual abuse of the constitution. Nontheistic Americans (including freethinkers, humanists, atheists, agnostics, and deists), along with many traditionally religious allies, view such government-sanctioned sectarianism as unduly exclusionary.

A consortium of leaders from within the community of reason endorsed the idea of a National Day of Reason. This observance is held in parallel with the National Day of Prayer, on the first Thursday in May (3 May 2007). The goal of this effort is to celebrate reason - a concept all Americans can support - and to raise public awareness about the persistent threat to religious liberty posed by government intrusion into the private sphere of worship.

Bush's 2007 National Day of Prayer proclamation calls on "the citizens of our Nation to give thanks, each according to his or her own faith, for the freedoms and blessings we have received and for God's continued guidance, comfort, and protection." However, as the Chicago Tribune's Eric Zom points out,

the National Day of Prayer does not embrace diversity. It's now basically a Christian observance, with more than 30,000 events nationwide promoted by the National Day of Prayer Task Force, an organization that requires its volunteer coordinators to agree to a statement that reads in part, "I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God and the only one by which I can obtain salvation and have an ongoing relationship with God."

The National Day of Prayer Task Force describes itself as "the Judeo-Christian expression of the National Day of Prayer"--a "Judeo-Christian expression," as Zom wryly observes, that excludes Jews. "Reason would tell you," states Zom, "that government officials at all levels ought to distance themselves from such blatant sectarianism."

A similar National Day of Prayer was declared last year by the National Council of Churches in Australia for November 26th. Though it was ostensibly a response to the drought, it does signal a worrying tendency among Australian churches to attempt to ape the intermingling of church and state that has been the hallmark of Bush America, and an inevitable consequence of the Republican Party's strong identification with the Religious Right.

Thus far, however, the Australian National Day of Prayer doesn't seem to have the official status of its American counterpart. The National Prayer Breakfast, on the other hand, held each year on November 26th in the Great Hall of Parliament, ought to be more of a concern for those paying attention to the increasing tendency to mix religion and politics under Howard--especially when Bill Muehlenberg is crowing about the event being part of "God at work in Canberra."

So is the trend away from secularism in the years since the Howard Government came to office reason enough to declare an Australian National Day of Reason on November 26th?

UPDATE: Perhaps the National Day of Reason ought to be moved ahead in the calendar. Bruce reminds me that the Australian National Day of Thanksgiving--an event which has historical roots in 17th century America but absolutely no tradition in Australia (the Australian franchise was established last year)--will be held on May 26th. The involvement of the Governor-General, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition in this event should at least raise questions about church-state separation.

Bruce has posted on this topic previously.

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The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XIV

The week in fundie:

• Malaysian couple forcibly separated by the country's Islamic authorities after 21 years of marriage because "the husband did not convert to Islam as required by law for their marriage to be legal." (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
• The ACLU is fighting to re-establish an Atlanta woman's legal custody of a child placed in her care by the girl's biological mother. The child was placed into foster care in February by an Atlanta judge after he learned the woman looking after her, and to whom the child had grown attached enough to call "Mommy," is a lesbian. (Morons.org)
• The Rev. Sun Yung Moon, founder of the Washington Times and Bush crony, calls for gays to be wiped from the face of the earth. (Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
• Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan suggests that Julia Gillard's choice to remain childless (or "deliberately barren") renders her unfit for leadership. (Ninemsn) (See also Bruce's post)
  
• The Australian blogosphere's foremost misogynist heartily endorses Heffernan's remarks. (via Random Brainwave)
• UPDATE: US conservatives are debating whether or not Darwin supports their worldview. Dinesh D'Souza goes so far as to re-interpret evolution to support his own wingnut presuppositions, suggesting that this new Conservalution^TM can be used to woo conservatives. (Pharyngula)
  
• Meanwhile, in a recent debate among Republican presidential candidates, John McCain admits belief in evolution. As for the Grand Canyon, however: a magic man did that. (EvolutionBlog)
  

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The Clueless Wings of Poesy: BBC6's worst pop song lyrics ever

BBC6 has been polling it's listeners on the worst song lyrics in popular music. The top 5 are:

1. Des'ree - Life
   I don't want to see a ghost,
   It's the sight that I fear most,
   I'd rather have a piece of toast,
   Watch the evening news.
2. Snap - Rhythm Is A Dancer
   I'm as serious as cancer,
   When I say Rhythm is a Dancer.
3. Razorlight - Somewhere Else
   And I met a girl,
   she asked me my name,
   I told her what it was.
4. ABC - That Was Then But This Is Now
   More Sacrifices than an Aztec priest,
   Standing here straining at that leash,
   All fall down,
   Can't complain, mustn't grumble,
   Help yourself to another piece of apple crumble
5. U2 - Elevation
   I've got no self control,
   Been living like a mole now,
   Going down, excavation,
   High and high in the sky,
   You make me feel like I can fly,
   So high,
   Elevation

Other songs containing some (in the opinion of BBC6 listeners) atrocious lyrics to make the top ten include Oasis' "Champagne Supernova"(#7), Toto's "Africa"(#6) and Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" (#10):



Certainly these lyrics are pretty bad, but are they really the worst out there? Surely there must be a Bulwer-Lytton or Eye of Argon out there that tops BBC6's candidates for crimes against poesy?

What would I choose? It's actually more difficult than it seems, partly because the criteria is limited to hit singles (and I don't really pay attention to the kind of music that gets played on Video Hits or Nova), and partly because a lot of silly lyrics are probably deliberately so. Take this nonsequitous example from Beck's 1996 hit "Where It's At:"

Bottles and cans and just clap your hands/and just clap your hands.

Or these lines from Eskimo Joe's "Ruby Wednesday:"

I met a girl who would travel the world for free/She told me her phone number, told me to call her at 3/She had a Gran who she liked to call Nan sometimes/That was a lie but I sung it because it rhymes

Maybe it only counts once a band starts taking itself seriously. "Ruby Wednesday" dates from a time when the only successful Perth band was Jebediah. Now that Eskimo Joe are as dominant in the contemporary Australian popular music scene as INXS were in 80s, they're opening singles with lyrics like this:

Sarah/Won't you tell me your name?

Um . . . what would be the point of that? I've always thought the following lyrics from Silverchair's "Tomorrow" to be fairly terrible:

Won't you come with me to a place in a little town/The only way to get there is to go straight down/There's no bathroom and there is no sink/The water out of the tap is very hard to drink/Very hard to drink

Then again, who doesn't write bad poetry at age 15?

If you like bizarre lyrics, Smashing Pumpkins albums never fail to satisfy. Adore's "Annie Dog" contains the lyrics: "She wants clean sheets/And fresh flowers/And dental shots/And the Hong Kong glue." What. The. Fuck? Of their hit singles, however, you can't go past the following from "Thirty Three:"

The Earth laughs beneath my heavy feet/At the blasphemy in my old jangly walk

Could Billy Corgan be the Jim Theis of popular music?

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Science vs. faith

Wellington Grey on the difference between science and faith:
Via Larvatus Prodeo.

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Grunge request fest

Super Simmo's blog is grunge-themed this week, and he's taking requests.

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Hated to death: a gay lynching in Jamaica

Pam's House Blend reports on a gay-bashing in Jamaica, one of the most virulently homophobic societies on the planet.
A 2004 Human Rights Watch report concludes that the pervasiveness of homophobia in Jamaican society is such that it is jeopardising efforts to combat HIV/AIDS in that country, where HIV/AIDS is still seen as a "gay disease." It also contains the following description of what can happen to gays and lesbians who speak out:

On June 9, 2004, Brian Williamson, Jamaica’s leading gay rights activist, was murdered in his home, his body mutilated by multiple knife wounds. Within an hour after his body was discovered, a Human Rights Watch researcher witnessed a crowd gathered outside the crime scene. A smiling man called out, “Battyman [homosexual] he get killed!” Many others celebrated Williamson’s murder, laughing and calling out, “let’s get them one at a time,” “that’s what you get for sin,” “let’s kill all of them.” Some sang “boom bye bye,” a line from a popular Jamaican song about killing and burning gay men.

Perhaps not unexpectedly, Public Defender Earl Witter blamed the victim.

Public Defender Earl Witter resorted to the vernacular yesterday as he advised members of the gay community to "hold your corners", and avoid flaunting their sexual preferences in the face of those who are repulsed by their behaviour.

Condemning violence in all forms, particularly against homosexuals, the public defender, however, warned members of the gay community that if they continued to shove their tendencies on others who found it repugnant, it might incite violence.

"It may provoke a violent breach of the peace," Mr. Witter told The Gleaner yesterday evening.

Writing in the Guardian, Decca Aitkenhead suggests that Jamaican homophobia is a legacy of "400 years of Jamaican history, starting with the sodomy of male slaves by their white owners as a means of humiliation." She also cites Jamaica's extreme poverty and dilapidated health, education and law enforcement systems: "for many the only support comes from churches, many of which dispense a fire-and-brimstone religion that is not merely homophobic, but designed to discourage independent thought." What is needed on the part of the West is not vilification, Aitkenhead concludes, but debt relief, fair trade and investment: "If that happened, homophobia would soon organically dissolve." Bullshit.

Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars

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Baby Jesus told me to beat up your son

An atheist high school student, Reed Braden, lent his atheist friend his copy of The God Delusion. The friend's father found the book, phoned Braden and informed him that he would personally be returning the book that evening (having placed the call at 11pm).

He read me my address (I assume he got it from the phonebook) and told me, "You made this too easy." I obsessively checked every lock in my house and went to sleep with a metal baseball bat held across my chest.

He sounded a bit drunk on the phone and I assumed he wouldn't drive across town to deliver my book in his state, so I called the school and left a message, asking to deny him a visitor's pass to the student areas of the building. He indeed came to school, and I assume he tried to visit me but was intercepted by the principal first. Whatever occurred, he ended up talking to my principal and demanded that I be punished for "handing out literature" and attempting to convert his already-Atheist son to Atheism.

Sidenote: The Gideons stopped cars in our parking lot a week ago to deliver Bibles to every person leaving the school... without school intervention.

Full details and follow-up at Braden's blog. Incredibly, the school is actually making up its mind about whether to punish him for his "sin."

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